From the category archives:

Stories

How Silence Can Be Golden, Not Awkward

by Timberry on June 29, 2011

Years ago I was contracted by Apple Computer to do a series of seminars in Japan, and they paid an expert (Dianne Saphiere, if you’re out there, take a bow) to help me with some cross-cultural fine tuning.

One of the lessons Dianne taught me was the power of silence.

In Japan, she said, a long pause during a negotiation was traditionally can a sign of respect. It was a way to show that the matter is important and the proposal just made is worthy of thought.

To Americans, on the other hand, a long pause during a negotiation is an awkward silence. The longer the silence, the more uncomfortable it becomes.

Imagine a conference room in Tokyo. A team of Americans are negotiating a deal with a team of Japanese. “We can do that for $100,000,” the Americans say. The Japanese say nothing. They wait in silence for two minutes.

“How about $90,000?” The Americans broke the silence by lowering the price. The Japanese were going to say yes to $100,000.

This lesson taught me the power of silence, I’ve seen it work many times in many different contexts, aside from the American and Japanese encounter. For example, waiting before responding isn’t a bad thing to do in any dialogue anywhere. Who knows, reflecting first on what you’re about to say might actually be a good thing, right? And in a negotiation context, silence can be awkward to one side and golden to the other.

(posted on Small Business Trends July 6, 2011)

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The Mini-Cooper And Me

by Timberry on July 12, 2009

That red Mini-cooper S helped me navigate the dark wood.

I started wanting it as soon as I realized they were selling new ones, rather than just refurbished old ones. More so when I actually saw them around. And then when Cristin graduated from Whitman, I gave her my RAV 4 and bought — it took about a year, because of the waiting list — a new 2005 Mini.

Cristin would say things like “at least your midlife crisis was just a Mini-Cooper, not a Porsche.” Not so bad.

I got it in April of 2005. That wood I refer to got darker and darker into 2006 — the Mini made it better, me and my car, but it didn’t solve anything — but finally started clearing up in 2007, thanks to reading, Carl Jung, meditation, and some related phenomena.

The car and I parted company very happily, four years later, when I gave it to Megan as she started adult life down in Palo Alto with a fresh new degree and a fresh new job. I drove it down there with her, for two perfect days.

When I got the new Audi TT to replace it, Cristin came home that day and said, “Dad, you turned in your hippy car for a preppy car.” Gulp. But then yesterday I took the Audi over Fox Hollow after dinner, I’m starting to really like it. And I love having left the Mini at a good place.

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Two Perfect Days

by Timberry on July 11, 2009

One of the few things that hasn’t changed in the last 40 or so years, or so it seems, is the interstate drive between Eugene and Stanford. My childhood included the stretch from Los Altos to Mt. Shasta, and my escape event the piece just north of there, Callahan, and Weed. And I was pretty much a child the first time I drove it all the way through to Eugene. We’d been married four months. We were both children. 22 years old. And a few months.

And our youngest daughter, Megan, was 22 years old and a few months as she sat, happily, next to me, just a few weeks ago, when we took that stretch together, Eugene to Stanford, one more time. One time that rolled up all the others and, well, I get ahead of myself.

This was Sunday, July 5, 2009. By 10:30 on a bright sunny summer morning we were sailing past Cottage Grove. Radar detector on, staying around 70, gliding around rolling curves, getting in rythm. I admit, even though things are just things, and it’s embarrassing for a full-grown over-educated would-be-intellectual and would-be zen 60-year-old guy, I’ve loved that mini cooper S from the day I first saw it. And, paradoxical as it may seem, driving it down to Palo Alto, with Megan, to leave it with Megan, was the best time I ever had in it.

Not, by the way, that I didn’t have good times in that car. I really did. There was that day in June, 2005, when it was just a couple months old, that I drove it over the Santiam Pass from Eugene to Bend in just over two hours. Listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink on the ipod attachment. Clear day, dry, no traffic, and I just sailed that little car over the mountains and through the high desert, up the Mackenzie River over the pass through Sisters to Bend. And that other time, Bend to Eugene, over the Cascade Highway; again, bright, warm, dry, and empty highway. And lots of curves.

