So, first love is a freighted conversation — is my first love Eliot, from fourth grade? Kevin Mills from 9th grade? Or the unrequited kind of Timmy Lewis in fifth grade and Clint Walker in middle school? When I think of my first love, the most poignant one, I think of Buck.

He was a Pleasanton kid, a friend of my cousin Amy. We met one night at the high school football field, a night that ended in a very long ride in an ambulance from Pleasanton, Texas to San Antonio. We were just playing around, holding hands and spinning fast in a big group of kids, when my head made some pretty fast contact with another kid’s knee.

We went home, Amy making sure I got to Granny’s okay, and then in the middle of the night I started vomiting. THREE other concussions (details to come) were bike related, but this one was just youthful stupidity. I was fine — the slo-mo ambulance ride was actually kind of fun, with my mom’s full attention and the bright lights spinning around.

So, back to Buck. I guess we made a strong connection that night, and this was BACK IN THE DAY, so he wrote me a much-wanted letter. And, best of all, I still remember it, he put cologne on the letter. It was blue stationary, with black writing, and the words were not memorable. But the scent — I bet I could still pick it out in a lineup of (cheap, young man) colognes.

It was so … appealing. Sexy, really, before I was really sure what that word meant. I felt so desired, and it was such a different feeling than with my boy friends at home (almost all of whom I was about a foot taller than). I wrote him back, he wrote me again, we wrote each other at least three times. He was older than me, by a year or two — this impressed me enormously.

Eventually we realized I wouldn’t be back in Pleasanton for some time, and the words tapered off.

A few years later, when I was in late high school or college, Buck committed suicide.

I don’t know his life story, or what demons he was dealing with, but I do know that his cologne-scented letters meant a lot to me then — and still do. I wish he were still around for me to tell him thank you.

My parents were raised in very, very small town Texas — my mom in Pleasanton, Texas and my dad in Poteet, Texas. They moved to Japan after college, to fulfill my dad’s ROTC debt to the Navy, and then lived briefly in Coquille, Oregon. By 1976, they had returned to Texas, and settled in Houston.

My first memories are of Houston, the flooded streets that we played in like swimming pools, the incredibly rare snowfall being treated as a miracle, the sunny gloriousness of the almost-endless summers. Best of all, for me, were the trips to Pleasanton. We’ll return to those again and again in this year of gratitude, but for today I want to focus on the cousin I played with the most: Amy Mills.

Her dad, my mom’s brother, was probably the scariest person in my childhood. He was strict, tough, and not given to speaking with children. But even the fear of him couldn’t keep me away from their house, where Amy and I would play make-believe for hours and hours (though I confess I went over more during the day, when he was working in San Antonio …).

A gaggle of cousins around 1986. Please note how VERY VERY sophisticated Jennei and I were pretending to be (well, Jennei actually was). Also pictured: Amy Mills holding Andrew Cullen, Benjamin Cullen (front) and Michael Mills (back).

We wedded our dolls to each other. We played hide and seek. We snuck off to the nearby high school, and had picnics on the grounds. And I could trust Amy with any question, no matter how  awkward or weird. She didn’t judge me.

So many memories flood me when I think of Amy and my childhood. In my memory, we are almost completely free from adults, when we were together. My grandmother gave us space to roam, and my parents and her parents trusted that we wouldn’t get into too much trouble in small town Texas.

Sitting under the enormous oak tree at the Pleasanton High School, talking about boys.

Opening Christmas gifts together in an orgy of greed, screaming at the awesomeness of the gifts.

Lying in bed, late at night as tweens (we didn’t know the term then), talking about what on EARTH the words in granny’s romance novels meant.

Visiting her at her job at the IMAX theater in San Antonio, and getting free tickets.

Playing on the football fields with her friends from Pleasanton, feeling both included and able to be freer because I wouldn’t see them again (soon).

Amy was a daring, bold person in my childhood, a leader who included me and took me places I’d be too afraid to go on my own. Looking back I realize how
I often put myself above her, in my mind, as I was a sophisticated city kid and she was a small-town girl, but it is amazing how wrong I was. Her sophistication and openness to who I became throughout my life has been an amazing model in my family and in my life. I’m lucky to have a cousin like her. Thanks, Amy.

