may it please the court…

I was, of course, mesmerized.

I was also tired. Up at 3, one flight in the dark, one just at sunrise.





I force myself to work in the air and that's good. Like taking a sedative.

In New York, I blow $29 on a cab because I have a chance to get to the Court House for the “all rise” part (i.e. the very beginning).





Why the cabbie gets bogged down in Brooklyn before crossing over to Manhattan is one of those mysteries of urban life, but no matter. I arrive on time. And he gets a fine tip. Make that then $35.


The courthouse has many, many security measures at the point of entry, ones that are at odds with security measures at airports. I wonder which ones are more effective.


I enter. Such an old, old court room...





...And then all assemble...





...and the trial begins. Except not really. The pre-lunch session is a review of motions and objections. I had forgotten about all this. I hadn’t been in court on a client case in nearly ten years. I had forgotten the dynamics. I had, most of all, forgotten how nothing, absolutely nothing beats being sharp and prepared. And honorable.

We recess for lunch and the team of attorneys ushers us to a place where lots of judges and lawyers eat. They then tactfully leave us alone, thinking surely Ed wants to take the time to celebrate his birthday with his occasional traveling companion. (Eh.. everyday's a birthday!)


We walk back amidst a flurry of last minute words about strategy, and litigation, and me asking -- why does the court allow these kinds of lawsuits to go forward?





At the trial, following opening statements, Ed begins to testify. He does well and even manages a wry laugh when asked the date of his birth. Today actually. Really? The judge is surprised. (Wry laugh.) You should have told us earlier. (Boisterous laugh now. Because what -- would they have sang a round of happy birthday then?) The judge, a no nonsense woman, has a sense of humor.


Today’s segment of the trail ended at five. Actually two minutes before five. Mustn’t run the stenographer and guard into overtime.

My older daughter is in town for her own lawyerly work and she sits with me for part of the proceeding. To compare notes and to reflect some more, I think, on the legal process.

She, Ed and I take a long walk and finally settle in for an end of the day drink: me: glass of wine; daughter: half a glass of wine; Ed (stripped now of his courthouse finery): do you have diet ginger ale? (they don’t).










My daughter takes off for DC and Ed and I walk through the Village. You know the streets – Bleeker, Spring, MacDougal, Cornelia.





At Cornelia, we stop at a place I thought he might like – Pearl’s Oyster Bar.

We eat oysters and share a lobster and I can’t say the evening feels celebratory and yet it does.





I’ll leave tomorrow, quite early actually, but I know things are moving forward and I have great respect for the attorneys who have worked so hard on this case, to do well by Ed (and, therefore, by his parents).

On a lighter note, I cannot believe that I had the opportunity to see Ed in a suit and tie (see photos above). Forget the docksiders. I know no sane person would wear brown docksiders with a bluish gray pinstripe suit, but I have to believe the judge never noticed. If she did, she never let on.

NYC – what is it about you...

You know the true sign of getting past the middle part of middle age? When you start taking out the bag to pack for a trip days in advance of that trip. Just to avoid the anxiety of figuring out at the last minute what combo of uninteresting pieces can pass as not frumpy.

So, my backpack for tomorrow’s trip is packed and ready. Which is good, as I have to leave by 4 in the morning.


To be in Manhattan again. I can’t tell you how many flirtations I have had with that city (in the way that you sometimes flirt with people who are not necessarily all that good for you)! I lived there, dreamed about it after, cried my way walking up and down streets and avenues, loved it once, hated it more than once – God, what a place.

Realistically, it’s a very brief trip. 24 hours, intensely focused on the law.

I’ll try to find a moment to tell you about it.

Oh, oh, you think I’m neglecting Ocean with my photos of the day? You are so wrong. It was a beautiful day! I biked to work in a dreamy state, forgetting for the duration of the ride all that I have on my plate right now. It was all about October trees against blue skies and blue waters and ducks waddling and shaking and generally having a fantastic time in the water.

the law

They say you never really understand how a complicated civil case works its way through the court system unless you, yourself have been implicated in one. Not as a lawyer, but as a defendant or plaintiff.

I think I agree. I remember when I represented parents in cases where they allegedly abused or neglected their children. I had a healthy amount of detachment from my clients’ issues. It’s not, I don’t think, that I lacked empathy. But, at the end of the day, I walked away and picked up my other life, my real life.


For the last four years, I have tracked a series of complicated legal proceedings involving my occasional traveling companion. Truly, they have profoundly affected the way I now regard the positioning of a client in a legal claim.

