We were horse­back rid­ing on a shady trail. Janet, my train­er, rode her horse and ponied Mar­garine, a lit­tle sor­rel mare. I fol­lowed, rid­ing Wil­son, a tall bay geld­ing. A half-mile into the ride, Wil­son and I moved up close to Marge. He tensed up and began toss­ing his head, then sud­den­ly crow-hopped and reared. I leaned for­ward and held on. He came down, reared again, and came down again.

“Get off of him,” Janet said in a calm voice.

In the emer­gency dis­mount tech­nique, you free your boots from the stir­rups, lean for­ward, swing your right leg over the horse’s hindquar­ters, and push away to land on your feet, but I wasn’t con­fi­dent my knees could with­stand a hard, awk­ward fall. So I stayed put.

After pranc­ing around ner­vous­ly for a while, Wil­son set­tled in one place for a split sec­ond, and I was able to dis­mount in the nor­mal way. Cri­sis averted.

Although we didn’t know it when we left the barn, Marge was in sea­son (at the point in her estrus cycle when she was ready to mate). Sur­pris­ing­ly, one-third of all ful­ly cas­trat­ed geld­ings can still become aroused. When Wil­son came with­in range of Marge’s sexy vibes, we found out he was one of them.

I was for­tu­nate to be rid­ing Wil­son when this hap­pened. A gen­tle giant, he didn’t try to buck me off, and when he reared, he only went up about halfway, but it was still a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for some­one like me, a begin­ning rid­er in his sev­en­ties with tita­ni­um knees. If my knee sur­geon had found out about it, he would have filed com­mit­ment proceedings.

Two years ear­li­er he’d warned me that my deci­sion to become a horse­man posed an unrea­son­able risk of seri­ous injury to a man my age in my con­di­tion. “Don’t do it,” he said. “Keep your feet on the ground.”

His advice was rea­son­able giv­en my his­to­ry. I’d enjoyed good health most of my life, but as I neared the end of my sev­enth decade, my body seemed to be wear­ing out. I’d come through five surg­eries to repair or replace fail­ing body parts, and arthri­tis had eat­en away all the car­ti­lage in my knees. Bent over and list­ing to one side, I could only walk fifty yards before the pain broke me down. I felt old. Real­ly old.

At that least oppor­tune moment in my life, when I was star­ing down the gun bar­rel of dou­ble knee replace­ment surgery, a sud­den ambi­tion to ride hors­es came to me out of nowhere and grabbed me by the throat. It made no sense to me, and I didn’t under­stand it.

My only expe­ri­ences with hors­es were min­i­mal and so far back in my past I had for­got­ten about them. There’s a pho­to of my dad steady­ing me in the sad­dle on a paint horse in 1948 when I was fif­teen months old. My moth­er wrote on the back of it, “You fell in love with hors­es on this vis­it to Paris, Ken­tucky.” I don’t remem­ber the hors­es or the trip.

There’s a lat­er pho­to of me at a pony ride. I was four years old the day Dad pulled our Hud­son off Route 60 into a dirt lot beside a field of tall grass where an old man lift­ed me onto the back of a tired pony and led us around a well-worn quar­ter-mile loop. Mom’s cap­tion on that pho­to says, “You had to ride this pony every time we went near Rich­mond.” I rode that pony four times, all told.

In my teen years, we moved to White Hall, Vir­ginia, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Moun­tains, big-time horse coun­try, hunters and show jumpers. While we lived there, I nev­er rode and had almost no con­tact with hors­es, but a vivid mem­o­ry of a par­tic­u­lar horse and rid­er from those years stayed with me.

I worked a few week­ends one sum­mer as a handy­man for Pete and Phyl­lis Jones, who owned Small­wood Farm where Phyl­lis trained hors­es and rid­ers. On a hot day I was stand­ing on the roof of the main house replac­ing worn-out tiles when a pick­up truck pulled a horse trail­er into the barn­yard. Pete helped an elder­ly man back a big, high-spir­it­ed, roan stal­lion out of the trail­er. When the stal­lion cleared the ramp, he screamed, bucked, and reared.

