John Foley

My brother Mike was visiting this weekend, and saw his nephew Sean Michael – named in part for his uncle –for the first time. One of the joys of my belated fatherhood has been seeing the curiosity with which Sean Michael greets each day and experience. He seemed entranced by the ocean when we drove over to Cannon Beach Saturday, and was no less thrilled by a stroll along the Willamette in Portland on Sunday…The brief explosion of cherry blossoms was another reminder to treasure the present moment, as was the relatively rare sunshine…Mike is working on a book about surviving in the business world with your soul intact, and is six stories into a projected collection of twenty. My favorite is about the time he was the youngest (24) manager at Illinois Bell and having an impossible time trying to win the respect of employees who had been there for decades. Following a meeting with his superiors, in which he was verbally abused for the lack of productivity among his charges, he went back to his office feeling very low. His secretary was a 50ish African-American woman, big as a tight end, who read his face clearly enough. “Mike,” she said, “they just ripped up your lily white ass, didn’t they?”
“Yup.”
“Well come on over here, child,” she said, spreading her arms. Mike took a seat on her lap and she rocked him and said, “There, there, you just a pup among them big dogs, but you’ll be all right.”
And he was.