When Seth decided to become an attorney, I cried. I never imagined being around people in suits. I didn’t even know how to think of it. I didn’t know what it was like to become a peer of people with money. I was shamefully poor-proud. My Daddy came home with work-boots on, and I liked it that way.

So when Law School began, and we started getting invitations to what I would call frou frou parties, I often freaked out. I dressed in ways that were unusual for me. I was young, should have worn the funky shoes.

Seth was loved. Very. And I had nothing to worry about, but I couldn’t see it, and there was one who sensed my discomfort always.  He was the Dean of the Law School, and he knew I studied poetry. He cared for us as a couple, and he talked to me at parties.

One particularly nervous event for me, we all dressed in fine clothes. I felt like a 10 year old with a wine glass, then Dean Atkinson stood at the microphone, and he grabbed the podium, smiled, and said by heart:

That day I became myself around attorneys, and they all became people to me, too. I still think of that poem all the time and the one who first gave it to my ears.