The Mary Griffin Gallery

A Lioness Passes

The Chicago artistic and historical scene lost a bright fixture with the passing of my aunt, Mary Therese Griffin, 82, on February 6, 2010. Mary, who retired from a colorful career as a teacher in the Chicago Public School system in 1987, had turned her passions for art, history and lifelong learning to a higher calling as a docent at the Art Institute, the Loyola University Museum of Art, the Chicago Architectural Foundation, the Field Museum, the Lyric Opera, Old St. Patrick’s Church, and the Chicago Historical Society. Among her effects at the time of her death was a pin denoting 500 hours of volunteer service at Resurrection Hospital. The CAF honored her for fifteen years of service.

The world may never again see a docent so well-read, or broadly educated, or so lively and genuinely enthusiastic. “Her feisty spirit and her knowledge of scripture always added a wonderful dimension to our program,” said Ann Meehan, Curator of Education at LUMA.

A Chicago native, Miss Griffin was the daughter of Irish immigrants, and always cherished her Irish roots, becoming an active member of several Irish American groups including the Friends of Irish Literature. Father Tom Hurley, pastor of Old St. Patrick’s church in Chicago, had these words of praise. “We will remember her here at Old St. Pat’s and pay tribute to the energy and love she had for the Irish ancestors who built this wonderful church and the great people whose faith and prayer sustain it today.”

Mary would certainly have enjoyed her own funeral mass, which was presided over by two priests who knew her for most of their lives—her cousin Cmdr. Brian Simpson of the U.S. Navy’s Chaplain Corps, and Father James Kinn, who had been a friend since childhood. Most everyone assembled in St. Ferdinand’s Catholic Church for the mass cracked a smile when Father Brian stepped down from the altar toward the end of the ceremony and launched into a eulogy that was tender, and touching, and laced with humor and fond remembrance.

Mary had teaching in her blood, and found inspiration in the example of my great-grandfather, Joseph Griffin. He had been headmaster of the Templetuohy Boys School in Ireland’s County Tipperary, and was recognized three times by the British Government for his teaching excellence during a time when Britain still ruled Ireland and held no great fondness for recognizing native achievements across the Irish Sea and St. George’s Channel.

However, Mary’s vocation was not always apparent at an early age. According to a knowledgeable source who shall remain anonymous, Mary routinely earned good academic grades as a student at Maternity B.V.M. school in the Humboldt Park neighborhood in Chicago…but was constantly subject to reprimands for infractions of classroom decorum. And the reason?

“She could never stop talking in class!”

Nonetheless, Mary graduated from Chicago Teacher’s College, and then went on to earn a Master of Arts degree from Loyola University. Her instinctive refusal to be boxed in by convention as a teacher became a source of inspiration cited over and over by her students at the news of her passing. One man who attended her wake had become both a doctor and a teacher, and came to pay his fond respects to his former fourth grade teacher at Mozart School in Chicago. Mary Griffin, he said, had shown him at that early age what teaching could be, and he said her example had paved the way for his own teaching career.

For all her own clashes with authority as a youngster in school, Mary insisted on order and respect in her own classroom. One memorable example which was cited by several of her students was a certain day in 1972, at the height of anti-war protests and youthful self-expression, when the students at Foreman High School planned a “walk-out.” They may have walked out of other classroom…but not Miss Griffin’s.

“She placed herself across the classroom door and refused to let us out,” one student wrote. “That’s how much she cared! She is still alive in each of us! ‘Mr. Holland’s Opus’ has nothing on her!”

Mary’s subject matter in the public school system was often varied, but teaching Advanced Placement Modern European History classes at Foreman High School was a passion very dear to her heart. One of her keepsakes was a “thank you” letter written by a former student TWENTY THREE YEARS AFTER being in her history class. The student noted that Mary’s love of travel had inspired her students and captured their imaginations. “The year I had you for history class you had traveled to the U.S.S.R. after studying the language for several months in advance,” the former student wrote. “This made us realize that learning continues throughout life and can stimulate it beyond formal education.”

Another student wrote of “our beloved ‘Miss Griffin” in a condolence note, and described “the 'teacher extraordinaire’ who challenged her students to explore and question and see beyond our little corner of the world.” She “brought history alive” in the words of yet another student.

