Personal
Responses to Leah; and Great Reaction to Wheels of Change
Posted 2/17/10. A warm thank you to all of you who commented on my post last week about Leah and my four children. Here are some reader responses:
From a father: “This is a very touching story. I’m not ashamed to admit I did tear up reading it…While I did not ‘need’ this personal story to confirm my respect for you and Jennifer, it does not surprise me in that I now see beautiful Leah reflected in each of you and who you are and what this world desperately needs more of in the sacred callings of Mom and Dad.”
From another father: “I do remember Leah's passing some time ago. I appreciate your guts and integrity to not put it away in some far corner of your life and never speak of it. Your speaking of this may even help someone else, so good for you.”
From an aunt: “Thank you, Kevin, for addressing this oh so personal and gut wrenching topic. I love all your children equally and with all my heart.”
From a long-time friend who participated in a memorial ceremony for Leah after her death: “This is very beautifully written, and I think important. Of course I knew about Leah. I still remember planting the tree for her. The other thing worth mentioning is that you can give parents hope by mentioning this. If they lose a child, they can realize others can follow and live. You are very brave to write about this so publicly. But I believe in the truth. It can be very healing. So many other countries embrace and acknowledge death in a way that America (in general) does not, and seems to be afraid of doing. I have a dear college friend whose three year old died (I think he would be 25 or so now), and she still does a ceremony of some sort on the beach the day of his death. Thanks for your writing.”
And now for something completely
different: Wheels of Change continues to draw attention of the most pleasing
kind. It has been nominated for the Cugnot Prize, which is awarded by the
Society of Automotive Historians to the best historical car book of the year
nationally and internationally. Wheels of Change has also been nominated for
the James Valentine Memorial Award, which is given to the best California car
book of the year. Finally, it will be a contender for the 2010 Dean Batchelor
Award for excellence in automotive journalism, presented by the Motor Press
Guild. The winners of these awards will be named later this year.
Thursday Feb. 18, I will be talking cars with host Patti Morrison on KPCC 89.3 FM in Los Angeles. Sunday Feb. 21—two days after gum surgery! Aaah!—I will be showing slides and gumming my way through a historical “lecture” at the Benicia Historical Museum at 2 pm. in Benicia. Monday, Feb. 22, Paul Kilduff of The Monthly will interview me for a Kilduff File podcast to be broadcast later in the week (I think). Wednesday, Feb. 24 finds me at the San Jose Rotary Club. I show up, they feed me lunch, and I talk a little cars. If nobody throws anything at me, and so far nobody has, the day is a success.
I Have Four Children. Their Names are Annie, Hank, Gabe, and Leah
Posted 2/8/10. Many people do not know that Jennifer and I had a baby, Leah, who died. She was born Monday, November 25, 1996, and died Friday, November 29, 1996, after five days of living only in a hospital. This is a picture of her in the last hour of her life; she had breathing problems she could not overcome.
One of the reasons that many people do not know about
Leah is that I do not tell them about her. Privately, among our family and
close friends, we of course speak of her and remember her. Every November
around her birthday, a time of year that is particularly hard for her mother,
we recognize her life by lighting a candle or hiking, as a family, up to the
hill where we scattered her ashes. We talk about her freely with our sons, who
never met her and will never understand the impact she has had on their lives.
Among people I do not know, however, talking about Leah represents an awkward challenge. Whenever a new book of mine comes out, the publisher releases biographical material about me that typically mentions the fact that I have children. I often speak publicly in front of groups, and occasionally do radio and TV interviews. These, too, generally mention my children, at least in passing, and this is where the awkwardness comes in. Do I say I have four children, or three?
This issue arose again last month when I was putting the finishing touches on the second edition of The Everything Father To Be Book, A Survival Guide for Men, which will be released this year. In my acknowledgments for the book, I thanked only three of my children by name, leaving out Leah. There was a reason for this. When you are having a baby, understandably, the last thing you want to hear is that something bad can happen to your child. I have written three parenting books, and after Leah died I had a spirited discussion with an editor (not my current one) about how much I should talk about her death when writing for expectant mothers and fathers.
"When you talk about that," she said (and she was a mother herself, and not unsympathetic to my concerns), "it puts the book in another category. It's no longer a parenting guide, it's a book about loss and recovery from loss." Indeed. As this blog post shows, as soon as I start talking about Leah the discussion becomes somber and the audience falls silent.
So, in my writing (especially for new parents) and my public speaking, I have generally avoided the subject, sticking with the public fiction of three children rather than the personal truth of four. Until the other day when I was watching TV. A man came on who was being interviewed on some issue or another. I can't recall his name, what program he was on, or the issue he was talking about. What I remember is that he said he was the father of two children, one of whom had died. "An angel," he called her. His eyes became teary. The host changed the topic, and they went on to discuss whatever it was they were supposed to talk about.
I was struck by this man's courage to be open about a hidden hurt. Following his lead, I decided to change my approach. I rewrote the acknowledgments to The Everything Father To Be Book, dedicating the book to all my children and mentioning them all by name. Is a child who is gone still your child? She is, and always will be. I have four children, and their names are Annie, Hank, Gabe and Leah.
Annie, who is now in college, with her sister
Of Doppelgangers, Italy, Streak Running, and Kaddish: Notes From Around the Globe
Posted 1/22/10. Last week’s blog on my adventures at a naked beach drove Annette Kaiser of San Jose, California, to her dictionary to find out the actual meaning of the word “doppelganger.” I confess I did not know what a doppelganger was when I used it to describe a certain portion of the anatomy of the fellows running around unclothed at Baker Beach in San Francisco; it just sounded funny to me. A doppelganger, says Annette, a dedicated crossword puzzler who knows her way around dictionaries, refers to a person’s “evil twin,” which makes the reference even funnier, I think.
