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Sunrise, Sunset. Mentor, Mentee.
May. 6th, 2007 09:22 pmMost of my past twelve hours (other than three very special ones spent with a certain hockey team coming soon to a Canadian capital near you) were devoted to the confirmation of the student I've been mentoring for the past year. First there was lineup and final preparation, than a lengthy (for us) service of confirmation, followed by picture-taking, and then, after the afternoon break, a dinner with Mike and his family.
Today marked my third straight year in this process: Emily's two years ago, then last year, which was my first crack at helping a younger kid understand (some of) this crazy little thing we call faith. This year's effort, like the previous ones, was meaningful, and the services (almost entirely written and executed by the mostly seventh-grade kids) were all wonderfully done, but for some reason, this year's made me about the weepiest of any of them.
I have an idea about why which I'll get to, but first I wanted to share, for those hardcore enough to take it, the written words we exchanged at dinner tonight. This year's kid, I found out early on, was already a devoted scholar of U.S. Civil War history; and while reorganizing our home library a few weeks back, I came upon Garry Wills's landmark work about the crafting of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln at Gettysburg, which our dear friends Jim and Jean got for us a few years back, so I ordered a copy for him.
This connection formed the first part of my message to the confirmand:
( Dear Mike, )
( Dear Ray, )
/wibble
----
One reason I know the importance of "being there" for a younger student, or professional, is that I know how important a difference it can make, between having one and not. I largely went it alone getting my degrees; I had good friends in college, but almost all of them were in other disciplines; and while all my law school friends were going into the same field, there wasn't as much time, and even then a lot of differences in our specialties, so I can't say I had a lot of guidance then, either.
My first job, on the other hand, introduced me to a mentor of the finest sort. Probably the most respected practitioner of our specialty in the city, and well known well beyond it, he took the time to instruct, to challenge, to correct, while still making it clear how much I still had to learn before I would be close to that expertise. He had a dry but wicked sense of humor, tolerated many shortcomings, and in the 23 years since I met him, I have yet to hear a human being say an unkind word about him.
Sadly, for almost all of those years, he hasn't been able to enjoy that praise. For it was 21 years ago this month that he collapsed and died of a heart attack in his suburban home, writing a legal document of a type I've written dozens of times since then.
He was 47 that year. Wanna guess how old I am?
----
At the age of 26, with barely a year of official experience under my belt, I inherited his entire caseload and had to turn to a new group of mentors, in but also outside the small firm he left behind, to try to pick up the pieces. They came from the unlikeliest of sources- opponents on pending cases, lawyers having nothing at all to do with matters, all of them opened hearts and hard drives (yes, we had them, all 10 bitchin' megabites of them at the time) to help me learn in a year what had taken them close to a decade. God bless them, it helped, and without that experience I would not be the person I now am. That includes betters as well as worses, but other than the do-over on his March 1986 cardiologist appointment, I wouldn't change a damn thing about it.
So if I ever seem a little too enthused about offering help to anyone here about anything, it's a paying-forward kind of thing. I get more joy than I can convey out of doing it, be it online or on the church aisle, and I'm hoping to have another story about the experience around this time next year:)
Today marked my third straight year in this process: Emily's two years ago, then last year, which was my first crack at helping a younger kid understand (some of) this crazy little thing we call faith. This year's effort, like the previous ones, was meaningful, and the services (almost entirely written and executed by the mostly seventh-grade kids) were all wonderfully done, but for some reason, this year's made me about the weepiest of any of them.
I have an idea about why which I'll get to, but first I wanted to share, for those hardcore enough to take it, the written words we exchanged at dinner tonight. This year's kid, I found out early on, was already a devoted scholar of U.S. Civil War history; and while reorganizing our home library a few weeks back, I came upon Garry Wills's landmark work about the crafting of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln at Gettysburg, which our dear friends Jim and Jean got for us a few years back, so I ordered a copy for him.
This connection formed the first part of my message to the confirmand:
( Dear Mike, )
( Dear Ray, )
/wibble
----
One reason I know the importance of "being there" for a younger student, or professional, is that I know how important a difference it can make, between having one and not. I largely went it alone getting my degrees; I had good friends in college, but almost all of them were in other disciplines; and while all my law school friends were going into the same field, there wasn't as much time, and even then a lot of differences in our specialties, so I can't say I had a lot of guidance then, either.
My first job, on the other hand, introduced me to a mentor of the finest sort. Probably the most respected practitioner of our specialty in the city, and well known well beyond it, he took the time to instruct, to challenge, to correct, while still making it clear how much I still had to learn before I would be close to that expertise. He had a dry but wicked sense of humor, tolerated many shortcomings, and in the 23 years since I met him, I have yet to hear a human being say an unkind word about him.
Sadly, for almost all of those years, he hasn't been able to enjoy that praise. For it was 21 years ago this month that he collapsed and died of a heart attack in his suburban home, writing a legal document of a type I've written dozens of times since then.
He was 47 that year. Wanna guess how old I am?
----
At the age of 26, with barely a year of official experience under my belt, I inherited his entire caseload and had to turn to a new group of mentors, in but also outside the small firm he left behind, to try to pick up the pieces. They came from the unlikeliest of sources- opponents on pending cases, lawyers having nothing at all to do with matters, all of them opened hearts and hard drives (yes, we had them, all 10 bitchin' megabites of them at the time) to help me learn in a year what had taken them close to a decade. God bless them, it helped, and without that experience I would not be the person I now am. That includes betters as well as worses, but other than the do-over on his March 1986 cardiologist appointment, I wouldn't change a damn thing about it.
So if I ever seem a little too enthused about offering help to anyone here about anything, it's a paying-forward kind of thing. I get more joy than I can convey out of doing it, be it online or on the church aisle, and I'm hoping to have another story about the experience around this time next year:)