Breakfast on the morning of my mom's passing

As I stood over the scrambled eggs, cooking slowly over low heat, and adding grated cheese near the end, I thought over the thousand Sunday mornings, sitting at a kitchen table in Annandale, or Ocean City, or Linwood, waiting for the laden platters to hit the table while reading the comics. Every Sunday morning of my childhood,  after returning home from Church, my mother cooked breakfast for our family.  The combinations varied around sausage,  bacon, or ham, around pancakes or French toast, but we always had scrambled eggs, cooked slowly with cheese folded in.  At the time, it was almost invariably Velveeta.  I use cheddar now.  She cooked in a large cast iron skillet that had been seasoned over decades, oftentimes with bacon fat.  She left the eggs loose and moist, and it was not until much later that I realized this was not common among my friends.  Their parents cooked their eggs to a dried browned crumble and never added cheese.

My mother died this past holiday season on an early Saturday morning.  It is such an unsettling feeling that slides across the background of grief at losing your mother.  She was the anchor. In speaking with my brother, I told him that I felt homeless, truly homeless, for the first time in my life.  I felt un-moored at age 52.  Her home was the home that, while I may have left physically many decades ago, never quite let go of.

I suppose we all respond differently at times like this, but I gravitate to the kitchen.  As the news was passed around our family earlier that morning, we gathered at my brother's home to talk about what needed to be done next.   As supplies trickled in: a box of coffee from Dunkin Donuts, donuts from Dot's Bakery, some muffins, bagels, and bread, I foraged in my brother's kitchen for some stuff to make the breakfast.  I found some ham, eggs, leftover steak from the night before, and began to assemble a meal at the stove.  While the conversation swirled around the house, and condolences passed from cousins, friends, and in-laws, I stood quietly at the stove stirring eggs, turning bacon, and thinking of Sunday mornings.

 I once heard my mom debate the preparation of scrambled eggs with her best friend from childhood. She advocated whipping the eggs until frothy and cooking them slow, unlike Betty, who believed in stirring slowly and cooking quickly. I realized that in this moment,  this was my connection to my mom.     Platters of breakfast food hit the table again this morning; we mourned her passing; and  I realized that she was always only a kitchen away from me.

Service

            Recently, I have been giving some thought to the concept of professional service.  We have all received good service and poor service, and typically, we notice only poor service.  Most service is like McDonald’s: it is consistently mediocre, so we know what to expect, and we don’t give it much thought.  In some situations, service may be impeccable and correct, but sterile.  And in other situations, the service may be friendly and engaged, but not very sound technically.  In both of these cases, we do not walk away with the “wow” factor. 

            On rare occasions, we receive such exceptional service that it becomes almost indescribable.  We reach a state of awe that only becomes fully realized in retrospect.  We are carried through an evening, or an event, or a weekend, or even crisis, where every need is met, every desire is fulfilled, or every fear is assuaged, and yet, we don’t even know how it happens. 

            What are the most basic elements of this type of service?  If you were to distill it down to the most essential components, regardless of the situation or environment, regardless of the venue, what would those be?

            I believe that there are three essential elements: presence, anticipation, and structure, of which the first two are primary. 

Presence refers to the ability to be fully in the present moment with the person in front of you.  This means that regardless of what is happening around you, physically, mentally, or psychologically, the person in front of you is the center of the universe.  Everything revolves around them for as long as you are engaged with them.  That person should feel your complete focus and awareness.  You may be pouring a glass of water, chatting about the weather, resolving an issue, making a suggestion, or explaining something, but regardless of what it is, they have your total concentration. 

Anticipation is foresight.  Foresight to recognize and fulfill a need before a person knows that they have it.  This takes skill and active projection.  It requires (again) that you remain fully aware and present in your surroundings, and have a strong sense of the interdependence of things.  “Interbeing” is how Thich Nhat Hanh, the renowned Buddhist monk and teacher, refers to it.  Every action, every object, every thought even, is interrelated. Exceptional service anticipates the need of a guest, before they ask or even feel that need. 

Proper anticipation begins with planning.  Envision the result that you strive for, and then build the path to get there.  Once you have created a path, consider Murphy’s Law: what could possibly derail your plan?  Then modify.  Then plan contingencies.  And then, most importantly envision it all from the perspective of the guest , because that is really the only thing that matters.  Once a plan is in place, then everything else depends upon being present, being aware, and responding rather than reacting.  Adjustments will be seamless and effortless.  With exceptional service, your guest will never sense the effort or the shifting conditions.

