Making Lemonade

I was fired once. It was in February 1994.

When I came home from the mission in Oklahoma I really had no idea what I was going to do with my life. In fact, I got sick on the flight home. Like sick to my stomach, vomiting-in-the-bathroom-where-there-is-no-room-to-vomit sick to my stomach. Yep, I am a member of a very different mile high club. The truth of the matter is that I had given exactly NO THOUGHT to anything that I would do after my mission. I had planned my life (to the extent I was a life-planner) up until the point that I was walking down the jetway, and now, like Indiana Jones, I was stepping off the ledge with nothing more than faith that there was SOME sort of plan for me.

On my second flight, from Salt Lake to Reno, I was seated next to a very attractive young woman. I had not actually spoken to a young woman for two years (well, that’s not entirely true, but certainly hadn’t talked with a young woman with any, umm, ulterior motives). My stomach had settled somewhat, so I thought I would engage in some pleasantries. Some very awkward pleasantries. Followed, almost immediately, by me burying my face in a vomit bag. Thankfully, I avoided retching any more (there wasn’t anything left to throw up), but after 20 minutes or so she very sweetly asked if I was OK.

OK? Sure, I’m great. Never better. I just happen to be ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED of going home and leaving behind the life that I’d come to know and love.

Sorry Mom. I would have stayed if they would have let me.

Life at home was a challenge for me. I really did not know where I fit in. I was back in Carson City, where my family had moved shortly before I left. Of course, I’d only lived there for a couple of months before the mission, but my family had been there 2½ years, so they knew everyone. I missed the mission, missed the structure and the companions and the ward members and everything about it.

I tried dating. There was a girl that was home from BYU that wanted to date me, and so we went out a few times, but she liked to take advantage of my naiveté—nothing evil, she would just have her sister pretend she wasn’t home, etc., to play with my mind. Being a newly returned missionary, I was just eager to please and not be offended by anything, so I fell for it. Every. Single. Time.

That relationship did not work out.

I got a job at a grocery store, Albertson’s. My brother Pete was employed there as a courtesy clerk/checker, and I got hired on in the butcher block. Being a butcher sounded like a cool job. I'd get to wield a knife, cut large cow parts into steaks and roasts, and talk grilling like a pro. Except that they wouldn’t let me touch the knives. Or even go in the back where the knives were. Heck, they didn't really want me to talk to the customers.

So I stood out front, looking pretty, trying to convince the soccer moms that country style pork ribs would make an amazing Sunday afternoon meal or trying to appear knowledgeable as the 30-something guy with a Guns-N-Roses t-shirt and leather jacket talked about the perfect method for grilling a tri-tip roast.

I had never even HEARD of a tri-tip roast.

But I could wrap up raw shrimp in paper wrapping and slap on a price sticker with the best of them.

After I’d been at Albertson’s for about a month, my dad mentioned that a local lumberyard was hiring. The owner was a guy in a neighboring ward. And so it was that I got hired at City Plywood and Lumber. Initially I thought I could handle two jobs, but the reality was I hated selling meat. And I liked playing with power tools and driving big trucks. So I quit Albertson’s and started working full time for City Plywood.

My boss was a crusty old guy named Perry, who happened to have a crazy generous streak to him. He was a classic man’s man. He swore like a sailor (a Mormon sailor, so a lot of d@*ns and h3££s and the occasional $#!+) and was not overly concerned with hurting anyone’s feelings. He called things like he saw them, argued with vendors over pennies, and expected his employees to WORK. He also bought us lunch everyday, and was quick to pull a twenty out of his wallet to say thanks for doing a good job. He loaned me cash to buy my first car after the mission, and he paid for my gas when I road-tripped to Utah to visit his daughter.

Oh, but that’s another story. Don't tell my wife.

I worked for Perry for a year. I started college about ten months in, but continued working for Perry. He had a couple of hard-fast rules, one of which was that we were expected to be at work at 7:50 every morning. We didn’t clock in until 8:00, but we were to  be there by 7:50. Having practiced before the NLRB, I can see the problem with that little requirement, but at the time it seemed reasonable. Reasonable, but impossible.

I could not get there on time to save my life. 7:54? Sure. 7:57? More likely. I was ALWAYS there before 8:00, but 7:50 seemed like it was SO FREAKING EARLY and I just could not seem to get my butt there on time.

Finally, Perry had had enough. I rolled in one morning about 7:58, and there was a line of trucks already in the yard waiting to be loaded up. I came in to grab my gloves and get to work. Perry was not happy, however. He fired me on the spot. Told me to get out and not come back. And then he followed me out to my car to make sure I left. Or to get his keys back. Probably the latter.

I was shocked. SHOCKED. And a little devastated.

But I learned an important lesson. Show up on time. Be there when you tell someone you’ll be there.