Looking to go to Italy? And learn some Italian while you’re there? Do you have long-lost family relatives in Italy and need help in finding or contacting them? Beyond the Sights can do all these things for you—and more. It is a new travel business just begun by my very own bro, Dave Nelson. And when you get to Italy on a Beyond the Sights tour, these are the five Italian instructors who will be teaching you the language. Ciao, baby!
Steve Conlin, aka Steve the Bartender, dropped me a line the other day, saying that he has moved from the Los Angeles area—formerly he was a bartender for the stars, at the old Bel Air Hotel in Beverly Hills—to Las Vegas. You may recall Steve’s contribution to this column not long ago, his sharp recitation of the events surrounding actor James Dean’s death. Steve is “now appearing,” as he says, at Wynn Las Vegas. Next time you’re there, look him up and ask how a novel he is thinking about writing—“a Southwest desert noir novel concept featuring a bartender/detective character in the tradition of Philip Marlowe”—is faring.
Ever hear of streak running? Neither had I until I got a note from Nancy Shohet West, who is a writer and streak runner who has enjoyed my Runner’s Book of Daily Inspiration. Streak running is not running around with your clothes off, like those fellows at Baker Beach. It is, says Nancy, “ a term to describe people who run a mile or more every day without ever taking a day off.” Nancy does indeed run a mile or more every day, and she blogs and tweets about it with the same energy and enthusiasm she gives to her streaking. Last I checked, Nancy was up to Day #895 in her running streak, and that is in the Massachusetts snow.
By the way, let's hear it for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts! Way to go, brothers and sisters.
Last year Pearl Felson died at the age of 87, and her son Leonard decided to
honor her life and memory by writing a blog. It’s called A Year of Kaddish,
What a Year of Daily Praying Triggers Within and Without. 
Leonard is an old
Hayward friend of mine who is now an esteemed journalist living in Hartford,
Connecticut. He is Jewish, and he says that according to Jewish custom, “a spouse
is obligated to say Kaddish [prayers] daily for one month; when a parent dies,
the children say it for eleven months.” So his blog is a sort of year-long
prayer for Pearl. But, he adds, it isn’t about his mother directly; it is also
about his spiritual quest and life appraisal following her loss.
Here in supposedly sunny California, we are experiencing big rains and wild storms, including tornados. But I know this is paltry indeed compared to a typical winter up in the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota where Travis Roste lives. Travis, a frequent contributor to this space, tells me that it has been “cold as a well digger's bum here lately. Until just this week when it warmed up, the last couple weeks were 10 to 20 below at night. Brrrrrrrrr.” That’s enough to freeze your doppelganger, all right.
The Wheels of Change Road trip chugs on: This Wednesday, I speak to the always friendly folks at the Kiwanis club in Benicia and on Saturday, Jan. 30, I hit the road again for a signing at Autobooks-Aerobooks bookstore in Burbank.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! 'God Bless Us All, Every One!'
"He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!" —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
No. 196,963 with a Bullet: Wheels of Change Motors to Hayward Historical Society
Posted 11-13-09. In the sales race between Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue and my Wheels of Change: From Zero to 600 MPH, The Amazing Story of California and the Automobile, the former vice presidential candidate is inching ahead. Her book is No.1 on Amazon, while mine is ranked 196,963. Nevertheless! Wheels of Change continues to motor along quite nicely, and last night close to 30 people in my old hometown of Hayward turned out for a scintillating talk and discussion about cars and car history at the Hayward Area Historical Society on Main Street. Here are some candids of people who attended, and remember to click the jump button to see all the pictures, particularly the last one:
From left, Carl Steward, Mark Croghan, Joe Joseph, Kevin Nelson (some guys never grow up), and Max Lateiner
Diane Curry, archivist at the Hayward Area Historical Society who helped me with some of the research on Wheels of Change for the old, now long-gone racetracks, the Oakland Raceway and Oakland Stadium
Carl Blincoe
Hank Nelson tweaks the nose of Abe Lincoln, who sat stone-faced through my entire talk and never said a word, so he deserves what he gets.
Once Upon a Time in Hayward, There Was a Little Boy ...
Posted 11-12-09. Once upon a time in a place called Hayward, California, there was a little boy with a gap-toothed grin ...
He lived in a pink house with a wonderful family and although his father died and knocked a hole in all their lives ...
The boy did what boys do. He played outside, he threw rocks, he climbed fences, he rode skateboards and bicycles. At Hayward High he played basketball well enough for a newspaper cartoonist to do a feature on him for the Daily Review ...
After high school he left Hayward for college but came back one summer to work as a lifeguard at a lake in Castro Valley ...
From there he left Hayward pretty much for good. But, fully into his bearded mountain man phase, he did return to Hayward-Castro Valley again to be Best Man at his brother's wedding ...
From there he became a reporter and writer ...
And now, all grown up with a wonderful family of his own, he will return to the place where it all began to talk about his new book, Wheels of Change: From Zero to 600 MPH, The Amazing Story of California and the Automobile. Here are the particulars about the evening, so if you're not doing anything tonight, come on out and say hello. And if you can't make it to Hayward, there is always the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum on Saturday at 1 p.m. Hoo-yah!
P.S. In the wedding picture, from left to right, the boy, Dave Nelson, Phil Deatsch, Phil Carlson, Larry Gordon and Dave Baker.
