Deborah Tannen, FINDING MY FATHER
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[1:49]Deborah Tannen is a university professor and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University
[1:54]and the author of many books and articles about how the language of everyday conversation
[1:59]affects relationships. She's best known as the author of you just don't understand women and
[2:04]men in conversation, which is on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly four years,
[2:08]including eight months as number one and has been translated into 31 languages. She's also written
[2:14]you are always mom's favorite sisters in conversation throughout their lives, which was a New
[2:18]York Times bestseller. She also wrote you're wearing that understanding mothers and daughters
[2:22]in conversation, which spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, talking from 9 to 5
[2:27]women and men at work, also in New York Times business bestseller, the argument culture stopping
[2:32]America's war of words. And I only say this because I love you talking to your parents,
[2:37]partners, sibs, and kids when you're all adults. Her latest book is finding my father,
[2:41]his century-long journey from World War One, Warsaw, and my quest to follow. Hello. Hi there. Hi. How are you?
[2:50]Put my picture on. Nice to see you. Thank you so much for being interested in this.
[2:56]Oh my gosh, of course. I was so excited when I even heard you were coming out with a memoir after
[3:02]reading so many of, I mean, even just like right here, hold on, I'll grab this. I was going to say
[3:08]your books are scattered all around my office. Oh my goodness. I had for so long, but you're wearing that
[3:15]and that was my mother. Like all over. You've been my guiding light here. So much. Thank you.
[3:23]Is your name the Hebrew name CP? No, it's short for Elizabeth. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Elizabeth
[3:30]is one of those names that has so many different diminutives, doesn't it? Yes. Yeah. My Hebrew name
[3:36]is Ellie Shaveh. I think yes. I had to start like an email to myself with all my kids,
[3:42]Hebrew names because I couldn't remember what any of them were. I mean,
[3:46]I'm a Israeli relative named Zippy, cheesy, IPI. And I have an American friend who has that name,
[3:53]but she calls it Zippy in this country. Yeah. Yes. I get a lot of variations on what people think
[3:59]my name is. But thanks for coming on my show. And I'm excited to talk about your latest book.
[4:05]Would you mind telling listeners what finding my father is about, although I'll just read the
[4:10]subtitle and that gives a clue. His century-long journey from World War I Warsaw and my quest to follow.
[4:16]So just tell us more about the book and what inspired you to write it, although you include
[4:20]that in there. So just tell everybody else. Yeah. My father was born in a Hasidic household in Warsaw
[4:27]in 1908 and came to the United States when he was 12. He lived to be in 98, he died two weeks
[4:34]before his 98th birthday. And he after he retired was almost obsessed with talking about his past,
[4:42]especially his childhood in Warsaw, which he remembered in astonishing detail. But his entire life,
[4:49]really. So I would trace two things about this to my wanting to write this book. One is the very
[4:57]personal reason. And the other is the maybe broader perspective. The personal reason I think is that
[5:04]when I was a child, I adored my father. He was the parent that I felt connected to. I felt he
[5:11]understood me. If I could ask him anything, he would answer with patience and precision. He loved
[5:18]words and language as I did. And I felt like if I said something to him, he would understand it the
[5:23]way I meant it. Whereas my mother, I felt often didn't or might have annoyed by my what I
[5:31]was saying. But he was absent more than he was present. The way I put it in the introduction is
[5:37]the strongest presence that I felt in the house was his absence. I felt like I was spending my days
[5:42]with my mother missing my father. And that really went on pretty much into adulthood. And we
[5:48]can talk later about his work life, which is a saga in itself. But he was gone more far more than
[5:55]he was there. And I think that was often true of parents at the time at the time. It was mostly
[6:01]fathers. I think now it could be fathers and mothers. And after he retired, his wanting to spend
[6:07]all this time talking about his past meant that if I talked to him about his past, I could spend
[6:12]time with him. And I'm kind of a workaholic. So once I decided that I was going to write a book
[6:18]about him, I could spend hours talking to him during the day, which I otherwise would never do.
