My Mother's Stories: Meeting My Father (Patreon)

My mother's responsible for a lot of the person I am today, and I refer to her as the Empress of the Geeks for a reason. I've been talking to my mom a lot about her life recently. I realized I'd never before asked her how she met my father, Kirk. I knew it had happened at Swarthmore College in the late 1950s/early 1960s, but that was all I knew.

This is her reply. I've done my best to transcribe it in her voice, from my memory of hearing it directly from her.

"I was in the Excursion Club. Students weren't allowed to own cars, but clubs could. So the Excursion Club existed to have a car, and to take batches of us to go do things in town and other places nearby. I was introduced to Kirk by his roommate, who I knew and who was in the club. Kirk joined the club.

"At first, I thought he was... boring. He didn't do the kinds of things I did, and did not seem to like the kind of things I liked. I went cave delving back then. He came to do one delve with us. It was the only time I got stuck in a crevice for a few hours. I eventually got out, but Kirk never wanted to go caving again.

"One of the things we'd do was clean up and repaint people's houses. Kirk would be there for those. Once during one of those days, I feinted. Maybe it was too hot and I got dehydrated. Maybe I caught a bug. We never found out why. I just passed out, and I woke up later in the college nurse's office. I was okay, but I'd been out for a few hours.

"The nurse came in, and brought me a huge bouquet of roses. She said, 'Your boyfriend brought you roses.' And I said, 'But I don't have a boyfriend.' And the nurse looked at me, looked at the huge number of roses, then looked back at me and said 'Now you do.'

"So, I spent some more time with Kirk. He was very attentive, and very interested in me. And after I got into deeper conversations with him, I discovered he wasn't boring at all. He had deep, interesting ideas and was fascinating to talk to. And he was very devoted to me. And I decided I was devoted to him."

-Claire F. McMurray