The Last "Intake Monday"

This essay about retiring first appeared on my "Growing Bolder" blog last August. But it just won FIRST PLACE in its blogging category in the Illinois Woman's Press Association's annual communications contest!  

After eighteen years of spending all of my “working” Mondays in the intake branch of Wisconsin’s criminal court system, I had my last pedal-to-the-metal “intake Monday” yesterday. Retirement, complete with punch and cake and goodbye hugs, is just hours away. I would be lying if I didn’t say I felt quite…unmoored. It has been quite the amazing journey. Rather than having an "empty nest" at my own home, I suddenly feel like I am leaving a sheltering nest of my own. What a cosmic turnaround!



To mark the occasion, I wore one of my stalwart pairs of stiletto heels, pumps with a grey and white faux snakeskin pattern and an equally fake illusion of having more expensive “stacked” heels. After ten years, the shoes had become a little wobbly, and one of them occasionally squeaked as I walked. But they were like old friends, and a familiar sight in court.



The other thing I made sure to wear was the ornate carved silver bracelet that my godmother had given me at my law school graduation. She envisioned it as my “signature” piece of jewelry, something that would catch the light as I made theatrical hand gestures in court. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my wrists and hands were so tiny that if I made such a flourish, the bracelet would likely fly off my arm and clock someone on the side of the head. But for the last day, I wore it to honor her. She had been a trailblazing, world-traveling high school teacher, and had served as the inspiration for many, including myself.




This becoming-a-lawyer thing was my second career…or my third, if you count the “soccer mom” years where I multi-tasked by writing magazine and newspaper articles while my youngest children were napping.



I was forty when I started law school as a part-time student, with four kids ranging from kindergarten to high school under the familial roof, and a life-long, bone-deep fear of public speaking. Only a year before I had spent several months in a body cast, the result of a horseback riding accident that left me with a broken back and a wake-up call to start heeding my “inner voice.”



Three and a half years later, I was getting sworn in as a newly minted attorney and soon found my dream job as a state prosecutor, working part-time handling everything from speeding tickets to appeals before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I worked in an incredibly beautiful Art Deco courthouse on the shore of Lake Michigan, and always felt like I was working on the side of the angels, blessed to be charged with a job whose professional ethics literally required us to seek justice rather than just to win at any cost. Talk about being part of a real-life “Justice League”!





As the part-time prosecutor, I had few cases of my own that I followed from start to finish. Rather, I provided backup for the other full-time prosecutors, who were called to be in two places at once on a regular basis. Mondays in particular were top-heavy with cases as the attorney “on intake” spent the morning reviewing police reports and dictating criminal complaints for people who had committed felonies over the preceding weekend, and I furiously worked to get up to speed on a combination of pending cases and new “initial appearances” for folks who had been given misdemeanor citations and told to come back to face the music and their formal charges several weeks later. I describe it as “catch and release.”



And over time, I overcame the challenges of public speaking…and picked up the challenge of mastering life in high heels. I was a late bloomer when it came to this, way past the age of 40 when in a moment of weakness and curiosity and urged on by my younger daughter, I bought a pair of sling-back faux alligator brown stilettos. And then bright pink stilettos. And then plaid stilettos with little bows.  And then…you get the picture. I figure that after tomorrow, unless I’m giving a speech somewhere, I’ll be in flats for the rest of my life. No more the echoing snap of spike heels on a polished stone floor, announcing that trouble is just around the corner…and closing fast.

But that was just a bonus. More than the challenging and personally rewarding work, and the steadfast and wonderful people I worked with and the friendships that bloomed, and the closeness to the Lake Michigan shoreline that drew me to the water on so many lunch hours…the past eighteen years have also provided a solid anchor during tremendous personal storms.