I’ve loved cars before. Several times. My first car, a VW type 3, dark red. I was 20, bought it new in Innsbruck, drove it all over Europe. And across the United States, three times. And from Mexico and back, twice. We called it Chofs. That green volkswagen beetle, that we drove all over Mexico. The Acura that bled the day I got it. And I loved my new Audi sports car, today, actually, as I drove it fast over Fox Hollow Road.

But none of them like that mini-cooper. And never as much satisfaction as giving it to Megan.

(to be continued)

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One or the Other; Make Your Choice

by Timberry on June 10, 2009

In an old joke I heard first while living in Mexico City, the pistol packing bandito storms into the cantina with guns blazing to get everybody’s attention. He draws a line in the middle of the bar.

“All right,” he shouts, to the now quiet crowd, pointing his two six guns menacingly, “I want all the SOBs on this side” … he waves at one side of the line … “and all the dumbbells on that side.” (For you Spanish speakers, that’s hijos de la ching*** on one side and pende*** on the other).

“Now wait a minute,” says one brave self-assured voice in the crowd, “I’m no dumbbell.”

“Well then move to the other side,” comes the answer.

I’ve always liked the joke, and I’m putting it up here because I’m going to work it into one of my blog posts some time. For now, though, I’ll just say that I don’t believe it. The implication is of course (and I include it here not because you’re a dumbbell, but because it may not translate that well) that you are either dumb or mean, with nothing in between. I don’t believe that.

But it’s a good story.  

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10 Lessons Learned in 22 Years of Bootstrapping

by Timberry on June 2, 2009

(I posted this yesterday on Small Business Trends, and it goes up tomorrow at Planning Startups Stories; but it belongs here too.)

Last week a group of students interviewed me, as part of a class project, looking for secrets and keys to success. They were asking me because after 22 years of bootstrapping, my wife Vange and I own a business that has 45 employees now, multimillion dollar sales, market leadership in its segment, no outside investors, and no debt. And a second generation is running it now.

Frankly, during that interview I felt bad for not having better answers. Like the classic cobbler’s children example, I analyze lots of other businesses, but not so much my own. As I stumbled through my answers, most of what I was saying sounded trite and self serving, like “giving value to customers” and “treating employees fairly,” things that everybody always says.

I wasn’t happy with platitudes and generalizations, so I went home that day and talked to Vange about it. Together, we came up with these 10 lessons.

And it’s important to us that we’re not saying our way is the right way to do anything in business; all businesses are unique, and what we did might not apply to anybody else. But it worked for us.

1. We made lots of mistakes

Not that we liked it. At one point, about midway through this journey, Vange looked at me and said: “I’m sick of learning by experience. Let’s just do things right.” And we tried, but we still made lots of mistakes. We’d fuss about them, analyze them, label them and categorize them and save them somewhere to be referred to as necessary. You put them away where you can find them in your mind when you need them again.

2. We built it around ourselves

Our business was and is a reflection of us, what we like to do, what we do well. It didn’t come off of a list of hot businesses.

3. We offered something other people wanted …

… and in many cases needed, even more than wanted. You don’t just follow your passion unless your passion produces something other people will pay for. In our case it was business planning software.

4. We planned.

We kept a business plan alive and at our fingertips, never finishing it, often changing it, never forgetting it.

5. We spent our own money. We never spent money we didn’t have.

We hate debt. We never got into debt on purpose, and we didn’t go looking for other people’s money until we didn’t need it (in 2000 we took in a minority investment from Silicon Valley venture capitalists; we bought them out again in 2002). We never purposely spent money we didn’t have to make money. (And in this one I have to admit: that was the theory, at least, but not always the practice. We did have three mortgages at one point, and $65,000 in credit card debt at another. Do as we say, not as we did.)

6. We used service revenues to invest in products.

In the formative years, we lived on about half of what I collected as fees for business plan consulting, and invested the other half on the product business.

7. We minded cash flow first, before growth.

This was critical, and we always understood it, and we were always on the same page. See lesson number 5, above. We rejected ways we might have spurred growth by spending first to generate sales later.

