Page One

Mine was a family that seemed unable to pull itself up; notwithstanding we five never released our death-like grasp on our collective boot-strap. So an inability "to get" was not new to me. It was only afterwards, in the calm of reflection that my reaction made sense. It was not the family's loss, but mine alone that found me so unprepared. Until then I'd taken community disappointment for granted. But I digress.

I was first in the entire family genealogy to attend and graduate college. My acceptance to law school seemed like all that pulling was about to pay off. My enthusiasm was obnoxious. Classes were to begin on a warm, August , Monday in 1976.

I lost my only source of income on the preceding Friday. The notice was accompanied by a pleasant note of encouragement, a blast of President Ford's economic policy, a glancing tribute to stagnation--which by then had begun improving--and a softball-sized rock that settled just above my beltline. My vision of the American dream began melting in the humid Houston heat fift-nine hours before it was to begin. The melting began not with the loss of my job but because my heart was beating at a rate I thought certain to induce a stroke. Reading the note left in my locker--termination was written not spoken--my knees weakened, perspiration surged like a small creek after a spring storm, the sense of dread mixed with panic and a pinch of fear all stirred around the rock and seemed only to compound my symptoms. It was forty-nine minutes after when finally I could stand.

Page Three

Monday morning, after a head dip in the dirty Gulf Station sink and a sponge bath of a weary body's "high" points, books in hand, I sat in an empty classroom awaiting my fellow first-years and the inaugural Contracts lecture. I had taken the first steps on what had become for me as frightful a journey as any through the Amazon jungle, guideless and alone. It did not work--my one step, one task at a time strategy--because it was in any way brilliant, innovative, or courageous. It worked because I had no other option and failure--or in my mother's world "things not working out"--would lead to a place so grim as to make the front seat of the Chevelle Taj Mahal-like. One thing you learn when your life has consisted entirely of struggle--pulling at those bootstraps with apparently no results--is the value of the pulling. It makes calloused hands, broad shoulders, muscled arms and hardened back available, toned, and ready when the pull becomes solitary. I spoke to no one. I had no answer to "Where's your apartment?" No believable explanation for "Why are you here so early?" Not to mention, my image of law students was a progeny of privilege, wealth, advantage. How discomforting for someone from my place, now in my place, to be here with all that.

It was that very Monday I discovered a library annex was opened always. I slept there my first night in law school, and many more, less afraid of discovery, attack, arrest, than seated in the Chevelle. There was still the light issue, but it was air-conditioned, smelled of books, and if I allowed it, perhaps the knowledge, the wisdom of American jurisprudence would envelop me as I slept, small bits and pieces absorbed into my being, new skin to replace what nature daily scraped away. That first step had led me to a better place in the span of 15 hours. The rock seemed back to softball size. Now all I needed was to step into tomorrow; and the day that followed, and so on, and . . .