conjoin

A year ago was the memorial service weekend for both of our parents: mom's service was on Friday, a beautiful and simple Quaker ceremony, with stirring, mostly spontaneous tributes. Pop's service was a more formal affair put on by the College on Saturday.

I wrote a bit about my amazing mother in the entry written the day before the anniversary of her death, February 28th.

Those who were present at the memorial service for my dad last April know from my eulogy about his desire to learn and his vocabulary lists. If you want to invoke his spirit for a few minutes, as I tried to do in the eulogy, you can read the tribute at http://www.conncoll.edu/news/chu/tributes.html. There's also a fabulous little video of him at http://www.conncoll.edu/news/chu/.

I've kept hundreds (a fraction of those he wrote) of these vocab lists of Pop's, and often stick them in with a letter I'm sending to someone who knew him. I've just sent this one off to some old friends of my parents, the Fishers.

The list includes: the great triad, natural process, entelechy, mimesis, tertiary, apposite, conjoin, tendrils of plant, intuit, plenitude, epiphany, immanence, immanent state, ventriloquism, paradigm, hermeneutics, exegesis, arabesques, oracular, oracle, intractable, a whiff, nascent, crimp, racked, scrawny, heretical, deciduous, philander off, effloresce, obeisance, inhere, inherent, misanthrope, misdoubt, cloak, hermetically, emasculate. At this moment, I am in the best state of my mind. Tranquility is the key: 1/18/86.

Each word or phrase has its Chinese translation scrawled next to it.

I cannot overstate my gratitude for having had parents who wanted to learn, who were so directed in their lives by curiosity and awe. I miss them, very much, but carry their curiosity and awe inside me. Thank God, thank Goodness, thank the Whole of It.