8. We put growth ahead of profits

Profitability wasn’t really the goal. We traded profits for growth, investing in product quality and branding and marketing, when possible, although always as long as the cash flow came first.

9. We hired people slowly and carefully.

We did everything ourselves in the beginning, then hired people to take tasks off of our plate. We hired a bookkeeper who gave us back the time we spent bookkeeping. A technical support person gave us back the time we spent on the phone explaining software products to customers. And so on.

10. We did for employees’ families as we did for ourselves.

Family members — not just our own family, but employee family members too — have always been welcome as long as they’re qualified and they do the work. At different times, aside from our own family members, we’ve had two brother-sister combinations, an aunt and her niece, father and daughter, and husband and wife.

And in conclusion…

Bootstrapping is underrated. It took us longer than it might have, but after having reached critical mass, it’s really good to own your own business outright. It might have taken longer, and maybe it was harder — although who knows if we could have done it with investors as partners — but it seems like a good ending.

Family business is underrated. There are some special problems, but there are also special advantages too.

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A moment in 1993 with Cristin.

by Timberry on June 21, 2008

This was sometime in Spring of 1993. Cristin would have turned 11 years old. We drove together in my Acura of those times, west on 18th, towards her soccer practice somewhere near Churchill.

As she was in 1993

As she was in 1993

The sky was dark, threatening, rain coming soon. Cristin’s soccer practice was going to happen in the rain.

“Dad,” she said, breaking one of those comfortable silences Cristin and I share, “Isn’t Oregon great?”

And I knew, or felt, then that the move to Oregon was okay. Cristin hadn’t suffered. Which was a great relief.

And that is a treasured moment.

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I Don’t Understand a Word They’re Saying

by Timberry on November 17, 2007

In 1987, a few months after Megan was born, I went on one of my occasional forays into the world of good movies (“all we ever see is junk,” I would say, or something like that. These were not my most popular moments) and rented Ran, directed by Kurusawa, one of the truly great movies.

We took our places in the living room in the house on Pitman, and started the movie. Landscapes, swordsmen, and all, of course, in Japanese.

We watched. We focused. We read subtitles. Twenty minutes went by.

Cristin, who was five years old, not quite in Kindergarten, cried out with a voice full of frustration. We realized, with a shock, that she’d been staring intently at the Japanese movie, all in Japanese, with English subtitles, for at least 20 minutes. She’d been patient, trying very hard, but finally she burst out:

“I can’t understand a word they’re saying.”

We all laughed, then explained, and hugged her.

From Slideshow

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Green Lakes

by Timberry on September 2, 2007


Green Lakes 003
Originally uploaded by tim_berry

Summer is ending, 2007, Cristin and I spent Friday and Saturday night at the Parsons’ house in Bend. We had a very pleasant (for me at least) hike up to Green Lakes, me talking about old times, telling stories of before Cristin was born, how we met at Notre Dame, and like that.

The day was perfect, not too hot but clear intense blue sky and high 80s in Bend, probably about 70s right here at the top, where we ate lunch. We put jackets on because we sat in the shade after hiking up hill with backpacks, so it was more comfortable with a jacket.

We talked some about synchronicity. Like Vange acing the test at the US embassy to get a scholarship, for example. I told the story of our first date, and my out-of-character skipping out of things the following week.

It was a really nice day with Cristin. We finished with dinner at Deep, which is as I write this a new sushi restaurant in Bend, and a Netflix marathon with Profiler.

Vange and Megan and the Parsons were in Southern California for a wedding, Laura was “home alone” at the Parsons house, and the New York Berrys were in Bulgaria at Boyan’s wedding.

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Cape Cod 2007

by Timberry on August 12, 2007


Click here for the Amiglia album Cape Cod 2007
Click here for the Picasa album Cape Cod 2007		 I drove from Philadelphia where I had a presentation with AOM. Paul and Milena and Eva flew from New York and drove from Boston. Dad and Liz had reserved a room for Paul and Milena and Eva. I stayed with them in their condo. The water was warm. The food was good, the company too. Lobster on the patio and deck, a warm breeze, swimming in the ocean before breakfast.

