Sunday Scribblings #48: Puzzled

The Sun­day Scrib­blings prompts have dove­tailed per­fectly for me to tell this story. Must be a mes­sage from the cos­mic forces of the uni­verse, urg­ing me to write this, even though I have put off doing it for so long.

As I explained in Part 4a, this is the story of yet another aspect of my life upon which the hand of God can be seen. It is also an exam­ple of what I talked about in my ini­tial post about my six-year jour­ney lit­i­gat­ing Con­ser­va­tor­ship of Wend­land: When you are truly called, you have no choice but to answer. No mat­ter what the cost.

Jere­miah 1:5

Why did I say “yes”?

I was com­pletely puz­zled by my own behav­ior, but the answer would be many years in com­ing to me.

Even­tu­ally, the plan for my life was revealed to me. Had things worked out between us, I would be a com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­son today. My first big crush was (and I pre­sume is) a tra­di­tion­al­ist who would expect a tra­di­tional wife. I used to refer to myself as a “rad­i­cal fem­i­nist” but over the course of time, I came to think of myself as a “rad­i­cal human­ist” because I believe in egal­i­tar­i­an­ism and equal­ity, and the term “fem­i­nist” ele­vates, in my mind, the fem­i­nine over the masculine.

More sim­ply, my best friend teases me that I would have been con­tent for a good while, but expe­ri­ence a pro­found “mid-life cri­sis” after grow­ing weary of being a duti­ful, tra­di­tional wife. She knows me very well.

There were sev­eral other “near-misses” for us. As to each instance, it was entirely my fault that things never worked out between us. My behav­ior — fueled by my fear, inse­cu­ri­ties and naivete — pro­hib­ited me from open­ing up and allow­ing a rela­tion­ship to take root and flour­ish, even though, for a few years, that was the one thing that I wanted most in my life. Each time that my big crush began to get closer to me, I pushed him away. I was puz­zled and frus­trated by my own actions, but com­pletely unable to stop myself no mat­ter how hard I tried.

Before I knew it, seven years had passed since the last such “near-miss” and I found myself at Chuck E. Cheese with a very hand­some, atten­tive gen­tle­man who was gen­uinely inter­ested in the “authen­tic” me.

From that blind date on, Big­Bob and I were insep­a­ra­ble. I jok­ingly tell peo­ple, “Well, he just never went home, so I fig­ured I’d bet­ter marry him.” We met in April, he started talk­ing about mar­riage in late May, we got offi­cially engaged in July and eloped on Novem­ber 2.

Life was the prover­bial whirl­wind: #1 son was born, my father strug­gled with his health for many years, I decided to go back to school to com­plete my Bachelor’s degree, then I got the wild idea of going on to law school, Matthew’s arrival sur­prised us, my father died two months later … some­times we look back and ask our­selves how we man­aged all of it, but the real­ity is that we did it the way every­body does — one step at a time.

From time to time I would see an old high school class­mate, hear a song or remem­ber an event that would make me pause to won­der how my big crush was doing and puz­zle yet again about why I said “yes” when the truth­ful answer was an emphatic “no.”

But it wasn’t until late 2000 that the answer was finally, fully revealed to me.

I had been prac­tic­ing law for seven years and the Wend­land case was pend­ing in the appel­late court. After I secured a vic­tory for my clients in the trial court, the oppos­ing side appealed the rul­ing and every­one knew that the case was going to go from the appel­late court to the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court. Although the Court hears only a minus­cule per­cent­age of the total cases in which review is requested (around 4 per cent), that it would agree to hear this case was pretty much assured. I was per­form­ing all work on the case pro bono. That meant that I worked a full week (for an attor­ney in pri­vate prac­tice, that can be 60 or more hours) and han­dled the appeals at home, free of charge, dur­ing my “spare” time. For sev­eral years, I tripped over boxes and boxes of doc­u­ments stacked in my bed­room. (I still have a good num­ber of them in the garage.)

Between all of that work, keep­ing up with my kids, con­tin­u­ing to make music, etc., I didn’t have time to puz­zle over things that had hap­pened years before or won­der what might have been.

But in late Octo­ber 2000, I had a very brief encounter with my first big love. Big­Bob and I were check­ing into a hotel. As we entered the lobby, I glanced at the man behind the desk, but I did not rec­og­nize him. Then, as I was look­ing down at the reg­is­tra­tion card I was fill­ing out, I heard a voice I would rec­og­nize any­where, no mat­ter how many years elapsed, say, “How have you been, Jane?”

I froze. Nobody had called me that name in nearly 30 years. Nobody who expected me to answer, any­way.

Yes, I was born with that name, but hated it pas­sion­ately. As soon as I was old enough, I changed it and never looked back. No one that I have met since my early col­lege days has ever known me by any name except “Janie.” But through­out high school, know­ing how much I hated to be called “Jane,” my first love had insisted upon call­ing me that for the sole pur­pose of annoy­ing and irri­tat­ing me. He had a spe­cial way of elon­gat­ing the “a” that made me want to chew on a box of nails.

