Near Carl and Cole, San Francisco: Lori Jane Ingram, my then wife, was an attorney by schooling who disliked lawyering, and who ran the operations side of our company, Network Answering Service.

She was good at it, interviewing and hiring the operators, training them, scheduling, and keeping our official manual up to date: very important, we believed. She organized our annual Christmas Party, and she instigated the ‘TGIF’ Pizza Party, where we brought in a dozen huge pizzas every Friday afternoon, the office kitchen filled with the scent of fragrant tomato sauce. Operators who weren’t scheduled on Fridays dropped in anyway, so we knew it was a hit.

For such a thoroughly modern Millie, now and then she enjoyed sewing.

Before the Wherehouse record store moved in, the building across the street sold fabrics. There Lori would prowl the patterns bin. These envelopes, with names like Vogue, Butterick, and McCall’s, pictured a dress or blouse, and contained huge tissue-paper patterns to be cut out with pinking shears, those strange scissors that cut a zig-zag line. It was like making full-sized paper dolls.

With fabric covering our dining table, pinning the pattern to the cloth, Lori spoke with a mouthful of pins. “Grnmmrph,” she said, “Lrrrn mufr grnmmph rrmuphr.”

What?

And then, for Christmas, she made me a beautiful bathrobe. In thick, soft, deep blue cloth, the robe was at once heavy and a delight upon the skin. Big pockets and a sash, and I felt like Henry the Fifth. I wore it, with great delight, for years and years.

The Spring following, we’d taken some days-old kittens from the Humane Society. When kittens arrive that young, a volunteer must be found to nurse them, else they die. I was that volunteer, and we had six kittens the size of little blind mice, to be fed one by one with the tiny bottle. They lived, they tumbled, they opened their tiny blue eyes and gazed with wonder and awe at me, their huge mama. They kicked, they rolled, they walked, they scampered, they climbed everywhere, and when they were old enough I returned them to the Humane Society where they were all adopted and went on to other adventures.

Except for one. This one stayed with us. When I dozed in my robe upon the sofa, the kitten would creep into the sleeve, and there would nap along with me, as soft and lovely as my wonderful robe.

I’ve received presents in my lifetime. This robe was one of the best presents ever. It reminded me of a cowboy-style red shirt my grandmother once made for me; the shirt had a yoke with white piping, and pearl snaps for buttons. Back then, as a child, I revelled in the shirt because it was so beautiful, and I felt like a sharp dresser.

Now, as an adult, I revelled in the robe because it had been made, by hand, for me, with love.

Wichita Falls, Texas, 1960: My cousins Bobby and Danny lived in this nearby city. Their father Pfeiffer sold insurance and had a fancy red Farmer’s Insurance sign painted on the doors of their white Studebaker. “It makes the car deductible,” he said.

His wife, formerly Rosemary Hurn, my mother’s older sister, was in fact the eldest of the Hurn children, and she was quite beautiful. As we remember that screen sirens of the 1940’s were somber-faced and dramatic explains a lot about how Rosemary and my mother dressed when they were dressing up. The difference between them was that my mother, a plump and cheery-natured woman, didn’t really fit in that picture, but Rosemary brought it off fairly well.

Rosemary, in my opinion as a child, rather put on airs. It was this snooty outlook which made Bobby’s first Communion so unfortunate for her.

For you see, Rosemary was the secretary to Dr. Hoggard, the smiling and pompous minister of Floral Height Methodist Church, which was lots snootier than the First Methodist Church of Henrietta which I was used to.

Floral Heights Methodist had a ceiling several stories high, and added a vast cathedral echo to the minister’s words. Perhaps that’s what made him pompous. Or perhaps I just imagined it as a child.

Bobby and Danny, and husband Pfeiffer, were expected to maintain a especially diligent decorum at Floral Heights Methodist Church, seeing as how Rosemary had such a position of importance there. So no whispering, and no fidgeting! The boys knew better.

When young Bobby was deemed old enough to attend Communion, he was anxious to do it right. Now, for the benefit of our heathen readers, in the Methodist Church, Communion is held but once per month, unlike the Catholics, who have Mass at most every service. The Catholics also have fancy wafers and red wine, but the Methodists just use crumbled pieces of Saltine Crackers and Welch’s grape juice, for as everybody knows the Catholics are a drunken, unruly lot, unlike the proper and sanctified Methodists.

Floral Heights Methodist being large and proper and sanctified, the Communion service takes a long time, for the congregation must trudge down to the great circle in crews. The ushers select a pewful of parishioners. Down in a line march these folks in their Sunday attire, to kneel upon the padded bench surrounding the low circular railing. Along come the priests- Oops I mean Ministerians, the first one offering to each worshipper a silver plate with the Saltine pieces, then the other guy offering tiny glasses of grape juice.