I consider the structure to be the supporting component of service.  It is the procedures and the actions, which provide the framework to achieve presence and anticipation.  Structure can vary to the situation, but the mechanisms, whether they be the policies and procedures, or the physical arrangement, or the protocols for behavior, dress, and action, should be designed to foster the desired results, and only the desired results.  

The Kitchen Table

This was a period of time during my childhood when there were always some pieces of furniture, in various stages of refurbishing, strewn around the floor of the den.  I do not know what drove my mother to embark on these projects, nor do I want to venture to speculate, but she was meticulous, methodical, and determined as she stripped, sanded, oiled and rubbed these pieces into submission.  My mother deconstructed, and then reconstructed, wooden discards into refined elemental beautiful furniture. 

One of the pieces that she restored was a Cushman Colonial Drop Leaf Maple Kitchen table, circa. 1950.  I know that now, because I researched it until I found the table that matched my memory.  But as a young boy and into my teens, I only knew that it was our kitchen table, the hub of my childhood and the center of the known universe. 

It was stripped down to its purest element, even beneath the scuffed aging techniques that Cushman was known for, and that was solid maple wood, unstained and lightly oiled.  I knew that table intimately, and the grain and touch of that wood is still fresh some thirty-five years later. 

Although on most nights, we ate in the dining room, most everything else gravitated to the kitchen.  This is where all other meals were eaten, and on those (somewhat) rare occasions when I was in a battle of wills over peas with my mother, this is where my plate and my butt were moved to wage the war of attrition.  This is where Sunday breakfast occurred each week, after Mass and a trip to Dot’s or the Pastry Pantry Bakery for jelly donuts or sticky buns.  The leaves were raised and a bounty of bacon, ham, cheesy scrambled eggs, and pancakes would slowly fill the table, while we sipped orange juice and read the comics. 

This is where the day actually began and ended.  You were not actually present and accounted for until you showed up at the table for breakfast, particularly in a large family.  And typically the night ended at the table over a snack or a book.  The kitchen table was the sidelines from playing outside to rest and catch a drink of water.  It was the homework and project table; the table for bill paying, and war counsel room.  It was where real conversations happened, not the formal dining ones or the distracted TV room conversations, but the ones where relationships deepened.  It was where crisis were met and averted, where the ebb and flow, the flotsam and jetsam of our daily lives floated in and out with the current.   Friends dropped in to sit at the table and chat for a while.  It was the thinking place; the safe haven with milk and cookies.  Oreo cookies were split and licked to high art at the kitchen table.  It was a place to wrap cool fingers around hot chocolate, and a dull mind around sharp coffee. 

A couple friends of mine talked about the kitchen table as the place where justice was meted out. One talked about his father sitting on a high stool at the head of the table, looking down at you, as from a judicial bench, and delivering his judgments.  Sometimes, if you were too late getting home, that is where you would find mom, preferably, or dad waiting up. 

My stepfather, a taciturn man of Italian heritage and old world values, still judges a man’s character by the kitchen table rules.  He once remarked about one of my sister’s boyfriends, ‘He never eats here’, and that was not a good thing. 

As I grew older, I found myself gravitating to the kitchen wherever I went.  Coming in the back door to the kitchen was the preferred entrance when I stopped by friends' homes, and even professionally through the many years I spent selling beer and wine to restaurants.   I  always felt more at ease in the kitchen during parties, dinners, and gatherings.  There, I could just do my thing, instead of force out small talk.  I cooked, and listened.  I felt my way through evenings tactilely, a light touch on the food at all times, an anchor that grounded and steadied my mind. 

At the end of the movie, “The Big Night”, a wonderful story about family, food and perfection, two brothers share a plate of eggs.  Not a word is spoken; there is only the act of cooking, the serving up of a simple plate of food, and the congregation of two brothers. 

I sometimes wonder why I really chose to stay in food service.  For many years, I thought I just fell into it.  Maybe I did, but not in the way that thought.  I fell into what felt most at home to me: the rhythm and smells, the background noise of conversation and cast iron skillets, and the sense that no matter what happened elsewhere, this would always be here.  My friends and my family would always come to sit at the kitchen table and share food, and themselves, with me.