I’ve never been close to being fired again. From that time, I have prided myself in showing up on time and working hard, no matter the job.

My dad took pity on his unemployed (in GREENLAND!) son and gave me a job. Within not too long, I was running his corporate service business while he ventured out into other opportunities. We had employees of our own, had offices and rents and clients and bills and all of those businessy things. I understood a little better why Perry got so frustrated with me and why he had no choice, really, but to send me away.

After about 5 years, my life was completely different. I was married. I had two kids and a house and a mortgage. I was living in Las Vegas and running the business from here. My parents had moved to Utah and my dad was busy running a Y2K food storage business. I was learning another lesson, too: when you are the owner, you are the last one to get paid. On slow weeks, when there wasn’t money in the account, there wasn’t a paycheck to take home to my wife.

I decided that I needed to go back to school before those two little kids realized that we were poor.

We sold the house, I gave up my interest in the business (my brother took over), and we moved to Provo to finish school and eventually to attend law school. We may as well have gone to seminary, since we took a vow of poverty before attending school. We lived off of student loans, lived in a 3 bedroom apartment that would fit in my living room and kitchen in this house with room to spare, and counted ourselves lucky to have food on the table. Clorinda got really good at thrifting and couponing and we had some generous family members that helped out (like the time that our heater in the car went out in February—my parents paid to have it repaired so we didn’t have to wear winter coats while driving). I had awesome friends (the Super Best Friends) at school that would cover for meals just to make sure I could come along. Our bank account was empty, but we were well taken care of.

At the end of law school I accepted a job working for a district court judge, Judge Adair, and I eventually accepted a job with a small civil law firm in Las Vegas where one of the partners was a friend of my father. I have been there for over twelve years. Several times I’ve had opportunity to leave, but the circumstances weren’t right or I felt compelled to stay. ("Faithfulness he talked of, madam, your enduring faithfulness!") I work with some really great people, people that I will count as friends for life.

That lasted until Wednesday last week.

On Wednesday, December 14, the senior partner (well, the ONLY partner) invited us into his office and announced that effective December 31, he was shutting down the firm. 22 years and 10 months after the first time it had happened, I was again unceremoniously fired. Dumped. Sent packing. Thrown out on my ear.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Fontano. I got you a pink slip! (Hmm, read one way that sounds like I got some lovely women’s underclothing. That is NOT the way to read that sentence. Although I’m pretty sure I could pull it off. And it doesn't make you a bad person.)

They say that history repeats itself. For a long time I’ve had promptings to start my own place, to go out on my own, to be my own boss. I’ve gotten fortune cookies that assured me I would “succeed in business” or that I should “start a new venture.” I’ve had friends that asked why I was still working for the man, friends that encouraged me to open my own practice.

The coward in me was happy to sit in my office, work my hours, and take my paycheck each week. On good years there would be Christmas bonuses. On not-so-good years there would be smaller bonuses, but we were comfortable, so it was easy to stick with the status quo.

Well, whether it was God or the universe or the soothsayers at Panda Express, life decided that I needed a little more motivation.

So, it is with a little fear and trepidation, and a lot of excitement and anticipation, that I announce the law offices of HEATON FONTANO, LTD., opening January 3, 2017.

The website (www.heatonfontano.com) isn’t up yet (hopefully within this next week), and the phones aren’t on, but I've signed a lease and we’re rushing to get everything in place (two weeks is not really sufficient time to get an office ready, but it's what I've got!). But if you need legal help, or if your friends are in need of legal advice, I hope you’d consider calling me. Heaven knows I’ll need all the help I can get!

For you, I'll show up by 7:50.

Only a Mother

There are two dates each year of particular significance for LDS missionaries: Mother’s Day, and Christmas day. It is on those days that the missionaries get to call home. The rest of the time they’re restricted to written communications. Now it’s email, but in my day, it was snail mail. There was no such thing as email (well, for the general public there wasn’t email. I understand Al Gore had been using it for years. And probably Josh Haley, but that’s just a suspicion.)

Of course, Christmas brought presents, too. On Christmas Day in 1992 I was doing my second stint in Lawton, Oklahoma. (I had actually started the mission in Lawton nearly two years before, so in mission-speak I was born there and I died there.) Shortly before Christmas I received a pretty large box in the mail that was filled with gifts. Unfortunately, the specifics of all but one of those gifts have long since faded from my memory. By that point in my mission I’d given up on any consistent journal writing, so I doubt there’s any kind of record anywhere, unless my mom kept an account book. But there was one gift that I still have today.

A blue sweatshirt with an ice-skating polar bear on the front.

I still have the sweatshirt--24 years later!