That love of travel ran as a constant thread through Mary’s life, and her trips abroad included China, all corners of Europe, Egypt, and South America. Her most recent passport bore stamps from Argentina, Ireland, England, Istanbul and Munich. She thought nothing of flying across the country for a weekend trip to take in a major art exhibition that would by-pass Chicago.

I was along for several of these excursions, and remember flying to New York City to take in the “Dresden Exhibition” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (we stayed at the Plaza Hotel, of course!), traveling to Washington D.C. by train to see the “Great Treasure Houses of Britain” exhibit at the Smithsonian, and driving to Pittsburgh to see the illuminated Irish manuscript known as the “Book of Kells” on tour from Trinity College in Dublin in the late 1970s. I believe that the statute of limitations has probably run on the speeding tickets we should have earned in that dash across several states, but that’s all I’m going to admit to in print.

A more recent jaunt was to Washington D.C. to see U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—one of Aunt Mary’s staunchly conservative heroes—preside over a reenactment of some historically significant federal case whose name and import now escape me. In 48 hours on the ground, we managed to squeeze in an exhibit at the Smithsonian, the shindig at the U.S. Supreme Court, and a tour of Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Hillwood Estate and Gardens. I came away from the adventure with a photo of me with Justice Scalia that looks like I’m on a date with Danny DeVito, and a picture of a terra cotta statue from Hillwood of Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, with her bow and arrows and her faithful dog. I still post it on my office door occasionally when I’m working on an appellate case, since it illustrates my gut feeling that appeal work is a lot like bow-hunting in a thicket. And it reminds me of our mile-a-minute adventure.

Once she “retired” from teaching in 1987, Mary just turned her natural talent to a different direction. Freed up from the responsibility and routine of grading papers and earning a paycheck, she launched herself into the world of volunteering at anything that caught her interest with a historical bent. Never without a book in hand or at her side about art or history or politics, she brought her combination of intellect and passion and humor to giving tours at art museums and historical museums and doing book reviews for the Irish Literary Society group.

Without question, though, among all the tours and talks she gave, her favorite was to lecture on the architecture along the Chicago River and the lakefront from the deck of one of the tour boats run by Chicago From the Lake. The experience combined her love of the outdoors, and her love of being on the water, with the grandeur of Chicago’s skyline and the colorful richness of its history. Her audiences loved it, and so did she. As her health declined in the last couple of years and frailty finally stood as a barrier to doing the boat tours anymore, there was a genuine sense of mourning when she spoke of the experience.

In a moving, witty and eloquent note of condolence, one of her favorite Chicago From the Lake boat captains, Rich Dalton, paid tribute to the docent he called “my favorite, the best, an original, one of a kind.”

“We loved working together,” Dalton wrote. “Mary told it the way it was, or at least the way it was according to Mary, and I can’t say that I very often disagreed. That was our bond. A highly opinionated, unfiltered, yet well thought out point of view, and a willingness to tell anyone who wanted to hear it, and even more so, those who didn’t.”

Sherry Avila, co-host of “Avila Chicago,” met Mary when they were docents at the Loyola Museum of Art, and became a close friend. She described herself as being “devastated” by the news of her passing. Avila said she pictured her friend giving “grrrand tours of Heaven” on horseback with her beloved Irish wolfhounds and Dalmatian at her side, and “knocking the wings off” the archangels with her “grrrand” spirit.

Mary had a “larger than life” quality about her that extended to her love of physical challenges as well. In her younger days, she was passionately devoted to horseback riding, and loved to ski and swim as well. And those who knew her well knew that she regarded shopping for bargains in quality clothing—Talbots was a favorite label—and jewelry as something of a primal sport. We often traded victory stories (and laughs) over the spoils from the hunt hanging in our closets.

The world is now a little less bright, and a little less colorful for Mary’s passing. But she leaves behind memories that cannot be erased. To echo the words of Captain Dalton who accompanied her so often down the Chicago River…

“God Bless, Fare thee well Mary.”

Tiger Beat

I’ve introduced myself—and been introduced—many different ways. I’ve been described as “the wife,” “the mother,” “the prosecutor,” “the photographer,” “the writer,” “the troop leader,” “the utility person,” “the ‘room mom’,” “the girlfriend,” “the mother of the bride,” “the award winner,” "the Hot Dog Fairy," “the driver,” and “the cocktail waitress.”

