Time To Say Goodbye
By NORM PATTIS
All things, good and bad, come to an end. So it is with mixed feelings that I announce the end of this column. It's been a great run and mostly fun. But on the cusp of the eighth year of weekly opinions, I am cutting the chains that bind me to this page.I recall when I was first asked to write here. I was flattered, of course. And I leapt in without thinking. The publisher promised to start running columns each week once he had three "in the bank." I think it took a day or two to come up with the requisite bank. Often, I had as many as seven or even eight columns ready to go.
This was in the days before blogging took hold. Along the way, I was invited to contribute to a blog page called Crime and Federalism, hosted by a law student in California. I flooded that page, too, with opinions. Earlier this year, I started a blog of my own.
Truth be told, some part of me hoped that I could write my way out of the law. I tried my hand as a columnist for the now-defunct Northeast magazine. We experimented some with sending the column elsewhere for publication. It felt good. Imagine making a living writing opinions, pecking away at home, with time for other pursuits. I even tried my hand at a piece of fiction; anything Grisham can do I do better. Or so I thought.
The world has not beat a path to my door.
Oh, I have loyal readers out there. I do not recall the number of times folks have stopped me in a courthouse to remark on the column. I love this not so subtle form of flattery. But this love is not really a sustaining sort of passion. Live long enough and the mirror loses its allure, trust me: The man looking back at me is often shaking his head these days, wondering what the last screed was all about.
In the past year or so, I have recovered a genuine sense of excitement about the law's possibilities. Intellectual combat is simply joy, and the need to say "no" when government says "yes" is eternal I still find clients and their needs overwhelmingly difficult, but after a tense prosecution of me by the federal Grievance Committee, I have learned that lawyer as counselor is a role I can play.
But even more compelling are the changing circumstances of my life. My wife's and my children have all graduated college now. The world looks like a much less urgent place. And although my wife's many health needs still have the capacity to terrorize me, we have found peace in the gentle rhythms of days increasingly spent together.
My wife was hospitalized again this year. I was terrified and did something I should have done years ago: I went to see a shrink to help learn the contour of all those things going bump in the night. These sessions have evolved into something more liberating than I thought possible. Scoffing seems suddenly less a fun pastime than a wasteful defense. It is long past the time to stop skipping stones of the surface of things.
There is only so much time in one life, and then it is done. There are many things I want to do before my shade lowers. I want to read "The Odyssey" in Greek. That means time spent learning to conjugate new verbs. My wife and I are surrounded by books; I do not want to wait until retirement to read the more challenging ones. If I can find but one hour a day to play with these tasks, I will be renewed.
So I am leaving opinion writing to others. When you finish this, I will be an ex-blogger and an ex-columnist. Thank you, each of you, for reading and for all the kind notes and comments. But it's past time to try something new. So, without further ado, I am off ...•
Norm Pattis is a criminal defense lawyer and civil rights lawyer in Bethany.
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