When I encourage my staff to come in and ask for help prioritizing projects, I am emulating Rich White. When I ask staff to take time for their families and their lives outside of work, I am honoring Rich White. When I see a dreamcatcher and smile with remembrance, I am thinking of the joy that Rich White found in the southwest.

Rich hired me in August of 1999, soon after two organizations had merged. I was a new Director of Communications, and I came in full of confidence and certain I had all the answers. Rich built up that belief in me, while gently transforming how I worked. I’m still not sure how he managed to be so strongly encouraging and completely reforming at the same time.

We went to the beach later that day, and relished the sun.

One day, a year or so into our working together, we went to San Diego for a meeting. His (then brand new!) wife Nancy joined us later in the trip (and we went to the San Diego Zoo together!), but at first it was just us. This was one of my first work trips, and I was desperate to both impress Rich and the AAIA board/communications team, and also to see San Diego.

We carefully laid out our schedule so we accomplished work, tasted excellent Mexican food, and saw the ocean. Rich and I edited the magazine together late one night because I told him that I really wanted to see the ocean the next morning. He begged off, so I woke up at 5 a.m. myself and drove the rental (a red Monte Carlo SS, I will never forget) to the ocean.

The sun, just to clarify, is SETTING here, which is does in the west.

I stood there at the water’s edge, thinking about:

• how lucky I was to work for Rich, and be able to travel the U.S. in ways I never had before.
• how amazing the trip was going, and how glad I was about the new magazine
• why on earth wasn’t the sun coming up? It was getting lighter and lighter, and yet the ocean was still just a stunning, unchanging, mild blue color.

With sudden insight, I turned around. The sun rises, for those of you paying attention at home, in the east. While I had always previously been to beaches in Texas and the East Coast that featured a sunrise, I had somehow come to believe that ocean = sunrise.

Looking at the sun rising over the mountains behind me took my breath away. What a basic assumption I’d made, and how wrong I had been! When I sheepishly made my way back to the hotel and confessed to Rich, he didn’t even laugh. He is such a kind man, so gentle, that he just said he hoped it was still a good morning.

Hard at work, editing together.

We traveled together a lot those three years we worked together, and saw a lot of amazing parts of the country. That trip, with Nancy and Rich, meeting people who would be in my life for decades to come, was a highlight. And Rich’s kind, gentle ways are a lesson to me still today. Nancy and I still work together occasionally, and I always ask her to tell Rich what a beacon he has always been to me — and here I am telling him myself.

Thanks, Rich. Your priorities were always right on.

My sister, two years and one month older than me, was my leader for much of my childhood. I remember with a sad pang the day in middle school — I remember it precisely — that I was standing behind her in her closet, trying to borrow her clothes, and realized that I would never become her. Until that moment, I had always thought that when I was her age — just two years away from where I was RIGHT NOW — that I would be as vivacious, outgoing, confident and adorable (she is 5′ 2″, I’m 5′ 11″) as she is. At that moment, as I was maybe 11 and she was 13, I realized that the difference was more than just years — that it was personalities, and while mine had its charms, it wasn’t going to morph into hers.

Jennei and I celebrating something … Christmas? …

We were more the textbook ‘arguing’ sisters than best friends growing up, and so rare times of true tenderness stick out in my mind. In particular, I remember Jennei teaching me how to shave. We were living in the apartment we moved into with my mom after my parents’ divorce, and I think my mom thought I was too young to shave. I was, in the peculiar way of pre-teen girls, obsessed with the (pale, invisible) hairs on my legs, and was convinced that shaving would give me both street cred and beauty.

After whining and begging for a while, I convinced Jennei to teach me. She sat on the tub next to me, in a rare role of patient teacher (patience is not something my sister and I excel in). She showed me how to lather up on one leg, and then how to run the razor up it. I was terrified of cutting myself, and so she showed me again, and instructed me when to rinse off the razor. She helped me with my whole first leg, and then stayed with me as I did the second one myself.

Our interactions tended more toward anger and jealousy, fighting over who got the most affection and who was the most beloved, so my memories of true sisterhood, of supporting each other against the MAN (or the Mom, in this case), are very cherished.

It wasn’t that I needed to shave, but I did need a sister to stand up for me and teach me how to be a woman. Thanks, Jennei, for the helping hand and the loving lesson.