The drive was memorable, for me. You all said it was crazy. It sort of started with a three-hour delay in San Francisco the day before, which meant I got to the airport at 1 am so I wasn’t fussy about the red Chevrolet Impala V8 with a tailfin that Hertz had left for me. I had reserved a midsize, the smallest Neverlost available.

The next day, Friday August 3, started poorly. I had to take an ambien at 3 am to sleep, so I slept until 10, then called Hertz about the car. The nice lady on the phone said I should take it to the downtown office — just a few blocks away — and switch it. Fortunately I called first, and when I did they told me they didn’t have any midsize. Oh well. Big, red, tailfin … perfect I suppose for I95 up the East Coast from Philadelphia to Cape Cod.

My presentation was anti-climactic to say the least. Four people showed up. So it wasn’t hard, no tension, but not useful. It started at 2, finished at 5. The concierge sent me to a nice-looking Italian deli across the street for a sandwich and fruit, but it was closed, so I got some food at (gulp) a downtown 7-11. Gulp indeed.

Then it was me and the red impala and Suzie Neverlost, with “on the road again” as background music. I listened to the audible book version of “Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath. I drove. I followed Suzy’s directions and she took me over a shortcut from one interstate to another, up New Jersey towards New York. I was okay with a crowded freeway heading out of Philadelphia towards New Jersey at 6 pm, but that traffic gradually faded, and I steamed up the freeway for a while happily.

As I approached New York, seeing the skyline and bridges and all, I assumed Suzy would take us to the left of the city, as indicated by Google maps. Nope. Before I had time to stop and reconsider, with me going 60 plus MPH the whole time, she took us right over the George Washington bridge into (gulp) Manhattan. It was upper Manhattan, ugly, squat, hot, threatening, and absolutely jammed with traffic. We crept slowly inch by inch through the Bronx, going about two or three miles in an hour. It was almost 8 pm before I was on the New England turnpike at freeway speeds again. Suzy said we still had almost 5 hours to go.

I just kept going. Night fell. The freeway was well lit but I slowed from 80-ish to 70-ish in the dark. The book kept going, stayed interesting. By about 9:30 I realized I’d made a significant failure to plan, I was still hurdling through Connecticut in the dark at 70 miles per hour but I was also still a full three hours from my destination, meaning that I’d get to my destination in the middle of the night with nowhere to sleep without waking up Dad and Liz, if that was even possible. I considered calling 1-800-hhonors but where was I, how could I ask for a hotel if I didn’t know where I was or where I would be? Then I decided I’d get Megan to get on Google maps and help me, but I called home and talked to Cristin, Megan wasn’t there. The prospect of sleeping in the car was not fun. I didn’t slow down though, because Suzy kept saying I still had a long way to go.

I lucked out. Around Mystic CT there was a cluster of highway motels. Howard Johnson’s had only a smoking room, Econolodge had nothing, but the Holiday Inn Express had one room left.

“It’s a handicapped room,” the guy said.

“Is that bad? Do I have to be handicapped?”

“No, it’s fine, it’s just the last room we have and it’s late enough now that we’re supposed to rent it.” It was 10:15 pm. So I got a nice clean normal hotel room and went to sleep. The car said we were 2:16 from the destination.

I was up at 7 and on the road at 8, but no luck on the 2:15 from the destination. Suzy Neverlost is totally naive about traffic, and there’s a bottleneck getting into Cape Cod around the Bourne Bridge and the Cape Cod canal that meant once again, as with New York the day before, it took me about an hour to advance three minutes on Suzy’s schedule.

So I was there about 11:15, and it was a great day in Cape Cod, alternatively cloudy and sunny, Paul and Milena and Eva were already there, the condo was comfortable, the water was warm, we had lobster sandwiches on the deck of the clubhouse for lunch and lobster on a patio restaurant overlooking a harbor for dinner. Dad and Liz raved about Eva, Paul, and Milena, all of whom were very nice, charming, good looking, hard working, and smart.