Please tell me about your kitchen table.  I like to hear from you.

Fight for the positive.

I’m a negative guy.  After almost a decade playing in the dining rooms of fine restaurants, training myself to look for small flaws - a fork that is not exactly one inch from the table edge, a drip on the edge of a plate coming out of the kitchen, a table corner that is slightly off ninety degrees, a water glass half full – I realized that I had trained myself to be a negative guy.

I like to think that I am not unpleasant when I go out to dinner with friends, or partaking of home-cooked meals.  But it leaks out.   Every few years, my siblings and I gather around our mom somewhere for a reunion.  On one of these trips, I spent an afternoon making dinner.  From all outward appearances it was probably fine (actually it was probably very good; not like the failed carrot soup from an earlier reunion).  However, it didn’t quite hit the mark that I was aiming for, and as I began my deconstruction of it, my brother said to me, 'are you ever happy with anything that you cook?' 

Of course in the moment, I explained all of the reasons and defended all of my compulsions.  But later… it hit me harder than I would have liked.

Recently as I met with a client, he was finishing up writing thank you notes to various employees from around the hospital.  As it turns out, each Friday he writes short notes to a handful of employees whose names have been passed along to him from his directors, and mails them to their homes.  He told me about one note.  A woman from the housekeeping department had approached him in the hall to thank him for it.  She had worked for the hospital for almost eighteen years.  She had a teenage son.  When she opened the card at home, she said, it was the first time that she could remember her son ever looking at her with pride for the work that she did at the hospital. 

It is a small gesture, to recognize something positive.  You just never know what the real impact of that small gesture is.

I pay attention to details.  I am a horizon scanner.  I anticipate issues.  This tendency makes me very good at some things. It makes me a good operator.  It makes me a capable consultant.  However, it does not make me a great manager of people.  It makes me difficult to work for.   So now, I write thank you notes.  And,  I fight for the positives.  

Stop dieting and buy this book: Eating Well for Optimum Health

“Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.” – Michael Pollan

At the very beginning of the introduction to In Defense of Food, the follow up ‘eater’s manifesto’ to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan provides a short, concise instruction for a healthy diet.  In 2000, Andrew Weil published a much longer and more detailed prescription for a healthy diet called, Eating Well for Optimum Health. 

            If you recall, Dr. Weil came onto the scene with a best selling nonfiction called Eight Weeks to Optimum Health.   It ran at the top of the NY Times bestseller list for several weeks, and focused our attention on the potential benefits of an integrated approach to health.  He followed up with Eating Well, the most comprehensive and lucid book about diet and health that I have come across. 

            Andrew Weil takes a very methodical and articulate approach to food and nutrition, beginning with a breakdown of the macro- and micronutrients, of each component of our diet, and then finishing by constructing the outline of an optimum diet.  I have used this book as a resource for many years now, in constructing menus within hospitals, in deciding how to fuel my own attempts to prepare for marathons and triathlons, and in teaching health and wellness in a public forum. 

            Unfortunately, I discovered recently that this book has fallen from the public eye, and hardcover print versions are becoming more and more scarce.  Before this book disappears altogether, I want to strongly suggest that you go out and find it, and make sure that it is on your shelf, alongside your diet books, your cookbooks, your self-help books and your fitness books.  It is an indispensable book, if you are serious about a long-term diet.  

A Loyal Guest and Friend

Almost every day for the past four or five years. Dean Lehmitz came into our café at Jordan Valley Medical Center for lunch.  Sometimes he came in twice, once for coffee and then again for lunch.  Most days, he brought along his buddy Ray.  Once when I was working on a Saturday, Dean came in dressed in his funeral suit, and it was the first and only time I ever met his wife.  A friend had died, and he had come by for coffee and a little dessert after the services.  

Dean was a retired  farmer from West Jordan.  I did not know much more than that, other than that he had served in the Pacific during World War II.  He was ‘an ornery cuss’, my cashier, Elaine, used to say, but meant it in the kindest way.  He would come up to the line and step back with the line cooks to get a closer look at the food, and ask for extra potatoes, another roll, or more gravy.  The thing was, Dean treated us and our café like a real ‘joint’ as we called them back east, where I grew up.  You know, the kind of neighborhood diner, where you went so often, it was hard to tell who the patron was and who the owner was, because they didn’t act much different, where everyone knew your name, like in Cheers, and just accepted you, warts and all.  It was the highest compliment, coming from a guy like Dean. 

