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Friday, June 3, 2011

what i learned when my husband went to law school

Three years ago j set out on a little adventure called law school, with me as his sidekick, just along for the ride. Starting out, those who have been there said how hard it was going to be. The rigorous pace and boundless material that would demand his utmost attention. The long hours, especially in that dreadful first year, where everyday you will ask yourself "why am I doing this?". And I even expected that it would be hard. I embraced it. But let's face it, I didn't have a clue.

What I didn't know was how it would feel to essentially become a widow just days after getting married, saying farewell to my husband as he buried himself in a pile of books. How stressful it is to try to be the breadwinner while at the mercy of a horrendous job market. And how hard I would work, harder than I ever had, for what would feel like peanuts. Or how lonely a small, one-bedroom apartment can feel when your stuck there alone for three months. And I had no idea how much time we would both spend anxious and on edge waiting and waiting for results or how the nerve-racking anticipation could feel so unbearably endless. And how badly you would wish that this self-imposed torture would pay off in the end, even when the future seemed grim.

On a more welcomed note, I also didn't know that during finals I would be living with a stranger that resembled "The Beard". That every Hollywood depiction of a court room would never hold up in real life. How much more I would grow to love and admire the man that gave it his all from beginning to end. And how you can feel like you have so much, when you have so little.

Jeremy would come home with stories upon stories of trials and cases. Its remarkable the way he remembers things. And I did my best to appreciate the facts of a case, once I could get past the blatant unfairness. Our more serious conversations quickly became very logical and precise. I soon learned that j would want the court report read back to him if I said some silly blunderous statement that made no sense at all. Yeah, I do that. A lot. He was a lawyer in the making, and he had me to practice on. Though infuriating at times to lose arguments on a technicality, he was brilliant. And I loved him more and more each day.

Throughout the entire adventure, Jeremy never complained. He didn't moan about the growing heap of books on the card table that masqueraded as his desk. Or the fact that he actually had to read them. He never complained about driving our old beater to school or staying up until the wee hours every. single. night. He never complained about eating a ham and cheese sandwich everyday for three years or that he had to wear an old suit to mock trials. He never complained about the tremendous workload or all that he was missing out on. He never complained that he spent almost every weekend cooped up and hunched over at his "desk" with his head buried in a book and his fingers frantically chipping away at paper, after paper, after paper.

Instead, he would tell me that he loved being in a courtroom, that his professors were remarkable, and that he wanted to be a really, really great lawyer someday.

Now that it is all is coming to an end and j is graduating law school, I know that I will likely look back on these stressful days and a part of my heart will long for them. This adventure has flown by. I will always think fondly of this special time in our lives; where it was just j and me. The three short years where we made so many memories and lived off tortillas and cheese. The years where he discovered that he can still function on next to no sleep and that no amount of Mountain Dew is ever too much. The years where I learned to live more meagerly, to keep myself preoccupied, and to be more patient. The years in which we made unforgettable friends. The years where we took short little road trips to places like Seattle and Vancouver, and spent date night driving around the neighborhood, memorizing all of our favorite houses that we dreamed of being able to afford someday. The years that we both learned and grew so much closer together.

Cheers to the happy ending of a challenging chapter and to a new beginning of possibilities.