My prob­lems start­ed with a dog’s limp. Two years ago, our brindle pit bull’s back right leg was swollen and inflamed. In the exam­i­na­tion room, the vet post­ed an X‑ray on a back-light­ed screen and point­ed to shad­owy blotch­es around P.D.’s knee.

“The ACL has torn away from the bone,” he said. “He’s in a lot of pain, and it’s going to get worse.”

“Can you fix him up?” I asked, naively.

I wrote a check big enough to cov­er a month’s vaca­tion at a lux­u­ry resort in Maui, and the vet rebuilt P.D.’s knee. When they brought him out of the recov­ery room after his surgery, sta­ples were stitched over a deep cut along the length of his leg, but he didn’t seem to notice. He bound­ed across the room full tilt and jumped up on me, his tail wag­ging at hum­ming­bird-wing speed.

“He has to stay off that leg for six weeks,” the vet said, look­ing wor­ried. “No run­ning or jumping.”

“You’ve got to be kid­ding,” I said. “Look at him! He’s nuts!”

“You have to restrain him,” the vet said. “Two weeks in a cage. Four in a small room. If he ruins his new knee, we’ll have to oper­ate again.”

Back at home, Her­cules and Super­man, work­ing as a team, couldn’t have mus­cled P.D. into a dog cage. I gave up on it, set up his dog bed in my office, and locked us inside. Where­upon began the longest six weeks of my life. P.D. spent every wak­ing moment bat­ting around the room, bounc­ing off walls, and jump­ing all over me. It was like liv­ing in a clos­et with a kan­ga­roo on speed.

Twice he escaped into the back yard and bee-bopped up the hill to the fence-line before I could las­so him with a leash and drag him back to our jail cell.

Mirac­u­lous­ly, despite his best efforts to rup­ture his knee, he sur­vived the six weeks with­out blow­ing it out.

Three weeks lat­er, his back left leg went lame. Back to the vet. Anoth­er torn ACL and anoth­er big check fol­lowed by a sec­ond six weeks in Hell.

Dogs don’t blow out their front knees, so I thought we were done. I was wrong.

I was at the back door watch­ing Zoey, our Amer­i­can Bull­dog, walk lazi­ly across the yard, sniff­ing flow­ers. Sud­den­ly, she lift­ed her back right leg, yelped, and ran over to me, whining.

“Damned bad luck,” the vet said.

I wrote the now stan­dard big check and descend­ed into Hell again.

Two months after Zoey recov­ered, P.D. lodged a fox-tail in his paw that worked its way up inside his leg, requir­ing yet anoth­er surgery. I wrote the check and went back to jail.

After vet bills approx­i­mat­ing the annu­al gross domes­tic prod­uct of Alba­nia and sev­er­al months of con­fine­ment in a small space with a wild dog, a pru­dent per­son would back away from ani­mal hus­bandry. Me? I dou­bled down.

Hid­den Hills is zoned for hors­es. I grew up in a Vir­ginia farm com­mu­ni­ty and I still miss White Hall and Sug­ar Hol­low, so I start­ed con­struc­tion of a two-stall horse barn to remind me of home.

I bought a lit­tle red mare, Mar­garine. I board­ed her in anoth­er barn while mine was being built and hired a horse whis­per­er extra­or­di­naire as my barn man­ag­er. “Marge will need a com­pan­ion,” she said. “Hors­es are herd ani­mals. It’s cru­el to iso­late them.”

Lily, an Andalu­sian mare, was for sale in Lan­cast­er. To demon­strate to me that she was well-trained, the sell­er spurred her up and down his cor­ral, jerk­ing her sav­age­ly one way and then the oth­er, run­ning her at full speed and then near­ly rip­ping her head off to stop her on a dime. It was hard to watch.

Heart­break­ing­ly, when the horse whis­per­er inspect­ed Lily for phys­i­cal sound­ness, she saw that the sell­er had bri­dled her with a spade bit. A spade bit has a “spoon,” a flat plate that goes over the horse’s tongue and pro­trudes up inside its mouth. A skilled rid­er can use it to good effect. In a cru­el rider’s hands, it’s an instru­ment of torture.

I would have paid five times the ask­ing price to res­cue Lily from that guy, but the horse whis­per­er held me back. “Don’t reward his bru­tal­i­ty,” she said. “He just wants to get rid of her any­way.” She was right. I bid low and he caved in.

