Despertar

i have a dream

Daughters inevitably turn into their mothers. My grandmother has a severe green thumb and a pretty respectable greenhouse. In her younger years she maintained that and a bunch of gardens religiously, growing different things in different fenced-in sections of her yard, grouped with respect to their comparable nutritional needs. It was the cutest sight ever, a grandmother in a sunhat and green wooden clogs from Germany, wandering around outside tipping a watering can over orchids, ferns, shiflera stalks.

My mother used to roll her eyes and chuckle over how "obsessive" it was. She also used to make fun of my grandmother (good-naturedly, of course) for her matronly little gardening accoutrements. Then, after I left for college, she started amassing a little plant collection of her own. By the time I graduated, our whole kitchen, every bedroom and the front and back yards were full of plants, grouped with respect to their comparable nutritional needs. And the day my dad drove me home from the airport, there was my mom, down on all hands and fours in the front yard, feet wrapped up in green wooden clogs, face hidden by the brim of her sunhat, silver spade in her gloved hands.

Me next? I have three plants. They live on the windowsill at the new apartment, which I'm beginning to think isn't quite sunny enough for them. I assumed custody of the first one after my college roommate and I moved back to opposite coasts; the second one used to live in my mother's bathroom and was planted to commemorate my grandfather after he died; the third one was a Valentine's Day present from a relative. I don't know any of their classifications, but I'm sure if you check in with me in a year, I will. If you check back in five years, or ten, or forty, I will probably have more of them. Grouped with respect to their comparable nutritional needs.

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Justin came to a work dinner with me last night. He wore a tie I picked for him.

He elevated his bed using plastic bed lifts while I was gone. Things are better in every way.

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This job is wiping away whatever hesitations I still had about committing myself to practicing law for at least a few years. It's a pilot program designed to find and bring in talent interested in helping the firm to meet annual pro bono targets, which is why I and the four other summer associates got to spend our summer doing meaningful public agency work (instead of boring, interny gofer kind of stuff here in the District).

A lot of it is propaganda, of course, but over the past few days we've gotten a crash course in asylum law, homelessness clinics, education initiatives, firms that focus solely on children's legal issues and rights--exactly everything I hoped I wouldn't have to give up to become a boring associate drone.

They wine and dine us like crazy. I haven't bought breakfast, lunch or dinner in a week. Everyone is nice. They gave each of us a Blackberry.

We're having Thai in an hour.

Life is so good, right now.