Passing the Bar

As promised to Beth Poore Finch, here is the story of Debbie vs. the Missouri Bar Exam:

I studied sporadically, but felt as if I knew most of what I needed to know to pass the darned exam. I planned never to practice, but knew that I would consider myself a quitter if I didn't go the distance to actually become a lawyer.

Ten days before I was to take the bar exam, I think it was ten days, I heard the news on television that the Hyatt had collapsed on a couple thousand people. My mother was one of them. The short story is that I got down there, found her, and she was injured but not permanently - unless you consider that she no longer has the nerve that controls her balance.

I took the bar on schedule, though I was totally rattled and didn't really care about anything other than getting my mother out of the hospital. When the news came out, I wasn't surprised to find that I didn't pass.

So I took the two sections that I didn't pass in July again in February. "Please let me at least fix breakfast for you," my mother wheedled before I went to Jefferson City. "I feel as if I were the reason you didn't pass before. You need to have a good breakfast before you take a test."

Against my better judgment, I agreed to stop at her house for breakfast on my way to take the Bar Exam for what had better be the last time. So I stopped.

When I walked in the door, I smelled something smoky. It smelled as if my mother had brought the Weber grill inside and had begun to cook something on it. But that's not what was smoking. It was the tree in the fireplace. Yes. A tree was lying trunk end in the fireplace, where it was burning away. As the trunk burned, my mother pushed the branches end closer to the fire, hoping, I assume to eventually burn the whole darn thing.

But the thing that smelled the worst was the sleeve of her robe, which had caught fire when she had pushed the tree closer to the fire. The whole length of her right sleeve was black.

As any reasonable person would, I hit the ceiling! "Are you trying yet again to make sure that I never get this thing done?!" I screeched.

"NO, NO!' she whined. "It was an accident! This is just smoke on my arm, I swear!"

I shook my head, rolled my eyes like any good 13-year-old daughter would do, and ate breakfast, which tasted a little smoky. I then went to Jefferson City to take the darned test.

And this time, I passed. And lucky for me, because I opened my law practice the year after Emily was born, and have been there ever since!