The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs

by Brennan, Chrisann

  At about twenty-eight, Abha was five years older that Robert. She was six months pregnant with their child when I first met her, and she had a magical daughter of three from a previous marriage, whom Robert would later adopt. Tall and radiant with a healthy pregnancy, Abha seemed both powerful and very sweet at the same time. Her face was covered in bronze freckles and her hair was a deep bronze with coppery pink highlights. Abha’s gold-flecked eyes were more than piercing: they appeared to look straight through people. And when she laughed her face broke into a thousand lit-up facets.

  Abha was as solid as she was aloof, in the way you would expect of someone who cared for so many people while simultaneously being so cosmic. She managed the kitchen well and was a remarkably gifted cook. I learned about new food combinations from her, like cottage cheese with dulse seaweed or fresh dill and soy sauce and farmer cheese or brewer’s yeast tofu stroganoff. I would watch Abha’s face when she cooked and tasted the food, her mouth mulling over flavors, her facial muscles tuned in to decide what more, if anything, was needed. Watching her face when she was tasting gave me pathways into my own new recipe ideas.

  Years later, after Lisa’s birth and after Steve became well-known, I felt I had to hide my identity when meeting new people because they had far too many projections—both negative and positive—and far too many questions. I’d just keep my mouth shut and become more and more quiet as Steve became more and more famous. However, over time, keeping a low profile turned into a problem. My history was filled with Steve and hiding it diminished my presence in a room of people. In effect, it silenced me.

  All of this came to a head years later when I began taking classes to learn how to visualize information for corporations. As part of the process we were given huge sheets of paper—four by eight feet—on which to use our histories to illustrate the paths our lives had taken. I think I did about six of them in different group settings. It was only as a result of being forced to reveal myself at these classes that I first became conscious of how truly uncomfortable I was about being seen—and unseen. I certainly didn’t want to put my life and everything on display in a professional environment. I couldn’t handle it and had decided my colleagues couldn’t either.

  Now I regret that I wasn’t more outrageous and inventive. I could have drawn a big black gangly vortex and strung the disasters one by one, around and around, tunneling inward into the center where a tiny exhausted figure holding a baby looked up from the bottom of a great hole. But I didn’t. And after taking a number of these classes and being extremely conscious of all I sanitized (and embarrassed by what looked like a milquetoast life), I eventually realized that I could use food to refer to my past and develop my timeline in a public way. It would be through food and cooking that I could talk about all the people who had introduced me to new ideas. It would be through food that I could talk about my life and illustrate my timelines and my passions. This was the subject that would braid itself into an easy narrative. And in this version of my history, Abha would be the first of my influences, once I had left my mother’s home. I thought I was brilliant when I finally figured it out, because the subject of food is always a way to be visible, personable, and enthusiastic while staying private. Finally, I could smile inside myself for having found a happy little middle ground in which to stand and be a part of the world without raising eyebrows.

  * * *

  After that first day of being in the kitchen, Abha apparently told Robert that Laura and I were great workers and so we were welcomed into the community. We hadn’t understood that this was such a big deal at the farm, but when we had learned that we’d passed with flying colors, we soaked up the unexpected happiness of this approval.

  The farm must have been a bold experiment for Robert, who owned it with his uncle, Marcel. If I remember correctly, it was Robert’s job in the partnership to get the farm into good shape so he and his uncle could turn it around and sell it for a profit. As there were innumerable projects that needed hands, Robert had ongoing ads in classifieds all the way up to Portland in the never-ending search for people who would work in exchange for fresh garden food and a place to live in the country. This business structure—extra farmhands working in exchange for food and a room—was an old farming model with an added new twist: hippies and meditation.

  Two types of people seemed to respond to Robert’s ads: those I thought of as spiritually oriented and those that I thought of as normal—young people who had moved to the farm to work, eat well, and live in nature, but who were not so spiritually motivated. The combination was a true yin and yang: the mystical and the mundane, and the comic spin between the two.

