The Difference of a Decade

Sunday.  Contented.  A lazy 8am wake up to fussing noises in the next room.  Bleary little blue eyes blink, blonde hair climbs to the sky, binkit and bear held tight.  My heart thrills at his sleepy smile.  I hold out my hands, and his arms reach, I catch him up in a hug.  I bring him to my bed for our weekend treat of ten minutes cuddling, which morphs into wrestling as we slowly wake up together.  A breakfast of cottage cheese and peaches for him, Eggo whole wheat waffles and soy sausage for me.

With Patrick not home, I decided to use this Sunday as a practice for how things will be when I start school.  P and I will share child care responsibilities – we always do, but what I mean is that we will not be putting Jack in any kind of school or daycare this first term, not on a regular basis.  Once we have firm class schedules, we will probably work up some kind of informal child care duty schedule.  We’ll each need good solid chunks of at least 3 hours at least twice a day to work on our studies, many days even more than that.  Jack still sleeps more than half the day away, but we also have to squeeze in housework and cooking and errands and exercise and me-time and down-time and family-all-together-time and all of this.

The husband and I are almost pathologically tidy people, and it is usually my default to be cleaning and organizing when at home (don’t judge me.  It makes me happy to have neat closets.)  On Sunday when Jack was napping, I had to resist the urge to unpack our travel suitcases and clean up the house while I had a free moment.  Unpacking can be done with a one-year-old hanging onto the hem of your shirt and handing you lint he picked up from the floor.  So can laundry, cooking dinner, going to the grocery, washing the dog, and most other housebound activities.  What can not be done when in the company (and the charge) of a toddler desperate to brain himself on every available sharp corner is focus.  I can fold laundry or make a simple supper without focusing, but I cannot brief a case or study the law of intentional torts* while getting up every thirty seconds to check on what IS that splashing noise coming from the bathroom?  Is that my son?  Splashing in the toilet?  Yes.  That is my son splashing in the toilet.  And I guess we’ll be having our bath early today.

So.  On Sunday.  Before Jack’s morning nap, we had breakfast, got dressed, and took Virgil on a walk to feed the neighbor’s cats, and then started some unpacking and laundry.  I was in a seriously groovin’ laundry/unpack mojo when Jack went down for a nap, and it took real mental effort to immediately flip off the mojo and get a jump on some law school reading.  It almost caused me physical pain when I heard the dryer buzz and didn’t get up to switch the laundry.  I was very firm with myself, and myself was very unhappy and fidgety, staring at my lawbook and squawking LAUNDRY’S DONE, LAUNDRY’S DONE, LAUNDRY’S DONE, HEY HEY HEY GUESS WHAT LAUNDRY’S DONE.  I was just getting into the flow of reading and casing my first brief when Jack woke up, and there we were again, flipping back into unpack and tidy mode.  Repeat for the rest of the day.  By the end of the day I wasn’t struggling so much with the sudden flips, but I was surprised at just how much discipline it took to not fold laundry fresh out of the dryer.  Am I sounding like a total loser here?  Are we still friends after I admit to you my shameful cleaning OCD?

I am proud to say I did no email-checking or facebooking.  I didn’t even load pictures or video from our trip yet, though I really really really wanted to.  It helps that I am using my laptop from 2002 for my lawschool notes, and it is (a) slow as molasses, and thereby (b) not connected to the internet.  This is best, I feel.  For exams I’ll take Patrick’s newer and quicker Sony Vaio, but for case-briefing, outlining, note-taking, and other word processing activities, I think my ancient Dell will work perfectly.  Even though it is approximately seven thousand pounds that I will have to lug to and from school.

Sunday went well.  I really like the material I’m reading so far.  Of course, it is shiny and new and different right now, and the novelty will wear off quickly.  But I didn’t find it immediately, forehead-slappingly irritating in the way that my HR study materials were.  And it isn’t completely oblique and ridiculously difficult (I know that comes when I get into Property Law, but that’s second semester!)  It requires a lot of practice, is all.  Not memorization, exactly, and not deep and philosophical thinking.  Just practice.  A new way of looking at things.  I think that my aforementioned neat closets will attest to the fact that I have an affinity for portioned off, tidy thinking, which is largely what law is.  Says the expert who studied it for a whopping total of 5 hours.

One thing I’ll say for this horrible job.  It has really lowered my expectations in life and career.  I will not go into the field of law expecting that: things will make sense; I will be respected; I will like or respect most of the people I work with; it is a perfect institution; I can trust the motives of most people; I will not run into the glass ceiling; most people in charge have at heart the best interest of their company and coworkers and humanity at large.  I now know that there is no great supreme authority to whom I can appeal when things are not fair or right, and I should have no expectation that things will be remotely fair or right.  It sounds jaded, but a large amount of the unhappiness in this world stems from disappointment of expectations.  I walk into this fairly clear eyed, but boldly and without regret.  This choice feels more right every day.

A decade ago I was twenty, and about to start my senior year of college.  I was a crack ace student who had nothing else to do but study and work and rehearse and tan.  Now I am a pale-skinned thirty, about to start my 1L.  A decade has brought me tons more responsibility, but also a decade’s worth of experience in Getting Things Done.  I think it’s all going to be ok.

*eh!  Check me out!  Sounding like a lawyer already!