“I know you said your wife would train him,” the old man yelled to Pete as he strained to hold on to the wild stallion’s lead rope, “but he’s too much for a woman to handle!”

“She’ll ride him,” Pete said.

“But look at him, Mis­ter Jones! Ain’t no woman alive can ride him! He needs a man’s strong hand!”

“If he can be rode,” Pete said in a steady voice, “she’ll ride him.”

And ride him she did. The next Sat­ur­day, I looked down from the roof to see the big roan prance out of the barn with five-feet-three-inch Phyl­lis Jones in the sad­dle. She guid­ed him on a tight rein through the yard into the pas­ture. He broke into a trot and then a can­ter. About halfway across the field, Phyl­lis urged the roan into a con­trolled gal­lop, mov­ing with his action seam­less­ly, as if she was part of him. It was a vision of spec­tac­u­lar beau­ty, grace, and grandeur.

For a while after that I dreamed about rid­ing, but when I went back to school in the fall, I for­got about it.

Maybe it was those three long-ago mem­o­ries step­ping for­ward out of the dark mist of the past that inspired me to turn to hors­es more than a half-cen­tu­ry lat­er. Maybe it was the lit­tle boy at the pony ride knock­ing on the door of my con­scious­ness. “Hey! Remem­ber me? Remem­ber that time before you had to grow up when we loved horses?”

Or maybe it was the teenag­er on Small­wood Farm call­ing out to me from way back before all the years at UVA, teach­ing, law school, Lath­am and Watkins, and Safe­way piled up on top of his dream and buried it.

Or maybe the past had noth­ing at all to do with it. Maybe it was the unhap­py present, a rebel­lion against my advanc­ing age and all the phys­i­cal prob­lems I’d come through. Maybe it was an attempt to reverse the clock, to rewrite the lat­er chap­ters of my life to replace pain and frus­tra­tion with vibran­cy and vigor.

I don’t know, but what­ev­er my moti­va­tion, I didn’t heed my doctor’s warning.

In my six­ty-ninth win­ter, I broke ground on the con­struc­tion of a horse barn. The fol­low­ing June, the sur­geon replaced my left knee. My sev­en­ti­eth birth­day rolled by in July. In August, I got a new right knee. For the next four months, I worked hard in rehab, focus­ing on leg strength, core devel­op­ment, and balance.

In Jan­u­ary, on a cold crisp morn­ing, I climbed a mount­ing block and threw my leg over the sad­dle while Janet held Marge in place. Sit­ting astride a thou­sand-pound ani­mal, the ground looked hard, unfor­giv­ing, and a long way down. For a few dis­con­cert­ing moments I thought I might be as crazy as my osteopath claimed. Light-head­ed and dizzy, I swal­lowed hard.

“You okay?” Janet said.

I touched Marge’s mane and stroked her neck. The dizzi­ness passed. “I’m okay,” I said.

Janet ponied Marge and me away from her barn, and we rode the trails in Hid­den Hills for an hour. We rode again the next day. And the next.

Grad­u­al­ly, my strength came back and my mood lift­ed. For the first time in years, I felt good. Real­ly good.

I bought Marge from Janet. A month lat­er, we found Lily, a speck­led gray mare. Wil­son, a thor­ough­bred now twen­ty years old, came next. Jack­son, a pedi­greed Amer­i­can Paint quar­ter horse, round­ed out the herd.

I’ve been rid­ing for four years, four to five days a week. I’m not a great rid­er, but I do okay. I go easy, at a walk or a trot, some­times a can­ter. I play it safe, but no horse is bomb-proof. Hors­es think any­thing they don’t under­stand is a preda­tor and they run from it. Large­ly because Janet’s pri­or­i­ty is safe­ty, close calls have been rare for me, the most dan­ger­ous being Wilson’s “Hi Ho Sil­ver” imi­ta­tion. So far, I’ve nev­er been thrown or injured.