But this time, I was at the bedside of one of my kids at a hospital, and when the specialist walked in, trailing a couple of medical students behind, I stuck my hand out for a handshake in greeting, and announced my status so there would be no mistake.

“Hi, I’m Mary. I’m the mother tiger.”

I don’t know why it took me so long. It’s not like with four kids I’ve had any shortage of opportunities waiting for test results to come back, or X-rays to be analyzed, or abdomens to be palpated, or medical gurus to be consulted.

There’s something so primal, and visceral, and imperative about sitting guard at your child’s bedside when something’s gone wrong. All the medical professionals and fancy hospital technology and state-of-the-art monitoring are no substitute reassurance for parking yourself next to your cub to hold off the dangers lurking beyond in the dark forest. Danger can come from the things we can see (Man, that must have hurt when he hit that mogul!!) and sometimes from the things we can’t—microbes and antibodies and viruses and prions and environmental toxins and the dealer pushing baggies of crack in the shadows around the corner.

When we become parents, we are captives and keepers all in one. I remember standing beside the crib of my youngest son as he slept, only a few days old. In the silent room, with the lights dimmed, I was hit by a tidal wave of emotion and hormones, thinking “I adore you. I worship you. I would die to protect you.” That was eighteen years ago. I still feel the same way.

Years ago I read an essay about parenting by Michael Kelly, the late Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist who was killed in Iraq in 2003, and it has always stayed with me. Long before his death, he’d written a light-hearted yet poignant piece about parenting and what he called “the look,” that silly combination of worship and rapture that crosses our faces when we gaze at our kids when they’re not looking, regardless of the age of our offspring, or even their personal grooming habits.

I clipped it out of the paper to save, but running true to form, I can’t put my finger on the yellowing piece of newsprint that’s kicked around one dresser or desk drawer or another since then. I’d have loved to be able to quote some of it.

Suffice it to say that it captured, far more eloquently that I ever could, that universal surge of pride and protection and tenderness that comes with bringing the next generation into the world. I think the only thing he left out was that feral “mother tiger” thing. The certainty that anything that threatens the cub has to make it across a vast and vigilant expanse of claws and teeth first.

It came into play a couple of times during this last hospital stretch, and turned out to be good for a laugh or two…and, I think, some actual results. Or at least a little validation.

Before the specialist came in for the consult, we’d been handed off to a “hospitalist” to oversee the case during the stay at the hospital. Now this particular physician may have done very well in medical school…but still came up a bit short on people skills. Not very good at taming tigers either. Brusque, unsmiling, not terribly familiar with our situation, and dismissive of my questions and concerns to the point of rudeness.

“Hmmm,” the doc countered as she shot down one point after another. “And you have no medical training…” What could I say? Guilty as charged…and yet still vigorously challenging some fundamental underlying assumptions. So sue me. I aced high school logic, and this didn’t seem all that much different.

An unhappy doctor finally left the room, still not cracking a smile. The patient and I collectively exhaled in relief. “Geez, what a @#%$&!!” we concluded. I explained the dynamic that had just occurred with as colorful an analogy as I could summon.

“Honey, what you just saw could be called ‘the clash of the middle-aged Alpha females.”

I’d like to report that I’d engaged in this Alpha-female test of wills while stylishly decked out in spike heels…but the fact of the matter was that I’d slept in my sweats on an excruciatingly short hospital sofa the night before, and had had to beg a nurse for a spare toothbrush. I felt like road kill…but with claws.

Vindication came, however, a couple of hours later when the specialist came in and sorted things out. Jovial, quick-witted, astute and experienced, he deftly poked and prodded, quickly sketched the outlines of the medical mystery that had landed us there in the first place, and suggested a course of medication I’d already suggested, and had rejected, by Dr. Grumpy.

“So,” he asked brightly as he gathered his notes and medical students. “Does this make the mother tiger happy?”

“Purr….” I replied.

My cub has returned to the forest, and I’ve resumed my usual routine of too many things to do in too little time. But I still get to laugh at the way things played out.

The moral of this story is simple…when the chips are down, put your money on the tiger.

Two Hens and a Harley

Perfect days come in all shapes and sizes. Some people might require a stroll on a tropical beach wearing a sarong, and a fabulous sunset to make the grade. Others might require a Superbowl win for their favorite team and a really good pot-luck dinner while they're watching it on a 102 inch projection style television.