My tenure at the job has seen me through the end of my marriage; the divorce; several serious health crises involving my kids; my own health setbacks; endless 240 miles loops of crisis management and medical response involving relatives in my home town of Chicago; the decline and deaths of my father and godmother; the wrenching move from my “empty nest” home of 32 years in the country to a place in the city close to my job; the whole “empty nest” thing at all; the passing of several beloved pets including the two horses I had loved and cared for since I was a teenager; and just this year the typhoon of chaos revolving around my 94 year old mother suffering a broken hip. Whether up or down, feeling depressed, exhausted, elated, triumphant, happy or some combination of all, I could count on the fact that every single Monday I had a seat in a courtroom and a job to do, frequently starting with the words “The State appears by…” It provided me with a routine, and a structure, and a set of familiar duties, and a specific place in the universe. And now, in less than a day, I will be casting off from this solid, secure dock and setting sail on unknown seas to a new stage of life and adventure.

It feels more than a little scary!

Perhaps I shouldn’t be quite as dramatic as all that. I still have the same children, the same friends, the same hobbies, the same inquisitive nature. Perhaps instead of looking back at the past eighteen years as a prosecutor with such a sense of wistfulness, I ought to look back at a few years before that, when I threw myself off the familiar path of journalism and with a “carpe diem” sense of destiny, took the plunge into law school.

Perhaps. All I know is, when I was starting to take things down from my office bulletin board this week, I not only uncovered photos of some treasured moments, I also found a pin that a friend had given me when I graduated from law school nearly twenty years earlier. I laughed when I studied it closely before packing it to bring home.  Right now, I can’t think of a better message to begin this new journey with!

Pelican Lessons

Everybody's got "the story."

For some folks--most famously Oprah these days--it's the "aha moment," that wonderful instant in the cosmos when a vital, incredibly important, life-changing realization strikes and the heavens part and the world divides into "before" and "after" and the path ahead becomes suddenly clear.

Before the "aha moment" entered the modern lexicon, it was the "Eureka moment," inextricably linked to Archimedes jumping out of his bathtub a couple of millenia ago and running naked down the street with excitement at the recognition of the concept of water displacement, which was a very big deal.

Well, "aha" and "Eureka" moments are great and all, but there's something beatific and divine and let's face it, bland and rather undramatic about them in the long run. I think "aha" and I think celestial energy and light flowing down from the heavens to shed enlightenment without irritation or effort or sweat or rueful discovery.

The story I'm sure everyone has lurking in their past and marking another important fork in the road has a bit more of an edge and a definite learning curve to it.

I think of it as the "I knew it!!" moment. It's that flash of genius when you realize that you've been listening to the wrong voices (sometimes your own), ignoring your own insight and intuition, turning a blind eye to the truth. It's that moment when a wife's discovered her husband was in fact cheating and the lipstick on his collar really wasn't hers; the good advice of friends wasn't nearly as good as it seemed; and that little old lady who lived down the lane really was running the drug ring you suspected but just couldn't put your finger on why, or get past the smell of her gingerbread cookies wafting into the street as you passed.

The "I knew it!!" moment sometimes come with a tinge of regret, often comes with a "once bitten, twice shy" moral, and always comes with the conviction that listening to your inner voice is the most important counsel you'll keep from now on. It can appear while you're laughing out loud, crying with disappointment, or having coffee with a tart-tongued buddy. And despite our best intentions, if we're slow learners, we can even get more than just one.

In my own case, I'll admit to being denser than a gourmet cheesecake at times and I have several of these road markers along the way. The most portentious, serious, highest stakes incident involved ignoring that "inner voice" in favor of taking one more run at a wood fence on a tall horse against my better judgment, and ended up with an ambulance, lights and sirens, a backboard, a whole lotta pain, and the words "you have a broken back" to ponder for the following three months in a body cast.

But I'd rather not use that reference point most of the way, when all I really need to think of are...pelicans.

The road to revelation was a two-lane ribbon of asphalt that ran through the Horicon Marsh. I was passing through on a long drive from the courthouse where I work to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where my daughter was receiving an award of some sort that came with a very nice dinner. With no time to spare, no binoculars or field guide in the car, and no hiking clothes either, I still stole ten whole minutes to explore a three mile driving loop through the marsh that caught my attention as I drove the scenic route recommended by a cop I work with. So I'd rather watch birds than people. Sue me!