  The nonspiritual people thought the spiritual people were hilarious. Informed, for the most part, by a materialistic and matter-of-fact view of life, they laughed at what they thought was the comedy of an overly spiritual perspective. When, for example, the spiritual people at All One called each other saints—“Oh, you’re a saint,” someone would say. Or “Would you be a saint and do this or that for me?”—the nonspiritual ones would roll their eyes. But it was all in good fun, and it seems to me now that no one believed they had the single scoop on truth, which was why this group of people was so important to me. We coexisted in a kind of common wealth, bonding over the bounty of the place, the daily work, the healthy meals, and the naturally forming relationships. It all held together in some basic and very agreeable way.

  There was so much to do and so many rich conversations at all levels that I felt endlessly happy at All One Farm. The sense of space and time, the hands-on work, and the variety of people so filled the hours that by the end of the first day I was baffled to think that only one day had passed. Truly, it seemed as if an entire month had gone by since dawn. Laura felt the same. The next night, as I pulled into my sleeping bag, I checked myself for the sense of expanded time and I saw that it had happened once again. And the day after that … and the day after that. In the end I decided that time must behave differently on a farm. It was a little insight I tucked away for future reference.

  * * *

  I didn’t see Steve very much those first few days. I was busy, having fun meeting people and working. Of course he wasn’t feeling well and he was grumpy; even so, I wondered if he still liked me. Teenage girls are always wondering if someone does or doesn’t like them. It’s a total waste of time, but there you have it.

  On day two, Abha gave me a huge bowl of the densest green parsley salad I have ever seen to bring across the field and up the plank into the barn to Steve, who was so miserably sick it was alarming. She made these salads just for him, to kill off the parasites in his liver, and calm the itchy bumps from the bedbugs he’d brought back with him from India. I arrived with these “lunches” a couple of times and Steve would stir himself slowly, then lean heavily onto one elbow to reach for the bowl. I sat next to him while he ate, happy to have an excuse to see him. I really wondered if this was going to do the job, especially since eating this much parsley seemed like a lot of work. But he committed himself to it with resignation and eventually some interest.

  The care that Robert and Abha bestowed on Steve was clear and dear. It was as if he were a son or a beloved younger brother. I would watch them look at him with humor and tenderness. They called him “Steven.” In fact everyone was called by their longer names at All One Farm, which felt rather grown-up and loving to me. It seemed like more of a person’s whole self was present when people used the full name that their parents had given them. I even felt more intact when I heard another’s name fully pronounced. I’m sure that was the point.

  During the week of our stay I met Greg Calhoun—Gregor—who was funny and smart and terribly cute. He had also gone to Reed with Robert and Steve, and had moved to the farm to live after he graduated. Greg’s father had died when he was young and his stepfather was an Episcopalian minister. Greg was one of the spiritual ones—a tight-muscled, petite man with a trimmed blond beard and mustache. He had a sweet temperament and twinkling
steel gray eyes with huge blond lashes that swept the landscapes as he thought. He played the piano and a number of other instruments, including the bagpipes.

  On the farm Greg had remodeled an existing chicken coop into a home for himself. I found it to be the nicest dwelling on the property, though it had no plumbing.

  On one afternoon, Greg walked me around All One to show me the different projects that were being worked on, or were soon to come up. He showed me the apple orchard from which Apple derives its name. It was a good twenty-minute amble from the main house and it was the oldest orchard I have ever seen. The trees had a crazed growth pattern with branches going every which way, covered with layers of lichen in all colors, like peeling paint. The orchard had not been pruned in what seemed like a hundred years and it had a scarecrow quality. Greg called them “old soldiers.”

