Dear Family,
The weekend of March 11th/12th was stressful for me, as it was for countless others, perhaps including you. As some of you know (and most of you don’t1) I work for a smallish financial technology company. Like a lot of firms fitting that description, my employer had significant monies on deposit at Silicon Valley Bank when it fell prey to the nation’s (the world’s?) first-ever, Twitter-fueled bank run before formally imploding on Friday, March 10th.
I apologize if I was a little short with you during the ensuing two days while the fate of the bank’s depositors remained uncertain. It’s just that I didn’t know when (or whether) I would be paid again. It’s one thing to worry about getting fired.2 But worrying that your employer might not be able to make payroll feels altogether more frightening. It doesn’t seem like it should feel any different, but for some reason it does.
I am ambivalent about the ensuing “bailout” (or “backstop” or however your politics dictate you characterize the government’s actions to make the depositors whole). On the one hand, it certainly benefited me personally (as well as everyone else whose only crime was to be employed by a firm that kept its cash in a federally regulated bank – I’ll go out on a limb and assume that, even now, you haven’t done much research into the duration matching practices at your bank, either). On the other hand, well, I understand the other hand argument — moral hazard blah blah blah — but I’m not going to make it here because I happen to believe the government acted appropriately in this instance. I guess I’m not ambivalent after all.
Grace
I offer the three paragraphs above as justification for how I reacted to learning on March 12th (perhaps not coincidentally, the very day we gave everyone in the country jet lag by stupidly changing the clocks) that Grace had backed “her” car into a mailbox and smashed out the back window. Pulling a page from her father’s playbook, she first attempted to ascribe blame for the collision to the mailbox, which I am told suffered no damage and was apparently of sturdier construction than Grace judged it to be when she apparently opted to give it the old “Philly bump.”3
I wish to point out here that Grace is probably a better and more conscientious driver than I was at her age. (I should also point out that I did not set a very high bar.)
One of many lessons I have been slow to learn as a parent is that it is insufficient merely to refrain from expressing anger in situations like this. Nor is it acceptable to comport myself in any way that reveals that I might be experiencing even a modicum of frustration. Indeed, the only acceptable reaction is for me to feign actual delight – to find something good to say about it. Maybe something like, “It was probably time to replace that old “Mitt 2012” sticker anyway, and scraping those things off the glass can be a real pain. Easier to just smash the whole window out and get a new one. So thanks for taking care of that for me!”
Crystal taught me the underlying principle after church one Sunday years ago. While filling the surplus time at the end of sacrament meeting, the stake president extemporaneously mentioned that he had resolved as a teenager that he would never raise his voice to his future wife (and that he had lived up to that commitment). After the meeting I asked Crystal, “I don’t ever raise my voice to you, do I?”
“No,” Crystal replied. “But you don’t have to raise your voice to be an ass.”
And so I apologize for my passive-aggressive, non-voice-raised reaction to the car. Blame it on Silicon Valley Bank and Daylight Saving Time.
For the latest news on Ari, read their “Epistolarius.”
Grace Sings
I am hoping that what I write next will incline Grace, who is practically perfect in many other ways, to forgive me for publishing the thing about the car.
It’s been a busy month for Grace – a month that included her 18th birthday. (And with that birthday, 26+ years after getting into the reproduction business, we are officially out of children. Doesn’t really feel any different.)
March began with Grace’s singing second soprano in the Maryland All-State chorus concert at the Baltimore Convention Center. I drove her up on Friday morning and she spent the next two nights in an adjoining hotel. The choir rehearsed together all day Friday and Saturday and performed on Sunday at 11 a.m.
I can’t say I’d ever been to an 11 a.m. concert, but I can’t say I’d been to many concerts held in a convention center, either. I suppose the odd time befit the odd venue. Our plan was for Crystal, Ari and me to duck out of church as soon as our 9:00 sacrament meeting ended (at 10:00) and race up to Baltimore in time for the 11:00 start.
Things didn’t go exactly according to plan. It was a fast & testimony meeting and I guess the spirit was strong or something (I don’t fully understand what people mean when they say that) because the stream of people coming up to speak was unrelenting. It was sometime past 10:05 when the sister I thought would be the last speaker finally wrapped up. I bent down to pick up my hymnal, but when I looked up, another sister was rushing forward. The bishopric counselor who was conducting had already stood up to close the meeting, but he’s a nice guy and let her go ahead. My head exploded and Crystal, Ari and I just bailed. The meeting could have dragged on another hour for all I know. Crystal had been leading the music and someone presumably covered the closing hymn, but no one in the congregation actually watches the music director, so it doesn’t really matter.
We drove up to Baltimore, parked a couple of blocks from the convention center, and spent what seemed like an eternity walking around nearly the entire perimeter of the complex before figuring out how to get inside. Fortunately, no musical event in recorded history has ever started on time, and so we were fine.
I guess a proper concert hall wasn’t an option. They sang in a cavernous, run-of-the-mill convention center ballroom with lousy acoustics. But the choir was mic’d well and sounded really good.
Grace was joined in the choir by her boyfriend Nnamdi (a tenor) and two other girls from her high school. Their music teacher said he couldn’t remember the last time Northwood had anyone get selected for All-State, and so having four this year was pretty nifty.
