Trace Minerals

Who taught you about work?

In my family there is a padrone, the eldest male. His job is to help the family, make sure everyone stays on track and understands what it means to be a Peirolo. Being part of our family has meaning, obligations, traditions. My grandfather was quite poor before he came to the United States as an adult. He told me he got meat once a year on Christmas, and that was when they got new shoes. When you grew out of the shoes you went barefoot until Christmas came around again. For my grandfather, everything could be a source of family pride, even poverty.

The padrone would have been my father because he was the eldest son. But he died, so now the padrone is my uncle Carl.  Carl flew out to Seattle last week for my 60th birthday. We sat in the sun on my daughter’s porch with a small group of family and friends, eating good food and talking. He talked about the planes he flew when he was in the Air Force, and we asked him about his two tours during the Vietnam war. We argued about politics and religion because that’s what we do to entertain ourselves after a good meal. Which can be slightly unnerving for the rest of the guests.

I was nineteen when my father died, a few weeks before my twentieth birthday. Which means this summer was the 40th anniversary of my father’s death. Carl and my daughter and I drove up to Bellingham where my father is buried to see his grave. We cut back an aggressive shrub that obscured the headstone and then cleaned the carved marble. I’ve done this before, so I packed gardening gear, a brush, water and rags. After we were done, his name shone. Edward Peirolo. I put the tools back in the car.

Yesterday, my uncle was talking to my granddaughter, his great great niece – who is three – about the importance of trace minerals. “You don’t understand this yet, but you will,” he said, “There are minerals in your body like magnesium and copper and zinc, all kinds of things we call trace minerals.” Carl is tall like my father was, and he uses the same gestures with his hands while he talks, he waves his arms in the region of his chest as if indicating circulation, the way trace minerals keep everything going.

Padrone is just our name for the role of teaching the younger generation the important things. Even when they don’t yet know that they are important. Carl has many kids, grandkids and great-grandkids, and I know they’ve all gotten those lessons even if they don’t understand them yet.  It’s good to have a person whose job it is to teach what is important to the family, and how the family operates; what is done and what is not done.

My father talked to me like that, from when I was very young. You don’t understand this yet, but you will. And I want you to be ready. He was a physicist and explained the Doppler effect to my sister and me. That’s the way the sound of a train bends as the train speeds past. My father would stand outside the window by the driveway and make the noise of a train passing and we knew he was home from work, and we would yell “the Doppler effect!!” and run to greet him. We were not much older than my granddaughter is now.

He taught me how to work. When I was in elementary school, he was writing a sales presentation on a yellow legal pad, and he was stuck. He was sitting at the kitchen table.

“You have to get their attention in a presentation,” he said, “you have to start with something that will catch their interest.” I was reading James and The Giant Peach which starts with James’ parents being killed by a rhinoceros and I ran and got the book and read him the start of it. He wrote it down. He started his presentation with the story of writing his presentation with his young daughter. It was the first time anyone wrote down what I said, and I remember it. I didn’t understand then, but I do now, what it means to talk to your kids like that about your work. He talked to me like I mattered, like I was smart, and he cared that I knew what he did.  

He taught me how to negotiate before I was in middle school. He taught me how to drive when I was fourteen, but I couldn’t get my driver’s license until I knew how to change a fan belt and a tire. He taught me how to play football and basketball. He, like my uncle, was well over 6 feet, and I remember him sailing through the air to do a hook shot and then tossing me the ball to do the same shot, as a teenager. I learned.

My dad traveled quite a bit for work. He worked for IBM. He was fascinated by technology. In the late 70s he told me that when he started his career, computers were as big as a room.

“One day,” he said, putting his hand on his desk, “computers will be small enough to fit right here and everyone will have one.”

I wanted to be a writer, but I ended up selling things, just like my father. We sold different things, but I spent most of my career doing sales presentations with interesting beginnings, and negotiating deals. Now I do trainings on negotiations and presentations. I like to teach people how to work better. I am fascinated by technology.

How I work and what I do has always been a monument to my father, I just didn’t understand that. I cleaned out the back of the car today and threw the soiled rags in the sink to rinse out. The dirt ran dark against the white enamel, and I thought this is from my father’s gravestone. But I am the marker that he was here. He taught me important things, listened to me and valued me, and got me ready for my life. Everything he ever taught me is still circulating through me, trace minerals, my foundation, ballast, fuel and fire.