The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
Dylan Thomas, The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower
Spring has not come to Humptulips County in the usual way this year. While our countryside is vividly green, Spring is without warmth and has unfurled under continuously overcast, and often rainy, skies. And so we approach Memorial Day having enjoyed only one day over 70 degrees in the last 200 some days. This is, in fact, one of our coldest Springs of record.
But Springs come and go, some warm and pleasant and some dank and cold. And even if this Spring represents the furthest in a pendulum swing toward dankness, a wondrously dark green canopy of plant life rules the day in all directions. The evergreen Humptulips County is now a truly glorious green, even if a bit shy in the enjoyment of the many other vivid colors that would normally preen themselves in front of the green backdrop of late May. Our country roads are awash in green, from the grass on the verge to the overarching deciduous and fir canopies. There is nothing more pleasurable now than to drive down these back roads through green tunnels of earth and sky.
The more I age, the more each Spring reminds me of my life’s springtime, especially as my oldest son’s birthday once again approaches. This weekend Don turns 41 and reminds me again of my graduation from law school – 41 years and two weeks prior to his coming birthday. These memories are pleasant ones, for that particular Spring gave birth to something and to someone special. Don is now a practicing lawyer in a very far corner of my elastically boundaried Humptulips County, at the start of his career in the law while I am nearing the end of mine.
Forty one years ago and four weeks hence, I began the practice of law. Technically, I wasn’t yet a lawyer when I began practice because I had not yet taken the bar exam and had not yet been sworn in, but I did show up at work, was placed in an office, was issued supplies, and did begin performing research for others. When, three days after I started work, a senior partner came into my office to ask why I was working when I ought to be studying for the bar exam, I gave him what was, to me, an obvious answer: I was married with a son and was broke, so I planned on working during the day and studying at night. It hadn’t occurred to me not to go to work in this circumstance, since from high school, and throughout law school, I had always worked full time and studied in the evenings. In the Sixties, student aid and student loans were available only in limited quantities, and while we had little time to ourselves as a consequence, we also graduated with little in the way of debt. Given the choice faced by many of today’s law students, I would again take work over debt. I have never suffered from hard work and the experiences gained from it sometimes even assume a roseate glow in the rear-view mirror.
The senior partner left my office and returned a few hours later (doubtless having first made the rounds of the other partners to secure acquiescence) and told me I would be paid without having to work and I was to go home immediately and begin my study for the bar exam. Such a directive was unheard of at the time. New lawyers weren’t paid until they started to work full time; there was no such thing as a bar exam study stipend. I was surprised and tried to argue to the contrary since I felt guilty about taking the money without corresponding effort, but I was firmly and truly thrown out of the office and told to return following completion of the bar exam. And so I did, returning to work on the Thursday following the exam’s Wednesday afternoon completion (it was a full three day exam in those days) due to my strongly felt need to promptly return the favor of the gift the partner had given me.
And thus began a 41 year career in the law, one that began in litigation but which soon converted to a business practice as I realized that litigation was not my métier. I have greatly enjoyed the counseling aspects of practicing law. Serving the needs of others – especially those of the type of clients I have been privileged to serve – has been greatly satisfying. I can well imagine that such service could well seem akin to slavery if the work or the clients were unwholesome in some way, but I have been fortunate to engage in complicated matters demanding intellectual acumen for successful clients possessing a strong sense of ethics.
In short, my clients have taught me as much as I hope I have given to them, and my career, in consequence, has been one long, continual learning experience. My education in the law did not end with that graduation those forty one Springs ago – only the more formal part did. For when a client looks you in the eye and tells you to complete an upside down transaction which he had every right to walk away from for the simply stated, elegant reason that ”I shook this man’s hand”, you learn well that business can be conducted ethically and compassionately. When that same client immediately follows his first statement with the admonition that ”And you are going to figure out how to make me whole”, you learn the importance of mental agility and the art of approaching each transaction as if you were on the same team with the other side’s lawyer with the shared goal of completing the mutually desired transaction, even if not as the parties originally envisioned it. And when, five years later, your chosen solution to solving the transaction finally comes to fruition and that client is at last made whole, the client phones to again thank you for your solution and your work, you realize the power of appreciation and the transformative effect of successfully concluding a matter by means supportive of, and not detrimental to, the needs of the adverse party. Finally, when you hear, serendipitously, from unrelated parties many years later during the conduct of a completely unrelated matter that the adverse party in the first transaction had been their mentor and that your client’s direction those many years earlier had saved the adverse party from bankruptcy and ensured him of a deserved retirement prior to his death, you realize the power of compassion in those who are strong enough to take what they might but chose, instead, to do only what they believe to be right.
I was blessed those many years ago with both the means to a meaningful career and a son. I was simultaneously given a child and the opportunity to serve those whom I came to admire; a twin blessing that has only grown with the increased opportunity for service that comes from experience and Don’s maturity, subsequent marriage to Sarah and the birth of their children, my two granddaughters, Chloe and Emma. Whatever its weather may have actually been, that long ago Spring was, at least in memory, much warmer than this one I presently enjoy. The warmth of that Spring, comes from these blessings and it has continued to warm me anew on each of Don’s successive birthdays.
So I don’t really mind the cold and wet that are the essence of this 2011 Spring, for Spring is as just as much a state of mind as is Humptulips County. I have been highly content with my choice of career, even as I wonder what I might do in the future. My choice gave me the chance to engage in service to others: as a counselor to clients, assisting them in the achievement of their personal and business goals; and as a mentor to younger lawyers, assisting them in the development of their skills and the personal attributes necessary for success in the practice of law. In such work I have found not only great satisfaction, but true delight.
If, as T. S. Eliot supposes in the opening passage of Burnt Norton:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
then that former Spring is as much a part of this present Spring as I am. That former Spring (as well as my recollections of that former Spring, however factually flawed those recollections may be) has informed this Spring and will continue to inform my future – just as those things I learn and experience in the present will also inform that future.
So this 2011 Spring is as much an extension of all past Springs and Summers and Autumns and Winters, as it is a precursor of Springs and seasons to come. And while I consciously do not dwell in my musings on the failings of my past, preferring, instead, to contemplate future challenges and their associated opportunities, I must accept that those failings, as well as past successes, are part and parcel of the here and now. What I will not accept, however, is Eliot’s elegiac reveries in Burnt Norton about passages not taken. While his words are charmingly evocative, his sentiment is not one I share:
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
For I do not regret the passages I chose and I believe there are multiple rose gardens to enjoy. I also do not regret past failings associated with those choices (except to the extent that they may have harmed others), since I have profited by them through learning and experience.
So I will revel in this Spring, even though I wish it were warmer and drier. I will revel in this Spring even though Don’s birthday, the touchstone that stirs all of my memories of that Spring, is imminent, since to do so is to revel in that long ago Spring as well. I will revel in this Spring because of the warmth of past Springs and the anticipation of the warmth of Springs to come.
Happy birthday, Don! May there be many more.