Mine usually involve some combination of a bonfire and an early autumn night, starry skies above and lightning bugs firing in the woods and the hollows at dusk. But I like to be flexible about these things. I had a perfect day just a month ago, and the two things that really made this particular combination "magic" and memorable were a Harley Sportster and a pair of delinquent ducks. I think that at the tail end of the day we even managed to fit in the bonfire and the starlit sky.

But really...it was still all about the ducks.

We're six days into December right now, edging closer to the first official day of winter though the temperatures in the morning have been jump starting me into the winter grumpies. Any day when the thermometer reads "something-teen" as I'm driving to work means that my winter mood has arrived already. And I hate winter.

If it wasn't five months long and didn't involve wind chills of forty or fifty below, I think I'd take it in stride a bit more easily. But this is Wisconsin, and I can still find pockets of snow in my garden in April. When I get cold, it can take me until the next day to really warm up, no matter how much hot chocolate with Kahlua and whipped cream and nutmeg sprinkled on top that I try to cure the chills with. And by the next day, we start the cycle all over again.

For me, the perfect winter would be about two weeks long. Over Christmas, of course, with enough snow on the ground to make a snowman, and some snow angels, and deep enough to make it worthwhile to bring out my snowshoes for my annual snowshoe trek around the edge of the property. Hot cider, cookies baking, fire crackling in the hearth, Currier & Ives feel to the holidays.

And then God can turn the switch to "Spring," and I'm ready to start looking at daffodils and crocuses and bluebirds again. So far he's still waiting on my suggestion.

In the meantime, we took one last glorious grab at a warm day on the motorcycle, and I have faith that it'll keep me going until April.

It was the first weekend in November, of all times, and the weather forecasters were predicting that temps could reach seventy degrees on Sunday. We hadn't had the bike out very often this year, and October had been a complete wash. Cold, relentlessly rainy, dreary, dismal, dispiriting. Forget the expectation of "Indian summer," that appointed time went by under grey skies and cold drizzle. We felt cheated, big time, by the loss of fall afternoons that should have been spent in the yard or on the bike. I walked around constantly grumbling that I wanted a refund for the month of October. Who even cared that we might get a few warm days later on, when the daylight was so short that the yard was dark by the time we cut loose from our actual jobs.

But still, a seventy degree weekend day is nothing to waste no matter what time of year, and we packed up a picnic lunch and broke out the bike. "Let's put the sun in our faces," he said, and I didn't need a second invitation. There's a reason the leather jacket and black boots sit in the closet closest to my front door. I brought sub sandwiches and chips and a cookie apiece, and we took the meandering back roads west to the city of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. We indeed had the sun in our faces as we rode past fields and evergreens and marshes with tall grasses and cattails bending in the breeze.

By two in the afternoon, we were ready for lunch, and pulled up to a spot beside a lake in the middle of the city. A stretch of raised concrete beside the water was the perfect picnic spot, and we settled in, our legs dangling over the side. A pair of identical mallard hens came swimming over to us as we unwrapped our sandwiches. These ducks were so cute!!!!! Bright eyed and buoyant, curious and friendly, they eyed us with precision and intent.

Our first inkling that something surprising might be afoot was when one of the hens launched herself in a flurry of wing beats out of the water and landed on my boyfriend's lap, then sank her beak into his sandwich, pulling away a chunk of bread. The brazen hussy!! He waved her off and back into the water, and then cracked up with laughter. We didn't get much of a break, though, because first one, then the other, then at times both, kept up in launch mode.

I'd never been that close to a wild duck before, but this was surreal and hysterically funny. I held my arm out to protect my sandwich at one point, only to have one of the hens fly up and land on my forearm like a raptor, balancing on her little wet webby orange feet until I jiggled her off and back into the lake. After the first few tries of lap landing, the pair changed their direct approach to one of landing beside us on the concrete, and trying to sneak their beaks into our laps to nibble at crumbs. At least a couple of times a minute, I'd be fitting my free hand under a duck's warm, feathered chest or tummy, and lifting her up off the concrete and casually dropping (or tossing) her back into the water without ceremony.

