A couple of months ago I posted an article about Jenny's responsibilities as a patent attorney. I said I would follow up with a post describing the traits that made her a great lawyer. However, the more I thought about it, each of her talents is so formidable that it wouldn't do them justice to compress them all into one post.
So, I'll dedicate this space to one talent of Jenny's that continues to influence her family today: her curiosity. Her desire to learn and discover manifested itself in many ways. For example, Jenny read more than 40 books a year for over ten years. She could be found reading from the first thing in the morning to the middle of the night, when everyone else was asleep. She also surrounded the kids with books. She established a culture of reading that Dylan grew up in and embraced. To this day, he spends much of his free time browsing through Jenny's books in our library. And, his chosen major in college will be one that utilizes primarily reading and writing.
Anyone who knew Jenny well knew she was curious about music. Whenever I went back home to Minnesota, she would often ask me to bring back piano books from my childhood. She not only wanted to expand her library of sheet music, but she also saw it as a way of connecting with me. She'd look for the pages that were marked up with notes written 40 years ago. She'd start by sight-reading music and, with a little bit of practice, master it better than I ever could. With Jenny producing such beautiful music on a nightly basis, I couldn't help but fall in love with piano all over again. In 2019 I picked it up and can now play Linus and Lucy from memory.
Jenny's most powerful use of her curiosity, though, was to engage her two sons. It was Jenny--and only Jenny--who always took the initiative to expose Dylan and Tyler to the wondrous world around us. She wanted to learn alongside her two boys. From the ladybugs at Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park to snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef to bike tours of cities across the globe to simply doing origami at the dinner table, Jenny was the one behind it all. When the kids reflect on the most thought-provoking and enjoyable experiences of their childhood, it will involve activities that Jenny prompted us to do. And, she used her curiosity to drive every single one of them.
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