I’ve wanted to be a mother since I first understood the word, ‘mother.’ My yearning for a baby goes back pre-memory, and I had a lot of expectations built up around that role. When I was finally pregnant with who would become Oliver Erwin Kiker, I was filled with dreams, ideas and goals for this wee boy, and visions for the kind of amazing mother I would be.

Oliver: sweet, fierce, beautiful, smart, tender Oliver, reset all of that. On the very first day of his life, he taught me that all of my ideas about having a baby were completely, totally different from the reality of having a baby. From nursing to changing diapers to sleeping (oh how I missed sleeping) nothing was as I expected it to be.

Those first few months, I floundered. I pretended. I cried. I nursed and listened and asked and played and searched his eyes for what he needed from me. Jason and I learned to hold him, and to bathe him, and to feed him, and we gradually grew into a family.

We’ve had a FLICKR site since Oliver was born, tracking his progress and the progress of his two younger sisters, Allyson and Eleanor. When I was thinking, today, on Oliver’s 6th birthday, about the day I finally realized we were a family. It was a completely random day — if it weren’t for our other site, I would have no idea when it was. Only that he was young, and it was before Allyson was born (they are 19 months apart).

Oliver had learned that his mouth would make crazy sounds if he made a sound (ohhhhh) and held my hand while smacking my hand against his face. It delighted him. It delighted me. It made us feel together, and funny, and competent, and loved. It was a beautiful sound, and it make me ‘break into blossom.’

March 23 was not the day I expected Oliver to be born, and after his birth things didn’t go the way I expected they would go, and that is part of the thousands and thousands of things my beloved son has taught me over the years: Things don’t have to go as expected to be wonderful, perfect and right.

As he’s grown up, and become his own kid, he’s also taught me that children listen to what you tell them, and act on it. When he started to want to wear skirts and dresses, two years ago, Jason and I told him that he shouldn’t, that people would talk about him, that it ‘wasn’t done.’ He listened, and then said, ‘but momma, why should I care what people say?’ and ‘why isn’t it done?’ When we finally ran out of excuses, he began to wear dresses.

Oliver and Allyson on a slide

He still does, most days, although today he chose pants and a shirt with a glittery pink belt. When the 13 kids at his party split into gender lines, he was outside, playing soccer with the boys. When they talked about Oliver, they didn’t talk about what he wears, but about his Legos, his charm, and his laughter (which is a bellyful awesome one).

He’s right. It doesn’t matter what people say, and here in Seattle at least, it is done. It’s hard to limit myself to just two lessons from Oliver, but the lesson of life turning out better than your best-laid plans and the lesson of asking ‘why’ are just two reasons why this boy is someone I am so deeply glad to know.

I’ve been writing this thank you note since the day I left my junior year of high school. Before the Internet, in all its robustness, I called Westbury High School and called Rice University to try to track down Katherine Drake, a 1990 graduate of their chemistry program and one-year teacher at Westbury. I have been trying to send this one thank you note to this amazing woman for decades.

Ms. Drake had just married her college sweetheart, Earl, when she decided to teach at Westbury High School. As a first-year science teacher, she was assigned a lot of beginner level and repeat level classes. The very in-demand honors chemistry teacher ended up with a class of almost 40 honors kids — too much for one class. So, Mrs. Drake was given one honors chemistry class — and I was lucky enough to be part of that cohort.

I had many magical teachers — Mr. Slackman, your entry is coming — and yet Mrs. Drake has always stood head and shoulders above the rest. Allowing Patrick Hallmark and me to come in early every day to ask questions, bringing in books during our ‘reading time’ to inspire us (she introduced me to the wonders of Anne Tyler with Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant that year). She even taught me how to deal with blisters, and also let me sleep in her class after we went to my first concert — Paul Simon!

Me and the ever-beautiful Karen Andrews in my junior year; oh I wish I had a photo of me and Mrs. Drake.

But what I remember most is how she encouraged me in a subject that I had zero innate skill in — chemistry. She would go to any length to show me my potential, even in a subject that I had to work very, very hard in to succeed.

Her patience with me was limitless. Her ability to explain really complicated subjects in a way that I understand stays with me to this day.

And because she believed in me, despite all evidence to the contrary, I worked so hard to please her. While I phoned it in for much of high school, I studied my heart out for my chemistry final. I needed an A to do something … qualify for something? … and I wanted to show Mrs. Drake that she was right — that I was smart enough to understand chemistry.

