I lost a good friend on Friday night. I will miss you so much, Joe. So glad I got to see you in May ... so sorry that I didn't get my act together to meet up with you since. I always thought I would see you again to share another meal, have another laugh, part with another heartfelt hug. It is truly unbelievable that you are gone.
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re-post of big buttons (february 2009)
My friend Joe looks down at me as I am buttoning my Woo Stassia coat, and comments,
"Whoa, those are some big buttons you've got there."
"Joe, I love it when you talk about my big buttons," I quip, knowing that he will find this amusing. He is, after all, always ready with a one-liner -- and I know this because we have known each other for over two decades now.
When I first met him, he was on a basketball court, even though it sometimes seemed that he was playing football. Off the court, he was usually wearing his Doc Martens, jeans, a t-shirt and a leather jacket. He wore his hair shaved around the back and sides, longer and slicked back on top -- clearly the inspiration for Gavin Newsom's current hairstyle. When we went out to a club, he wouldn't (or couldn't) do the Cabbage Patch. "Do your own dance!" he would say with a smile, as he busted some unique move that he must have created himself or learned during his days as a Valley Guy. He is one of the few people I know who is skinnier and in better shape than he was twenty years ago, but aside from his trimmed down physique, he is the same Joe to me. We used to bond over things like how to cut and roll a room, back in the day when we used to paint our own houses -- before we had kids.
The occasion for seeing Joe (and Nancy, Bill, Debbie, Tim, Ada, Jin, Peter, Steve, Onilda, Jackie and "the kids") tonight was a Happy Super Chinese New Year's Bowl Party, complete with chips & guacamole, calamari, roast duck, pressed duck, chicken, ribs, crab, shrimp, fish, chow mein, two different seafood & veggie dishes, fried rice, sticky rice, duck & organic greens salad, seven-layer jell-o, and a berry trifle made with Chinese sponge cake for dessert. Orchestrated by Debbie and Bill, we somehow managed to find a date when all of us and most of our kids were available to spend a few hours together. As we sat around the dinner table, we talked about how we all knew one another, and it was interesting to see that all of my relationships in that room were somehow tied to my summer clerkship for the Asian Law Caucus in 1987, when Bill took me with him to play basketball. It was great to just have some time together, talking about the old and the new; potty-training puppies and college applications; affirmative action and domestic violence; lumpia and egg rolls; Top Chef and CNN; the Cardinals and the Steelers. Real conversations in real time. Friendships that started out with being connected by something other than a Facebook link. Wow. What a concept.
Thanks for a great evening, and a toast to all the pre-Facebook friendships out there. And, yes, Joe -- I do have some really big buttons. I look forward to showing them to you again sometime soon.
