Shakily leafing through handfuls of ads and bills, I stood in the little cul-de-sac where my mom lives. There it was: "to Adella Thompson, luv the Washington State Bar Association" typed neatly in more official words on the outside. The dreaded envelop of life changing portent! Inside that innocuous white paper lay the key to my career or the agony of at least six more months of bar-angsting agony. Standing there, judging the weight to decide if it was heavy enough to be an acceptance letter, I had one of those "red-pill-blue-pill" moments. But it was too late to turn back. Ripping open the outer seal, I saw forms. Forms are good - things to fill out, checks to write... these are good. Anything but a slim sheet of tersely worded "NO" is good. There were demographics surveys. That was good. But there would be no release until I saw those words "We are pleased to inform you..." Surely they wouldn't be pleased to break my heart and crush my dreams. Surely!! Right??? YOU HAVE PASSED THE BAR. Six months of dizzying panic, tears, gnashing of teeth rushed from every pore in a not-entirely-comfortable catharsis. I screamed "oh thank god," startling the children playing near by, and crunch over in a sudden onset of tears. I remember these tears. When the report on my mom's hysterectomy came back with stage ONE (i.e. "highly treatable"), they were the same tears. Sheer and utter relief and the dying thralls of those omnipresent lingering "what ifs" that seep between our human optimism. "IT" was over.
Not wanting to scare my mom - waiting patiently inside - with the teary eyes and staggering shakes that were coursing through me, I took a moment to breathe and compose myself, wandered into the house and nearly whispered "I passed." We hugged. I cried a little bit. I'm pretty sure she cried a little bit. The hug lasted roughly the duration of the Reagan administration. There were forms. Yes, forms. Before telling any one else, there were forms. To make it real. I wrote the licensing check three times in decreasingly chaotic scrawl, still shaking and shaking my head. I filled out each additional form, liberally crossing out the unrush of typos and misinformation that gushed from my pen in the haze of relieved stupor. Envelops? Of course not. But minor details.Finally, I reclaimed my backpack, laden with the Barbri books I was too superstitious to get rid of until I knew I wouldn't be needing them again. Books went into the recycling.
At the end of the day, this is the end of limbo! Even before the end of the day. At the end of mail service. The hold placed on my life this last six months (three years?) has officially been lifted. Now it's business cards, advertisements, malpractice insurance! In two weeks, I will be a sworn in member of the legal profession authorized to "practice" and boy had I better practice, because I am breathless at the kind of responsibility I'm about to acquire in my newly formed fiduciary relationships.
Over the next two weeks, it is slowly going to settle in - those questions and feelings and fears that I might have expected at graduation, but was too busy to reflect upon. For now, though, forget what it means to have the future wide open and to be forming a permanent professional relationship with the same pomp and commitment as the marriages I'm planning to help dissolve (ok, hopefully the marriages that won't need my services)... for now, let it rest merely with this: I never ever ever have to take the bar exam ever again!!!!
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