[6:24]And I recorded our conversations once he realized that I was doing this and he encouraged it.
[6:30]In fact, I found notes in which I should say he saved every piece of paper that came into his life.
[6:36]And he left me many, many, many different kinds of documents and letters and notes and memories
[6:43]that he wrote for me. And once he began doing that, I had more and more material that I felt gave
[6:50]me a perspective on the entire century. His life really is like walking towards history.
[6:58]He was lived in this World War I Jewish community of Warsaw, Hasidic community
[7:06]before, during and after World War I. And he really captured that community in the beginning,
[7:12]my thought about the book. And his too, because I have a copy of a letter he wrote to someone
[7:18]back in OJ, the early 80s, Deborah is going to write a book about the Jewish community of
[7:24]Warsaw based on my memories. And I was thinking of it that way. But then I realized his entire
[7:31]life reflected these different cataclysmic events of that century. The Bolshevik Revolution
[7:38]which had a tremendous effect on his mother's siblings, especially her younger siblings,
[7:43]whom he lived with because he had no father. So he was living in his mother's nuclear family,
[7:49]which was grandfather, grandmother. And many, many anson uncles, nine that were living there.
[7:55]When he was there, I can name 14 of them. And what happened to them tell you their life stories,
[8:00]a few of them, I do tell in the book. So the younger ones were caught up in the Bolshevik
[8:07]Revolution and became passionate communists. And the one who influenced him the most,
[8:12]the youngest of all those anson uncles was only six years older than my father was in more
[8:17]like an older sister that he admired. So by the time he came to the United States, he told me
[8:23]later years later, he already was identified as a communist and an atheist, which he says happened to
[8:31]him. He converted really when he was six following his hands around. And then his whole experience
[8:38]of work is just captures one Jewish immigrant experience. He quit high school at 14, went to work
[8:47]in the garment district in New York. So many immigrants did. And yet managed to go to law school at night,
[8:55]become a lawyer that then it was the depression that other cataclysmic event. And there's something
[9:01]almost ironic or maybe appropriate this book coming out in a pandemic. Because the fact that
[9:08]he finished law school in the depression made it impossible for him to then support. He was the
[9:15]sole support of his mother and sister having no father because of the depression. He could not work
[9:20]as a lawyer. And so he for all those, utility was 50. When he was 50, when I was in junior high,
[9:27]he did become start to work as a lawyer and established a workman's compensation
[9:34]firm. At the time, we said workmans and now we say workers, which actually ended up being the
[9:39]largest workers compensation firm in New York City, which means he liked to point out the largest
[9:45]in the world. But he did so many different things before he could do that because of the depression.
[9:50]And I think many people today are suffering similar consequences. There are futures
[9:55]so changed and so much more challenging because
[10:00]because of the economic situation.
[10:03]So I'll make one last comment here.
[10:05]It so much helped me understand the contrast
[10:09]between his way of looking at the world and his life
[10:13]and relationships between women and men.
[10:16]There's also drama about who he married
[10:19]and my mother and not another woman he might have married.
[10:22]But when my father sat down to write about his life,
[10:26]he began by listing all the jobs he had held.
[10:30]And to him that really captured his life.
[10:34]That was the summary of his life, the work that he did.
[10:37]When I thought about his life and I think about my life,
[10:40]I begin with relationships who was important to my life,
[10:43]who influenced me, who I loved,
[10:46]have those relationships developed.
[10:48]But for him it was work.
[10:50]And I came to understand that really family and work
[10:53]were inextricably intertwined in his mind.
[10:55]Family meant obligation to support the people you loved.
[10:59]And how you went about doing that was both a summary
[11:03]of his life and also proof of his devotion to the family.
[11:07]It was because of that love that he couldn't go to work
[11:11]as a lawyer and let his family starve
[11:13]while we have a difficult time while he built up a practice.
[11:16]Wow.
[11:18]You know, it's amazing because I feel like people
[11:21]in their 50s think like that's, you know, it's too late.
[11:25]Like somebody in their 40s the other day said to me,
[11:27]like, oh, I got started.
