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10.10.59 – 10.10.09
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“Thank you” to our friends and relatives at our golden wedding anniversary party
Last year I wrote about my forth coming 50th wedding anniversary ( http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=15979 , http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=15663 ). Well, the day finally arrived1. It was exactly half a century ago to the day (10/10/59 was also a Saturday) that my wife, Sophia, and I were married.
I was a beginning graduate student and she just graduated from college, we had combined net worth of less than zero. Three quarters of our parents were not in the US. So we did not sent out invitations. Sophia made her own wedding dress and we had a small cake with family and a couple of close friends. The reception and the wedding banquet have to wait for 50 more years to today. But age, passage of time, having so many life-long friends here, and our children organizing and giving us a fabulous party, made this event that much sweeter. Thus, what more can a parent ask and say except “THANK YOU” from the bottom of our hearts to our children2.
But I do want to acknowledge the presence of our grandchildren (ages 12 through 20) , all six of them, two from California and another flew back from her college in LosAngles for this event. One is co-MCing this event , another will write an article about it, and others are filming and taping the event for posterity2. I thank them all. Also we have relatives from both sides of the family, our brothers and sisters and in-laws from Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, and Texas. We are so happy to share this day with them. I also want to acknowledge two of my oldest friends and their spouses whom I met more than 58 years ago, Billy and Lucille Lee and Bob and Betty Lee. The first couple were at our wedding in ‘59 and I was the best man at the wedding of the second couple in ‘57.
I also have many friends in China who cannot come due to distances involved. Thus, they are giving Sophia and me sort of a mirror image of this party two months from now in Shanghai China when we will be there. But one person, QS Jia, my colleague in Tsinghua University actually managed to make the trip just for this weekend. I thank him for making this effort. His travel distance rivals that of my youngest daughter who came back from Ivory Coast, Africa for this party.
Sophia gave me a most pleasant surprise by singing tonight same song she sang at our first meeting (the Chinese song 红豆相思) It was the song that sealed my fate. However, I didn’t have any surprise of my own to reciprocate. Instead I revealed a 50 year old secret which only Sophia and I know. When I proposed to her on Valentine’s day in 1959, I made the usual promises of “to love, honor, and obey (at least most of the time)”. But I made one more unusual promise. I always love to travel and visit faraway places. So I said to Sophia, “I am the envelope and you are the stamp. Stick with me and we’ll go places together”. In the ensuing 50+ years, I can honestly say, like Madonna who sang the title song in the movie EVITA, that "I kept my promise". We can probably write our own version of the best selling book of “1000 places to visit before you die”.
I can go on. But I probably will get all emotional and choke up. Thus for the next 5 minutes I am going to let music and pictures do the talking. With apology to John Steinbeck for borrowing the title of his book3, the voice of Barbara Striesand, and the technical assistance of my good friend Yan-Wu Tang and Chan-shan Ting for making the DVD, here is my version of “Travels with Sophia, in search of happiness on our life’s journey”. Computer, Take it away4.
Footnotes
1. The joke is that at my age, one should not even buy green bananas (one may not be around when they turn yellow and good enough to eat). Thus, one cannot always count on future events.
2. You must excuse our parental pride for showing off the photos below. This party was completely organized and given by our children (In Chinese custom and our obviously biased opinion, that is 25 孝.).
3. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley – In Search of America Penguin Classic, 1962
4. Readers can access my website http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~ho and click on the button “50th anniversary slideshow” to see and hear this DVD.
10.10.09 (She made both the dresses in ‘59 above and ’09 below)
Venue of the party - The Insitute of Contemporary Arts, Boston Harbor Wharf (Inside and outside of ICA)
https://wap.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-263414.html
上一篇：Everything you ever wanted to know about Harvard
下一篇：10.10.59-10.10.09 (II)