At that time I was serving as the zone leader and was the only one in the zone that had been out for over a year. My companion, Elder Scott Davis, was a brand new greenie, straight from the MTC, who had only been out a month. It was hard to believe for me that the mission was about to come to a close. It had been my life for two years. I had been serving as a missionary for 23 months and I was two weeks from turning 21.

What I wasn’t was 4. Which was good because the sweatshirt was (and still is) size XL. If I HAD been 4 it wouldn’t have fit it very well.

Quick, think of any 21 year old man you know. What do you think he wants for Christmas this year? If you guessed a blue sweatshirt with an ice-skating polar bear on the front, you’d be WRONG! 100% of the time, you’d be wrong.

And so it was that when I opened that gift, which was, incidentally, the “big” gift in my box, I was a little, in a word, dumbfounded.

Thanks Mom.

My mother is perhaps the craftiest person I know. I mean that in the best way possible. Like in the sense of doing and making crafts. Like they should rename “Michael’s” to “Kathy’s” crafty. My whole life before going on the mission, our house was decorated for the season. About midway through January, all of the Valentine’s day stuff came out. The house was red and pink. Most kids gave valentines to their friends. We gave iced sugar cookies with each kid’s name handwritten in frosting, carefully made by my mother.

No sooner did the Valentin’s decorations come down than the house was turned green. My mother was a Griffin by birth and the Irish blood came out. We didn’t have a river near our house, but the water coming out of the faucet was green.

Ok, that’s not true. But her beer was green.

That’s not true either. Sorry. Although she was Irish, she’d long since adopted her mother’s LDS faith so no drinking. But we DID have hand-crafted St Patrick’s day decorations all over the house. And shamrock-shaped sugar cookies with green icing and names scripted in frosting.

If you decorate for St. Paddy’s day, you certainly decorate for Easter. And your kids’ friends get sugar cookies in Easter Egg shapes with pastel frosting and their names scripted in frosting. You decorate for Independence Day. And Halloween. And Thanksgiving. It didn’t matter what the holiday, my mother had crafts that announced to the world that WE CELEBRATE [INSERT HOLIDAY NAME] IN THIS HOUSE!! And your kids’ friends get sugar cookies with their names hand-scripted in frosting. GEICO could make a commercial about my mother—it’s what you do.

But Christmas was the granddaddy of them all.  The tree was decorated with homemade decorations, including a personal favorite—soldiers and reindeer and Santas and nativity characters and all sorts of characters made from old wooden clothespins. She made stockings and advent calendars and table runners and tree skirts and more advent calendars and Christmas card holders and still more advent calendars. And they weren’t just for us—our cousins all got advent calendars and tree skirts and table runners from my mother, too. In fact, just last year Clorinda and the kids and I were visiting my cousins in Philadelphia and they were telling us about the advent calendar from Aunt Kathy (my mom) that she had sent them probably 35 years ago that was still in use in their home!

A fairly recent advent calendar.
I'm pretty sure all of my siblings have a matching one in their homes, too.
I'm not certain whether my cousins do.

Yep, while the rest of the world was fighting it’s way through mobs of people at all of the stores on Black Friday, our house was turning red, green, and white. My mom was crafting 12-Days-of-Christmas gifts for 4-6 different families, to be snuck out in the dark of night and delivered to unsuspecting recipients. And our friends got cookies with their names handwritten in frosting. And fudge. Oh, and peanut butter haystacks.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. My mom could cook really well (except for cream tuna on toast—that was nasty). And bake really well (except for that time she made a cake that called for mayonnaise and used Miracle Whip instead. Zing!).

And it wasn’t just holidays. My mom could do it all. She was my cub scout leader, coached my brother’s soccer team, was a “merry miss” leader back in the pre-activity-days days (I still don’t know my color season—my mom was adamant THAT was just for the girls, so it’s her fault if I wear clothes that aren’t in my color wheel), and seemed to have held just about every leadership position available in church.

So as it happened, there was some sort of ugly sweater contest in 1992 at my parents’ ward, and my mom decided that everyone needed matching blue sweatshirts with ice-skating polar bears on the front. So she made them for everyone in the family. That is no easy task in my family. There were 8 kids, at that time ranging from 21-minus-2-weeks (yours truly) to 3 (my sister Amy). Six of those eight were boys. Ten people. Who has time during December to whip out ten blue sweatshirts with ice-skating polar bears on the front?  But I guess if you’re already doing nine, the tenth one isn’t a big deal in that situation. Of COURSE if the 3 year old girl wants one, her 21 year old brother wants one! (She probably sent matching sweatshirts to Susan and Karen in Philadelphia, too. I’ll have to check next time I talk to them.)

My mother.