[11:29]And I thought it was too late to write a book
[11:30]and thinking, no, no, no, no, no.
[11:32]Like look at this, your dad even back then launched
[11:35]a whole new career so late in life.
[11:38]And yet it was only half his life.
[11:40]He still had half to go.
[11:41]So I don't know, it's very encouraging and empowering
[11:45]to think that, you know, at any moment,
[11:47]just start following your dream and it's not too late.
[11:50]Yes, yes.
[11:51]In his case, it was opportunity.
[11:54]So the brief summary of how it all happened,
[11:57]he did all these different things during the depression.
[12:00]And then there was a civil service exam.
[12:02]He was taking, he said many, many civil service exams.
[12:05]There would be thousands of people taking an exam
[12:07]for a few jobs, but toward late in the depression
[12:12]and things was starting to open up.
[12:14]He got the offered to be a prison guard
[12:17]in the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Connecticut.
[12:20]Not at the kind of job he thought he was going to consider
[12:23]but he went, tried it out.
[12:26]He was very happy there.
[12:27]He loved the lifestyle that went along with it.
[12:30]He had always lived in cities in Warsaw
[12:33]and then in New York City, always in apartments.
[12:35]For the first time he lived in a house,
[12:38]there was a beautiful yard.
[12:40]Everybody who talked about it, talked about it.
[12:42]It was such longing when they were no longer there.
[12:45]Everyone in the family, that is my father, my mother,
[12:48]my sister who was alive at the time.
[12:50]My oldest sister was a little girl at the time.
[12:52]He talked about the beautiful weeping willow tree
[12:56]in the backyard and he was doing very well at it.
[12:59]He was promoted to parole officer very quickly
[13:02]but then he got an offer based on another exam.
[13:05]He had taken civil service exam to be an alcohol tax inspector
[13:10]with the Treasury Department chasing bootleggers
[13:14]and it offered a bit more money and he felt he had to take it
[13:17]because that was all about doing what he had to do
[13:21]to support your family.
[13:22]When he told the warden that he was making this change,
[13:26]the warden was beside himself.
[13:28]You are doing so well here.
[13:30]You are going to be a warden very soon in a year
[13:34]and he thought that was ridiculous.
[13:35]He said, no, there's no way that a Jew will be a warden.
[13:39]There are no Jewish warden's and the warden said,
[13:43]well that's because there were no Jews in the system
[13:46]but now that there are, of course, you'll be promoted.
[13:50]He didn't believe it.
[13:52]He did not believe it was possible
[13:53]and he made the switch.
[13:55]It turned out that the person who was given his job
[13:58]as parole officer became a warden in a year
[14:01]and that person was Jewish.
[14:03]So that realization that he could have had
[14:07]that comfortable life became especially upsetting to him
[14:11]because the job in, as alcohol tax inspector,
[14:15]the job was okay, he didn't love it but it was all right.
[14:19]But the family had moved to Providence, Rhode Island
[14:21]where nobody was happy, they had no community
[14:24]as they had had in Danbury.
[14:26]That word, Danbury, was like a warden of even,
[14:28]I heard about my whole life.
[14:30]The wonderful life they had in Danbury,
[14:33]the miserable life they had in Providence,
[14:36]my mother became pregnant with me,
[14:37]so of course I felt always felt guilty about this
[14:40]and they moved back to New York.
[14:42]She wanted to have the baby in New York.
[14:45]And as a stopgap measure, he took a job in a factory
[14:48]as a cutter.
[14:49]It was supposed to be just a brief time
[14:52]while he became very active in politics.
[14:55]He was no longer a communist, he became disillusioned
[14:58]with communism in 1939 when Hitler made a pact
[15:02]with Stalin made a pact with Hitler,
[15:04]but he became active in the New York Liberal Party,
[15:07]some kind of a party somewhat left of the Democrats.
[15:11]He was promised a political appointment within a year.
[15:14]It took 13 years, each year it was next year,
[15:17]next election, after the election, wait for the election.