I drove deep into the marsh and far from passing traffic, and parked the car by a boardwalk that ran directly into the marsh. I stepped into a world of water and nature and trilling sounds and wonder. As the late afternoon sun shimmered on the water and illuminated the tall vegetation beyond, there were myriad takeoffs and landings occurring around me, splashings and wingbeats and fluttering sounds. Something white caught my eye, and I stared in wonder as three huge white birds soared in from the periphery and came in for a landing past where the glimmering plane of water was interrupted by rushes and cattails and an air of mystery.

I stood, transfixed and mesmerized until they disappeared. The golden sunlight shown on gleaming white feathers with wingtips tipped in inky black. From my far-off vantage point, there was a joy and and an ease and a lilt to their flight as they circled and floated and finally landed gracefully in the reeds, well protected from prying eyes. These birds were huge. They seemed the size of hang-gliders, easily the biggest birds I'd ever seen.

And there was a flash of something familiar to them. For just an instant, I thought "pelicans!!" And then reason and rationality set in and I shut that thought down. "Nah," I thought. "Couldn't be." Too big by far, entirely wrong in color, a thousand miles from the Georgia shoreline where I was used to seeing them skimming the waves and the palm trees overhead like prehistoric throwbacks before alighting by the dozens on a sandbar in the Atlantic.

I got back in the car, drove the rest of the way to the awards dinner, and wondered all night and for days after what exactly I had seen. Could they possibly be whooping cranes? I knew that a few of these rare birds had been sighted recently somewhere in the marsh, and that seeing them was like finding the birdwatcher's Holy Grail. Could I have been among the chosen few?

I pondered the mystery for the next few weeks. Called a Department of Natural Resources warden I worked with on occasion and asked his advice. Where had I seen this trio, he asked. We weren't entirely sure that the area of vegetation was a customary place for whooping cranes to nest. Had I thought about the possibilities of trumpeter swans, he wondered. What about herons?

I stewed over the puzzle for weeks, reaching out to other birdwatchers with little satisfaction. The optimist in me really hoped that I'd seen a trio of whooping cranes. What an accomplishment!! What bragging rights!! But as I thumbed through my well-worn bird guides, I realized that this couldn't be the answer. Whooping cranes would have the same silhouette in flight as the slightly smaller sandhill cranes I could identify in my sleep--a vaguely alien form, as though you took a goose and added an element of elastic to it, neck strangely thin and elongated, long legs trailing out behind like twigs. I'd caught just a fragmentary glimpse, but there was an elegance of movement that could not be denied. Just like a few bars of Beethoven's Fur Elise can be mistaken for nothing else.

Likewise for herons--the size was off by a lot. What I'd seen was enormous. And the more I looked at the descriptions and listing for trumpeter swans, the more I recognized that the flight pattern was wrong. The birds I'd seen soared and glided and flew with a playfulness that swans and geese, I knew, just didn't have. If you've ever paid attention to a goose in flight, you know that it's a big-ass bird. There's a lot of meat to haul from one point to the next, and there's no room in that equation for burning fuel to have fun. A goose reminds me of a C-130 transport plane--it moves a lot of weight, and flies in a no-frills straight line.

I had reached a dead end. The mystery was still alive and well, but I was all out of leads. I tried to push it out of my mind.

A few weeks later, though, I was back at the marsh, this time for a leisurely morning of hiking and bird watching, a sanity break in a busy life, a battery recharge at the font of nature. Sneakers on and binoculars looped around my neck, I walked, and I sat, and I kept an eye out for another glimpse of those white visitors. No luck. As I finally heading home I took a different route, one that ran past the wildlife refuge's main visitor center. I stopped in, looked around, stepped out on the deck and looked out at the marsh spread out before me. A ranger was working in the office, and I put the puzzle to her. Explained the inspiring thrill of the sighting, the inquiries, the ponderings, the frustration.

"I'll bet they're white pelicans," she said.

WHAT!!!