My barn still wasn’t ready, so we trail­ered Lily to the four-stall barn where Marge was board­ing. The first time Marge saw Lily, she laid her ears back flat and bared her teeth. We hoped Marge would get used to Lily over time, but her hatred only grew.

Mean­while, Lily fell in love with the geld­ing in the stall next to her. Every time we tried to sep­a­rate them, she had a ner­vous break­down. Although Lily’s roman­tic inten­tions could nev­er be con­sum­mat­ed (he’s a geld­ing, for Pete’s sake!), we couldn’t cure her sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety no mat­ter what we did.

Who­ev­er came up with the term “horse sense” obvi­ous­ly nev­er met a real horse.

By the time my barn was ready, Marge hat­ed Lily, and Lily was in love with a horse I didn’t own. The sen­si­ble solu­tion was to sell one of them and buy anoth­er horse for my sec­ond stall, but of course, I had fall­en in love with both of them by then and I couldn’t bring myself to let go of either one.

So in Bak­ers­field, we found Wil­son, a tall bay geld­ing with a docile, easy-going per­son­al­i­ty. I moved him and Marge into my barn and paid the board­ing fee to keep Lily at the oth­er barn where she could con­tin­ue to rub noses (and noth­ing else) with her neutered paramour.

Every­one was happy.

Until we turned Wil­son and Marge out into the cor­ral. They grazed peace­ful­ly togeth­er for almost an hour. Then, for no appar­ent rea­son, Marge began kick­ing the liv­ing crap out of Wil­son. Being For­rest Gump-like, it took him a while to fig­ure out he was under attack, but once the light bulb came on, he gave as good as he got. The horse whis­per­er hero­ical­ly jumped in between them and herd­ed them back into their respec­tive stalls.

“Cuts and bruis­es,” the vet said. “They’ll be sore for a good while, but they’ll be okay.” He cleaned and ban­daged their wounds, and I wrote yet anoth­er big check. (By the way, politi­cians who are con­cerned about income inequal­i­ty could learn a lot about redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth from the Nation­al Vet­eri­nary Association.)

Giv­en my equine predica­ment, a sen­si­ble per­son would sell Marge, but I still loved her despite her severe per­son­al­i­ty disorder.

So I called the fence man. “We’ll run a fence down the mid­dle of the cor­ral,” he said glee­ful­ly as he hand­ed me his estimate.

I swal­lowed hard and wrote the check. Marge stays on one side of the fence; Wil­son on the oth­er. Lily remains in the oth­er barn with eunuch-boy.

That’s it, I told myself. No more ani­mals. Enough is enough. No mas.

Until grand­daugh­ter num­ber three got excit­ed about chick­ens. We built a coop on the hill above the barn. One red and two whites. She named them Icy, Barb, and Faji­ta. Two days into it, Icy tried to kill Faji­ta, and Barb almost choked to death on a long piece of straw.

I know what you’re think­ing. A sen­si­ble per­son would draw the line, once and for all, at the chick­ens, but by now I’m a fatal­ist. I know it won’t work.

It’s only a mat­ter of time until, “Don’t you think goats are kin­da cute, Papaw?”

Right after we moved to Los Ange­les in the sum­mer of 1975, my wife seemed tired all the time. Cindy told me what she thought was wrong. I sat in the lob­by while the doc­tor exam­ined her. When she came out of his office, she was smil­ing. “I’m preg­nant,” she said.

We’d arranged to have lunch that day with the Lath­am lawyer who gave me my job offer. As I drove from Bev­er­ly Hills toward the restau­rant in down­town Los Ange­les, the prospect of hav­ing a child occu­pied my thoughts. Cindy was dis­tract­ed, too, I guess, because we rode along in silence.

“Where are we?” Cindy said, after a long time.

I looked around. Graf­fi­ti-cov­ered build­ings and a chain-link fence topped with rolled barbed wire lined one side of the street; ram­shackle hous­es with board­ed up doors and win­dows on the other.

“We’re not in Bev­er­ly Hills,” I said in a hol­low voice.

I’d appar­ent­ly dri­ven through down­town into a bombed-out neigh­bor­hood. It didn’t look safe, but we were in no dan­ger of attract­ing the atten­tion of bad guys. Our mus­tard-col­ored Pin­to sta­tion wag­on hadn’t been washed since Vir­ginia; the stench of cat urine assault­ed any­one with­in ten feet of it; and its front end bore the imprint of a tele­phone pole. Our sporty ride fit right in.

I found my way back to the restau­rant. We met our friend and told him the news. When he toast­ed us, I dropped a glass of ice water in my lap.

