Chapter 25: The IPO

My children lived in a Chicago suburb – two daughters born to Mindy and me, two years apart. They were twenty-nine and twenty-seven. Marcy, the older one, taught social studies in junior high school and loved her job. Karolann, the younger, had a job as a physical therapist for a small company specializing in supporting the nearby orthopedics doctors’ patients in healing.

Both daughters were married. Marcy’s husband was Todd. He was a burgeoning photographer in their small town, and had managed to capture the contract with the local school system to do the various individual and class photographs that went in the school yearbooks. He also covered the local school sports teams.

Karolann’s husband, Scott, was an electrician. He was eight years older than my daughter, and established in the town where they lived, so had more than enough business to keep himself and ten other electricians and ‘apprentices’ busy. Kar also helped with Scott’s back-office stuff such as the weekly payroll, calendars, scheduling, and other admin stuff he didn’t like to do.

After Mindy had died, so had part of my relationship with my daughters. Mindy was the one of us that was intimately involved in their lives from the time they were born until she passed when they were just finishing college. She did get to attend Marcy’s wedding, but barely.

I routinely emailed the two of them and we had a common ‘Hume News’ text group where we could post various milestones or events, often humorous, in our lives. In person conversations had become rare

Thus, I shuddered with some intrepidation when I read a long text from the two of them: ’Dad, the four of us are coming to stay with you in North Carolina for the Thanksgiving Holiday. If you can’t house us, can you arrange something nearby? We love you and don’t get to spend enough time with you, so prepare for the four of us to arrive on Tuesday afternoon and depart Sunday morning. Details to follow. Love, Marcy and Kar, Todd and Scott.’

I showed the text to Kim. She gave me a great smile, “Oh, good. I’ve wanted to meet your kids. I think we can be great buds. Heck, we’re all about the same age.”

That evening, I explained to Kim that I hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with my girls about our relationship. I explained that since Kim was more or less their age, I thought they might not approve.

Kim asked, “What have you told them?”

I sighed, “I’ve never mentioned your age, and if anything might have used a word or two in my communications that suggested you were more my age.”

“More,” Kim gestured.

“I said that I’d ‘gotten a room’ in a house because I was doing so much work for your company. I later said that I’d developed a ‘nice friendship’ with someone and that we ‘shared some interests’, including flying, and ‘liked to spend time together’.”

Kim laughed. “They are going to hoist you on your own petard, my dear, as Hamlet said. I think I may end up being on their side of things. You should have told them more as we went along – not the juicy stuff, but that you and I are serious.”

I did an eye roll at my own situation. Kim was right, but it was too late to fix it until they arrived. I did send a reply text that I hope suggested something slightly more significant than what I’d previous led them to think. ’Re: Your Visit. Wonderful. Kim and I look forward to your visit. Lots of room in the house for all of you. Come and stay – we have multiple guest rooms. Love, Dad.’ I hoped they’d key off the word ‘We’ and not be as shocked by what was going on.

I had two weeks to worry about what else I might say and how to defend myself for my lack of specificity and detail about my relationship with Kim. Hopefully, my daughters would immediately overlook the deficiencies.

While that was going on in our social life, our business life was going much better. We finished up the submission to NASDAQ in mid-October. I flew up to New York and hand delivered the entire data package in person, hoping to make a good impression about our eagerness to be listed as a publicly-traded company.