1998: Alex cruises in, and the internet bubbles
Our 1998 Annual Update:
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!!!
Christmas brings you all our best wishes, as ever. Particularly this year,
when we have often felt isolated, it is a pleasure to get in touch and remember
that our community may be scattered, but it is still there.
1998 brought its best news at the beginning of the year.
Alexander arrived on
January 22: our first blue-eyed boy. His mother did not want to be away from her
home for any longer than necessary, and was out of the hospital (with her
doctor’s blessing, needless to say) less than six hours after arriving! [The
photo was taken at Rio Del Mar beach on February 15, after a storm.] The
little chap is big and progressing well, enthusiastically exploring cupboards
and drawers all day long. Sue (my sister) thinks he looks like his
father.
In honor of his arrival and (in the interests of completeness) in order to do
something about the absurd disparity in life insurance premiums based on
smoking, I quit on January 17. The cravings are now few and far between, and
Marie-Hélène quit in October. So we both feel rather pleased with ourselves.
Unfortunately, the bad things that 1997 brought us remained stubbornly
immutable. Our furniture remains blocked by Tison, a blackmailing moving company in
France (“pay double the estimate or we won’t deliver your furniture”), and the
French court competent to judge the matter will not even hear it before March of
1999, 21 months after our departure. One can’t accuse French justice of being
ruthlessly efficient.
Nick and Tom remain in Paris, although they did visit us four times during
the year, and we were able to spend a lot of time together this last summer.
They dragged me panting and heaving to the top of Yosemite Falls
[the photo was taken on the way down], and I realized
that they are already (at 12 and 9) more fit than I (at 37, more or less!). The
court that changed their residence when we left France (so that they could
continue to attend French schools!) appointed a psychiatrist to examine them and
us after their headmistress called in social services. He came all the way to
Santa Cruz to meet everybody, and told us that the boys should rejoin us. So now
we wait and see.
It still feels great to be back home. Santa Cruz remains a fascinating and
diverse place, with its cafes and terraces that can delight even a Parisian and
its beaches and waves for her children. It cannot be a coincidence that
Alban
only ever wants as a present something that ends in “-board” (but does not begin
with “black”!), and that Santa Cruz’s prime industry (apart from the Silicon
Valley fallout) is manufacturing various boards. If you know the trademark
“O’Neill’, you know Santa Cruz’s best-known product.
I took a real job in March, for the first time since the summer of 1992. Lots
of hard, hard work, but very satisfying. The law firm (Wilson Sonsini et al) is
the biggest in Silicon Valley, and the “deal flow” (as they say here) is
incredible. The commercial future of high-tech passes across our desks. The
extra years in France have made the return here more complicated professionally,
but for the moment at least even a square peg can find his place. It was a
delight to discover that a chap who, as a lawyer at a firm in New York many
years ago worked for Reed and my dad, has now moved to Reed and is himself a
client of this firm.
Life in our “hers, his and theirs” household continues its merry rights of
passage through the childhood years. The absences are disconcerting (after
Nick
and Tom have been absent since August,
Daphné and Alban will now be in Paris for
Xmas), but the noise, the amazing variety of small objects constantly appearing
underfoot and the high and low moments (not forgetting the noise) remind us day
after day how blessed we are. If we could just get the furniture back . . . !
A warm thanks to everybody who helped us get moving over here, most notably
John Fore and Oded Eran, and a warm “salut” to all those that we miss over
there. Our apologies for the late arrival of these good wishes.
We wish you all good health and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
Here is is our carousel of time, and here are
other annual updates: 1994, 1995,
1996, 1997, 1999, 2000,
2001, 2002, 2003,
2004, 2005,
2006, 2007