This week, a trail begins in New York, and it has elements of every kind of law – family, property, negligence even. In other words, every subject that I teach at the law school. The case is Ed’s case and therefore not something I would explain here, but I’ll say this much: Ed is as quiet in life as anyone I’ve ever met. And yet, he’s stuck in a legal quagmire that is absolutely consuming – of time and resources. He once told me that he retired early so he could devote himself to straightening out this legal mess (not of his making).

Sometimes I have wondered why he doesn’t just not try. He wouldn’t admit it, but I think he is committed to doing what is surely right out of a profound love and respect for his (now deceased) dad and mom.

I mention all this because he is in New York now and I am struggling to get work completed this week-end so that I can fly out just for a day (and a half!) for the beginning of the several week-long trial. Teaching and my little shop obligations prevent me from spending more time out of Madison, but on Tuesday, on his 59th birthday (everyday is a birthday!), the 4th anniversary of our meeting (doesn’t celebrate that either), I’ll be at the Supreme Court of New York, listening very carefully.

(Sometimes life has too much drama.)

In the meantime, today, I checked up on the cats. They’re doing well, Ed. Here’s something that’ll make you smile:










For the rest of Ocean readers, I understand that photos of two feral cats may be a little too little. So I’ll post photos from my bike ride over to the farmette and back again. The last photo is of beef bourguignon, from an Alice Waters recipe. Prepared by friends who are really really good at looking after me in times of stress and worry.

the essentials

I have, over the years, slowed down. You don’t notice it when it happens. One day, you’re flying between court cases and class teaching and restaurant baking and childcare and garden work and gutter cleaning and school newspaper editing and Nutcracker rehearsal schedules (because your kid is Clara and what a time suck that is!) and fresh and honest dinner cooking and and then suddenly, at some later date, you notice that, line by line, your list has grown shorter. Whited out over time. Down to three items. Four during the holiday season.

So that it hardly seems excessive that I should run now from one job to the other, plan dinner menus in advance, think about a post when riding the bus home. The days are, for the most part, orderly and I know that I have made them that way. By the time you’re in your upper fifties (56 is upper, isn’t it?), you have either given in to chaos or you have perfected order. I have perfected order.

Today, that order is pristine and solid. With Ed away, my day is stripped down to only these essentials: grade exams, work in shop, eat dinner, post on Ocean. That’s it.

I’m thinking -- as I wake up in that predawn hour of undefined light -- I’m thinking that I should add to it. And so, even though I have just made a Cousances pot (I have the old one, before Le Creuset bought the company) of roasted tomato soup, and hashed a truckload of brussel sprouts (with olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and white wine), I want to go to the market. I want to stare at crates of produce. Because too soon, the market season will be over.

So this is what I leave for you: a morning (one of the last) at the Westside Community Market. As the sun breaks. And the pears come out of their purple shadows and the carrots and pumpkins show off their carotene pigments in the sudden burst of early light.

leaves

My feeling is that if you can’t brag about the colors just outside your door in mid-October, then what good is mid-October?





Which brings me to a different but not unrelated point. A friend said yesterday that her aging in-laws were moving from their assisted living residence at Spring Meadows, to the next level of assisted living – Autumn Leaves. I spent a few moments thinking about which name was more likable. Which lead me to search all the names of old people’s homes in Dane County. A discouraging activity. Though I had a small laugh out of this one – the Home of Infinite Ability.


In the NYTimes this week-end, readers are asked to come forth with their definition of age (I did submit one because I think it’s cool to write for the NYTimes). And so now I'm again thinking about October: it's an old month, don’t you think? But isn’t it ironic that, living in the northern Midwest, the month you really come to dislike is at-the-cusp-of-spring March? So unpredictable!

It was an all around day of work for me.

settling in?

Finally. Half way into the semester, I have developed a rhythm. I’m in control. When I have a few minutes of spare time (on the bus ride in maybe?), I use them well. At night, I know when to turn off the light and force sleep. On Sunday, I have to work on Tuesday’s class (because there wont be time on Monday) and Tuesday, I have to imagine a blogpost in the evening hours that I work at the shop. I can’t write it then, but I have to imagine it.

So, having said that, I am about to abandon it all and hit a period of turmoil. Nothing will be as it was up to now. I have disruptions in October, in November, and really, by the time we hit December, I may as well give up, because there is nothing normal about any single day of that month.