But the thrill of rid­ing is not the main rea­son my mind and body healed. It’s the horses.

A poster hangs in the tack room of my barn. Beside an artis­tic ren­der­ing of Secretariat’s pro­file etched in hand­writ­ten script are the words, “God made the horse from the breath of the wind, the beau­ty of the earth, and the soul of an angel.”

This is true.

A horse’s heart is about twen­ty times the size of a human heart. Some peo­ple claim hors­es can feel your heart­beat when you approach them, and they syn­chro­nize the beat of their heart with yours. I’m not sure about that, but this much I know. There’s a benign sym­bio­sis between each of my hors­es and me. When I’m stressed, they calm me down. When I’m trou­bled, they soothe my soul. Always.

I can point to a basis in log­ic and rea­son for all the big deci­sions I’ve made in my long life. Except for this one. This one time I closed my eyes and took a blind step for­ward. And to my great sur­prise, I stum­bled upon a mirac­u­lous gift, the love of horses.

Twen­ty years old, she’d worked as a sec­re­tary for Cam­bridge, Inc., a small mort­gage bro­ker­age firm, for only a month when she claimed the CEO sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her. He insist­ed he nev­er touched her.

“It’s a he-said-she-said sit­u­a­tion,” the office man­ag­er told her. “There’s noth­ing I can do.”

A few days lat­er, Cam­bridge fired her.

She filed suit, alleg­ing sex­u­al harass­ment, gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion, and wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion. My law firm rep­re­sent­ed Cam­bridge and I was assigned to defend the case.

Mar­garet, the office man­ag­er, in her for­ties, tall and thin with short coal-black hair, dressed in a dark blue skirt and match­ing jack­et, escort­ed me into the CEO’s office.

We sat down across the desk from Ted, in his mid-thir­ties, aver­age height with an ath­let­ic build, close-cropped brown hair, and a con­fi­dent demeanor. “I bare­ly remem­ber her,” he said. “We had no con­tact oth­er than the few times she brought me doc­u­ments to sign. I don’t even know when she claims I harassed her.”

“The morn­ing of July 12,” Mar­garet said.

“I under­stand she report­ed the inci­dent to you,” I said to Margaret.

“That’s cor­rect. She told me she was stand­ing beside Ted at his desk while he reviewed let­ters she’d typed when he grabbed her around the hips and shoved his hand up under her skirt.”

“Ridicu­lous,” Ted said.

“Any wit­ness­es?” I asked.

“They were alone. She said Ted told her to close his office door when she walked in.”

“That’s a lie,” Ted said. “She closed it on her own.”

Inter­est­ing, I thought. Ted doesn’t remem­ber when she claims the inci­dent took place, but he recalls she closed the door that morn­ing. “Did any­one see her when she came out of Ted’s office?”

“My office is across the hall,” Mar­garet said. “I saw her come out and run down the hall. She was sob­bing hys­ter­i­cal­ly. I found her in the women’s restroom. It took her a long time to calm down enough to tell me her ver­sion of what hap­pened. She was so upset I sent her home for the day.”

“The dis­charge let­ter says you fired her for insubordination.”

“Work­ing with Ted is a job require­ment. She refused.”

“Who made the deci­sion to fire her?”

Mar­garet looked at Ted.

“Mar­garet and I made the deci­sion togeth­er,” he said.

“What was the qual­i­ty of her work?”

“Excel­lent,” Mar­garet said. “She was fresh out of a good sec­re­tar­i­al school. Inex­pe­ri­enced, but high­ly skilled.”

I stud­ied Mar­garet. She returned my stare evenly.

“Give us a minute alone,” I said to her. She left the office.

“A pack of lies,” Ted said.

“She’s a good liar,” I said. “In the few sec­onds it took her to reach your office door, she burst into tears and kept it up until Mar­garet sent her home.”

“All part of an act designed to hit the law­suit lottery.”