Grace Acts
Grace’s (and our) final school musical (Chicago) was earlier than usual this year. This brought a number of rehearsals into conflict with swim team practices and may have contributed to Grace’s having a smaller role (she played Mary Sunshine) than in previous shows. (The dance-heaviness of Chicago may have had something to do with it as well. Grace is more of a singer than a dancer.) It should not have come as a surprise to me that sitting through a school musical when your kid is not on stage most of time is less fun than sitting through one when she is. But for some reason it did.
The cast and crew did a fine job (some sang better than others). But let’s be candid: Chicago is an awful show. I’m not referring to the mature themes – I’m not being prudish. It’s just a stupid, pointless and unfulfilling story. WIth the exception of Amos (the unfortunate husband of the show’s morally bankrupt main “protagonist,” if you can call her that) there is not a single sympathetic character – not a single person I felt the slightest bit invested in. When a show climaxes with a trial and can’t manage to make me care whether the defendant is hanged or acquitted, that’s pretty lousy storytelling.
A lot of people obviously like Chicago, and maybe I’m missing something. But I don’t think I am. Fortunately, all of Grace’s grandparents came to see her and think she sang beautifully, which of course she did.
Uncle Pete Turns 40!
We marked my brother Peter’s 40th birthday last Saturday with a surprise party in the cultural hall of the Olney meetinghouse. I’m not 100 percent sure this is an approved use of a Church facility (in fact, I’m about 75 percent sure it isn’t) but pretty much everyone with any authority to put a stop to it was at the party. There’s probably a lesson in that. And if there’s anyone worthy of having rules bent for him, it’s Peter. (Just don’t tell him. He gets pretty annoyed when people color outside the lines. Several of us were concerned that he might object to the party’s taking place five days before his actual birthday.)
He didn’t object. His face betrayed some initial confusion when he entered the room with the MacGyver theme song playing over the church sound system and everyone shouted Surprise!. But it didn’t take him long to light up, proudly strut into the room, arms raised triumphantly, and start hugging everybody. I didn’t count how many people came, but it was certainly more than will ever come to any birthday party of mine and probably more than will attend my funeral.
And it’s only fitting because he is probably the most lovable person I know. I mean, when was the last time you were this excited about anything?
The party was conceived of and staged almost entirely by Peter’s “sisters,” which is to say the wives of Peter’s brothers. (The Evite appropriately identified “The Willis Women” as host.) Crystal would say it was mostly Jen and Jess, and perhaps it was, but cooking and hauling seven pounds of spaghetti (which weighs a lot more than seven pounds after you cook it) from Silver Spring to Olney is no mean feat. The dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, salad and Costco cake – all Peter favorites – came together incredibly well.
Elder Neff
I served my mission from 1991 to 1993, before people had email addresses and even longer before they had social media accounts. Life was harder in those days, and consequently, I have not maintained contact with most of my missionary companions. (That’s the excuse I’m going with.) My batting average went up a little this month when Ned Powley, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and one of the only mission companions I have maintained any contact with at all, crossed paths with Brad Neff, one of the many I hadn’t. It probably did not take them long to figure out they had a common denominator in me.
[Ned and I worked together in the town of Meaux (25 miles east of Paris) for roughly half of 1992. Later that year, Brad and I were teamed up in what was then the Paris Rive Gauche Ward. (If there’s a cooler unit name anywhere in the Church, I haven’t heard it. Sadly, it no longer appears to exist).]
Ned put Brad and me in contact with each other and, next thing you know, I’m having lunch with someone I hadn’t seen or heard from in over 30 years. He and his wife live in the Bay Area but were in D.C. for a conference, and so they popped across the river to Rosslyn, where I work, and we ate on the roof of my building.
I often think I would benefit from the social skills lessons Crystal teaches the boys in her middle school’s high-functioning autism program. I was reminded of this yet again when I realized that the Neffs had finished their lunch before I had taken three bites of mine. I can imagine Crystal patiently explaining to me in her kindest voice, “Sometimes it’s nice to let other people talk — hear what they have to say…”
Easter Concerts
Finally, last night the Washington D.C. Temple Choir, in which I sing baritone, performed the first of its two Easter concerts at the temple visitors’ center. (We sing again tonight at the Mt. Vernon stake center in Alexandria.) I sincerely hope the audience enjoyed hearing the music as much as we enjoyed singing it. I frequently find it difficult to sing Easter music without getting emotional, but I managed to hold it together during the performance.
At the risk of coming across as treacly, few things make me happier than singing in this choir. No matter what kind of week I’m having, rehearsing with these people on Thursday nights always seems to pick me up.
You also make me happy!
Love,
Tim
Managing Editor of The Famlet Monthly
- If you only know me through these letters then you almost certainly don’t, as I very seldom write about work here.
- I worry about getting fired at least once a week – which you might think odd since I’ve worked at the same place for the past 16 years. But what can I tell you? I’m a worrier.
- ”Philly bump” is what we called it growing up in South Jersey. I’m guessing other localities have their own variation for the practice of backing up until you run into something and then shifting into drive. The advent of nearly ubiquitous backup cameras has probably made the Philly bump less common. But, alas, “Grace’s” car is a 2004 minivan lacking that particular safety feature. So, really it’s not the mailbox’s fault for being there so much as it is my fault for not buying Grace a better car.