REUNITING

The bigger these Reunion numbers get, the more mixed the feelings. For me, most recently there was my college 45th in 2022, followed by my high school 50th in 2023 and just this past weekend my law school 45th. Nothing is more fertile ground for the WouldaCouldaShoulda, the Road Not Taken, the Impostor, and the I Can’t Believe I Lived For A Full Year In That House And With Those People Syndromes than a reunion. I am always anxious as the date(s) approach and more than pleasantly surprised by the good feelings engendered.

Never more than this past weekend.

I am part of the Harvard Law School Class of 1980. We think we are the best class to ever leave that place—because we are—and only a true cynic would snipe that the bar for this is notably low. I will leave the myriad reasons why that is for another time. It does have something to do with the fact that we came to law school at a time when both The Paper Chase (featuring Timothy Bottoms as the unforgettably intimidated first year law student James Hart and John Houseman as the unforgettably intimidating Professor Kingsfield) and One L (Scott Turow’s “insider view” of the horror that was supposed to the first year of law school) were much too front and center for anyone’s comfort.

The cranky old man in me notices the differences in today’s HLS without much effort and without sitting in on a single class. A wall in the world-class student union is lined with a hundred large black and white photo portraits of faculty members, all smiling, none intimidating, Kingsfield be damned and buried. There is recognizable food. A lounge with comfortable chairs and floor to ceiling windows and a bar that someone just might think could encourage relaxation. In case that isn’t enough, posted over the urinals is notice of the “November Event—Embracing New Changes with Mindfulness” coming from “The Well: Health and Wellness at HLS”.

The cranky old man in me takes note but remembers that our class found its way without any of it. It studied hard and partied hard and laughed hard and we’re apparently still doing it almost five decades from our first class in Cambridge. (In the interest of full disclosure, I only scored 2 of 3 on those categories because, and this should be familiar to those who know me, I wanted to be writing and not fighting.)

Forty-five years after graduation, from everything I’ve witnessed, my class is full of attorneys with great values who’ve made a real difference all over the country, as attorneys yes, but also as teachers, judges, university presidents, politicians, ambassadors, volunteers, novelists, poets, historians.

I am proud to know them.

So I agreed to serve this weekend on a Looking Forward panel in one of those law school classrooms generally reserved for the Socratic Method. I was asked to discuss creative writing, otherwise known as words not generally arranged on the page by lawyers in their briefs, and to answer a few questions. My twenty minutes came right after those of a brilliant classmate who didn’t rest on his laurels as a Constitutional scholar and top-tier lawyer but instead is working fervently on a Harvard initiative training leaders to take on the nation’s many challenges. And right before several judges who care only about reaching the proper decision in the face of our increasingly political and polarized environment.

I had a wonderful time.

I closed with something I wrote on the way to the symposium which seemed to resonate so I will share it now. I think most writers, and perhaps lawyers too, know where this is coming from.

“You know you should be writing. That voice again. You know you should be losing weight, getting in shape, making more money, being a better parent, and trying that miracle cream that everyone swears will reverse this godforsaken aging process. But those voices are easily silenced. And you have nothing but layers of fat, retirement insecurity, same old kids, and all these wrinkles and jowls.

But this writing thing. As if you had something new to say in a refreshing way not covered by Shakespeare or AI. No matter. You’re all set up with computer and that little Nespresso thing that costs so much money you can almost hear your late father asking you if you’re crazy, reminding you that he could get a perfectly delicious cream cheese on date nut bread and bottomless cup at Chock full o’Nuts on Third Avenue for a dime.

This blank screen is daunting and thirty minutes in it’s dawning on you that maybe you don’t have anything to say after all. Out the window that lawn is growing untamed and closer at hand some Facebook friend’s report on her 2-egg breakfast with her Schnauzer is only a click away. And you know the world outside is dying in fake news and fake friends and fake forays to easy answers and you remember that the opportunity to be real, to be authentic, your voice, well that was why you started putting all this fiction down on paper so long ago. And if your father were still alive, you’d tell him things are getting better, not worse, that they just have to, and that your Nespresso Vertuo Pumpkin Spice Cake is just so much tastier than his lunch counter Chock full o’Nuts.

Well, that’s it. A blank screen and a lawn that needs to be mowed. Coffee’s gone and that new age music you had playing to keep the truly bad guys out of your story has ended. 

Let’s revisit this tomorrow.”