[15:21]And so that contrast of these 13 years working in a factory
[15:26]when he could have been a warden
[15:29]and have a comfortable life in his family,
[15:30]would have been happier.
[15:32]So that always was a shadow over his life
[15:35]and over the family.
[15:37]Though he did not give me the sense that he,
[15:41]how much he disliked that working in a factory,
[15:44]I did not sense that he never allowed us
[15:47]to see how unhappy he was.
[15:48]But he certainly talked about it
[15:50]after when we had all these conversations.
[15:53]How did it make you feel to hear about
[15:55]how he had been feeling and sort of hiding all that time?
[15:58]Yes, and I'm grateful to him for that.
[16:01]There was one anecdote he wrote about.
[16:03]He started writing his memories for me as well.
[16:06]And there was one he described in something
[16:09]that he wrote, I guess he wrote in his 80s,
[16:11]but then he retold it in his 90s
[16:13]when we talked face to face after my mother died.
[16:17]He moved to an assisted living facility
[16:20]where we talked many, many, many hours.
[16:23]He remembered, this is before he passed the exam
[16:26]and got the job in Danbury.
[16:28]So it was during the depression.
[16:30]Having no job, he was every day looking for work.
[16:34]He always worked, but it would be temporary jobs
[16:37]trying to find something that he could that would work out.
[16:41]And he passed his mother sitting outside her apartment.
[16:45]Now, he had supported his mother from the age of 14
[16:50]until he got married at the age of 24.
[16:53]So 10 years, he was sole support.
[16:55]And it turned out that she was putting money away
[16:58]all those years.
[17:00]She would even, he would keep out a small amount from self
[17:03]for car fare, she would go through his pockets
[17:05]if she found it and take it.
[17:06]So she was a piece of work.
[17:08]He passed his mother and asked her
[17:10]if she would lend him $5.
[17:12]And she not only refused, but began
[17:15]berating him that he was a spendthrift,
[17:17]that he was irresponsible.
[17:20]And he wrote, even now, when I think about it,
[17:23]I feel like crying because he felt so humiliated by this.
[17:29]And I don't think it was so specifically about his mother.
[17:31]I'm sure that was part of it.
[17:33]But that having sacrificed so much to get a law degree,
[17:37]he passed the bar, he was a lawyer.
[17:40]He should have been working as a lawyer.
[17:42]And here he was penniless.
[17:44]And then he wrote that he did manage to get a job the next day.
[17:48]He was able to borrow a small amount of money
[17:51]from the bank, which apparently was part of there,
[17:53]the way he kept things going.
[17:55]He said where I had an unblemished record.
[17:58]But yeah, and the thing about the way he wrote about it
[18:03]that really was so fascinating to me and so enlightening,
[18:07]he said he felt so terrible because his situation
[18:10]was financially so bad.
[18:12]And he said the need to hide it from my family
[18:16]that I felt that way.
[18:18]And I realized, yeah, that's what he did.
[18:22]My first 13 years of my life when he was working in a factory,
[18:25]he completely hid the negative feelings he had about that.
[18:30]And I was shocked when I asked him as one of our conversations
[18:34]when he was 97, he was a lawyer till the end.
[18:38]How did you feel about working as a cutter?
[18:40]And he said, I hated every minute of it.
[18:43]I had no suspicion.
[18:44]I wonder if this has informed all of your work
[18:46]on communication, that's such a central part
[18:49]of what you investigate is how to ease that communication
[18:53]between all different types of people.
[18:55]Do you think it has something to do with that?
[18:58]Yes, absolutely.
[18:59]On two levels, people ask me, why did I write?
[19:02]And how did I know how to write for general audience?
[19:04]I was trained as an academic.
[19:07]And I always say, and why did I want to?
[19:09]I always say, I wanted to write about that my mother could read.
[19:13]But really, it's that I did grow up in that working class background.
[19:17]My father's friends who were factory workers
[19:19]as he was.
[19:20]My mother's many siblings somewhere.
[19:24]We would now call middle class somewhere one person,
[19:27]owned a factory, a small factory.
[19:29]Others worked in factories.
