I saw the notice on facebook, of all places, where it had been posted by the mayor of Sacramento, whom I follow. The city had just created an Ethics Commission, and all interested Sacramento residents were invited to apply. So I thought, why not? I found the application online, filled it out, and submitted it electronically. Isn’t it amazing all the things you can do these days without ever leaving your house?

Weeks or months later I received an email addressed “Dear Applicant,” informing me of interview details. There was only one date and time that they would be holding interviews, so I guess if you couldn’t make it then, you were out of luck. Thankfully, I was in town and free that day. These were the instructions in the email:

When your name is called, walk up to the podium, introduce yourself and proceed to answer the two interview questions, which will also be on the overhead (you are allowed 2 minutes to address both questions):

• Why are you interested in serving on this commission
• Briefly describe the knowledge and experience that qualifies you for this commission

Wow, I need to tell them everything I want them to know about me, and then convince them to choose me, all within two minutes. Okay, I can do that . . . I hope.

There were 42 applicants who showed up at City Hall, all given the same time to appear. The Council members said the names would be called in alphabetical order. I groaned.

My last name is near the end of the alphabet, and I have always complained about the tyranny of alphabetical order. In many high school classes we were seated alphabetically, so I was inevitably at the back of the room, which is tough when you are nearsighted and too vain to wear your glasses. We often picked projects or paper topics in alpha order, so I was stuck with whatever nobody else wanted. I dreamed of marrying a man with a name in the first half of the alphabet so I could move up to the favored region, but by the time I got married I was no longer willing to change my name, so his name didn’t matter, it wasn’t going to help me.

Back in the Council chambers, it turned out there was a deviation from the normal procedure. They were going in alphabetical order by first names instead of last names. A slight improvement for me. I would be ahead of any Theresa or William, but still pretty close to the end. Why couldn’t my parents have named me Amy or Beth? As I sat through the 38 people who were called ahead of me, I realized that most of them had qualifications similar to mine. Everybody’s two-minute spiel was starting to sound the same. I needed to do something distinctive. So I added a little joke about the tyranny of the alphabet, and a comment about the current UNethical administration in Washington, and how important it was for us to be ethical in contrast. (These were all Democrats, so I knew that was safe.) But two minutes goes by really quickly, and I sat down feeling like I hadn’t done an adequate job of selling myself. Then I went home and just let it go.

Six weeks later, I got a letter in the mail. In the mail! It’s lucky I even opened it, we generally just get bills and ads, and sometimes they sit on the mail table for weeks before one of us opens them. The return address was Office of the City Clerk, and I figured it was just a courtesy notification of who had been appointed. I opened it and the first thing I saw was Congratulations! I have never been so surprised! Could this really mean what I thought it meant? Yes! The next sentence was:

“On December 5, 2017 your nomination for appointment to serve on the Sacramento Ethics Commission under seat E (A member representing the general public) was confirmed by the Sacramento City Council.”

I had to read it several times to be sure. Then I had to find someone to tell. I was jumping up and down with excitement, and I was home alone. I went outside and started walking up the street, looking for a neighbor I could talk to, but it was the middle of the day and everyone was at work. Then I saw my husband driving home in our Leaf. I flagged him down and got in the car, saying “Guess what? You’ll never believe it!” I was still jumping up and down, as much as you can when you’re sitting in a car.

The definition of a surprise is something unexpected or astonishing. This was both. I knew I was well qualified, but so were most of the other applicants, and there were only five seats. To be chosen for this commission was a surprise I will always cherish.

 

I had a somewhat tortured gynecological history (never regular periods, an ectoptic pregnancy in 1981, leaving me with one working Fallopian tube, followed nine months later, with the same IUD in place – the doctor never told me to remove it – by another pregnancy which Dan and I chose to abort for health reasons), so I had some difficulties becoming pregnant when we decided it was time. I was 32 years old and we had been married 11 years when David was born at 7:11pm on August 20, 1985 after a grueling 37 1/2 hour labor (he wasn’t breach, but “sunny-side up”, I had unproductive back labor for hours).

We didn’t know the sex before-hand, but were thrilled to welcome David (just an easy name to go with our challenging last name), Benjamin (for Dan’s grandmother Bessie, who died two weeks before I became pregnant). Jews don’t name for living relatives. According to legend, it might confuse the Angel of Death, who could  take the wrong person when she comes to claim her prey, if people have the same name; hence, no “Juniors” or “the second” in Jewish tradition.

I already had the “Baby Book” ready to go and began filling it in immediately with details from the birth, a first photo of David, his hospital bracelet, an original birth certificate (which I’ve removed and used when I need to).

The book queried “The World As It Was” on the day he was born. I saved the front page from all the sections of The Boston Globe, so there were two car bombs that killed 29 in Moslem area of Beirut, Mayor Flynn tells BU ‘no’ on apartments. Senator Laxalt won’t run again despite Reagan request. Front office constructed a comeback for the Yankees; Sox swept under. Walton deal still in limbo (with the Celtics).

Big movies of the summer: “Volunteers”, “Cocoon”, “Rambo”, “Back to the Future”, and “Prizzi’s Honor”.

Big TV shows: summer re-runs of “The Cosby Show” and “Miami Vice”.

Hot books: Iacocca, Yeager, A Light in the Attic, Smart Women, Foolish Choices, Lucky.

