Quick Take
Writer, podcaster and big-wave surfer Kyle Thiermann has written his first book, which serves as both a memoir of growing up in the surf community in Santa Cruz and a practical guide in getting to know your parents better. "One Last Question Before You Go: Why You Should Interview Your Parents" is a penetrating and humane look at communicating better with those closest to you.
At some point after he had turned 30, Kyle Thiermann had an insight, that his parents would “not be around forever.”
It’s the kind of obvious truism that comes to almost everyone from the earliest age, but remains only on the surface of the conscious mind, like a pat of butter on a cold piece of toast. It takes years of maturity and experience for the notion to penetrate the heart.
In Thiermann’s case, an unlucky accident made him confront his parents’ mortality. One day, his mother was helping a friend back out of a parking space in a public parking garage, when the mechanical arm that allows cars in and out struck her, knocking her to the ground and fracturing her hip and femur. She eventually healed from her injuries, but it was a long rehab.
“When I saw her hobbling around, frail as a bird, I slid into a bad mood that lasted for weeks,” he wrote. For Thiermann, the result of his mother’s accident was an idea accompanied by the determination to see it through: He was going to interview, as a journalist would, his mother — writer and filmmaker Kimberly Carter Gamble — to learn more about her life, and maybe even more about himself. He would do the same with his father, also a well-known Santa Cruz filmmaker, Eric Thiermann, and even his stepdad, Foster Gamble, to whom he had been close since he was 11.
Given his pedigree, it’s no surprise that Kyle Thiermann, 35, is also a filmmaker, journalist and podcaster. But he’s also a celebrated professional big-wave surfer, known for his longtime sponsorship association with Patagonia and his pursuit of the wave at Mavericks, one of the Western Hemisphere’s most consistently challenging big waves, located just offshore near Half Moon Bay.
It would’ve made sense if Thiermann’s first book had to do with surfing. Instead, it’s “One Last Question Before You Go: Why You Should Interview Your Parents” (Lioncrest).
The new book is set for release Tuesday, and Thiermann will be on hand to talk about his new book Nov. 25 at Patagonia on River Street in Santa Cruz. Thiermann implied that the book’s release just before Thanksgiving — a time when many adults reengage with their aging parents — is no coincidence.
“I would offer this book as a potential way to have new and better conversations around this time,” he said. “It really starts from a thing that’s hard to do, which is, I’m going to be willing to see my parent in a new light, and to possibly be surprised by their answers. That’s a powerful thing.”
Most adults, said Thiermann, think they know their parents well enough already, and that a formal sit-down interview is unnecessary, or even potentially dangerous. But the chapter headings in “One Last Question” serve as a list of questions that are designed to bring the conversation to unexpected places — “What should you apologize for?” “What’s the biggest misconception about you?” “What have you changed your mind about?” “What do you want more of from your kids?”
The book also works as a kind of memoir of his life with his mom and his dad. His parents were divorced when he was 6, so he mostly experienced them in separate realms. Thiermann’s mother and stepfather were the producers of a documentary film called “Thrive,” which makes the case for, among other things, perpetual motion machines, secret “free energy,” gifts bestowed upon humanity from alien forces in UFOs, and a vast world-government conspiracy to hide these revelations. Thiermann writes that his mother’s belief in conspiracy theories has been, and remains, a contentious issue between them. He likened his relationship with his mom to the board game Operation: “We navigated holidays cautiously, careful not to zap ourselves with the wrong subject.”
Of course, many of us have similarly supercharged subjects they steer clear of around their parents. The book makes clear that Thiermann strongly disagrees with his mother and stepfather on many issues and calls them both out as victims of confirmation bias and “pareidolia,” the psychological tendency to find meaningful patterns in randomness. (That might be an interesting term to present at the Thanksgiving table.)
Thiermann said the first draft of his manuscript was judged by some early readers as too glib and not emotionally honest. He then wrote what he called a “very angry version of the book.” Finally, he found a path that was honest but compassionate, understanding but not capitulating.
Despite the book’s assertive subtitle, Thiermann says there are emotional and psychological risks inherent in interviewing parents. “Interviewing your parents is like a psychedelic trip — helpful for most, life-changing for some — but not for everyone,” he writes. “There’s a thin line between difficult and damaging, and only you can make that call.”
However much he is frustrated by many of his mother’s beliefs about the world, he also is quick to credit her with helping him through a treacherous upbringing. Thiermann grew up in a surfing subculture in the 1990s/2000s in which drug addiction was rampant.
“My mom was really able to help me navigate all that,” he said. “She told me, ‘If you don’t smoke pot or do drugs until you’re 18, I’ll pay for you to take a trip anywhere in the world.’ And we just had a level of trust, and that saved me from making a lot of bad decisions.”
Thiermann also learned a lot about his father in this potentially awkward process.
“My dad is one erudite man,” he said. In the interviews, he talked about “buying a hot air balloon off a hitchhiker, doing a magic trick for Muhammad Ali. He was a very fun character to write about.”
The book is a chronicle of Thiermann’s relationship with his parents. But he also wants it to serve as practical guidance to others who want to get to know their parents better, before it’s too late. Included is an interview checklist, including what recording equipment to purchase. It advises to ask specific questions that go beyond facts that you might already know and into feelings, perceptions and attitudes. Thiermann gives credit to Santa Cruz-based journalist Charles Duhigg and his book “Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.”
“One of the biggest differences between an interview and a conversation,” said Thiermann, “is that [in an interview], you don’t have to respond to what they say. It puts you in the driver’s seat. If it starts to go off the rails, you can just change the subject and go on to the next question.”
The key, he said, is to listen perhaps in a way you’ve never listened before: “When you’re learning these stories about your parents’ lives, you’re learning, on some deeper level, how they see themselves, and how they see you.”
In the end, said Thiermann, his parents were supportive of and receptive to his project. After sending them the manuscript, he said, “I got very thoughtful and kind messages from all of them.”
For better or worse, our parents have shaped much of our own personalities and values. Thiermann believes that ultimately, deeper knowledge of the people who raised you leads to deeper knowledge of yourself.
“There’s something about understanding who these people are, how they influenced us, and then deciding how we can take agency in deciding what parts of them we want to pass on and what parts of them we want to pass up,” he said. “I think that can be really valuable.”
Kyle Thiermann, author of “One Last Question Before You Go: Why You Should Interview Your Parents,” will read from his book on Tuesday, Nov. 25, at 7 p.m. at Patagonia Santa Cruz. It’s free.
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