[19:31]So I grew up talking to people who did not
[19:33]have a college education, and even a high school education,
[19:36]and were not have understood how to talk the way
[19:39]I talked to my academic colleagues.
[19:41]But also, really, I think from my father,
[19:44]I got this perspective on language.
[19:47]He was the one after people left when we'd sit around
[19:50]and talk and gather.
[19:52]He was the one who would say, did you see how she said that?
[19:55]And how her expression looked when she said it?
[19:58]And she said, did you see how she said it?
[20:00]would draw conclusions from the subtle, subtle wording.
[20:04]I had hired somebody before I began interviewing him.
[20:08]I hired someone, somebody told me about that
[20:10]interview older people about their histories,
[20:12]about their past.
[20:13]And I hired someone to interview both on parents.
[20:16]And at one point, she asked my father about his grandfather.
[20:20]How do you like to remember him?
[20:22]And he said, like it or not, I remember him as picking up
[20:28]the phrasing that she used.
[20:30]And I was amused that he was kind of subtly questioning it,
[20:35]criticizing it even.
[20:36]So he had that sensitivity to language.
[20:38]And I think I did pick that up from him.
[20:41]One last comment about that, that I'll tell you.
[20:44]So because he had been raised in his classitic background,
[20:48]he had been sent to what we call, what was called
[20:50]the shader, the religious school.
[20:53]From the time he was four all day until he was old enough
[20:57]to go to gymnasium, then he had tutors at night
[21:00]and went to secular school during the day.
[21:04]So he had this training and talent
[21:05]from the time he was studying religious sex
[21:08]and the time he was very small.
[21:09]And he hated it.
[21:10]He had so many stories about how much he hated losing his child
[21:15]to these to hate her.
[21:16]And the teacher was cruel as many of those teachers were.
[21:20]And so the first academic paper I published
[21:22]I still have graduate students.
[21:25]I sent it to my parents.
[21:26]My mother wouldn't read an academic paper,
[21:27]but my father would.
[21:28]And he called me.
[21:29]And he started by telling me how much he admired it.
[21:32]And then he started saying how, yeah,
[21:35]the way you pull apart all the meaning of the words
[21:38]and look for the underlying meaning.
[21:39]It reminded me of how I was trained to study
[21:43]Talmud and how we had to look for the meanings.
[21:46]And he started getting worked up remembering how much
[21:50]he hated all that.
[21:51]And finally, he got to one point.
[21:53]And he said, I don't know how you can stand it.
[21:56]No, we burst out laughing.
[21:59]I think, in many linguists, by the way,
[22:00]are Jewish.
[22:01]And I think that Talmud of tradition
[22:03]is probably a part of it, just saying.
[22:05]And you included in this book, why you did not
[22:08]write a book about your mother.
[22:10]And you kind of poked fun at her gently
[22:13]and how she would talk.
[22:14]Can you speak a little more about your relationship with her?
[22:17]Yes.
[22:18]Well, my mother tended to be very unhappy.
[22:20]And so she would take that out both on my father
[22:22]and on the kids, especially me.
[22:25]Because I was kind of difficult.
[22:27]And I think I inherited some of that tendency
[22:29]to be unhappy.
[22:30]So I was not an easy kid.
[22:33]And that was the fact that my mother
[22:34]didn't want a third child, which I always knew.
[22:37]And my father did, and apparently he
[22:39]talked her into giving it, like leaving it to fate.
[22:43]And after one night, she said, no, I don't really want that.
[22:46]But it was too late.
[22:47]So I had to always knew that.
[22:51]But my mother was not contemplative or introspective.
[22:53]And she didn't tend to take a step back
[22:56]and ask questions about the way the world is.
[23:00]And she wasn't interested in talking about her past.
[23:02]And because I was recording all these conversations,
[23:05]I actually captured it on tape at that time.
[23:08]It wasn't cassette tape.
[23:10]And I had transcribed some of the conversations
[23:12]in the book I transcribed from actual conversations we had.
[23:15]But there was one where she was often envious
[23:17]that I spent all this time talking to my father.