Crunching a handful of potato chips and throwing them on the water occasionally bought us a few extra seconds to take a bite or two of our sandwiches without being molested, as the hens scurried after the chips floating on the water like a pair of guided missiles. Though it's it's hard to chew and laugh at the same time without choking. I don't know what possessed me to leave my little digital camera behind, other than the desire to just have nothing to do for an afternoon than sit on the back of the bike and empty my mind as the countryside rolled past.

We eventually made it through our lunch, though I'd have to guess that the ducks made off with about a third of our sandwiches, most of the potato chips, and half of the cookies. Okay, by the time they were nibbling on pieces of macadamia nut cookies, we were officially volunteering the treats. The afternoon started to cool under the bright blue sky, and we finally got up to leave. Tossing our sandwich wrappers into a trash can nearby, I looked up at a small sign hanging in the parking lot behind us warning visitors not to feed the waterfowl.

Oops. It reminded me of hiking at the Grand Canyon with my son a few years ago and having a marvelous, memorable time feeding granola bars to a friendly squirrel, only to finally see the tiny "do not feed..." sign as we were leaving. Oops!

The rest of the day unfolded with familiar joys--cutting and stacking firewood, dinner, a bonfire on an unbelievably warm November evening, and an inky sky studded with stars.

But it's the ducks I'll be laughing about all the way through the long, cold winter, reminding me of a perfect ride in the country on a perfect warm fall day. I hope that bold-as-brass pair of mallards finally figures out the way south with the rest of the flock. That whole "shoreline banditry" thing only works when there are easy marks on a warm, sunny day.

The Coffee and Chainsaw Connection

I pushed the familiar number on speed dial on my cell phone to let my friend Judy know I was running late for coffee.

This is nothing new, sometimes the "I'm running late" call comes from her end. We have four kids (now adults in varying stages) apiece, and two ex-husbands (one each). She has two grandkids, I have a dog and a cat and a "grand-pug" and two "grand-cats" that sometimes come to visit. Her house burned down about a year ago, my fifteen acres of fields and woods are starting to crowd me and look like something Maurice Sendik dreamed up. We both have things that make us stare at the ceiling in the middle of the night.

We're always trying to cram one too many things into our lives, but we try to make time for coffee once in a while, around hair appointments and sick children and travel plans and work schedules and the assortment of surprises life's always throwing at you. I invariably drink my coffee loaded with chocolate and whipped cream. Judy's the more adventurous one, she'll foray into things with pumpkin spice and caramel this time of year. Thirty years ago or so when we met, Judy was a dead ringer for the actress Kate Bosworth of "Blue Crush" and "Beyond the Sea" fame. I looked thirty years younger then too, and my hair was really and truly brown. I don't look like anybody famous, but I remind a lot of people of somebody they've already met. When somebody I work with told me they thought I looked like Annette Benning, I could have busted a rib laughing.

It's good to have friends who know where the bones are buried and always forgive you for falling off your diet. Because, as we all know, coffee loaded with whipped cream and chocolate will always be the slippery slope.

This morning, though, my excuse was a tad unorthodox, and eight hours later I'm still turning over the particular combination of words in my head.

"I'm running a little late because my chainsaw got stuck in a log."

Good lord, what being single has done to me!!

Now before you start to picture me as Paula Bunyon with a blue ox parked in the garage, picture this. Only two weeks before, I was doing the tango--badly, but with enthusiasm--on a vintage dance hall floor in a polka-dotted silk chiffon dress, magenta suede stilettos with tiny patent leather bows, and a Gerbera daisy the size of a saucer in my hair. I like shoe shopping, I'm absolutely addicted to chocolate, and I really like to be pampered.

Four years ago, when the ink was barely dry on the divorce that had followed a long and very traditional marriage (he worked long hours, I kept the home fires burning and the soccer uniforms washed), I didn't know a hex wrench from a jar of honey. But little by little, necessity being the mother of invention, I've accumulated a few tools and now know how to use them. A cordless drill was the first, sparked by the need to immediately fix a pasture fence to keep the horses in. A tool kit, though to be fair, it's really a pretty turquoise and opaque white fishing tackle box. A level. And the piece de resistance, the rechargeable-battery operated chainsaw. That purchase was made after one windy night when a large dead tree came down across my driveway and shattered, and I had nothing but a handsaw to use on some of the larger limbs. Aerobics classes be damned, that was hard work!

