To their relief, and mild surprise, Jobs actually did return to Hawaii after his press conference to pick them up and take them to Japan. “It’s a miracle,” Powell told a friend. While Reed took care of Eve back in Palo Alto, Erin and her parents stayed at the Tawaraya Ryokan, an inn of sublime simplicity that Jobs loved. “It was fantastic,” Erin recalled.
Twenty years earlier Jobs had taken Erin’s half-sister, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, to Japan when she was about the same age. Among her strongest memories was sharing with him delightful meals and watching him, usually such a picky eater, savor unagi sushi and other delicacies. Seeing him take joy in eating made Lisa feel relaxed with him for the first time. Erin recalled a similar experience: “Dad knew where he wanted to go to lunch every day. He told me he knew an incredible soba shop, and he took me there, and it was so good that it’s been hard to ever eat soba again because nothing comes close.” They also found a tiny neighborhood sushi restaurant, and Jobs tagged it on his iPhone as “best sushi I’ve ever had.” Erin agreed.
They also visited Kyoto’s famous Zen Buddhist temples; the one Erin loved most was Saihō-ji, known as the “moss temple” because of its Golden Pond surrounded by gardens featuring more than a hundred varieties of moss. “Erin was really really happy, which was deeply gratifying and helped improve her relationship with her father,” Powell recalled. “She deserved that.”
Their younger daughter, Eve, was quite a different story. She was spunky, self-assured, and in no way intimidated by her father. Her passion was horseback riding, and she became determined to make it to the Olympics. When a coach told her how much work it would require, she replied, “Tell me exactly what I need to do. I will do it.” He did, and she began diligently following the program.
Eve was an expert at the difficult task of pinning her father down; she often called his assistant at work directly to make sure something got put on his calendar. She was also pretty good as a negotiator. One weekend in 2010, when the family was planning a trip, Erin wanted to delay the departure by half a day, but she was afraid to ask her father. Eve, then twelve, volunteered to take on the task, and at dinner she laid out the case to her father as if she were a lawyer before the Supreme Court. Jobs cut her off—“No, I don’t think I want to”—but it was clear that he was more amused than annoyed. Later that evening Eve sat down with her mother and deconstructed the various ways that she could have made her case better.
Jobs came to appreciate her spirit—and see a lot of himself in her. “She’s a pistol and has the strongest will of any kid I’ve ever met,” he said. “It’s like payback.” He had a deep understanding of her personality, perhaps because it bore some resemblance to his. “Eve is more sensitive than a lot of people think,” he explained. “She’s so smart that she can roll over people a bit, so that means she can alienate people, and she finds herself alone. She’s in the process of learning how to be who she is, but tempers it around the edges so that she can have the friends that she needs.”
Jobs’s relationship with his wife was sometimes complicated but always loyal. Savvy and compassionate, Laurene Powell was a stabilizing influence and an example of his ability to compensate for some of his selfish impulses by surrounding himself with strong-willed and sensible people. She weighed in quietly on business issues, firmly on family concerns, and fiercely on medical matters. Early in their marriage, she cofounded and launched College Track, a national after-school program that helps disadvantaged kids graduate from high school and get into college. Since then she had become a leading force in the education reform movement. Jobs professed an admiration for his wife’s work: “What she’s done with College Track really impresses me.” But he tended to be generally dismissive of philanthropic endeavors and never visited her after-school centers.