Paul Milena and Eva left after a breakfast on Sunday, but we met on the beach before breakfast to swim in the ocean. It was warm again, and Sunday was spectacularly beautiful, about 80 degrees high, low humidity, bright, blue, and, well, beautiful. We had a nice dinner at a nice restaurant, Ocean something, and dad and I sat up talking for a long time.

Monday morning was a special treat. Dad has a regular tennis game every day about 10 a.m. and he borrowed a racket for me to join. It was a bit surreal to feel like a youngster at 59, the whole group was in their 70s and 80s, they all played excellent tennis, they were also a very fun group, great spirits, joking, teasing, enjoying themselves. I was forgiven for my mediocre tennis because I was so young, or so it seemed — and I’m 59 years old as I write this. The whole thing made me happy on several levels, I’m really glad dad is doing so well, I’m glad he’s happy, I’m glad he’s healthy, and the group is a reminder to all of us that some people do well with age. These men all play better tennis than I do, they are all very much alert and aware and alive, and they are all in late 70s or 80s. For the record, dad is the oldest and the best tennis player of all.

– Tim

Click here for the google maps for this.

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War of the Front Seat

by Timberry on August 12, 2007

 

From a letter from Jay from a few years ago

Martha and I didn’t really experience World War One or Two. We certainly both respect the horrors of both those wars, but we know in a visceral way, the “War of the Front Seat.”

The “War of the Front Seat” took place on long automobile vacations between about 1964 and 1969. Constant arguing between mom and dad. I know that mom always accused me of ruining the trip to Canada (this was the one where dad, following the dictates of his inner voice, drove away from a gas station in Canada leaving me standing at the gas station.. Mom would often tell this story later, and she got a big kick out of it.), but mom did her part on occasion in putting a hurt on these car trips. I never understood the big deal over the map. I mean how hard is it to find your way around these big interstates and highways! But still mom and dad would have these tremendous wrangles over directions and the map. It was very odd. If I recall, dad’s general strategy was to kind of take a look on the map and decide, okay, we’ll take 37 and then 120, and then we’ll swing over to 99. Problem was that you didn’t get all the way over to 99. Or, at least, according to Mom you didn’t. Dad would take a look at the map and you take 37 and then 120 and then you swing over to 99. But Mom actually has THE MAP! That was the rub! Mom has THE MAP and if you look at it very closely, 120 doesn’t go all the way to 99. This dialogue would go on for about 10 minutes. Martha and I would be in the back seat kind of like, Oh, well, it’s happening again, I guess. Mom has THE MAP!

This was just one of about nineteen battles in the War of the Front Seat. Martha and I never really kept track as to who was right. Did 120 end before it met up with 99. Was dad right, or was Mom reading the map wrong. I think it was half and half, but I’m not sure to this day.

Martha and I would sit in the back seat with a kind of Ivan Denisovich stare. We never really understood, if truth be told, the War of the Front Seat. I’m not sure Mom and Dad understood it.. In the fog of war both parties stubbornly held their ground.

– They had two radically different travel styles. Dad was kind of learn as you go, don’t worry about it. Map! Who needs a map! Well, okay, where’s the map? I’ll look at the map, fer Chrissakes! This was kind of the instinctive Irish approach. Mom came from the Klausewitz school of travel. You planned it out! You phoned ahead! You had to be prepared! You had to know the enemy and the enemy’s name was chaos, chaos in the universe, around the next corner, right around where 120 does or doesn’t meet route 99. Some of this, in retrospect, was genetic, probably Teutonic, but some of it came from her awful Pittsburgh youth.

Trouble was around the next bend! You did have to prepare for it!

The following is a very recycled story, but it bears continual repeating, because anything that makes me laugh bears repeating. This was the trip to El Cajon, a classic clash of traveling styles and civilizations.

