It’s Opening Day for the Seattle Mariners. My husband and I have spectacular seats for the game, and we’re sitting outdoors in great weather. The Mariners are improbably several runs ahead of the World Champion Boston Red Socks. It’s perfect.
And yet, I’m conflicted. As luck would have it, I landed two seats for Opening Day from my Mariners ticket pool on the same night I had scheduled and paid to attend a professional legal event honoring groundbreaking women in the law. It was an opportunity that I looked forward to and longed to be a part of.
But it was also something I should have gone to, an occasion to be seen, to connect and engage with lawyers that might give our law firm work. Networking in the legal world is nuanced: shaking hands, congratulating lawyers on outcomes of appeals, chuckling about a judge’s comments during hearings, and, occasionally, commiserating about case outcomes. It’s all part of the social marketing dance.
I’ve made many hard decisions in the thirty years I’ve been a lawyer. Private practice is a particularly demanding master, filled with challenging cases, formidable adversaries, and exacting clients. And managing a law firm has its own insistent and unrelenting tasks.
The missed family opportunities were the hardest: middle-of-the-day elementary school art shows, rocket launches, and field trips. On one excruciating occasion, a court appearance caused me to miss my son’s first day of school, and I couldn’t watch him board the bus nor meet his teacher. The agonizing and complex decision making that working parents make seem disproportionately borne by women, and I’m glad those years are over.
But for the last nine years, I haven’t sacrificed exercise for either work or family. Working out doesn’t fall into either the “should” or “want to” categories. It’s like the Switzerland of daily tasks; my emotion about it is neither abundant enthusiasm nor ascertainable dread. I just know I’m going to do it. That’s the beauty of an exercise habit: it doesn’t require effort, sacrifice, guilt, second-guessing, or contrition. It’s just there.
Tonight, I regret missing the comments and conversation from the Honorable Carolyn Dimmick, Mayor Jenny Durkan, and the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown, among other female groundbreakers. But I’m betting that part of their relatable experience includes making difficult decisions about competing demands. These impressive women no doubt understand and endorse the complicated lives that working women face. They probably all support my decision to spend time with my husband doing nothing more productive than cheering on the home team.
So, buy me some peanuts and Crackerjacks. Go Mariners!