The First Monday in October.
Oct. 1st, 2012 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogIt's a significant date over at the Supremes, but is always a day of remembrance and reflection for me, especially when, as this year, the First Monday of that month happens to be October 1st.
It was this day, 28 years ago, that I began my journey as an attorney, at a small Rochester firm which, then, had three full-time attorneys and a semi-retired one, with me as the green-horned kid. Eighteen months later, the senior full-time partner was dead of cardiac arrest at the age of 47, and I was thrust into complexities of bankruptcy practice which never would have come to me in the ordinary course without that tragic event.
I lasted there for close to a decade, as the firm eventually added a new full-time fourth attorney, made us both partners, but, in the end, caused him and me to seek out other options. I will never forget, and will always appreciate, the learning experience of those early years, but this year I am mindful of how close it came to never even being.
----
The job posting came late in the recruitment season- right around the time we'd spent in that summer of '84 studying for the Bar. I did my interview, and then waited. Capital-W waited. Moved most of my stuff 400 miles-waited. Ultimately, they extended an offer to me that September, which resulted in the job that began 28 years ago today, but months later, I learned that I was not my future partners' first choice.
No that would be another guy. In fact, let's call him Guy. I'd known him for the full three years of law school, and knew he'd also applied for the job, but it was only later that I heard that Guy had gotten the offer first, and had turned it down, in favor of a job at a local Rochester company that would not have involved the meatball-surgery aspects of law practice that I learned there and still use on a near-daily basis.
All these years later, I think about how different my life would be today if Guy had taken that job instead of me. I'd had no other prospects in Rochester, and I'd have wound up there with about as much probability as one in Kalamazoo, or Katmandu. I wouldn't have returned to the faith community of my upbringing. I would never have met Eleanor.
In short, I wouldn't be me.
And so, I took a moment today to look up Guy and see what became of his life story. He's still at that corporate-ish job he took, all those years ago, gaining an extra graduate degree along the way. His Facebook picture is the guy I clearly remember and recognize, and it lists him as being "in a relationship" with another gentleman, whose name I did not recognize but whose gender sounded perfectly right for the Guy I remembered from back then.
To Guy, I can say only this: I hope your life has produced at least some of the happiness, the memories, the consequences of the choice you made, which were the direct and proximate cause of the one(s) I did. And, however belatedly, I thank you for that.
It was this day, 28 years ago, that I began my journey as an attorney, at a small Rochester firm which, then, had three full-time attorneys and a semi-retired one, with me as the green-horned kid. Eighteen months later, the senior full-time partner was dead of cardiac arrest at the age of 47, and I was thrust into complexities of bankruptcy practice which never would have come to me in the ordinary course without that tragic event.
I lasted there for close to a decade, as the firm eventually added a new full-time fourth attorney, made us both partners, but, in the end, caused him and me to seek out other options. I will never forget, and will always appreciate, the learning experience of those early years, but this year I am mindful of how close it came to never even being.
----
The job posting came late in the recruitment season- right around the time we'd spent in that summer of '84 studying for the Bar. I did my interview, and then waited. Capital-W waited. Moved most of my stuff 400 miles-waited. Ultimately, they extended an offer to me that September, which resulted in the job that began 28 years ago today, but months later, I learned that I was not my future partners' first choice.
No that would be another guy. In fact, let's call him Guy. I'd known him for the full three years of law school, and knew he'd also applied for the job, but it was only later that I heard that Guy had gotten the offer first, and had turned it down, in favor of a job at a local Rochester company that would not have involved the meatball-surgery aspects of law practice that I learned there and still use on a near-daily basis.
All these years later, I think about how different my life would be today if Guy had taken that job instead of me. I'd had no other prospects in Rochester, and I'd have wound up there with about as much probability as one in Kalamazoo, or Katmandu. I wouldn't have returned to the faith community of my upbringing. I would never have met Eleanor.
In short, I wouldn't be me.
And so, I took a moment today to look up Guy and see what became of his life story. He's still at that corporate-ish job he took, all those years ago, gaining an extra graduate degree along the way. His Facebook picture is the guy I clearly remember and recognize, and it lists him as being "in a relationship" with another gentleman, whose name I did not recognize but whose gender sounded perfectly right for the Guy I remembered from back then.
To Guy, I can say only this: I hope your life has produced at least some of the happiness, the memories, the consequences of the choice you made, which were the direct and proximate cause of the one(s) I did. And, however belatedly, I thank you for that.
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