I remember asking her so many questions, and I remember her patient, kind answers. I most of all remember being at home, the day after my junior year finals. I walked in, and pressed ‘play’ on the answering machine. My mom and I had a hilarious, hilarious rap that we sang into the machine (“This is the Prestons’ answering machine, leave a message, but keep it clean! We’re out right now but we’re listening in, at the sound of the beep you may begin! Beep beep!”).

Immediately after that, I was shocked and worried to hear Mrs. Drake’s voice on my home machine — what was she calling to say? Then I heard the words I remember to this day: “Elizabeth, you did it. You scored the highest score in the class for the final, a 92.”

That — my success (never again repeated in chemistry), her willingness to call me at home, her belief in me and her support — was what I’ve been trying to say thank you for over the last 22 years. She changed my life; she taught me to expect I could succeed far more than I expected. She taught me more than I can capture here — and she never came back to Westbury. She went elsewhere, and no matter how many times I search for Katherine Drake, or Earl, I can’t find them.

Wherever you are, Mrs. Drake, I hope your heart has been hearing my endless thank you— for the call, the books, and the lessons, beloved Mrs. Drake. I wouldn’t be who I am today without you.

(I have photos with all my other beloved teachers, but no photos with Mrs. Drake — I thought she’d be back for my senior year to take pictures.)

I started dating Jeff Wilkinson by inviting him to go with me to the Rebelette Ball (… Rebelettes … it’s a long story) in our junior year of high school. I have so many stories about Jeff and the almost four years of high school and college that we dated ( … off and on, as these things happened) that I am struggling to choose one. Some memories are just snapshots (Jeff saying, “rich, not gaudy” in a tone my husband and I still use to this day. Learning about baseball to cheer on Jeff’s beloved Pittsburgh Pirates. Watching Christmas Vacation and watching Jeff recite every line — something I continue to do each year, reciting them now myself.).

The beloved Wilkinsons at home, circa 1991.

One thing that suffuses our time together in high school is the love of his parents, Tom and Tana, and his sister Taryn. I hadn’t been that close with another family before in my life, and I found them warm, funny and fascinating. I have my own snapshots of them (shopping with Taryn for clothes, feeling like an indulgent big sister; tasting Tom’s [Mr. Wilkinson to me!] beloved salt and vinegar potato chips, which I despised then and love now; eating vegetarian soup that Tana [Mrs. Wilkinson still in my mind … ] made just for me, and pretending I didn’t notice it was made of chicken stock), but tonight’s specific thank you is for the sense of humor they shared with me.

Theirs was a family that loved to laugh. They traveled to Europe together, they waxed cars (endlessly) together, they ate dinner together. They shared a goofy and theatrical sense of humor that I envied and admired. One night, they took me out to a Chinese restaurant we all loved. In Houston, around 1991, eating with chopsticks was a rare and wonderful feat. Because my parents spent four years in Japan (my sister and I were both born there), we learned early how to use them, and by high school I was quite a master.

The Wilkinsons were pretty awed by my skill, and someone asked, “How did you learn to use chopsticks so well?” Without missing a beat, I said, “I was born in Japan.” Of course, I forgot that my audience this night knew me pretty well, and knew that while I had indeed been born, my whole family had moved back to the U.S. when I was just four-months old. There was a moment of sustained hilarity until Mr. Wilkinson said, “They teach you at four months old in Japan?” and then we all just cracked up.

Even in recreating the night, I can’t clarify what was so wonderful about it — the fact that we were all laughing at me so gently, that I was so known, that we were at a restaurant we all loved and I felt like ‘part of the group,’ or just that I was so happy to be in the same circle as this lovely family. Probably a mix of all of the above.

When I see or talk to Jeff, every 10 years or so, I always ask about his beloved parents and sister — he was my first true love, and I always include his family in the warm memories I carry with me. I was lucky to know them at a seminal moment in my life. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson, Taryn and dear Jeff, for welcoming me into your heart and home.

I still use chopsticks really well. I was born in Japan, you know.