And he brought Ray along with him, and occasionally another old codger.  He even stepped into line for our free employee BBQ’s throughout the summer, and our holiday meals during December.  He used to tell me that I did a good job when I was director there, and that we had the best deal in town, and the best food.  He told my replacement that too.  And I believed him, because he made me feel like I was doing the right things.  Really though, it was our grill cooks, Steve and Armando, and our cashiers, Elaine and Renee, and Dana, our sous chef,  and the rest of the crew, that were doing the right things.  It wasn’t really about service, or maybe it was.  It was about making someone feel welcome, feel at home, like they belonged there.  That was what our staff did, every day, and that made all the difference. 

We used to talk about what it meant to work in the hospital in the café.  Coming from restaurants, from ski resorts, and golf courses, like I did, it was easy to show people a good time during meals.  They were already having a good time, all you had to do was avoid screwing it up for them.  But in the hospital, you never knew what the folks were going through, who came through your doors.  It could be the best of times, like a newborn baby, or something much different, like a sleepless night in the ICU, a vigil over a loved one.  The ten minutes or half an hour that you saw someone might be the only break they got from a hospital bedside the whole day, and good or bad, the only moment to take a deep breath.  Our job was about much more than serving food; it was about being present and knowing that you had an opportunity to make a difference in someone’s day, if you simply paid attention to what they needed most from you.  It wasn’t always about the French Fries.  I like to think that is what Dean recognized when he came in every day for lunch. 

This year Dean did not make it to our holiday meal for the prime rib.  I read his obituary just the week before, and learned that he had earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star during World War II, farmed with his brothers, and  worked at the copper mine, that his wife’s name was Evelyn,  and that he had children, and grandchildren, and had lived his whole life in that part of the valley. 

Thanks Dean for your patronage.  We will miss you. 

Visioning: What are your Top 3?

In The Accidental Creative, Todd Henry talks about ‘your top three’.  ‘What are your top three priorities right now?’ he asks.  In his context, this refers to alignment: alignment with your employee or alignment with your boss (or client).  It is a way to clarify what you are, or should be, working on, and it is a way to clarify expectations so that we are all on the same page. 

More importantly, however, is the visioning aspect of this.  What are your Top 3, in terms of where you want to go.  What is your vision for your business, your profession, or your life?  How do you align your actions with that vision?  Do you spend time each day, each month and each year creating a vision for yourself or your business?  Do you invest energy into exploring what or where you want to be at the end of the day? Or year? Or lifetime? 

When I was a child, each Sunday after church, my father would drive us all around in the car before heading home.  It was difficult.  There were five of us children crammed into the back seats of the family wagon, after being crammed into a pew for the past hour, driving around in a seemingly aimless tour of the better neighborhoods where we lived.  We would drive through the hoity toity areas, while my father pointed out big houses and nice lawns.  For years afterward, we siblings joked about these Sunday drives.  It did not make sense to me as a five-, or eight-, or ten -year old boy, but this was how my father motivated himself to achieve a better life.  This was his visioning process.  

I was recently involved in a decision to terminate a manager in our company.  It was a difficult, painful decision that I resisted for a long time.  We had worked together for almost seven years.  This manager was a hard worker.  He lived cleanly and had integrity.  I enjoyed his company and his family.   We mountain biked and golfed together.  

But when we talked about his vision for his account, when we talked about his top three, he could not articulate it.  He was unable to look down the road and envision something better for his business in a creative or entrepreneurial sense.  It made him appear disengaged and aloof.  And that is how our client perceived him. 

It also made his decisions and actions appear random and without foundation.  He worked through his day and through his projects without a clear goal or objective fixed in his mind.  He could not ‘see’ where he was going, because he did not invest time into envisioning it.  And not only could he not articulate it to me or our client, he did not articulate it to his staff, and so they too could not see what the objective was.  They felt out of the loop and disconnected, and it impacted their work as well.

Invest in this portion of your work and your life.  Invest time in the visioning process.  Whether it is driving around the rich neighborhoods or touring the sites of your toughest competitors or gleaning ideas from magazines and trade publications or simply sitting quietly and asking the question – what do I want? For my work or for my life.