I am thriving. What I enjoy most about this new work is supporting students of color and students from other underrepresented communities in keeping their nose to the grindstone and their eyes on the prize when life tries to get in the way. I am making less money than I’d made as a lawyer, and the trajectory for future income is nowhere near as high as that of a lawyer, but the knot in my stomach as I think about going to work the next day is gone. And that is worth its weight in gold.
I feel engaged and productive as a problem solver in the lives of humans. We have a little baby boom in the student population with five or six students who themselves are pregnant or whose partners are, and it seems only logical to take an unused storage closet and spruce it up and outfit it to serve as a room for nursing mothers. I also have a fantastic boss and mentor in Paul Brest, an exalted white male law professor who engages me in conversation as if my mind works well and my thoughts genuinely interest him. As if we are equals in the work of helping other humans thrive.
Now in a more relaxed and welcoming work environment, now enjoying myself in my career, now surrounded by many more people of color in the law school student body, and on the faculty and staff, I stop pressing my hair flat and pulling it into a ponytail or bun and begin to let my hair down. Wear it natural. I experiment with the creams and conditioners made for hair like mine that are being developed in response to a burgeoning population of mixed race women, and that I can find via the Internet.
In May of 1999 when I am thick with nine months of pregnancy, waddling up and down stairs, just hoping my water won’t break until the school term is over, one of our students takes his life. I’d interacted with him a number of times. He was tall and thin, sweet and funny, and had eyes that shone with curiosity and intellect. Whenever he showed up at my door I knew he’d be warm and respectful, and present a problem he’d already gone to great lengths to resolve before coming to me.
The day after his death his shattered parents come to Paul’s office late in the afternoon, and Paul asks me and a few other university officials to be there with him. Together we sit with the parents as disbelief gives way to frustration and when, finally, their anguish releases. We know we’d perhaps known their son in ways they did not, and know just as equally that none of that is relevant now.
The conversation ebbs and flows from the sadness to the practicalities of the young man’s belongings, records, and so forth, back to the emotional, and even the existential. Seeing the meeting going long into the night, Paul nudges, then urges, then with his eyes almost begs me to go home. I sit on his couch with my legs neatly tucked beneath me, wearing the black maternity dress I’d put on that morning after hearing the news. I just smile gently at Paul and nod a silent thanks but I’m okay.
Later in trying to be more aware of why exactly I loved the work I was now doing, I’d reflect back on this night sitting with parents experiencing the first shock waves of the unimaginable, and I’d see it clearly. The law partner who’d taken me to lunch implored me to work longer hours despite my grief; here, in total contrast, amid the greatest crisis a school administration can experience, was a boss telling me to go take care of myself. I learned that night that bearing witness to the suffering of another human is the most sacred work we can do.