“An Oscar-win­ning per­for­mance on the spur of the moment.”

“She prob­a­bly rehearsed it.”

“Twen­ty years old. First job after sec­re­tar­i­al school. Not the typ­i­cal pro­file of a con­niv­ing fraudster.”

Ted paused. “You don’t believe me?”

“I’m giv­ing you an objec­tive assess­ment of the facts. Margaret’s obser­va­tion of her behav­ior sup­ports her story.”

He gave me a blank stare.

“Tell me what real­ly hap­pened,” I said.

More of the blank stare. Then, “You can’t tell any­one what I say, right?”

“This is an attor­ney-client priv­i­leged con­ver­sa­tion. I can’t tell any­one with­out your permission.”

He smirked. “She’s got a killer body, and she knows it. When I walked by her desk in the sec­re­tar­i­al bay that morn­ing, she gave me a smile and a fetch­ing look. Ten min­utes lat­er, she showed up at my door wear­ing a short skirt and a tight blouse and stood right next to me while I reviewed her work. Her hip brushed against my shoul­der. It was an obvi­ous come-on, but when I tried to pull her down into my lap, she went crazy. Screamed and ran out of here like I’d tried to rape her or something.”

“Did you put your hand under her skirt?”

“I might have. I don’t recall. It was all over in a cou­ple of sec­onds. It was no big deal.”

“It seems to have been a big deal to her.”

“What did she expect? Dress­ing like that. Flaunt­ing it.”

I searched Ted’s face. Indif­fer­ence, with a hint of defi­ance. No shame. This is not going to be easy, I thought.

“She’s got a strong case,” I said. “We should set­tle it before her lawyer digs into the facts.”

Ted looked shocked. “She can’t prove any­thing. It’s her word against mine.”

“Your sto­ry isn’t cred­i­ble. Margaret’s putting up a good front, but she believes the plain­tiff. It took me less than ten min­utes of ques­tion­ing to see through your denial.”

“Okay. Let’s work on my sto­ry. Shore up the weak points.”

“That’s not an option. You’ll have to tes­ti­fy under oath.”

“So what? No one will know I’m lying.”

“You’ll know. I’ll know.”

“Well, I sure as hell won’t tell any­one and you can’t tell because you’re my lawyer.”

“If you get caught, you’ll face per­jury charges. It’s not worth the risk. Besides, the jury will like­ly believe her even if you lie. She’ll get back pay, com­pen­sa­tion for emo­tion­al dis­tress, puni­tive dam­ages. The judg­ment could reach six fig­ures, but if we don’t fight her claim and set­tle the case quick­ly, she’ll prob­a­bly walk away for a small pay­ment and a writ­ten recommendation.”

“How small?”

“Ten thou­sand. Maybe less.”

“Ten thou­sand dol­lars! For a two-sec­ond grab that went nowhere!”

“You’ll spend a lot more in court costs and legal fees defend­ing the case.”

“Fine. At least we’ll get some­thing for our mon­ey. I’m not pay­ing her a dime.”

I argued long and hard, but Ted wouldn’t budge, which put me in a tight spot. The canons of ethics pro­hib­it a lawyer from pre­sent­ing false evi­dence to the court, so I couldn’t know­ing­ly allow Ted to lie under oath. But the rules also pro­hib­it­ed my dis­clo­sure of his con­fes­sion to any­one, includ­ing the court. Under Cal­i­for­nia law, there was only one way to pro­tect both con­flict­ing inter­ests. I with­drew from the case with­out telling any­one what Ted had told me, and he hired a dif­fer­ent firm to defend the lawsuit.

I changed a few details and the names of the com­pa­ny and exec­u­tives, but oth­er­wise this nar­ra­tion tracks the fact-pat­tern of a case I worked on in the 1980’s.