– This was a trip with just Martha and I. Chip and Tim were in college and out in the world. They were now beyond beach trips. We had started out the trip in Newport Beach and I recall it was a nice trip. I was about 14 or 15. This was the last beach trip, by the way. Am I right about this, Martha?. I think it was. Anyway, after spending a week or so at Newport, the plan was to travel to San Diego and spend the night. Okay, no problem. Except in this case, Klausewitz had the upper hand. This was not a time for confidence and spontaneity. This was a Saturday night in San Diego and every motel room was no vacancy, no vacancy, no vacancy, NO VACANCY. Dad, was doing very well as an ophthalmologist/surgeon, and when the family went on one of these car vacations, we generally stayed in fairly civilized lodgings. It wasn’t Mauna Kea, but it was very pleasant and comfortable. There would be a pool, and maybe even a little dining room, where I could order a steak. But I couldn’t help but notice that as we wheeled through San Diego, all of the places that we would ordinarily stay in we’re filled up. One after another after another. Hundreds, literally, were filled up.

Like many cities, San Diego has a very nice part, a nice part, a not so nice part, and a very, very not so nice part. Martha and I couldn’t help but notice that we had gone from the very nice part to the nice part, and now were traveling in the not so nice part. Dad was becoming increasingly quiet as we drove through the not so nice part not only because he wasn’t real happy about having to stay in some dive, but also on account of the fact that his whole travel strategy, which oftentimes worked like a charm, was losing and losing badly to the Klausewitz/Werthenbach school of travel planning and engineering. The representative of the Klausewitz camp was very forthcoming in making clear the deficiencies of the instinctive travel school and calling for a paradigm shift, even if it be somewhat violently imposed. Needless to say, Martha and I could hear the mortars explode– we had put on our helmets. We were back in the War of the Front Seat!

Things only got worse. We all expressed our amazement at just how many motels there were in San Diego, and just how many were filled. I remember wondering as to why San Diego was so popular on a Saturday night. Just what went on in San Diego on a Saturday night? We were soon neck deep in the very, very, very, not so nice part of town. A feeling of chaos and heat and people making up for a bad week with one wild Saturday night.Wild people yelling out of cars, little roadside cantinas where four hours later Rodriguez and Martinez will shoot it out over Rodriguez’ sister. Lots of semi-desert. Much scarier than all desert. We actually were out of San Diego now. We were now in a place called El Cajon. Ever since that night, I have heard the name El Cajon associated with horribly savage crimes. Stories in the newspaper about how the suspect spent the night at a motel in el Cajon, the body later found in the surrounding desert…

We did finally find a place to stay. We wheeled up and parked the car in front of a woman who was kind of stumbling around by the second floor railing. The woman was a friendly but very strange looking sort with the wildest hairdoo I have even seen. She could have raised bees in that hairdoo for a second income. It looked like a Mesotopamian ziggurat after a big storm. She was also very deep in the bag, as they say. In fact, she was waving a very large bottle of tequila around and kind of slurring her speech: “Come on, in!” she slurred. Needless to say, Klausewitz was not terribly amused!

The rest of the night had its moments. Poor dad, from all the stress that goes with completely having your world view debunked by your wife, was suffering some major league chest pains.

And, as you’ve probably heard, there was a funeral home across the street from the motel with a blinking neon sign! About 1:00 a.m., we were all treated to the sound of what sounded like about 12 cowboys promoting a rodeo. I went to the window and saw about three long-legged kind of trashy looking women sitting on these porch- like abutments to the rooms kiddy corner to our wing. They were smoking cigarettes, wearing lingerie, and talking with okie accents to the cowboys who were driving up to the porch-like abutments. It was one of those places old as mankind itself. The cowboys had arrived with only pure thoughts about developing serious relationships with these young ladies. I must say I found myself quite intrigued by the whole scene. I even thought it would be nice to stay in these kinds of places more often!

All in all, it was quite an adventure, and, truth be told, kind of a fun place to stay. That night before we returned to the motel, we went to some extremely hot, non air-conditioned theater in El Cajon and watched a James Bond movie, Thunderball, while munching in the dark on fried chicken we brought into the theater from a Kentucky Fried.

When I think of it, actually, Klausewitz was wrong! If we had planned it all out, we wouldn’t have had the adventure that night in El Cajon.

