Category — Steve Jobs

We went this afternoon to see if it was okay for the Wolvog.  It’s a little amusing since I’ve never been a huge lover of gadgets nor Apple fan until the Wolvog started his one-sided bromance with Steve Jobs at age two.  Since then, I have not only switched to a Mac and iPhone, but I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and relayed the stories to the Wolvog.  Seeing the movie felt like a natural extension of feeding that beast.

To answer the question about whether I’d take the Wolvog, the answer is yes.  There is a scene with acid that could either get glossed over or explained.  There is cursing, but we’re fine with him hearing cursing in the context of art.  There are the crappy things he did such as deny paternity or screw his friends, but those lead to interesting discussions.  So all in all, okay-ish for the Wolvog.  Since he knows so much from Isaacson’s book, I think he’d be able to follow along for what I’d want him to get out of the film.

That said, I’m on the fence about how I felt about it; film-wise.  It’s very choppy; as in, enormous ideas are glossed over with a single line.  People appear and disappear with no explanation.  A lot of people who are in Isaacson’s book don’t appear at all, and others that you know played much larger roles in Apple are tucked behind the scenes.  In trying to cover too much, they covered nothing very deeply.  At times, I could watch Ashton Kutcher and forget it was Ashton Kutcher.  And other times, I looked at the screen and all I could think about were those creepy Nikon commercials that had him oogling women.

Maybe the problem with the film overall is that people are too complex to be contained in a biopic, Steve Jobs and this large cast of characters even moreso since trying to contain them also means trying to explain to an audience aspects of the computing and business world.  His friendships seemed excessively messy (at least as portrayed on film and in Isaacson’s book) as did his relationships.

Aaron Sorkin is making another movie about Steve Jobs that is focusing on three half hours that came before three launches; covering in real time three moments from three different periods of his life.  It doesn’t sound as if Sorkin’s script will solve one of the inherent problems with today’s film’s script, namely, that the other interesting people are shunted to the back of the story.  But maybe it will at least delve deeper into his personality.  Give us the “why” that Isaacson gave in his book.

And still, the best way to understand a person seems to be to read one of the numerous books.  We’ve already read Walter Isaacson’s biography.  The Wolvog just started iWoz and loves it.

So can I recommend the movie?  Not if you’re tight on money or time.  If you have $10 for a ticket and two free hours, then sure, go ahead and see it.  But keep low expectations.  I can’t say that this film blew my mind or made me realize something incredible or even moved me.  I left the theater feeling the same way I came in.

That said, I am taking the Wolvog since he idolizes Steve Jobs and loves the idea of spending two hours listening to anything regarding computers.  The movie opens the door to a lot of discussions: being a team player, respecting other people’s ideas, collaboration, respect.  So on that end, it’s worth another $20 to show him that world, reminding him that a lot of it is fiction.  That people have a tendency of being flattened once they hit the screen, whether that be a blog or a movie.  It’s an important thing to remember; that we can’t contain three-dimensional, complex human beings with words.  So be mindful of that as you read and watch your way through this world.

So a “meh” is our take on the film.

I may post a more in-depth review over at Geek Dad.

* Though I must admit that the iPhone revolutionized my life, and I feel like it takes such a weight off my mind in keeping me organized and on task.  Plus I like always having books with me.

I got to the end of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography during Thanksgiving as I was baking a cake for a friend’s birthday.  Josh and I were sitting at the kitchen table — he was reading Murakami’s 1Q84 and I was finishing Steve Jobs — and the cake was baking in the oven.  Warm chocolate, with an undertone of coffee.

I obviously knew how the book would end, but I found myself crying as I got to April 2011, essentially reading the looking glass: what was happening on the other side as we exchanged emails.  I knew he was sick — the whole world knew he was sick — but I have to admit that I hadn’t given a lot of thought to what was happening in his world.  At least, not specifics.  I had been touched that he had taken the time to write my son; knew that he was a busy man and a sick man at that, and the fact that he would take the time to change a little boy’s life spoke volumes — to me — about his character.

And now I was reading about spring of 2011, and my heart broke for his family.  Any death is impossible to wrap your brain around.

I thought about how often someone has written me, having no clue what is happening in our house mostly because I haven’t said what is happening in our house.  I think about the times that I’ve composed a not-very-nice, leave-me-the-fuck-alone email in my head before sending off a terse, “so sorry — I’ll get to this soon” because no one really knows as we bump into each other — interact with one another — what is happening in the other person’s world; day-by-day or minute-by-minute.  We reach out to each other at these inopportune times without knowing.  And the worst is that we think we know.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to Josh, “there is no reason why it should be taking this long for X to write back.”  And the reality is that I have no idea what else is happening, what I don’t know at all, that affects the other person.  And I do this knowing full well how many times I have left things unsaid here and had to deal with the types of emails that come in when someone assumes that nothing is up.