It’s funny that I should have developed a good pace now. Useless, really, but for this one brief moment in time – deeply satisfying.

Oh, sorry. You may want a photo or two from today. Well, in between classes and meetings with students, I took a two minute break to gaze out my office window. When students ask why I have the office I do (it’s disproportionately small), I tell them it’s because of this – a huge window that looks out on Bascom Mall and the mighty trees that line its paths.





Another photo? Sure, I have one more: walking home late at night (from the lovely little corner shop), I pass, as always, the big grocery store. It’s open round the clock and I find myself going in more often than not – maybe out of a feeling of solidarity toward the late evening shift. I pick up a few needed items and I head home. It’s a deeply satisfying routine -- comforting, warming, invigorating even, because I know that soon I’ll be safely at the condo, feet up, cup of soup steaming, glass of wine at least half full.

Tonight, though, there is a drizzle that makes me pick up the pace just a little. Though I do pause. Because these pumpkins on a wet walk are too beautiful to ignore.





Cold, wet nights. Beautiful in their own way. No kidding.

stillness

Early in the day, Ed and I take a walk to the market. A typical November market. You don’t think “bounty!” Instead, you notice the empty spaces, the absence of bright colors, the chill in the air.





It’s the kind of day when you’re thrilled to see brussel sprouts.





But the market seems strained. As if the farmers had to dig extra deep to bring even this much.

I pick up squash, onions, cauliflower, garlic. And tomatoes. And brussel sprouts. I’ll be cooking for one (and only one) in the weeks ahead. It will be a time of soups, prepared, then reheated. A time of early nights, and earlier mornings.

Ed’s flying off tomorrow (court time, in NY) and I’m envisioning days of sifting and sorting. Pruning the garden of weeds and dried brush (even as it wont really be a garden, let alone one with weeds, or with dried brush).


Walking to campus, I think that even though there are colors out there, they don’t make the world more colorful. She appears indifferent to the guy, he seems indifferent to her, and the bus rolls along, unconcerned about the season, about anything except getting the pack of kids back home on time.











I am happy that people whom I care about are just a phone call or an email message away.

the few, the hardy few

I’m not one of them.


Are you biking to work today? – Ed asks.

Is he serious?

No, I am not biking.
Then why did we replace the battery in your cycle meter the other day?

Call him frugal. A person who will always conserve battery life and fuel.


Cold. So cold that I almost skipped the espresso at midday. Some people are just more hardy than me. Or, they pretend.










Pull up the hood, sit down, eat. Imagine that it's one of those unseasonably warm days. It wasn't that, but just stretch your imagination chords somewhat. Don't forget to pull up the zipper. And tighten the hood. It's October after all.

getting ready

My visiting daughter has an early flight out. I watch her get ready. In my mind I count the days when I’ll cross paths with her or her sister again (not too many!)

My daughters move between big cities effortlessly. DC, NY, Chicago, Boston – that's all part of the everyday for them. Me, I move between campus and condo, shop and condo, Ed's farmette – if the weather is nice.

I can’t say that the weather is nice, but in the predawn hour, after dropping daughter at airport, I swing by the farmette.

It seems wintry by his shed.






I offer to help evaluate his preparedness. He has to be ready for a court appearance in New York next week. New York – I say. Have you forgotten? Suit and tie, buddy.
It shouldn’t matter what I wear… He turns, wanting me to agree that it doesn’t matter. I say to him – oh, but I think it very much does matter.

He puts on the suit that he bought for a funeral eight years ago. It’s too everything: baggy pants, limp jacket covering a tight shirt. I stifle a smile. It’s okay, it will do. You’re okay. I’m talking to the man who would prefer to dig out boulders on the Ice Age Trail than set foot in New York again.


We go to his favorite cheap haircut place. I know I should tell the cutter – make him look less wild. But I don’t. I feel we have compromised enough on the clothes.










Late. Classes are done. The clouds roll in. Surely it is a winter sky. No? Not there yet? Are we merely getting ready? I'm fine with that.

She ran ahead, in the way that she used to run ahead when she was small.





In those years, her younger sister, held by one parent or the other would look on.

Indian Lake was a favorite – close, but quiet. Manageable. Initially, we would just take a walk to the lake and back.





Now, of course, we aim further. The rewards are tremendous.





I come here to this same path in the winter, to cross-country ski. I tell her how warm you feel climbing up these hills on skis. Maybe next year she’ll push along with Ed and me in the winter forest? Maybe my littler one will too?


