Partners

I never imagined I would have a partner. And then the realities of how painful the practice of law actually was bore down on me and forced a partnership to emerge from its own necessity. And after that it was mostly good. The economic realities of the business of law, like being a small dairy farmer pressed down on me. The intense amount of capital required to keep the business moving, how much the business was business and how little it was the practice of law. And although my law partner, like my life partner, was not close to being the person I would have imagined myself having as a partner. If you had asked me about who I would have chosen for a life partner or a wife I would have told you about an urban, articulate, somewhat aggressive woman who paid attention to her makeup and cared about how she carried herself in the world. And it is not as if that didn’t describe Marie, but she was also far more ego-less, far shier and more self-effacing a woman than I would have imagined. Yet she was kind, and calm, un-aggressive, gentle, subtly sexy and fiercely autonomous. She was a Lutheran, not Jewish, and that alone said a lot. And my law partner was also a surprise to me. A much younger man, with distinctly different political values, a liberal Republican rather than a liberal Democrat, a gun carrying, knife wielding, bespectacled suburbanite with two young kids, a beautiful wife who seemed to love him loyally, and a demeanor that just fit right in.

Anyhow, that Monday I woke up at five thirty, was out of the house and at exercise class before seven, was in the office, strapped into my seat by nine, and didn’t leave again until twelve hours later.