Reading the book drove this point home: that we have no idea as we read someone’s blog, as we exchange emails, as we see each other on the street, as we spend time in each other’s houses, the subplot, the hidden story, the words unsaid, the thoughts locked inside the mind that affect the emotions, affect our ability to process an interaction.

And that is humbling.

This is the end of the book, but in between, there are dozens of places I marked, dozens of stories that I’ve been discussing with the Wolvog.  And I hope that you’ll indulge me as I process the book and the talks I’ve been having with the Wolvog about the lessons learned from studying someone else’s life.  Because there is something amazing about a person laying themselves bare, even if the book comes too late.  What I really wish I could do right now is write Steve an email — and maybe I will send it off into the ether — and let him know that now seeing the conversation in context, it means even more.  And just thank him for playing the role for my son that Bill Hewlett played for him.  The best lesson I can teach him from the book is to be open with your time, with your ability to reach out, and to do so, even when it is not convenient or easy or even something you want to be doing at all.  Because we’re all just humans, and our greatest gift is to crash into each other, to change each other’s lives, and to be grateful for every interaction because every moment of the day changes who we are.

Photo Credit: Acaben.

I was not planning to read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson at all.  I mean, yes, perhaps, at some way distant future date if it became available on Overdrive, but certainly not now in the middle of all the hoopla about the book.

The twins and I were early to meet Josh for tapas so we ducked into the library to see if they had the soundtrack to Evita (all part of their much dreaded musical theater education — dreaded both by them as well as Josh, especially when I pop Chess into the CD player).  And there, positioned right by the door, staring at us as we entered from a display case was Steve Jobs’s piercing stare.

The Wolvog immediately let out a breath and quietly said, “Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve.”

Which sort of decided it then and there.

We are reading it together, by which I mean that I am reading it after he goes to bed at night and then telling him stories in the morning.  Relaying Jobs’s stench from his lack of bathing coupled with his fruitarian diet, and stories about the Woz (which often strike me as a better personality match for my son; they both have the same sweet temperament, wondrous view of the world, and a fondness for dogs), and all the kismet moments that shaped the computer industry.  Discussion about adoption plays heavily in the first 100 pages of the book due to both his own adoption as well as the daughter he had with Chrisann Brennan.

I thought I would place my thoughts here.  The Wolvog and I are reading it together, but if you want to hear the story, you can figuratively read it with me too.

Special

As we walked around the library holding the copy of the biography, people kept saying to us, “you are so lucky!  That just got put out ten minutes ago.”  It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  The librarian finally finished logging the new book into their system, she set it on the shelf, and I walked in at that moment.

I’ve never really had people comment on the luck of our library borrowing choices, but as I carried that book, I felt like I had a spotlight shining on me.  It actually made me feel fairly uncomfortable; maybe not the first time someone said it, but certainly by the third time.

So it was interesting that one of the first ideas covered in the book is the idea of being special.  The concept of specialness, and do people enjoy feeling as if they’re set apart; even when the apartness comes from something such as intelligence or luck.

While other people in the book hypothesized about how Steve Jobs’s birth and adoption shaped his personality, Steve Jobs himself dismissed their theories.  And frankly, I’m going to go with Steve Jobs — the adoptee — on this one and believe him (I know other people are second-guessing him, which seems sort of strange for one person to say that they understand more about the other person’s life than the person who lived it).  He didn’t feel the adoption itself shaped him at all, but rather being told by his parents that he was special, that he was chosen, that he was waited for and loved beyond belief — that is what he felt played a bigger role in how he saw his place in the world.

In the book, Isaacson writes,

Jobs dismissed this.  “There’s some notion that because I was abandoned, I worked very hard so I could do well and make my parents wish they had me back, or some such nonsense, but that’s ridiculous,” he insisted.  “Knowing I was adopted may have made me feel more independent, but I have never felt abandoned.  I’ve always felt special.  My parents made me feel special” (page 5).

The book continues to talk for many many many more pages about how that concept of believing he was special affected how he interacted with others, how he believed in himself, and how he convinced others that the impossible was possible.

