A new adventure begins
Posted on 22 September 2009
A contract finally agreed, moving trucks reserved, a new house lease signed. In a few days we will be leaving our home of 11 years in Spokane and embarking on a new chapter in our lives in the shadow of one of the engineering wonders of the world, Coulee Dam in North Central Washington State. I am off to work as Director of the Tribal Public Defender’s Office for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
For Lisa the move is less than desirable, having just completed a M.Ed. in School Counseling moving to a relatively remote area reduces the number of potential employment opportunities, but after nine years at Whitworth University she is ready for a change and a well deserved break from working.
For Hayden the move involves him leaving the only home he has really known, having moved here at 3 years of age. But most of all it involves him separating from his “common law brother” Quentin; friends who have been inseparable for over a decade. In the midst of adjusting to High School he is now going to have to adjust to moving to a small High School in a pretty remote part of the State and to a life where he can no longer spend most every waking minute with Quentin. Of the three of us it occurs to me that Hayden has the most change to bear and the least experience in coping with change. Yet he approaches the move with a confident resignation and a strength of spirit that is quite remarkable to see in a fourteen year old.
We leave behind Garrison who today started a new chapter in his life having just started in his journey to becoming a Paramedic by enrolling in the Emergency Medical Technician – Basic course. Text messages are flying between us as 
I type but it seems the instructor is "soothing” which cuts down on the stress level but that it seems that it is likely to require him to do 50 hrs of prep and class work a week. There is a new series on TV called “Community” about a group of Community College students – the main character a lawyer who is returning for a degree after the bar association discovered his degree from Columbia was from the Country not the University in New York. He tries to manipulate answers to the test questions but ends up short and sits despondent on steps outside the library. Other students try to explain it’s no big deal and that a few hours of studying will make the test easy for somebody as bright as him. He replied “the funny thing about being smart is that you get through most of life without ever having to work – so I’m just not so good at that.”
For me I have landed a dream job. After years of private practice in which civil cases were merely a means to fund criminal cases for clients who often couldn’t pay – I am about to walk into a job in which criminal law is the bread and butter of daily practice, after a year of wondering what to do with my MBA the job presents some personnel and fiscal
management duties and best of all I will have an opportunity to work in a tribal court setting. This was something I did in law school and never again since – but my experiences doing so were amongst my best in 15 years of being a lawyer.
Today I did postal address orders, address changes with DOL for driving licenses and car registrations and a host of other administrative chores, tomorrow I don’t think I can avoid packing any longer – it may take a few more than 2 days to pack up 11 years of life.
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