Unbeknownst to my local expert fifty miles away, the Horicon Marsh is a summer breeding ground for thousands of white pelicans. I hadn't even known they existed. I'd simply asked the wrong person for advice. The ranger showed me a postcard in the gift shop. Sure 'nuf, they looked right. I ripped through my bird guides to the section on pelicans I'd never thought to open, and there it was, in black and white and full color. With a wingspread of nine feet, no wonder I'd thought they were the biggest damn birds I'd ever seen.

And with that, I smiled, even laughed a little. "I knew it!!" I thought in triumph.

And now as I blunder through every day since then full of judgment calls and leaps of faith and decisions big and small, if I need a little validation for the idea of trusting my gut, I just look back at a warm spring afternoon on a Wisconsin marsh, and think...

Pelicans.

Squirrel Mercies

I have changed the steps of the dance.

The bird feeder sits on the back deck, in square view of the window over my kitchen sink, as it has for the past twenty-five years or more. The feeder is now cracked and weatherbeaten, as is the deck that it sits on, attached by a brace of wood . And if I'm going to be perfectly honest about it, okay, I admit I've developed a few lines and creaks of my own in that time frame too.

The feeder has a hinged roof, and the simple design contemplates that two panes of plexiglas contain the sunflower seeds that I could pour in from the top every few days, refilling the tank when the level gets low. I have long since abandoned that as an ideal, ever since the neighborhood raccoons discovered that by ripping out the plexiglas they could access the entire cache of seeds at once. Usually in the middle of the night. It would drive the dog--my first dog Muttsie, followed when she passed by Shadow, then by Rocket, then Bandit--absolutely bonkers. In fact the racoons broke one of the two panes, rendering the entire assemblage utterly useless for storing anything but a cup and a half of sunflower seeds at any given time. 

This winter has seemed particularly harsh and brutal, and so I've taken up the duty/challenge/gauntlet of stepping out on to the porch every frigid morning to set out a cup or two of "hulled" sunflower seeds for the birds. I buy this pricey variety of seeds because they comes with the hard black shells removed. It makes an easier meal for a number of birds that wouldn't otherwise come to the feeder. Cardinals and goldfinches can easily crack the whole seeds open with their strong beaks. Nuthatches naturally would have to work at it a little harder. 

And so every morning I am greeted by a mixed flock of hungry birds hanging out on my deck, giving me reproachful stares and impatient glances until I don gloves and boots and a down coat and emerge with the plastic container holding their breakfast. It is a colorful assemblage that settles down to eat between fluttery comings and goings--woodpeckers in black and white, buff and red; white and red-breasted nuthatches; cardinals; chickadees; goldfinches; snowbirds.

Other than a trio of babies that decided to check out the porch one night last summer, I haven't noticed any raccoons making midnight forays lately. Let's face it, the birds clear out the seeds I put out in the morning by lunchtime. However, there is the occasional squirrel...or even two...that stop by. 

I have long been entranced by the comings and goings of squirrels in the forest and on city streets, their chittering backtalk, the grace with which they jump from branch to branch, the way they run up and around a tree trunk like a stream of mercury. That they are intelligent and wily and resourceful there is no doubt. But for years they were scarce in my yard, and entirely absent from the deck. It was simply a matter of environment--when the house and the deck were both new, the forest where they lived was much farther away. Over three decades, however, natural succession has taken root. Small saplings have become trees, shrubs have migrated nearer to the edge of the yard, and the forest drew closer to the house. And so did the squirrels.

When Bandit was still alive, I enjoyed watching him chase them from the feeder and the porch. Bandit was what I sometimes called my "Lazarus dog," a chocolate lab/beagle mix with a bad liver who had come back from the precipice of death more times than I could remember. And despite his age, on his good days he was blazingly fast. And he loved to chase squirrels like greyhounds love to chase mechanical rabbits. 

We evolved a routine over time that relied on a pas de deux of pantomime and whispers. Once I spied a squirrel at the feeder, I'd duck out of sight and whisper "squirrel" in Bandit's direction. He'd spring to his feet and race me to the back hallway so that I could throw the screen door open like the starting gate at Churchill Downs. The squirrel would get a head start, of course, as soon as he heard us bumping around in the narrow hall, all elbows (mine) and wagging tail (his) but that never deterred Bandit from turning on the speed and chasing his prey deep into the woods. He never caught one, but we both appreciated the chase. It made me laugh with delight every time to see how much enthusiasm he brought to the pursuit.