  Soon after this, all the young men on the farm would be at work to revitalize them. I have the pretty image that their working in that orchard was for Steve a St. Francis-like rebirth. After he had gone to India and then been so ill, it must have been wonderful to return to life there, with all his friends working together like a brotherhood in the bright, limitless air. Orchards are a kind of church in any case. You walk under limbs that meet in graceful flying arches, filling up with blossoms and birds and rain in the spring and then grateful heavy fruit in the fall.

  * * *

  I looked for ways to talk with Steve through his sickness and our distance. He had done a lot of work to separate from me, but I wanted to know who we were now and what my place with him was. On a few nights, I tiptoed out to where he lay in the barn and slipped into his sleeping bag next to his feverish, skinny, scabby body. We curled up together for hours, and there were a few moments of real tenderness and love, but we both knew it wasn’t a good idea. I’m not sure why I was reaching out; neither of us could have opened up to each other at that point. I think I was just trying to feel the perimeter of the changes in him and in us. Holding out for what might be possible, I was trying to connect beyond the strangeness, too. I missed him, and I imagine that he was trying to see if he could sleep next to me without being attached in the old way. After all his longing, which was truly overwhelming to me in the first two years of our knowing each other, our new distance unbalanced my sense of everything. As exhilarating as it is, change grieves me. And I’ve never quite understood separations or endings.

  Since that first day on the farm, I’d had to cope within myself with Steve’s growing distance. That earlier deep, young love had changed. With just a few exceptions Steve didn’t extend himself to me and I hardly saw him. I voiced a complaint on one of the days when he was up walking around, concave and fragile. As we happened to be standing near each other without anyone else nearby I said, “You seem to not even like me!” It was the verbal equivalent of stamping my foot on the ground in hurt and frustration, but I was sinking rapidly from the effect of his apparent indifference, and I felt I had to say something or go under. In response to my little bomb of outrage he said that one of his friends at the farm had just told him, after meeting me: “Steve, I knew you had taste.” Oh, I thought, he said this about me to compliment Steve. It felt like a lifeline, a connection, and an acknowledgment of my value but with a curious twist. It was as if he’d reached into his pocket to find something to offer, gracious and immediately given, to ease my pain and confusion. Yet in the alchemy of gift giving I think it surprised both of us because it was so brilliantly crafted for good-bye. I found a confidence in that statement that set me free. After that, I felt I didn’t need to pull on Steve for affections he didn’t want to give. I was unburdened, happier, set up on an even keel with wind in my sails.

  The very fact that Steve had invited me to All One was a gift of sharing something he cared about with me, and for me. I do know this: Steve had a generous spirit when it came to bright things. Over the next fifteen years he would invite me to a number of events at Apple and it would always be a puzzle, because once I actually did all the work to show up he would invariably ignore me. Likely he was acting on moments of inspiration because he liked my mind and wanted to share with me, but in the end he could never remember or carry it out with sustained friendliness. I always had a hard time holding up under it, too.

  * * *

  One day in the late afternoon, toward the end of Laura’s and my stay, I walked into the kitchen to discover that a new wave of visitors had arrived. Among them was a woman with her four-year-old daughter. The two stood center stage on the kitchen floor with about ten people surrounding them, including me. The little girl was wearing a long dress and sandals. Her mother was dressed in long hippie skirt with a pretty blouse and flip-flops. She was a confident tree of goodness, standing tall and firm next to her little one. Everyone was talking, as women do, pouring praise and greetings onto them. Someone said the child was born in the month of May and was a Taurus. Oh, I thought dreamily, a little Taurus! I was very taken by the child because she had such a powerful soul-light around her. Without thinking, and in a complete wonder, I floated a new thought: I want a little girl like this one, a little Taurus! I knew the woman was a single parent, but in this one moment even that looked good to me. So fast and full did the wish fly through me, so at-one was I with my dream that I didn’t fully understand that I was engaged in an act of creation.