[23:19]She didn't like it when I was alone with him.
[23:22]And she wanted the attention for herself.
[23:24]So one time she came in and she said, well,
[23:27]I'm going to have to think about my past.
[23:29]And I said, yeah, I want to know about your past.
[23:31]I started asking her a question.
[23:33]And I think it went to something like,
[23:35]do you remember how she grew up in?
[23:37]Yes, sort of.
[23:39]We had a house to remember the furniture,
[23:41]because my father gave all these detailed descriptions.
[23:44]Do you remember dinner?
[23:45]Dinner?
[23:46]Yeah.
[23:46]Like, do you remember what dinner was like?
[23:49]No, I know there was a table and a chair.
[23:52]Did you have friends?
[23:53]You know, get my father had these stories about all the other
[23:56]kids he knew and what their life story.
[23:58]I know I had friends.
[24:00]Do you remember any particular friends?
[24:02]No.
[24:03]And then she would get impatient very quickly.
[24:05]And she said, we came to this country.
[24:08]We always had enough to eat really nothing special.
[24:11]That's it.
[24:12]And clearly, there's many ways that that's wonderful
[24:15]that she didn't get obsessed with the past.
[24:18]She was very impatient with my father's being so obsessed
[24:21]with his past.
[24:23]Apparently, she made a rule in the house.
[24:25]No talking about dead people.
[24:30]You always wanted to reminisce about his grandfather and his
[24:34]past.
[24:34]And he made fun of himself for it.
[24:36]He said, yeah, well, she's like, most people,
[24:39]she's interested in the present.
[24:40]But to me, it isn't real until it's passed.
[24:42]So yeah, so I couldn't write a book about my mother
[24:45]because she didn't give me the material.
[24:47]And my father gave me these mountains of words,
[24:50]journals that he kept, letters that he kept,
[24:53]notes that he kept, memories he wrote down for me.
[24:57]He learned to use a computer when he was 70.
[25:01]And he learned to use email.
[25:03]And he was 80.
[25:04]So he was sending me these long letters that he typed and
[25:08]long emails and so much material to work with, too much in
[25:12]a way that was part of what took me so long to write it.
[25:15]Yeah.
[25:15]I do talk about my mother in the book.
[25:17]You learned that about mothers and daughters.
[25:19]I'm a lot of anecdotes about that.
[25:20]Yes.
[25:22]How long did this back take you to write?
[25:24]From one perspective, it took me 40 years.
[25:27]But I did write quite a few other books in between.
[25:32]Like, I quite serious about writing it in the mid 90s.
[25:35]And I actually proposed it to my publisher at that point.
[25:37]I said that I wanted to write a book about public discourse,
[25:40]the argument culture, and this book about my father.
[25:43]And they said, if you want to write, the argument culture,
[25:46]then the other one has to be about relationships.
[25:49]They didn't want the book about my father.
[25:52]And I said, well, I wrote the argument culture.
[25:56]And then I wrote a book called, I only say this because I love you
[25:59]about adult family relationships.
[26:02]And then that had a book about mothers and daughters,
[26:05]a chapter that people liked very much.
[26:07]So I wrote the book about mothers and daughters.
[26:10]Then my mother passed away while I was writing that book.
[26:12]So that delayed that a bit.
[26:15]I was very close to my mother when she got older.
[26:18]The tensions were no longer there.
[26:20]And then somehow in the mid 90s,
[26:23]I got quite serious, had all that material,
[26:25]had all those nodes.
[26:26]But I did move away from the idea of actually writing it.
[26:30]I got more serious about it around 2012, 13.
[26:34]I had a year at a sabbatical.
[26:36]And I did come out with a draft at that point,
[26:39]but didn't really start shaping it until a couple of years
[26:45]ago.
[26:45]And again, wrote another book in between.
[26:47]My book about friendship, I only say this because I love you.
[26:50]And then I guess in a way, I needed that much distance
[26:55]from my father.
[26:56]He has now, it's now 14 years since he passed away.