My mother is the first of two and the third of four, depending upon which of her parents you’re basing it on. She has one younger sister, and two older brothers that share a different dad. She grew up primarily in northern California, in the East Bay. When she was just fourteen, her own mother passed away from cancer, and my mom became the woman of the house. Eventually her dad remarried, which was a good thing for him but not so great for my mom. Having some understanding of the teenage daughter dynamic, I can see where bringing a new woman into the home probably isn’t going to turn out like the Sound of Music.

Well, maybe the part where they put a frog in her dress. But definitely not the part where they sing and dance through the mountains of Austria.

Let’s just say there was some friction between my mom and her step-mother.

But that didn’t stop her. In High School my mom’s family moved and my mother transferred to Castro Valley High School where: (i) she met my dad and (ii) she graduated top 5 (?) in her class. She lived in a different world from today. There wasn’t an expectation that most people would go to college, and that expectation was even lower for women. The draft was in full swing, and she and my dad were both expecting that he would soon be off to Vietnam. They had decided to get married and were even engaged (make sure to ask my dad about the night he asked his future father-in-law if he could marry my mom—let’s just say the words “terrified” and “vomit” may come up (pun not intended) in that story). But the Lord works in mysterious ways, and my dad was called to serve a mission for the LDS church. He went to Michigan. (It’s no Oklahoma, but I’ve been to East Lansing once and I just saw the inside of the Detroit airport last week—it seems nice enough.)

While my dad was in Michigan, my mom moved in with my other grandparents. As the end of my dad’s mission was approaching, they were still of a mind to get married when he returned. My mother took matters into her own hands. She got the announcements put together and sent out. Yes, my father received an invitation to his own wedding while he was still serving a mission in Michigan. That doesn’t happen every day (it certainly better not happen with Marien!). He returned home from his mission on March 2, 1972, and they were married 18 days later in the Oakland LDS Temple. Nine and one-half months later (drumroll please), yours truly arrived on the scene and life as we know it was forever changed.

My parents used to joke that they didn’t know how kids were made—maybe it came from eating Chinese food?—and that’s why they had so many. Well, the Chinese food was apparently plentiful in the Bay Area. They had four boys in their first five years and four months of marriage. Another boy was added 3 years later, but since he was destined to be THE middle child (just ask him), they added a girl, a boy, and another girl during the 80s. At one point my mother had 5 boys under the age of 8, and my dad was in the Bishopric, so she had to keep all of us in line by herself during church. WWE has got NOTHING on my mother.

Of course, my mother is not perfect. We still laugh thinking about when she was the Activity Chair in our ward in Hawaii and showed “Popeye” for a ward activity (“haul @$$, haul @$$!”). Or the time she stood in testimony meeting and told the ward that sometimes she wanted to ring their necks. Or the time she got really mad at Jay over something and actually tried to ring his neck. I’m not sure if Jay’s laughter was genuine or just an uncontrolled nervous terrified reaction.

But she is perfect in many ways. As a grandmother, she loves her 24 grandchildren perfectly and is always looking out for ways to serve them. For the last several years she has cared for my dad perfectly as he has been in and out of hospitals and surgeries and while he was effectively paralyzed from the neck down. (Note to self: insert joke about how he’s been paralyzed from the neck up most of his life.) I’m not sure she realized how strong of a person she was before all of that, but I’ve watched in amazement as she’s spent day after day and night after night in the hospital room or at PT or the doctor’s office. She has been the perfect wife for a serial entrepreneur. My dad gets new business ideas more than anyone I know (he’s like a poor man’s Elon Musk), and she has lived through years of feast-or-famine. But she always managed to make sure we were fed and clothed and had a roof over our heads.

There is a great verse in the Book of Mormon. It talks about a large group of young men who had gone off to war. They were very young, but were valiant and unafraid. When one of their leaders questioned their courage, he noted their response:

[A]s I had ever called them my sons (for they were all of them very young) even so they said unto me: Father, behold our God is with us, and he will not suffer that we should fall; then let us go forth; we would not slay our brethren if they would let us alone; therefore let us go, lest they should overpower the army of Antipus.
Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them.
And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it. (Alma 56:46-48.)

With my dad at her side, my mom raised 8 kids. I’m a little biased, but 7 of those 8 are among the best people I know (sorry Dave—maybe next year you’ll make the cut). I can’t speak for those 7, but I can speak for the other 1 (yeah, it wasn’t really you, Dave. You’re back on the list). So much of who I am and what I know and hold dear in my life I owe to my mother. Like the sons of scripture, I have relied countless times upon her example and testimony, and when I may have doubted my own testimony, never once did I doubt that my mother knew.

I remember one time my mom commented about how all she had ever wanted was to be a mom. So much of the world doesn’t see that as successful womanhood, but I am eternally grateful for a woman that dedicated her life to the noblest pursuit. Only a mother? Perhaps, but she is my mother. My angel mother.

Maybe that’s why I still have that sweatshirt.