At the same time, I have read on plenty of donor-conceived and adoptee blogs (and I’m sure, in the future, IVF-conceived childrens’ blogs) that being told you are special can be damaging.  That it can make a person feel apart, and not in the good way that Jobs describes where he feels more loved, more cherished than other children.  Apartness can sometimes simply feel alienating.

I can sense from the twins that uniqueness has both a push-me-pull-you effect: they love being twins and different from all the singletons, but they don’t like being different from all the singletons.  They like to hear stories about their preterm birth and the NICU days, but they don’t want their friends to know about it or see pictures of them from that time period.  They don’t really know yet that children are conceived in other ways than in a fertility clinic (oh, this is the fantastic side effect of having non-sexually conceived children.  You can tell them how they were made without ever having to mention sex), but they have been told countless times how much they were wanted, how hard we wished for them, how long we waited for them, and how much they are loved.  There has not been a day of their life that has passed without the two of us uttering the words, “I love you” to them.  We tell them they are brilliant and funny — we tell them that they are great writers and artists and computer programmers.

Because all those things are true, and I don’t think there are real benefits from withholding effusiveness.  Which is not to say that there can’t be damage from that effusiveness, but I don’t think the opposite is true — I don’t think there are actual benefits from not complimenting your child.

Which is along way of asking how does one know which way it will go?  For Steve Jobs, he says that hearing all his life that he was special and wanted and chosen gave him the confidence to plow ahead, charting his own course rather than taking the familiar road of a standard engineering path.  I might not have my iPad if Clara and Paul Jobs hadn’t conveyed that idea to their son.  And at the same time, for so many children, they have the opposite reaction.  They talk about the burden of specialness.  The apartness that comes from feeling the weight of their parent’s love, especially when they were brought into a family after a long wait or in a unique manner.

And without knowing how it will go, how do we know how loudly to turn on the message?  Do we whisper it?  Say it in a normal tone of voice?  Scream it like Clara and Paul Jobs?  Not say it at all?  How do we know when we also hear that volume counts — that the amount we say things can shift a life in one direction or another?

I am completely overwhelmed — and grateful — by everyone reaching out to the Wolvog after Steve Jobs’ death*.  We tucked them in, and Josh went downstairs to heat up dinner while I sat down for 20 minutes to take those memories out of my head.  The emails and Facebook wall posts and Tweets had started to come in while we were telling the Wolvog the news, but we had walked away from electronics for a few hours to eat and clear the pictures off a camera.  When I opened email again right before bed, we both stared at the number of emails, the number of people who said that they thought of the Wolvog when they heard the news, and said “holy shit.”

I cannot thank you enough, and I feel horrible that I can’t respond to everyone’s writing personally.  You took the time to tell him that you were thinking of him, and that makes my stomach twist to not be able to write everyone directly and let them know how much that meant to him (and us!).  I have put all the emails and Facebook wall posts and Tweets in a folder for him to start reading this weekend.

The Wolvog is mourning in this very strange way; it’s the loss of a hero, but not the loss of a family member or friend.  He is not someone he saw every day, but he’s someone who affected my son’s mind every day.  Harry Potter is magic, but Mac is magic too — perhaps more so because while the Wolvog watched or read about how others utilized wands, he was able to place his own hands on the computer and control what he wanted to do; where he wanted to let his imagination go.

That is all a wand is — a computer that is rolled into a tight, little stick.  And a computer is just a wand that has been rolled out into a rectangle, both objects capable of changing the world in the right owner’s hands.

This is what the Wolvog learned when he saw all the notes (and thanks to BlogHer sending it out, they came from strangers all over the world, all touched by his story):

That people shouldn’t mourn alone.  That being sad together somehow spreads out the burden of grief.  That we should always reach out to someone who is mourning and take part of their load simply because it is the right thing to do as humans.  That coming together is better than dividing apart.  I hope what he retains from this is that he should never dismiss someone else’s grief; that he should always give the hug, say the kind words, ask what he can do.

You taught him that, so thank you.  Which feels like two too small words to convey how you drove home the humanity we’ve been trying to instill in them in birth.  That it’s always better to connect, to reach out a hand, to not ignore, to give empathy.

Some people mourn by talking about the person.  Some people mourn by cleaning or trying to control their environment.  The Wolvog backed away from scary thoughts about the unknown and death — ideas he couldn’t wrap his mind around — and returned by morning to the orderly computer world, where everything is black-and-white; where a command always creates the same action.  If I brought up Steve Jobs, he’d look at me and then say, “I need to talk to Tim Cook about why they keep changing the thinness of the iPhone.  I need to understand that.”  And then I’d tell him that his kindergarten teacher wrote to say she was going to find him at school and give him a hug, and he’d say, “do you know that they released the iOS5?  Do you understand how this is going to change the iPad?”

