Women & Money

    We all know the familiar saying:  “The only things for certain are death and taxes.”  It came to mind recently as I was doing two important things:  preparing my 2008 income tax return and thinking about a topic for my Silver Vixens column for this month.

    In the midst of going through the neatly labeled folders that held the necessary papers for my annual taxpayer’s accounting date with Uncle Sam – I had a conversation with Chief Silver Vixen Bonnie Price.  We found ourselves on the topic of perfection and how it may or may not be a heavy mantle in the lives of women.  

    My experience with being the recipient of perfectionism came from the loving hands of my 20-year old mother.  Vivien Baxter married my Dad Bill Dickerson (with her parents’ permission) three weeks before her 17th birthday.  When I was born, I became her real life doll and she took exemplary care of me.  Everything she did for me and with me was as perfectly orchestrated as she could make it.

    Perfection had been an important and early discipline for this child bride to master.  Though she was the teenage wife of a young Army/Air Force lieutenant who was just a few years her senior, she was a military wife now – in the midst of “older women” already in their 30s!

    Her perfection for being stylishly appropriate was one of my Mom’s greatest assets.  She practiced what she learned on me.  Where did she learn this grown up sense of the life and style she wanted to provide me?  From my Dad.  

    The story goes:  A few weeks after they were married, he arrived home to change into his military dress uniform and pick up Mom for a squadron party.  He found her dressed like the 17-year old that she was – in her best pleated skirt, white Angora sweater, matching socks and black Mary Jane shoes.  Dad told her she looked beautiful and that he’d like her to save the outfit to wear when the two of them went out to dinner because in the Air Force there was a sort of uniform for wives too.  “The older women usually wear a cocktail dress,” he said.  “Let’s go get one for you!”

    And so it was that every Friday of those early months of my Mother’s married life that my Dad would take her shopping for her “uniforms”.  One Friday it was hats.  Another it was shoes.  The next - for suits.  Yet another for purses and so on.   And so it was that history and evolution of the perfectionism into which I was born and grew up.  
My parents have been gone five years now – first Mom then Dad six months later.  They’d been married 61 years.  It is always a special memory for how tenderly Bill brought Vicki into the world of older - women of a certain age.

    Yes, I had been in the midst of my perfect plan – to accomplish two things today before leaving on my business trip:  finish and mail my taxes and decide on a topic for my monthly “With the Family in Mind”: Women and Money column for Silver Vixens – when I spoke to CV Bonnie.  

     It was that conversation that gave me the topic for this column:  not the death of my parents but rather how they lived and taught me to recognize the value of different kinds of assets in our lives.  Money is an asset and certainly matters.  We should make deposits into our savings and retirement accounts on a regular and committed basis.  

    But memories matter, too.  They’re priceless assets and should be considered valuable deposits into our emotional bank accounts.

    Here’s to your health and wealth!

P.S.  I’ll get the taxes in the mail well before the deadline.  I really didn’t need to get that done in order for today’s perfect plan to be achieved.