Fads:  Calling young urban professionals ‘Yuppies’ and their kids – ‘yuppie puppies’, punk clothing and music, Trivial Pursuit, Vaurnet sunglasses, Swatch watches.

The book prompted me for all the milestones: first smile, roll over, sit up, first tooth, first word: bye bye, etc. I filled them all in. I included his Consecration Certificate from Temple, when he was no longer a baby. In the front, I have cards he made for me on Mother’s Day at Nursery School and all his immunization records, given when he outgrew his pediatrician. The book is bursting with information.

I found a fascinating piece of correspondence. David always had a mathematical mind (he went on to major in physics at Stanford, get a PhD in computational neuroscience from Columbia and now is a Senior Scientist at DeepMind in London, doing pure research in machine learning). In 6th grade math class, David made an interesting observation, that I can’t quite describe here, but he wrote out the equations for me (I have the original paper on my study wall). He had stumbled on Pythagorean triples and described them to his teacher and classmates. No matter what numbers he tried, the equation always worked. This was well beyond 6th grade math and the teacher was impressed. With David’s help, she wrote this up and sent the paper off to Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. The editor was so excited with the paper that she skipped the usual rewrite cycle, as she was in a hurry to publish it, which she did. His teacher shared this with us, the head of the department and the Vice Principal of the middle school and asked if David wanted to skip to 8th grade math, as he was clearly bored with the current curriculum. I don’t remember that outcome, but I did share my son’s observations with one of my older Sarason cousins, Donald Sarason, a well-respected math professor at UC Berkeley, many years my senior. He wrote back that it was clear David had the mind of a mathematician and could he and his wife (who taught middle school math) correspond with David’s teacher. I have all the correspondence from 1998, including the original article, safely tucked away in the Baby Book.

I also kept a copy of his first pay check. During the summer of 2000, he worked as a stock boy at the local bookstore around the corner from our Edgartown home. During that first pay period, he earned $66.50, which he tucked into his savings account. One of the Harry Potter books was released that summer. The women who owned Bickerton & Ripley (long-gone now) opened at midnight, dressed up as wizards and let the kids of the neighborhood line up to get those precious books. Jeffrey was already asleep, but his big brother got him one.

 

Three years later, I was pregnant again, also planned and it happened very easily. Today this would be called a “geriatric” pregnancy, as I was 36 when our second baby was delivered. I had amniocentesis and knew it would be boy. This book was a gift from Dan’s parents.

Jeffrey Bennett Pfau came quickly into the world. In fact, there was no time for anesthesia. He arrived 45 minutes after we got to the hospital. The name Jeffrey (like David) was just a name we liked (though it did get misspelled too often as Jeffery), Bennett was for my maternal grandmother Belle, long-gone.

Jeffrey, born at 6:08am on May 8, 1989 was pink and healthy.

I put those first photos in his baby book along with a family tree that was prompted.

This gave his whole lineage. This was a new addition to the baby book.

This book didn’t prompt for as much information as David’s did (or perhaps I was too busy to fill in as much information). I saved the whole Boston Globe from the day he was born, so the big news stories that day were: Lender’s caution cools fever pitch of Boston development, Cold War over, says German, Panama casts votes for leader. Census to be taken of homeless in 1990. New wisdom on humble ankle sprain (by columnist Betsy Lehman – a sad note; she died at one of our best hospitals while undergoing treatment for breast cancer due to an incorrect dose of chemo – WAY too high, some years later). Red Sox’ homework pays off, 9-5 (over the Texas Rangers).

The president was George H W Bush, popular entertainers: Kevine Costner, Eddie Murphy, Madonna, George Michael, Bette Midler

Fads: casual clothes, “couch potato”

As with David, I have Consecration certificate, homemade Mother’s Day cards, his complete medical records from his pediatrician. His first word was “kitty cat”. He LOVED his cat.

Jeffrey held two part-time jobs in 2006 and I made copies of both first checks. One was at Vineyard.net. He has walked in cold, looking for a job from them that summer. They usually hired local kids and Jeffrey had no outside experience, but had been programming for his own amusement for years. On his resume, he put his SAT scores. He got 800 (perfect) on his math test. That impressed the owner enough to give Jeffrey some hours and Jeffrey didn’t disappoint. His first paycheck amounted to $146.29.

He also did an independent project for our friend Tony, who owned Edgartown Marine. Tony installed a webcam, which he wanted programmed so he could control it to scan the harbor. Jeffrey had to figure out how to program the camera. It was not a simple task. His paycheck was $312. (I believe that was one installment.) This was a significant job and we believe it impressed one of the gurus of the Computer Science Department at Brown University and helped him gain admittance.

Jeffrey took 4 1/2 years to graduate from Brown, which was fine with us. They did a nice ceremony in December, 2011, but not cap and gown or diploma. He had to come back the following May for that (which he did, though he had already moved to California and was working for Apple, but I got my cap and gown photos). The very first document in his baby book is:

The letter declaring that Jeffrey had completed all the requirements and was a college graduate. He needed this to get a discount on a car loan (new grads got one), get his first apartment, and all sorts of other things. It was a precious document before his diploma came through several months later. I cherish it.

Becoming pregnant was shrouded in mystery back then. There was always an element of surprise when I became pregnant.
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