“You seem stressed,” he said, grinning.

I grew more rat­tled as my role as a prospec­tive dad took shape. Back in 1953, when my moth­er went into labor, Dad drove her to the hos­pi­tal, dropped her off, and came home. About 3 a.m. the phone rang. “Yeah … Great … Thanks.” Dad told me I had a baby broth­er, and we went back to bed.

Mom said she didn’t remem­ber any­thing about the birth. “They wheeled me into a room and put me to sleep. When I woke up, they hand­ed me a baby boy.”

Times had changed by 1975. Dads didn’t go home and wait for a call. They were expect­ed to be present in the labor and deliv­ery rooms. This didn’t seem like a great idea to me. At Cedars Sinai, the hos­pi­tal where our child would be born, a dad faint­ed in the deliv­ery room, gash­ing his head on the cor­ner of a steel cart and knock­ing him­self unconscious.

“Maybe we should plan for me to stay in the wait­ing room,” I sug­gest­ed to Cindy.

“I want you with me at the birth,” she said.

“Right,” I said.

The deal for moms had changed, too. No more knock-out drugs. Moms remained ful­ly con­scious dur­ing deliv­ery, and a grow­ing move­ment advo­cat­ed nat­ur­al child­birth with­out any med­ica­tion, which was sup­posed to be bet­ter for the baby.

Cindy want­ed a nat­ur­al child­birth. Car­ol Bur­nett once said you could sim­u­late the pain of labor by grab­bing your low­er lip and pulling it over the top of your head.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Right,” I said.

We enrolled in La Maze class­es. The goal of the La Maze tech­nique is to block the pain of child­birth through relax­ation strate­gies and self-discipline.

We went to class­es every week. The instruc­tor said Cindy should stare at a focal point dur­ing a con­trac­tion and breathe through her mouth in short rhyth­mic bursts, mak­ing a lit­tle squeak­ing sound, “hee … hee … hee.” My job was to be her coach. I would set up the small stained glass medal­lion she chose for her focal point and breathe with her to help her concentrate.

It sound­ed like hocus-pocus non­sense to me, but it seemed to work. In the class­es, the instruc­tor told me to grab Cindy’s leg just above the ankle and apply pres­sure while she stared at the focal point and breathed the lit­tle hee hee’s. Each week I tight­ened my grip. By Decem­ber, she could take all the pres­sure I could inflict with­out flinching.

As we approached the due date of mid-Jan­u­ary, 1976, I began to think every­thing might go well. Then the doc­tors in Cal­i­for­nia went nuts. To protest astro­nom­i­cal mal­prac­tice insur­ance pre­mi­ums, they called a state-wide one month strike begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1. We called our doc­tor in a pan­ic. He was on strike, but he told us Cedars Sinai would main­tain an insur­ance-cov­ered Ob/Gyn on duty through­out the month to deliv­er babies. We were wor­ried, but there was noth­ing we could do.

The night of Jan­u­ary 17, Cindy said it was time. Mirac­u­lous­ly, I drove her to the hos­pi­tal with­out get­ting lost. A nurse exam­ined her at 11:00 p.m. She was dilat­ed three cen­time­ters. I set up the medal­lion, and Cindy began the breath­ing regimen.

Nurs­es exam­ined her through­out the night. The results were always the same. No progress. At 8:30 a.m. she was still dilat­ed only three cen­time­ters. I was exhaust­ed and hyper­ven­ti­lat­ed from coach­ing the hee hee’s, but Cindy seemed steady and determined.

The con­trac­tions got stronger short­ly before nine. A cou­ple of real­ly big ones rolled through at the top of the hour. Then came an earth­quake-sized mega-con­trac­tion. Cindy closed her eyes and grabbed the bed with her fists, fight­ing the pain. Sud­den­ly, her water broke. Spec­tac­u­lar­ly. Shoot­ing through the sheets to splash against the wall at the foot of the bed.

I ran for the nurse. “Ten cen­time­ters!” she said, smil­ing ear to ear.

The deliv­ery team wheeled Cindy down the hall so fast I had to run to keep up. We banged through big dou­ble-doors into blind­ing flu­o­res­cent light and gleam­ing stain­less steel.

Amaz­ing­ly, anoth­er woman was in the midst of child­birth at that very moment, and Cedars Sinai’s only cov­ered Ob/Gyn was ful­ly occu­pied with her!

