Our Ironic Serendipity (IM5)

Chapter 9

For most of the morning, Rose and I spoke about random things. At first, we talked a lot about our families and where we come from, which led to me basically hearing about Maria's and Walters entire love story.

First, Rose talked about her mom, Maria.

Maria is fully Mexican, and she lived with her "poor as dirt" (as Rosetta described them) native family until the age of 5 when a rich white couple from Alabama adopted her. Maria says she doesn't remember much about her biological family and she never bothered to find out anything about them because she dearly loved her adoptive parents, Christian and Sandra. Christian was apparently a successful doctor and Sandra was a well known lawyer. They were the perfect rich couple, and Maria, despite her very different birth place, fit right in. She loved her life, and when she graduated from her private all girls high school, she went to Stanford to study medicine. She wanted to become a doctor like her father.

Then, after hearing about her outstanding success in the medical field, some military people decided to offer Maria a chance to work for them and basically make boat loads of money. Obviously, she took up the opportunity, but she wasn't able to finish her medical degree at Stanford.

Second, Rose talked about her dad, Walter.

Walter came from a simple family down in the South. Somewhere in Texas, his family of 10 lived on a corn farm. Walter was the fourth of his seven siblings to be born on that farm. Apparently it had snowed the day he was born, which wasn't very common in Texas. I guess that was his parents', and his aunt's (who lived with them to help take care of the kids), first hint that he was going to be special. Anyway, Walter and his siblings grew up in the same town, and they all went to the same small school. The school had only about 300 students, and out of all of them, Walter was the most outstanding. He went to that school until a new teacher came during his high school freshman year and saw what a mathematical and scientific genius Walter was. So, just at the age of 14, he was given a full scholarship and sent to Berkley, The University of California, to study engineering. He spent five years at Berkley, studying and also doing some research in between, until NASA contacted him about working for them. He didn't have much else going for him, and he had already finished his studies at Berkley, so he took up the opportunity.

Then, one day, when Maria was at a very boring military gathering, and Walter was at an important meeting with some Airforce officials, their two paths collided.

Maria was standing near the corner of the big room with a thin glass of champagne in her right hand, watching people as they spoke to one another about satellites and guns and things she generally showed no interest in when suddenly someone bumped into her, causing her to spill her drink all over the chest area of her red 3000 dollar Valentino Garavani dress. Then, she turned around to see none other than Walter. From then on, Walter apologized and offered to buy her a new dress, to which Maria responded with laughter because the dress was probably way too much for him to afford, but then they both came to realize the success of their careers as they spoke about work and life over a drink at a jazz bar only a couple blocks away from the military meeting/gathering building.

Years passed and Maria and Walter were dating for a long time until they finally decided to get married. They spent quite a lot of time working, and in their free time travelling a bit, until at the age of 37, Walter decided to retire because Maria, 33, was pregnant with Rosetta. For two years after Rosetta's birth, Maria still tried to work, but she finally decided to retire to spend more time with her family. Since money was no problem for either of them, they decided to settle down somewhere quiet and give Rosetta a peaceful life in a big house with a lot of land around it.

Walter and Maria were already living in this general area, so they decided to get a big house and stay here, which they ultimately ended up doing.

That's the story Rosetta told me about the history of her family while I sat with my mouth hung open in amazement at how oblivious you could be about people that you'd made specific assumptions about. In my case, I was way off with my speculations about Walter and Maria, although maybe I wasn't so far off with Walter.