When I think of my parents, I imagine what I have been told about them. They met in college, a messy, redheaded, math major, and an organized, taciturn who was studying English, and it was love at first sight. My father, Francis, was said to be untidy and absentminded. He was the kind of person to lose his glasses, only to find them on his head later on. His whole person had a sort of pattern, even inside, his hair looked as though he was standing on a cliff in a windstorm. An hour after he had put on one of his freshly ironed shirts, he would look as though he slept in his clothes; and his shirttail had a way of creeping out of his pants when he reached into the top shelf of the cupboard to get some chalk, or when he was writing something on the upper part of the board. My grandma says his personality was just as untidy and unpredictable as his appearance. She says he had a roar of a laugh, that bursted forth at any given moment, for he was a happy person. My mother was said to be a quiet, but beautiful woman who seemed to remind some of a doe eyed deer. Her name was Colette and before she had me, she taught English to students at the small public high school in town. She loved English, and her students learned more because of this. For when a teacher loves the subject they teach, the students tend to catch that love for themselves. But after I was born, she had to quit her teaching job to take care of me. I guess she had been sad to leave teaching, but my grandma assures me that she enjoyed being with me a million and one times more then teaching kids about sonnets and Shakespeare. Grandma says she never stopped talking of me, and was constantly calling her up to update her on my latest activities. I don't remember what my mother looked like exactly, but Grandma says she was was a small woman, of just 5'2, and was said to have has the best smile around. Her hair flowed down her back like a blonde waterfall, and she had little freckles sprinkled across her nose. She loved walks in the wood among the wild colors of autumn, and to read Jane Austen in the last light of the day. Unlike my father, she was organized and neat. Everything she did was according to a to do list, and was done in an orderly fashion. So in these ways, my mother and father balanced each other out in a way, and it was as if they were made for one another. Their first, and only house together was a small white house with blue shutters and a lovely garden. My father taught math at a nearby college, and my mother stayed home with me at this time. Grandma says this was a good time, and she says they loved each other very much. She says that the neighbors who witnessed my fathers departures and arrivals to and from school were to say that when he left in the morning it was as though he were going to war, and that his arrivals in the late afternoon were like the triumphant return from a major battlefield. I hope that someday I will find someone like this who will be my triumphant soldier, who I will love just as much. I don't remember my parents, because they died in a car accident in 99', and I was only three at the time. Everything I know about them, I have learned from my Grandma. I am constantly asking her questions about their life and what they were like, and sometimes I can see it makes her sad, but I just get so curious. But so far, from what I know about them, I know I wish to be like them. I wish I could have known them, and that they were still with me today. But in the end, I know someday I will, and we will be a family again.