Hero­ical­ly, our doc­tor, who was wait­ing in the deliv­ery room to watch over the birth, stepped up and saved the day. With no insur­ance cov­er­age and know­ing I was a lawyer, he took his place between the stir­rups, his brown eyes smil­ing reas­sur­ing­ly above his sur­gi­cal mask.

I stood on the oth­er end of the table at Cindy’s head and held her hands.

“Push,” the nurse said. Cindy squeezed my hands and pushed.

In a mir­ror perched above the table, I saw the baby’s head crown.

Our doc­tor cupped his hands. Relaxed, calm, in love with his job, he was hum­ming the song, If I Were a Rich Man.

“One more big push,” the nurse said.

Despite her low­er lip being pulled well over her head long before then, Cindy hadn’t screamed once up to that point. She clenched my hands and pushed with all her strength and groaned/screamed from way down deep inside.

In the mir­ror, I saw our child slide out of the birth canal into our doctor’s gen­tle grasp.

“You have a son,” he said.

Tears stream­ing into my mask, I kissed Cindy’s fore­head, so proud of her.

They cleaned up our baby and Cindy held him in her arms. I’ll nev­er for­get her smile.

Lat­er, they placed him in a warm­ing tray. I stood beside it and looked down at him. He stuck his left foot up in the air and made lit­tle cir­cles with it.

I was for­ev­er changed in that moment. I still was, and would always be, the child of my par­ents, but that morn­ing I became much more. I became a father.

Post Script: I stood beside Cindy in the deliv­ery room twice more. Each birth was magical.

A gen­er­a­tion lat­er, I got lost on the way to the hos­pi­tal in the mid­dle of the night, but I man­aged to find the place just before Cindy and I became Granny and Papaw.

My wife was the dri­ving force behind my deci­sion to become a lawyer, but John­ny Car­son actu­al­ly clinched the deal. My wife and I were school teach­ers at the time. We thought we couldn’t sup­port a fam­i­ly on our salaries, so we looked around for alternatives.

“Why don’t you go to law school?” she said.

“Too much tedious detail, por­ing over com­pli­cat­ed doc­u­ments, wrestling with bor­ing rules and regulations.” 

“I bet you’d like it.”

“I don’t think so.”

Over the next few months, she sug­gest­ed law school again and again. I brushed her off each time with­out telling her the real rea­son. I thought I wasn’t smart enough. My G.P.A in col­lege was a lack­lus­ter B-/C+. I didn’t think I could sur­vive a law school cur­ricu­lum, but my wife believed I could do it and I’d learned to trust her judgment. 

Her gen­tle prod­ding had almost over­come my lack of con­fi­dence by the time John­ny Car­son got into the act. I was watch­ing The Tonight Show when he intro­duced F. Lee Bai­ley, Richard “Race­horse” Haynes, and Melvin Bel­li as the best lawyers in the coun­try. They sparred with one anoth­er. Bai­ley was impres­sive, but the oth­er two came across as com­plete duds. Years lat­er I learned they were both great lawyers, but that night Race­horse was slow­er than a crip­pled mule and old Mel was almost comatose. If those two guys could rise to the top of the legal pro­fes­sion, I thought I’d be able to scratch out a mod­est liv­ing at it.

UVA’s law school, one of the best in the nation, was right down the road, but I fig­ured my G.P.A. would dis­qual­i­fy me. My wife’s friend worked for the Dean of Admis­sions. She said the law school was required to take half its stu­dents from Vir­ginia res­i­dents and the appli­cant pool for that group was thin. She thought I would make the cut.

I applied. UVA turned me down. They put me on a wait­ing list, but the call nev­er came. Our friend thought I should try again. “Com­ing off this year’s wait­ing list,” she said, “they’ll give you pri­or­i­ty.” I took her advice, taught for anoth­er year, and reap­plied. As she pre­dict­ed, UVA accept­ed me.

We pen­ciled out a bud­get. My wife’s salary and the small amount we had saved up would cov­er tuition and liv­ing expens­es if we pinched pen­nies. That sum­mer, to cut costs, we moved from our house in Crozet to an effi­cien­cy apart­ment in Charlottesville.

At law school ori­en­ta­tion in the fall, every­one I met was an Ivy League School Phi Beta Kap­pa, a vet­er­an who had served as an offi­cer in Viet­nam, or an M.B.A. grad­u­ate. I had been reject­ed on my first try for admis­sion, and I seemed to be the least qual­i­fied stu­dent in the incom­ing class. I fig­ured I stood a good chance of flunk­ing out even if I gave it every­thing I had.