When I left for college, in the fall of 1992, it felt like more than the end of my childhood. My mom, my closest companion and dearest friend for the past four years, was remarried in August just before I left. The man she married, Luther Smith, was a much older man from our beloved church. I was … well, I was skeptical. I hated that she was *leaving* our shared life (being sure not to notice that I, too, was leaving). I hated that she had found someone else, that I was not part of the inner circle anymore, that ‘we’ had become ‘them.’

In the midst of these hysterics, I began to actually notice who Lou was, and who he was to my mom. I have so many deep, loving and fond memories of Lou, who died in 2007. When I try to capture a bit of his humor, or his wry sayings, they come off sounding sarcastic instead of tender. While he could be sarcastic, it was always — always — built on a base of pure, sweet tenderness.

Mom and Lou goofing around in the kitchen of their Rutherglenn home. Their tenderness and Lou’s Longhorn signal (as I set off for Texas A&M) make me feel so overwhelmingly tender.

So, I return again to the day I found him the most surprising, and most tender. When I was in college, I wrote a weekly column for the newspaper. I was one of the most liberal people in a very conservative town, and one of the school rituals I had the biggest issue with was around Good Friday. Students from Christian organizations around campus would reenact the crucification of Christ on the steps of our student center, in the middle of campus.  I wrote a column about accepting different religions, and what that might mean, and the result was — incendiary. People were — mad.

My mom, who had recently become a more avid Christian herself, asked me some tough questions, about what I was trying to say and why I chose that time and place to say it.

My stepfather, who my mom met IN CHURCH, and whose children remain some of the most dedicated and strong Christians I know, pulled me aside when I went home that weekend. He was on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me on practically every issue, and we had long learned what topics to talk about and what to avoid.

That day, however, he leaned into me and said, “I liked your column. I’ve attended Sunday every week for my whole life, and I enjoy it. And if I’m right, all my work around church will be for good. I also like hearing your opinions though, and I’m glad you are saying them.” His quiet support, at a crucial moment in my life, was deeply appreciated.

I think of him so often — his pithy sayings, his steady, deep love for my mom, my sister and me, and his four wonderful daughters. We learned so much from loving Lou — most of all that there are times to stand up for your faith, and times to stand up for your family. I still miss his quiet wisdom and wonderful humor. I hope he was right, and is somewhere watching over us right now.

Andy would never use the word synergy — who would? What a ridiculous word! And yet, if it means the linking together of disparate minds and ideas to create a better whole, our time working together actually was that word. I always appreciated Andy — I think he’ll agree with that — but now that I’m an ED myself I just revere his patience, kindness, and putting the League above his wants and wishes.

The best way to illustrate how Andy represented TEAM and AWESOMENESS for me is a (long, sorry) personal story. After I’d been working at the League about a year, a guy we all loved named Matt (for obvious reasons, we called him Mate) was going to head back to England. His one goal before he left was to complete a U.S. (not a metric) century.

I can’t find the (incredible) photos from this trip, so this is Todd, Andy and myself on my first 60 mile ride with the League. On this ride, Andy and Todd waited for me politely at one point. I rode up and spat out, “I don’t need you to BABYSIT ME” quite rudely, thus ensuring they didn’t wait again and also creating a line that we all say to this day when feeling grouchy …

While I had started at the League proud of my one ride of longer than 30 miles (YEAH solo trip to Mount Vernon and back), by then I had one (incredible, life-altering) Cycle Oregon under my belt and lots of 50 and 70 mile rides. We had a dedicated (to each other and to the cause) staff, a nearby Apple Butter Century calling our names and the ability to do it all for ‘work.’

So, we signed up (in an unrelated story, the four staff who couldn’t go decided to see a movie instead of ride a bike, and they saw a TOTALLY R rated movie with a COMPLETELY creepy sex scene and said they could barely look at each other for days with the awkwardness. So, let it be a lesson to you, choose the bike ride!) for the century, and set off.

First of all, we went in two cars — one carrying passengers and one pickup truck with our beloved bikes piled in back. I was driving my (too too fast and sleek) yellow Lexus, and Mate and Yoder left from the office with me. We drove to Falls Church to pick up Andy, and this is what we hear from his wife as he is coming out to meet us: “Happy Anniversary, Honey!”

Of course, we start to question him — anniversary? What? Well, it is their 15 year anniversary, THIS NIGHT, and Andy has chosen to go with us to ride in backwards rural Virginia over celebrating at home. We find this awe-inspiring and awesome.