Envisioning yet more dead trees coming down across the driveway at inconvenient times such as when I'd be leaving for work, I took myself shopping and picked out the smallest, most benign-looking chainsaw I could find. It's not much bigger than a blender, though it still carries the requisite air of potential dismemberment that keeps me treating it with a lot of respect. And wearing heavy leather gloves. I remember still how terrified I was when, on one vacation, my ex-husband would disappear solo into the woods for several hours at a time to trim trees and brush on a lakefront lot we had purchased when the kids were still quite small. Death, disaster, life as a widow, all sorts of dire scenarios ran through my head like leaves in a storm until he'd walk through the door again, still in one piece. Now it's my friends who worry about me on the weekends as I wield my tiny chainsaw in the woods, battling nature and, to be honest, losing most of the time.

This morning's hitch came about as I was trying to detangle a Gordian knot of three dead trees that had crashed down on each other in a windstorm a couple of weeks earlier. I'd been working on it every opportunity where there was brief spell of dry weather. If a tree falls in a forest, nobody much gives a damn. But one of these trees had fallen into the beautiful crabapple tree at the edge of my yard that I had gotten from the kids for Mother's Day years earlier. Another rested in the branches of a smaller trash tree twenty feet away. And they had all come down like a giant three-dimensional game of JENGA. One fell east, one fell southeast, and one fell north atop each other, forked branches intertwining. As I cautiously worked on cutting the farthest, smallest branches and clearing out a thicket of leafy vines that obscured those complicated spatial relationships, I stood back often, trying to figure out what I could safely pull on that wouldn't have something else and something bigger fall on me.

I thought I had it all figured out, with several fireplace-sized cuts of wood already stacked on the lawn from my efforts today. But then as the little saw blade gamely tore through yet another good sized tree limb, something further up the line jiggled, and then something else shifted, and then the half-cut tree-limb closed down on the blade and the jig was up. I tugged, and tugged, and tugged some more, but it was hopeless. At least for me. I trudged back to the garage and brought out my hand saw and put a lot more elbow grease into freeing my stuck little battery-operated tool than I ever thought I'd do with a saw again. Then I put everything away and drove to meet Judy for coffee at a frou-frou coffee joint.

There have been a lot of little "self-sufficiency" markers in the past four years, starting with dragging out a ladder to change the light bulb in the foyer (always a source of much cursing by my ex, and, I've discovered, with good reason) and moving on to installing handles on the basement storage cabinets, replacing a bathroom fixture, and fixing a toilet. Twice. Nothing that I'd ever contemplated when my understanding of life roles came down to "his" and "hers." Much has changed since then, some of it still making my head spin if I think about it too much.

I still like chiffon, spike heels, romantic walks on the beach, and bouquets of flowers for absolutely no reason.

But dang it...I like my little chain saw too!!

Ship Out of Water

A trip to the Milwaukee Art Museum is always such a visual treat, long before you even get to the artwork on display inside. Part "ship out of water," part mechanical giant butterfly, with a Dale Chihuly glass "tree" inside the lobby that looks like it's from "under the sea" and giant aspen leaves that never fall just down the street at Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin, it's always an excuse to grab a cup of coffee and just stop and stare for a while...

Tough Enough?

The scene in the courtroom still haunts me ten years later.

I remember the tears that sprang hot to my eyes as I shut the door behind me and walked down the corridor, thinking "I am not tough enough to do this job." I was a law student then, a seasoned criminal prosecutor now. And from time to time, out of nowhere, still comes that memory. It is seared into my consciousness, a testament to "collateral damage," and a mother's grief--two mothers, in fact--and consequences reaped by horrific acts, and how nothing in life, either evil or good, ever happens in a vacuum.

But first, a bit about my job. For the past nine years I've been unbelievably fortunate to work as a criminal prosecutor in a part-time capacity. When I got hired, I felt like I'd hit the jackpot in terms of balancing life and work and family. I still do. I had four kids at home when I'd started law school, and still had three kids living at home when I finished. Getting to do the work I loved in a half-time structure meant that I could still make it to soccer practice and gymnastic meets and find the time to bake team cupcakes decorated like tennis balls and help with homework and volunteer at school and cook dinner on a regular basis. Okay, a semi-regular basis. My kids really got quite sick of "rotisserie chicken" and potato salad from the grocery store deli every Tuesday night.