[27:01]And I guess I was finally ready to bring it all together
[27:04]and shape it.
[27:05]And do you now feel like a sense of closure now
[27:07]that it's come out into the world?
[27:08]And it's done, and it's here.
[27:10]Oh, yeah.
[27:11]I did it in a fear.
[27:14]I'm so thrilled that I thought it done, that it's published.
[27:20]I promised him I would write it.
[27:22]And he was pleased that I was writing it.
[27:24]And we talked about it.
[27:25]And he sent me things with that in mind.
[27:28]Keep this, I hope you have a file for this.
[27:31]Keep it, keep these things together in a file.
[27:34]We're very lucky.
[27:36]As I said, he was really healthy until the end.
[27:38]But there was just one week he had a heart attack.
[27:41]He was in the hospital.
[27:42]He seemed to be recovering, and then he had a stroke.
[27:45]So after the stroke, he wasn't responsive.
[27:49]But the hospice people assured us he could hear.
[27:53]And they said, talk to him about all the good times you had.
[27:56]And I thought, well, I think I'll tell him what I think
[27:59]he would appreciate hearing.
[28:01]And I said, I promise you, I will write the book
[28:04]about you.
[28:04]So I'm glad I kept my promise.
[28:06]I'm glad you did too.
[28:08]That's really nice.
[28:09]It's so special.
[28:10]I'm glad you got to tell him.
[28:11]And I don't know.
[28:13]I sort of believe that people know on some level,
[28:15]even if they're not with us, which sounds a little woo-woo.
[28:18]But I do believe that it's out there.
[28:21]And it's acknowledged in some way.
[28:23]I think I do too, although clearly he was in AVs,
[28:26]so he did literally believe in the afterlife.
[28:28]But one of the conversations we had really stuck in my mind,
[28:32]we were talking about, this is when he was again, 97.
[28:35]And we were talking about how old, how long I would live
[28:38]and how I would like living that old.
[28:40]And I said, I guess I won't know until it happens.
[28:44]And he said, well, I'll have to tell me when I'm up there.
[28:47]He said, I'll be watching you from up there.
[28:50]Oh, I feel the way it is.
[28:52]That's amazing.
[28:54]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[28:57]The advice is pretty much advice that I was told
[29:01]and inspired by many years ago.
[29:04]Just write, don't wait until you've got it all right.
[29:08]All those notes that I was writing, all those years,
[29:11]I did eventually incorporate, not all of them, of course,
[29:14]I couldn't, but many of them.
[29:16]If I had waited until I knew what shape the book was
[29:19]going to have, I would never have written it,
[29:21]because it was so hard to know what shape it would have
[29:25]until I started writing.
[29:28]And then having all that material,
[29:30]and then it was certainly challenging
[29:32]to figure out how to shape it, what to include, what
[29:35]to leave out, maybe that was the hardest.
[29:37]Deciding what to leave out.
[29:39]But having been writing and having all that material
[29:43]to start with, I think, is what made it possible.
[29:46]Anything?
[29:47]Well, thank you.
[29:48]Thank you so much for coming on my show.
[29:50]Thank you for sharing your beautiful stories.
[29:52]And I feel so great knowing that I got
[29:56]to hear just the sliver of the backstory
[29:58]of this beautiful, sort of, love, love.
[30:00]or to your dad, so thanks.
[30:02]Thank you so much, thank you.
[30:04]Have a great day.
[30:05]Okay, you're too.
[30:08]Thanks so much to Mindy Kayling and her book,
[30:10]Nothing Like I Imagine.
[30:12]First sponsoring this episode,
[30:14]you can get it on Amazon.com slash Mindy Stories.
[30:19]And again, it's called Nothing Like I Imagine.
[30:22]Go check it out.
[30:23]Thanks for listening to this episode of Mom's Don't Have Time
[30:26]to Read Books.
[30:27]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram
[30:29]at ZB Owens and at Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:32]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com
[30:35]and sign up for my virtual book club
[30:36]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:39]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[30:42]for the Sound Editing.
[30:43]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:45]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.