  Years later other women—at least three that I know of—would look at my child and would also decide to have one like her. All had been taken by Lisa as I had been by that child at All One Farm and all went on to have daughters of their own. Incredibly, each one sought me out after the fact, to proudly tell me, as if from a hushed secret society, “I now have a daughter and she is like Lisa.” Tipping their heads forward, they would smile, clear-eyed and glowing with pride as if to say what couldn’t be said, “My daughter is also like her.”

  * * *

  I wept when Laura and I left the farm at the end of the week. It felt like home to me in a way that nothing ever had. It wasn’t just about Steve because he was way too ouchy to be around without others to dilute the hurt with laughter and kindness. It was the farm and the life at All One itself that I loved. There was some rare, incomparable nutrient that had saturated my being in that place, a quality that, as Rumi says, “your whole life yearns for.” Getting up at dawn to meditate, the rich gold feeling deep in the bone of focused work with others, and yet so much more on the side of the ineffable. Maybe it was Neem Karoli Baba’s influence, because it sure seemed like someone with that kind of love over-lit the place. Steve used to frame things as being greater than the sum of their parts, and this described All One. I wanted to stay forever and ever. Nothing in me could hide the depth and purity of the sorrow I felt about leaving. I had a commitment to drive on with Laura but I stood outside the car door and cried. Next lifetime, though, I’m staying.

  All One Farm was a wisdom society when we were all still so young and foolish. It was a spiritual community working to turn a profit. A sanctuary. It was the time and place where Apple got its name and where I first had the yearning for my chirpy, happy, soulful daughter.

  TEN

  THE PRACTICAL AND THE POETIC

  I have always had the odd talent of being able to find the very best books, films, and clothing; to walk into a store and locate the one item I want without having to shop, sort, or compare. It’s the perfect sense of the true find. That’s what happened in the spring of ’75 when I came upon a restaurant in downtown Los Altos, called Pan’s. I was charmed by this little place, by the way the front door was set back from the street in a little alcove. And so I went in.

  A man in his mid-thirties with a shaved head stood behind the counter preparing food. His body was slightly stocky, and he had a large chest and grounded feet, as if he had a bit of the hobbit in his bloodline. His eyes had a diamond hardness: not harsh, but crystal clear and intentional. The air around him was so palpably quiet and focused it seemed as if I had entered another world. The place was empty besides the t
wo of us, and at first the thick silence in the room felt suffocating. But that soon gave way to something peaceful. Eventually he asked me what I wanted, then turned his back to complete some other task before starting on my order.

  I fidgeted as I waited. On the counter next to the register I saw a brochure about a Zen Buddhist community in Los Altos; it attracted my attention in a fierce way. “You ought to check it out,” the man said. He then returned his full attention to the work. I took the brochure and sat down to read it, glancing at the man as he prepared my lunch. He moved at a glacial pace, shaking tiny droplets of water from the lettuce one leaf at a time, then stepping back to place them onto the bread he had just cut. Finally he set the sandwich in front of me with such care that I got the awkward feeling of being served by someone of great spiritual development. It was in that sandwich piled high with a mountain of sprouts that the world of Zen first entered me. The man’s name was Steve Bodhian and he was an ordained monk.

  I saw Steve Bodhian in his robes the following Wednesday at Haiku Zendo of Los Altos, the place on the brochure. Haiku Zendo was located in a two-car garage that had been converted into a tricked-out Japanese meditation center. When I first peeked into it I saw beautiful wheat-colored tatami mats covering the floor, and a balconylike tier of seating around the walls—also covered with tatami mats. The front wall had a central island stage built out into the room for the teacher, with two recessive platforms behind him where advanced students would sit. Regal-looking scrolls with Japanese calligraphy hung on the wall behind the teacher’s seat and ceremonial accoutrements were arranged up front: an incense cup; pillows on which two different sizes of bowl-like bells had been placed; mallets; and a long stick. The place wasn’t that big—it only seated about seventeen people—but it was so ordered and beautiful that the room’s emptiness felt spacious.