This was a new position, not only for me, but for the District Attorney's office as well. And so little by little, my job duties evolved to make the most use of my time there and my previous background as a writer. While no one I work with would, I think, dare call me the politically incorrect "miscellaneous backup chick," I make sport of it myself. One cop, introducing me to another, described me as the office's "utility person." I have my areas of specialty--appellate work, child support prosecutions, seizing assets from drug dealers, responding to requests by inmates who are unhappy that their probation or parole has been revoked and want the trial court to overturn that administrative decision--and then I just get thrown into a lot of things with little warning. It comes with the job. I've argued four cases before the state supreme court, I've been admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court...and I handle a lot of speeding tickets as well.

But being the part-timer means that for the most part, I don't handle the big cases from start to finish. I may review their police reports, I may issue the charges, I may even brief or argue a pre-trial motion, but I'm rarely there for the finish.

Ten years ago, I was simply a spectator in the courtroom. And it has stayed with me every step of the way since then.

A young man's life hung in the balance. His was the last sentencing hearing of a trio of young men who had, months earlier, kidnapped and savagely victimized a young woman in a highly-publicized case. There were no reporters in the courtroom this time, no television cameras, no members of the public. Just the routine players in this type of drama. A judge, the defendant, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, the courtroom staff. And the families. Both his and hers.

His mother went first, a lioness trying to protect her son. She walked into the courtroom with a bearing that was so precise it was almost military. She was a flight attendant, and wore her navy uniform proudly, crisp white accents with glints of gold, her hair pulled severely back. The courtroom was a high security place, which meant that in addition to armed bailiffs being present as a matter of course, the "gallery" was separated from the court by walls of glass and wood. Sound was amplified and conveyed by microphone and speaker.

For nearly a half hour the young man's mother spoke before the judge, passionately pleading for mercy. Sometimes her voice was strong, sometimes it broke with emotion. In her hand she held copies of papers and artwork he had created in grade school that had hung on her refrigerator door years before. She told the tale of his life, which was in large part a tale of hers as well. Of a severely abusive relationship that she had finally found the courage to leave, of her struggle to claw her way out of a life of despair and establish herself as a professional in a field that leaves nothing to chance and relies on absolute accountability and responsibility. Her son's failings were not all his, she argued. He had been such a good child. But a cousin--one of the other defendants, in fact--had often led him astray as he was growing up. And she, in her job, had not always been there to counterbalance the influence.

And then the victim's mother spoke. The girl herself was not in the courtroom, but her mother and some other people were there to stand up for her. This mother was, on the outside, less crisply glamorous, more plain spoken than the woman who spoke before her. But she spoke eloquently about her child nonetheless, about a wonderful and responsible young girl who was the first in her family to go to college, who had a life bright and shining with promise and optimism. And whose life had been utterly broken by no fault of her own. Her daughter had had so much taken from her, and would never be the same. There needed to be justice here.

The prosecutor spoke then too, and the defense attorney, though I remember little of what either of them had to say. Real life and real heartaches trump the speeches of professionals most of the time.

And then it was the judge's turn. The words of the law fell heavily in the windowless courtroom. Punishment. Rehabilitation. Protection of the public. Concepts that judges apply every day in courtrooms across the country, elastic in their application but fixed in their importance as guiding principle.

But the moment that stays with me was one that was happening on the other side of the glass, in the gallery that separates the official participants in the case from everyone else. As the judge began to speak, the mother of the young man who had done such wrong walked around to the first row of the gallery, and knelt in front of the young woman's mother and put her hand on the other woman's lap. "I am so sorry," she said, and bowed her head, and then the two of them listened together for a verdict delivered in the pursuit of justice that would never make either of their children alright.

I fled the courtroom at that point, though not before hearing a sentence handed down which ensured that the young man would never see an ordinary sunlit day outside of a prison for most of his life, if not all. "I am not tough enough for this job," I thought as I wiped the tears away with my hand and then left the building.

It's been ten years since that day in the courtroom, nine years since I started working as a criminal prosecutor. I've had by victories and I've had my defeats, and none of them have shaken me to the core as much as this one did. I look back and still wonder whether I'm "tough enough" for the oath I've taken.

If I'm very lucky, I think and pray, I'll somehow make it to retirement before I ever find out.