Emily Mayfield, part 3: Parents

Emily’s father, Robert Mayfield, met Emily’s mother, Suzanna McKinley, in college. She was majoring in home economics, and Robert was studying economics.

Suzanna worked in the university kitchen and had a small room in the top floor of the women’s dorm. Robert was an instructor at the university. He lived in a basement apartment just one block off campus. The apartment smelled funny, so Robert spent most of his free time in the library, which is where he met Suzanna. He was a Ph.D. candidate, finishing up work on his dissertation and preparing for his defense. He came up for air one day, and there was Suzanna, looking wise and soft and caring.

Both worked their way through school. By the time they graduated, he getting his Ph.D. and she a baccalaureate degree, they were grownups, independent and self-supporting and living away from home.

Their wedding was held the day after their graduation, since all the family members were in town anyway. Suzanna wore a dress she made herself. In fact, her wedding dress was her senior project. She got an A on the dress. Robert wore the only suit he owned. It was black and a little shiny. He bought a new tie for the wedding.

Suzanna’s maid of honor was named Emily.

Robert became a professor of economics at the University. This allowed him to have the summers off to tend the farm, and to hire his students as workers.

Suzanna has put her degree in home economics to good use tending the home, raising four children, tending Robert and his laborer-students, and—Robert’s specialty notwithstanding— managing the household budget and finances.

Robert is a tall, gaunt man, kept stringy by all that dealing with the laws of supply and demand. That and working the fields. Suzanna is a dumpling of a woman, soft and nurturing to Robert’s lean spareness. They complement one another in physique as well as personality.

Robert is an idealist, a theoretician, a dreamer of worldly dreams. He thinks he’s practical. His specialty is the stock market, and he NEVER invests his personal money. On paper he has made over three million dollars during the course of his career. He is very proud of the fact that he has never lost a penny on the stock market.

(continued)