– Now, it’s time to reflect on the Emily Post Table Manners Institute, which mom was the director of for about four or five years (I think she gave up after that!) Comedian Bobby Slayton has this little patter that goes like this: “Ya think of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, but ya can’t forget Moe of the Three Stooges” and then he goes off on Moe. Well, you could say Mom had the wisdom of Lao Tzu coupled with the beauty of Katherine Grayson (she told me people would often compare her to that particular actress when she was young), but she had a little Moe of the Three Stooges in her. During the most turbulent moments of the training sessions, mom was good for hitting me straight over the head with a fork or a spoon. Mind you, being a nurse and a loving mother, she would strike you over the hard-shelled front part of your cranium, so it would not cause you any academic harm in the future. But it hurt!

I think the whole manners problem was just very frustrating to her. Chip had briefly attended the institute and graduated with maybe a D minus at best. Tim had done a little better. He left with a straight D. Martha graded out at a C minus. A disappointment for a girl. But I think I clearly wore the Emily Post Institute’s paper hat! I was failing the institute’s curriculum with wild gusto, and it put mom in a frenzy. I’d say three or four times during those years, when the book would be hauled out ( OH, GOD, NO! NO! NO! HERE COMES THE MANNERS BOOK! OH, GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?) The spoon would come flying over head and

it really hurt! Mom would just take a complete dive into the deep end over this whole thing– she went koo koo over it. Still, when I’ve had to go back to my Emily Post roots, I can really bring it. I know all about putting down my fork until I’ve stopped chewing. So the institute worked to some degree. Whether it was the worth the excruciating pain to both mom and to us is another question.

– When I think of mom I think of a very complex person with all kinds of quirks and good points and, yes, some bad points, but she was mostly a very warm and passionately caring soul.

I remember one time in my life when I was in tremendous emotional pain. A lot of you know I had a very dim bulb relationship with an older woman during the fall of 1979 up to the spring of 1980. I took the relationship with operatic seriousness. I was really wearing the paper hat on this one. Predictably, the relationship started to go downhill, and wildly downhill, careeningly downhill like an elephant on roller skates. I was very emotionally out of control. I cried about half the day. My shirts were mildewed.


One leaden afternoon I drove/limped up to 23260 to eat dinner, completely out of my mind. I found myself at one point crying my stupid eyes out in the bathroom. The rational side, through the tears, could look at that stupid face in the mirror and think: God, they don’t make morons like you anymore. They threw away the mold! Still, pain is pain. I will always remember Mom kind of racing in and hugging me during that moment. It is a very tender memory. We all know she would come to help any of us in a nano second.

Before she died in 1988, during the spring, around March, I remember coming up to the house. These were tough visits. We all knew it was not long. Mom and I watched TV one night. It was pleasant, but it was not quite real. The bear was very much in the room. The thing at that point that obsessed her was the house. Would Dad be okay with dealing with all the details in the house. But not only that, she said several times to me: “I’m very worried about your dad. I’m very worried about your dad.” I will always be touched by that. Despite all the battles in the front seat, it was so clear to me how much she loved dad. And this was kind of the ultimate proof of that. She would be very happy that Dad found Liz and has had a nice life following all of this tragedy.

Well, that’s all for now. It’s been painful to think of all of this, but I’ve laughed a little bit, too.

I hope you enjoyed it, beloved family members. The cars are still whooshing by on Mirabel, and Riley is now in a dog’s deep dream.. What a beautiful dog he is!

And mom always, always, lives on in my mind.

But wait! Don’t think it’s over!. I do believe in the spirit world and I do believe that some day we will all be together once again. We will all be piled into the Oldsmobile 88 about 15 or so miles from the center of the world– King City.

It’ll be hot and the sun will filter through a mystic grove of eucalyptus fanning by on the right, and Chip’s shoes will take up about half of the back seat.

When we get to the mysterious center of our journey, we will drink an ice cold 10 cent coke from one of those thick little bottles. That Indian summer Pierce will bring it and Willy will send two of em flying out of there. The Dodgers will lose once again!

And that fall the great Miyahara will once again toss the pigskin around Lancer stadium.

Or, more accurately, he will scramble for his life in the pouring rain!

But dad, you’d better watch out, for it won’t be all a bed of roses, because in the front seat sitting next to you, Mom will have THE MAP!!!!

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