Coincidentally, I went to a discussion on Tuesday night about children and anxiety, and one of the things the speaker covered was how children have no perspective or context.  In other words, an adult hears that someone died of pancreatic cancer, and our thought it how rare that is.  And a child hears that someone died of pancreatic cancer and all they know is that there is “happen” or “can’t happen.”  There is no context, no in-between.  So part of last night’s discussion was trying to give them that context, the idea of rarity, the knowledge that just because something can happen doesn’t mean that it will happen.

On Wednesday night, the twins learned that heroes die.  And they made the jump to the idea that one day Josh and I would die.  And finally they traveled to that space where they learned that they would one day die.  We spent an hour and a half before tuck-in standing on that very scary patch of mental ground.  And I didn’t know what to do the next morning, so I put cartons of chocolate milk in their lunch box.  I hoped that chocolate milk said to them everything I wished I could find the words to say.

* Again, to understand the backstory about the Wolvog and Steve Jobs, it is here and here and now here.

Josh called with the news, 15 minutes from home, while we were watching Harry Potter.  “Keep him up,” he told me.  “Wait for me to get there.”

We sat down in the Wolvog’s room; me in the rocking chair with the Wolvog on my lap, and Josh on the Wolvog’s bed holding Chickie.  It was the wrong formation, the wrong order of things; they are usually in the other parent’s lap when we start tuck-in.  There was this moment, a second before I told him that Steve Jobs had died, when he still didn’t know and he was in his Star Wars pyjamas, Harry Potter on his mind, reading homework tucked into his school binder, that I wanted to freeze indefinitely.

I have never had to kill someone’s hero.*

Because that was what it felt like to destroy whatever ideas my son had constructed in his mind about immortality.  That yes, old people died, and people who stopped eating died, and people who ran into the street because they weren’t hold their mother’s hand died, and bad guys died.  But being named someone’s hero; that protected you, infused you with the ability to live forever because you need to by necessity of the fact that you are someone’s hero.  People need their heroes; we can’t have them die.

The Wolvog’s face crumpled and first he cried in this shattered sort of way, and finally he entered this place where he was very very quiet.  His sister asked 1000 questions, trying to understand cancer, trying to understand what would happen next at Apple, suggesting different things her brother should do — or we should do — in order to process this.  I finally motioned with my head for Josh to take her to her bedroom, and the Wolvog curled up against my chest, his hand over his eyes as if he was saying the Shema.

We rocked for a long time, so I had a good ten minutes to formulate what I wanted to say.  And this is the gist of what I told him:

Bad guys die, and heroes such as Steve Jobs die, because both bad guys and heroes are simply humans who have touched our lives in an enormous way.  It’s important to always remember that heroes are people; that they don’t have powers that the rest of us don’t have the chance to possess: they simply make choices that lead them in one direction or another.  We all have the ability to become someone’s hero, and I fully suspect that one day, the Wolvog will be someone’s hero.  And that while heroes themselves die because they are human, what continues to live on are their ideas, the actions they took while on earth, the people who remain alive who think about them and love them.  That he will never be fully gone from this earth because there are tangible reminders of him in our very house with our iPad or our iPods.  And the way we really honour our heroes is to emulate them; to grow up and similarly repeat (while putting our own flair on it) the good things they did.  Following his computer bliss would be the best way to honour Steve Jobs’ life.  Finally, I told him that the chicken he had eaten at Rosh Hashanah had been my grandmother’s recipe, and I had made it to feel close to her since I was having my parents over for dinner too.  So while she is gone, we still are connected to her through her recipes — these cooking ideas that were so important to her while she was living — and we will still be connected to his hero via enjoying his ideas, his inventions.

And then I put the saddest boy in the world to bed.

I love everyone who took the time while we were talking to him to call our house or send an email or write a note on Twitter or Facebook.  I’m going to gauge his mood in the morning and then read them to him when it feels like the right time.  I asked him what I could do to help him with this, and he asked me to take him to the Apple store tomorrow — his holy space.  And I told him that I thought it not only was a great idea, possibly more healing than a funeral, but it probably would have made Steve Jobs happy to know that we are going there and enjoying his inventions, keeping his ideas alive.

So that’s where you’ll find us until he’s ready to come home.

* To read the backstory about the Wolvog and Steve Jobs, it is here and here.