Then, after a long and uneventful drive, we arrive and set up camp. From here, the evening gets a bit hazy. Drinks are had. Sausages are grilled over the fire. Inter-office love between some people bloom, and is curdled in others. After a hike and a quick tour by Yoder, our colleague who actually attended college in this teensy, tiny town, Andy smartly drives off in my yellow Lexus to stay in his hotel for the night rather than continuing to consume alcohol. He makes the choice alone — the rest of us are ALL IN.

Did I mention drinks were consumed? Sleep is, barely, had. We get up in the morning, and before we even arrive at the start we are stopped by police — because Andy had the Lexus, two of the more youthful-looking of us are crammed in the back of the pickup truck, and the police man thinks we have two children in the back of a truck. After being assured that Yoder and I are ANCIENT, the policeman lets us go (Mate: “I also wanted to be stopped by an American police officer before I left! This is awesome!”) we arrive at the start.

At this point, we’re already down a rider to the evil genius known as hangover, so the five of us set out. Keep in mind the goal: Complete a century. Keep in mind that one of us is on a single speed, one of us has only just started riding long distances, one of us is in the pickup truck vomiting and only Andy is fresh as a daisy.

We stay together. We ride together. We laugh, we wait at rest stops for the laggards (I say we, but let’s be honest, they were always waiting for me and single speed guy who kindly rode with me). We eat a lot of pie.

At some point during the day, we sit down for lunch. We’re more than halfway in, but only just, and while I was FINE* (*I was not fine), the rest of the non-Andy team was really sagging. Andy, as he has always and had always done, takes a look at his team, sets aside his personal goal of doing an awesome 100 miles as a group instead of spending his anniversary with his beloved wife, and says, “you know, there is an 75-mile option.”

I’d like to tell you there was a hearty debate, followed by a team cheer of CENTURY OR DEATH, but we just basically fell on his offer, and took the short cut at the first opportunity. Andy, alone, completed the century (in about the same time that it took the rest of us to stagger to the end of our 75 miles).

So, how does this translate to Andy as a leader ?
1. Plan for fun.
2. Build a team with interesting pursuits, but keep your head about you.
3. For god’s sake, get a motel room if that’s a possibility.
4. Put your team’s wellbeing first.
5. Finish your own goals while managing to what others can do in the moment.

Andy, you were a great boss; I miss your advice, insight and humor every day. Thank you.

We had lived in our house about a year (already having moved in, gotten married in the house, and had Oliver) when we attended our first Fourth of July parade in Barcroft. All neighborhoods *think* their Fourth celebrations are awesome, but Barcroft’s really is. Why? Because the talent is so very, very homespun.

Who is invited to march in the parade? Everyone is!

Who is invited to cheer people on? Everyone is!

Who is marching with you? Neighbors, firemen, the Barcroft marching band, many floats, and all the neighbors that can possibly make it. We flew back from Texas twice in the 6 years we lived there just to be sure we would be in Barcroft for the parade.

So, in that first year, we were kind of standing around, not sure if we are allowed to march (Oliver was just three months old). The parade route was just one block from our house, and suddenly I noticed: A baby smaller than our own!

Even though Oliver was just three-months old, this baby was WEENSY. Teensy. Brand new. It turns out Eulalia was just over two weeks old. I couldn’t resist saying hi, and comparing notes, to see if their taste of infancy had been as unexpectedly full of challenges as our short taste had been.

Megan reading to wee baby Oliver and wee baby Eulalia

And thus we met Megan, Leo, and darling baby Eulalia. These three would become our closest friends in Barcroft — for our last four years there, we ate dinner together twice a week, once at our house and once at theirs. The shared vegetarian meals, the shared laughter, the shared woes of child-rearing and career development: these were the bedrock of our friendship. Jason got along with Leo, Megan and I rode the exact same bus (and I even talked her into biking with me on some glorious days) and our kids thought the world of each other. They are the only other parents who admonish our children just as we do — and no one blinks an eye.

Yaya, as our kids called Eulalia back when they could barely talk, is still one of the most talked about and beloved friend from back home (along with Sam and Evan and Lillian and Thea), and Allyson writes her cards almost every day.

We feel so grateful for the years that we shared their lives as dear, close neighbors.