And there in that hotel lobby, 22 years after the last time we had seen each other in per­son, I once again heard that voice say “Jane.” (I shud­der, remem­ber­ing it as I type this.)

In response, I mum­bled some­thing bril­liant like, “Busy.” I was in such a state of shock at see­ing him there, I did not want to linger and have to engage in real con­ver­sa­tion, so I took the room key, thanked him, turned to Big­Bob, and said, “Let’s go!”

Big­Bob was com­pletely baf­fled because he had never heard any­one call me “Jane” except a cou­ple of for­mer teach­ers and, occa­sion­ally, when they’d for­get and slip into an old habit, my par­ents. So on the way to our room, he guessed that my big crush was one of my high school teach­ers! (We had many laughs about it that night.)

Had my big crush and I ended up together, I am con­vinced that I would have had chil­dren at a much ear­lier age. I am absolutely cer­tain that I would never have com­pleted my edu­ca­tion. I just can’t imag­ine my first big crush encour­ag­ing his wife as she drove off to law school classes three or four nights per week, leav­ing him at home for sev­eral hours to care for two small chil­dren. But that’s what Big­Bob did. He was right there for all the mile­stones, grin­ning proudly when I was in the “Final Four” Moot Court Com­pe­ti­tion (oral argu­ment in front of real Supreme Court jus­tices from three states — Mon­tana, New Mex­ico and Illi­nois — who served as guest judges of the com­pe­ti­tion), grad­u­at­ing, being sworn into the Bar, in court­rooms … #1Son, an eighth-grader at the time, proudly accom­pa­nied him to watch me argue before the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court.

I really can’t pic­ture my first big crush dri­ving his wife to her Evi­dence class just a lit­tle over 48 hours after she gave birth. (To be fair … Matthew was in the NICU with aspi­ra­tion pneu­mo­nia and well taken care of. Finals were in less than two weeks. I told Big­Bob I was per­fectly capa­ble of get­ting to class by myself, but he insisted on dri­ving me.)

I can’t imag­ine that my big crush would have reacted as well as Big­Bob did when he came home from work and I announced, “Hey, I’m going to St. Louis tomor­row to appear on Sally Jessy Raphael and talk about my night­mare expe­ri­ences as a step­mother to your daugh­ter, and you have to take me to the air­port.” (I still chuckle when I remem­ber the look on his face!)

Or how about this one? “I’m help­ing plan Clint Ritchie’s fan club lun­cheon … did I men­tion that it’s in New York City?”

And then there was the day that I came home with a flute and he just stared at me in dis­be­lief. A year-and-a-half later I was off to San Diego, the site of that year’s National Flute Asso­ci­a­tion Con­ven­tion to shop for a new pro­fes­sional model. In just a lit­tle over a week, I’m going to be per­form­ing at Carnegie Hall.

Yes, poor Big­Bob has learned over the years to roll with what­ever crazy idea I throw at him. But he’ll be the first to tell you that he’s never bored! After he gets over the shock, he just laughs and gives me his trade­mark impres­sion of Ricky Ricardo: “Luu­u­u­u­u­uc­c­cyyyyy, what are you a-scheming now?”

This much is cer­tain: Had my big crush and I ended up together, I would never have devel­oped the self-esteem or self-confidence that I pos­sess today. I believe that I would have remained that geeky, unsure-of-herself woman, totally depen­dent upon my first big crush to define and com­plete me.

The Holy Spirit knew, of course, that I was des­tined to stand before the high­est court in this state with media rep­re­sen­ta­tives from around the world assem­bled in one sec­tion of the court­room. It knew that I had been called to argue the highest-profile case con­cern­ing end-of-life decision-making up to that point. Had things worked out the way I wanted them to, how­ever, I would never have devel­oped the sheer, unmit­i­gated chutz­pah to see the case through to completion.

I grad­u­ally came to see why every time we came close to embark­ing upon a new chap­ter in our rela­tion­ship, the Holy Spirit inter­vened: I had to develop my own voice, rather than be an exten­sion of some­one else’s. I was doing just that which is why I was so puz­zled by my own behav­ior for so long. But, you see, it wasn’t actu­ally my behav­ior that was the deter­min­ing fac­tor, after all. It was, quite lit­er­ally, “divine inter­ven­tion” that kept me on the path I was meant to travel so that I would be posi­tioned to be called into the man­ag­ing partner’s office in 1995 and told, “Here’s your new case.”

A high price? Indisputably.

The only price? Not by a long shot.

The right price? You can’t argue with the Holy Spirit, can you?

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On the Same Topic:

• The Cost of the Call (Part Four)
• I get that sink­ing feeling …
• A Lit­tle Spice
• What Christ­mas Means to Me
• A Walk Along a New Path