Bobby marched down behind Rosemary and Pfeiffer and knelt properly, craning his neck to see the silver platter approach. He took a piece of the holy Saltine, and the serving Ministerians moved on to Rosemary and Pfeiffer.

Suddenly the beauty of the service was marred. Bobby was crawling around on the carpet, scurrying in hasty circles on hands and knees.

“Oh my gawrsh!” he cried out, “I dropped my cracker!“

The concept of breaking a task into small parts, to accumulate small successes as building blocks, and to accrue these to build emotional momentum toward your target is presented clearly in Jim Sloman’s “May You Be Happy” website, in a short series called “Strategic Applications”.

He also addresses the concept of avoiding direct fighting, and adding the external energy from the universe to your own as an effective path to negotiation, enlightment, and success.

The marvellous thing is that he presents these spiritual truths in the context of their use by generals in historical wars on this planet. Along the way, Sloman provides a fascinating insight into times and places when the history of continents hinged on a small battle involving, sometimes, only a few thousand men.

An outstanding read.

Mount Shasta, CA, September 2, 2003: Adrienne has done it right. The best time to leave a job or profession is when you’re at the top. She is, and she has.

For the last ten years she’s operated Adrienne’s All-Weather DogWalking Service in Marin County. A month ago, she sent a letter to her clients, to let them know she was closing her business, because we were moving away.

Oh, the tears! She’s become part of the lives of these families, including the Mayor of Ross and one of Arnold Schwartzenegger’s current advisory panel. The lovely letters she’s received are quite touching. She says all the dogs could tell. She told each one. The last day, she saw Izzy and Coley.

She and Coley Mulroy, a large black lab, like to dance to country music. He puts his paws on her shoulders, and she says, “Shake it, Coley” and he does the shimmy, to the strains of Shania Twain. She had her last dance with Coley. She said good bye.

When I picked Adrienne up on Sunday, she and I and Tulip and Percy got into the new Ford.

And we drove away.

Henrietta, Texas, 1963: It is a time-honored tradition among college-age boys that they drive home on weekends, and there consume mightily of home-cooked meals prepared by their mothers, and by a remarkable coincidence they often have brought a duffle bag filled with laundry which they somehow failed to find time to wash while at school, what with their busy schedule of studying, and etc.

Although these college lads may be large, hulking, beer-swilling brutes, each is still mama’s dear baby, and so these mothers feed the boys and do their washing, and after the weekend send the young warriors off with bellies full and clean clothing. This cycle repeats over and over again, apparently eternally.

I was no exception.

On this particular weekend, I was desparate, for I was down to wearing a dirty shirt, and two mismatched socks. One sock was pale blue and the other white with a faint orange stripe.

In the laundry room, my mother looked me up and down as I plopped down the swollen laundry duffle. Staring at my feet, she frowned.

“It’s the funniest thing,” she said.

“What is?” I asked.

“You have another pair of socks here,” she said, “exactly like that pair you’re wearing.”

Henrietta, Texas, 1955: About the time of the Sleuth-Hound Club, there were two tough kids in our neighborhood. I don’t remember their names, because they vanished from school some time later, so let’s just call them Moe and Joey.

Moe was older, lanky thin, and not very smart. His brother Joey was one year younger, lanky thin, and not very smart, too. They were often dirty, often badly clothed, and they gaped in dim wonder at the schooling process. One day, Mrs. Gilbert asked Joey to conjugate the verb ‘Go’. Joey looked first trapped, then worried, then irritated.

“Go,” he said. Mrs. Gilbert nodded, encouraging. ” … go …” he said. He scowled. Finally he could delay no longer, and shouted, “Go, go, go!“

This was not the correct answer, but it gives you an idea about Moe and Joey. But I digress. What I wanted to tell you about was the fight.

Moe and Joey lived a few blocks away. My friend Donny and I steered clear of them, because they were quick to fight. Luckily for us, they mostly fought with each other.

One day Donny and I came upon Moe and Joey in a wild fist-fight and wrestling match. They were mostly silent, raining blows upon each other, then grappling and rolling in the sand beside the road. Occasional mutters and curses popped from the boys as they rolled wildly, turning over and over, one on top, then the other, and finally they wrapped themselves into a complex knot that only advanced yogis and young boys could manage.

Joey had grabbed a foot, and gave it a forceful twist, at the same time calling out in pain and anger. He was so angry that he twisted the foot even harder, immediately yelling again, in rage and pain.

Of course, in the excitement and the twisting and turning, the fool had grabbed his own foot, and was too stupid to realize it. Again and again he’d beat upon his brother, rolling and twisting, be beaten in turn, and he’d grab that foot, and then yelp as he gave it a vicious, painful twist.

Donny looked at me. I looked at Donny.

We left the two of them scrabbling in the dirt, and we walked home quietly, wondering what life would be like when we grew up.