Bandit eventually died, and in his place came Lucky, a wolf-sized border collie mix with even more speed, and a taste for wildlife. Rabbits in particular, but I think he'd eat just about anybody. I have literally wrestled in the snow over a frozen rabbit carcass with this dog, and I only won half the battle.

One day I decided to try out the "chase the squirrel off the porch" routine with Lucky, and he spooked that squirrel so badly that the squirrel ran right past the first couple of big trees with a slavering dog hot on his tail, and eventually found shelter in a third. 

The thought has crossed my mind lately that Lucky might actually catch one. The snow is deep, and his legs are long, far longer than the squirrel's. And I really don't want that to happen. And so I have entirely quit giving my dog notice at all.

And so this morning, as it has several times since winter started, I noticed that there were no more birds on the porch, and that a luxuriously fluffy tail and set of furry, squirrel-sized haunches completely filled up one side of the feeder. I went from window to patio door to get a better view, then back again. My movements must have given me away through the glass, because suddenly the squirrel perched himself at the edge of tray, nose facing toward the forest, one eye on the house. I tiptoed to the back hallway, and opened the back door, then the storm door. "Scoot," I planned to say, but in fact he was way ahead of me.

At the first sound and movement from the doorway, the squirrel launched himself off the porch as though he was parasailing from a cliff. Front paws outstretched, he glided downward a good dozen feet or more, his tail serving as a rudder in the wind. Then he caught solid ground and scampered away in lightning-like bounds toward the woods to the east, leaving pockmarks in the pristine snow cover from the house to the closest maple tree twenty yards away.

Safe at last, I thought with a smile...and then my eye was drawn upward as a red-tailed hawk with a notch in one wing soared into view from the west and began to circle the trees. Within the confines of the forest, I'm pretty sure that my little squirrel visitor will be safe for a while. In the long run, I'm not placing any bets on his future.

But at least, while I'm on duty filling and watching the feeder, I know he'll get a hard-earned meal once in a while. Even if he has to cross a no-man's land of bare, unprotected lawn, and then elbow the woodpeckers and chickadees out of the way. And from now on, at least, I guarantee there won't be a dog on his tail. 

My Growing Bolder connection!

Way back when "Running with Stilettos" was just a wee new blog and I had JUST collected a bunch of essays from the blog into a book of the same name, I was surfing the internet one night looking for something else. It was close to seven years ago, somewhere in the summer of 2008.

And while I didn't find the link that I was looking for, I came across an ad for something called "Growing Bolder," a website based in Florida that devoted itself to the message (at least as I understood it!) that instead of bemoaning the fact that we are all inevitably growing "older," we should celebrate that we can and often do grow "bolder" in our choices.

Given that I was shopping for my first motorcycle jacket at the age of fifty and had only started wearing spike heels not very long before that, you could say that I was "all in" from the start! For years I posted paragraphs and essays at the Growing Bolder site, sharing news, challenges, photos, and encouragement on a "member page" personal blog. There were ups and downs, joys and sorrows, challenges and satisfactions...and demons wrestled to the ground.

In my own literary world, I wrote three more books, and learned to enjoy speaking in front of groups of people instead of wanting to run from the room. Growing Bolder turned into a media juggernaut, expanding to radio, TV, magazine, and now a documentary. The GB website has undergone a sleek new redesign recently, and I am so very happy to note that while the "member pages" part of the site is gone, I've been folded into the official "GB blogging team." Woo hoo!!!!!

And so I expect that just as hearts expand to hold more love, my writing output will expand a bit too. I'll still be posting here at Running With Stilettos...and I'll still be adding to my "author website" as well. But come on over to check out Growing Bolder too! Not just for what I'll be writing, but for everything the website has to offer in terms of inspiration, and encouragement, and pushing one's limits, and trying new things. Because we can ALL use more of that to keep us "growing bolder" instead of "just growing older."