We watch the clouds recede. That gorgeous Midwestern sky! Later, in the shop where I spend the waning hours of the afternoon, I encounter customers from England. They are bothered by the cold, but I remind them that they have a multi-layered cloud system over the British Isles that always threatens to explode on the poor sods below. In Wiscosnin, we have sky! Endless beautiful sky! Yes, the old man agrees. Your clouds are rather high up.





I don’t think it passed 40 degrees today. Who cares. It felt breezy and vacation-like because I was indeed on an early afternoon vacation.

In the middle of the forest we encountered a couple of mushroom hunters.





You found those here?
Yes, of course, by the trees.





I recognize the accent. Are you from...?
Byelorussia.
Ah. You know, I’m from Poland. We were big mushroom hunters there, when I was a little girl.
Actually, the part of Byelorussia that we’re from used to be Poland…

Yes, there’s that.

The mushrooms here? They’re like the ones in Byelorussia. I admire and move on.

Up the next hill, the final hill, for that last view.





Last breath of quiet air. The weekly clamor for spare minutes hasn’t started, but I hear its rumble. But not at this moment. Not now. Not at Indian Lake, where little girls once chased their fantasies and I trailed behind, beaming and proud.

ice age (trail)

I am so tired. Eyes half closed. Begging for the release of sleep. Will you accept just a photo or two, maybe from the downtown farmers market?





Okay.



The whole day -- in all its parameters, was because of her:





She’s visiting. Me, in anticipation, I worried about the weather.

I shouldn’t have. No great rains, no colorless skies, none of it. Well, I'm thinking of the hours after the morning snow flurries.

An increasingly bluer sky along the Ice Age trail. And the breeze of early winter.

Cold, but so good, so invigorating.

stitching and honor

You may think I have spent an unpardonably long period of time trading adventure and exploration for work and tedium (with a little bit of extra cash thrown in). I’ll let you think that.

But, today, it would be good for me to include a photo of someone spinning. Because I feel myself to be spinning ideas for the weeks and months ahead.

Sadly, no spinner crossed my path. Though I did see this woman – she had fixed a pair of pants for me and I went to the shop to pick them up. She’s a stitcher, no? (She dresses well, as does her husband, Sr. Monetti, of Monetti's Tailoring. Yes, they're Italian.)





Might I say then that I have been stitching together ideas for some longer pauses from work?

My spinning and stitching is ripply and uneven. I have a lot of unknowns to deal with which stand in the way of making grand plans, paid for in advance with a credit card.

But, sooner or later, there will be a finished product (many! Oh I hope so!).


In the meantime, I’ll share a rare semi-political thought (Ocean, as you know, avoids politics with as much care as you might avoid the H1N1 virus): I woke up to Ed telling me early before dawn (too early before dawn) that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. My reaction was simple (I was groggy, so forgive the language): no shit? No shit.

I thought back to my UN school days and my last graduation ceremony, which took place in the great hall of UN's ECOSOC. I thought, too, how gratifying it is to learn that diplomacy still has its fans, even if they live in a country that spends the better part of winter without sunlight.

Later, when I awoke for real and clicked on the computer/news, I thought how sad that anyone should wake up to find out he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, only to be then scoffed at by those who had other ideas about where the prize should go.

Then, I thought how the Nobel peace prize and the literature prize invite snarky commentary. Because we all feel ourselves to be adept at judging the merits of people who emerge victorious therein (as opposed to winners in the natural sciences, about whom we stay silent, because we cannot even pretend to understand fiber-optic cables, let alone the significance of telomerase).

Finally, I thought how good it is that I do not have millions to give out in prestigious awards. I think I would be somewhat shocked to learn that my decisions were scrutinized and commented on with such ill will toward me and the benefactors.

So, bottom line, I’m glad that I have a week-end of moonlight tasks at the little shop on the corner. Perhaps only in little shops on the corner can we be left alone to do well by others. I intend to be supremely nice to all customers who come in.

[And to my daughters: I'll have the honor of being nice to them as well. That should be easy. One is flying in tonight for a visit. The other? I'll be seeing her soon as well.]

clinging

I’ll stick with the theme of green tonight. Green leaves – the leftover nothings, the ones that cling without really believing that they’ll make it past the next week. Green umbrellas, food stand, galoshes, jackets. Green.





Strands of grass, birds plucking away, cheerful birds, cheerful me.





Almost as good as a winter break after a long semester of school work, is an evening after an over-extended period of hard hard regular work. Thrilling.