Abject fear proved to be a great moti­va­tor. My wife dropped me off at the law school every morn­ing at eight and picked me up at five. I sat in the back of my class­es, kept my mouth shut, and took copi­ous notes. The rest of the day, I stud­ied in the library. At night, I manned the desk in our bed­room until eleven.

One three-hour exam at the end of the semes­ter deter­mined the entire grade for each course. Five exams would decide whether I would sink or swim.

In Jan­u­ary, the results of the exams were post­ed on bul­letin boards, social secu­ri­ty num­bers on the left of the page, grades on the right. I was a dead man walk­ing when I approached the first board. My eyes ran across the page from my num­ber to the grade. I froze. It had to be a mis­take. The grades post­ed on each suc­ces­sive board pro­voked the same reac­tion: This could not be happening. 

I sat my wife down and broke the news to her. “We’re going to be okay,” I said. When I told her my grades, she jumped up and down and cheered. 

The fol­low­ing semes­ters went just as well. Doors opened that we nev­er dreamed we could walk through. Law firms recruit­ed us lav­ish­ly. On our first inter­view­ing trip, a firm put us up in a fan­cy hotel in Atlanta. Glass ele­va­tors zipped up and down a col­umn inside the sky­scraper. We rode to the top, stared wide-eyed at the lob­by way below us, then rode down, and up and down again, like kids in a roller coast­er park.

Those heady days passed quick­ly; grad­u­a­tion approached; and we had to decide what to do with our lives. In almost every firm I’d inter­viewed I’d met a weak link, and I used the Racehorse/old Mel ratio­nale to reas­sure myself: “If that lawyer can suc­ceed here, I can too.”

Lath­am & Watkins in Los Ange­les was the sole excep­tion. I’d met thir­ty attor­neys. They were all great lawyers. No weak links.

I lev­eled with my wife. “I don’t know if I’m good enough to make it there.” The rea­sons not to accept Latham’s offer were daunt­ing: Nei­ther of us had been west of the Rock­ies until we inter­viewed Lath­am. Los Ange­les was 3000 miles away from our fam­i­lies and every­one and every­thing we knew. We’d spent only six days in the city, not enough time to know if we’d like liv­ing there. And I might fail.

On the oth­er side of the ledger stood a sin­gle, stark fact: I was con­vinced Lath­am was the best law firm in the country.

I was fifty-fifty on the deci­sion. My wife tipped the balance.

After grad­u­a­tion, we wres­tled our five cats into a cage, loaded it into our Pin­to sta­tion wag­on, and set out for Los Ange­les. At the top of Afton Moun­tain, we stopped and looked back at the val­ley, not know­ing if we’d ever return to this place we had loved so much. And we cried.

Six days lat­er, we arrived in Los Ange­les. After a week of argu­ing with land­lords about our cats, I did what I had to do. I com­mit­ted fraud. I signed a No-Pets lease and we smug­gled the cats into an apart­ment on Gret­na Green Way in San­ta Mon­i­ca, three doors down from the court­yard where O. J. Simp­son would slash Nicole’s throat and stab Ron Gold­man to death nine­teen years later.

I went to work at Lath­am in June. In July, I took the Cal­i­for­nia Bar Exam, the most dif­fi­cult bar in the coun­try with a fail­ure rate of fifty per­cent. At that time, no attor­ney at Lath­am had ever failed it, and I assumed they would fire me if I washed out.

I entered an audi­to­ri­um the morn­ing of the exam ner­vous and over­wrought and left three days lat­er, feel­ing no better.

While we wait­ed anx­ious­ly for the results, a para­le­gal who worked at Lath­am told me he’d failed the bar exam eight times. At a cof­fee shop, I met a Har­vard Law School grad­u­ate who’d failed it twice. As the months dragged on, I met a small army of impres­sive grad­u­ates from good law schools who had failed the exam once or more.

I was on the verge of a ner­vous break­down when the bar final­ly released the results to the press in Decem­ber. My hands shook when I paid the old guy at the news­stand.  I swal­lowed hard and found the page with the O’s on it.

Back at the apart­ment, I showed my wife the news­pa­per. She cheered again, but being eight months’ preg­nant, she had the good sense not to jump up and down this time.

I prac­ticed law at Lath­am for eigh­teen years. I did okay, and I liked it a lot. 

John­ny and The Tonight Show gave me the last shove across the line, but my auburn-haired blind date is the one who called the shot and got it right. She knows me bet­ter than I know myself.