I like this sto­ry. It makes me look good for doing the right thing, but the truth is it was an easy call. The fee to defend the case amount­ed to less than a drop in my firm’s buck­et of rev­enues; the client was a small com­pa­ny whose ongo­ing busi­ness was mean­ing­less to us; and Ted made my skin crawl. With­draw­ing required no real sac­ri­fice and no courage.

About the time I with­drew from rep­re­sent­ing Cam­bridge, a lawyer in my firm draft­ed opin­ion let­ters con­cern­ing the like­li­hood of lia­bil­i­ty and poten­tial dam­age awards in cas­es she was han­dling for one of our biggest clients. Finan­cial laws required the client to dis­close the attorney’s esti­mates to cred­i­tors and share­hold­ers. Its Gen­er­al Coun­sel dis­agreed with her opin­ions. He demand­ed that she change them to down­play the risk of loss and reduce the poten­tial damages.

Eth­i­cal canons and fed­er­al laws require an attor­ney to ren­der hon­est and accu­rate opin­ions about such mat­ters. She gave the Gen­er­al Coun­sel the back-up data sup­port­ing her esti­mates and told him she couldn’t change them. He became bel­liger­ent and threat­ened to fire the firm from all his company’s legal mat­ters. She was shak­en but stood her ground.

Soon after­wards, the com­pa­ny declared bank­rupt­cy. Its debts and poten­tial lia­bil­i­ties far out­stripped its assets. We learned then that the Gen­er­al Coun­sel had pres­sured all its out­side law firms to change their opin­ions so it could take on more debt in a des­per­ate attempt to sur­vive. Some lawyers had com­plied. Their firms faced poten­tial fraud charges. Mine did not.

In pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys, lawyers rou­tine­ly rank at the bot­tom in pub­lic trust. There are good rea­sons for this. Sleazy lawyers abound and they tend to gar­ner a lot of pub­lic­i­ty, but I worked with legions of attor­neys of the high­est eth­i­cal char­ac­ter whose courage and con­vic­tion went unno­ticed in the pub­lic eye. My for­mer part­ner was at the top of that list.

I’d like to believe I was in her league, but I’ll con­fess I’ve often won­dered what I would have done if the con­text of my with­draw­al had been dif­fer­ent. Sup­pose Cam­bridge had been a For­tune 500 cor­po­ra­tion and one of the firm’s largest clients. Sup­pose Ted had threat­ened to fire my firm from all legal mat­ters if I with­drew. I’d like to think I would have been as strong as my part­ner, but I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t put to the test. She was, and her per­for­mance under immense pres­sure earned my ever­last­ing admi­ra­tion and respect.

Post Script: A year after I with­drew from the case that inspired this post, the plaintiff’s attor­ney told me my suc­ces­sor set­tled it on the eve of tri­al. He said the terms were con­fi­den­tial, but the huge smile on his face leads me to believe the com­pa­ny paid big bucks to get out of that mess.
The real Cam­bridge even­tu­al­ly filed for bank­rupt­cy. The CEO was the major­i­ty own­er, so the real Ted may have gone down with the ship. I hope so.

The video­tape begins with a high-angle cam­era shot of a beefy mid­dle-aged man secur­ing a bike to the roof of a blue hatch­back parked on the curb of a sub­ur­ban street. He fin­ish­es up and walks around to the rear of the car. A teenage girl car­ry­ing a laun­dry bas­ket stuffed with clothes and a ten­nis rack­et meets him there, slides the bas­ket into the car, and clos­es its back door.

The cam­era shifts to eye-lev­el as they face each other.

“Wow. Col­lege already,” he says.

“Yeah,” she says. They look at each oth­er uncom­fort­ably. “We got­ta go,” she says.

She gets in the car. It pulls away, then stops abrupt­ly. She jumps out, runs back to him, and hugs him. While they hold each oth­er close, Celine Dion sings, “For all those times you stood by me/And all the truths you made me see.”

Because You Loved Me plays on as they sep­a­rate, and the girl walks slow­ly back to the car.

He calls out anx­ious­ly, “And remember—”

She turns, grin­ning and count­ing to three on her fin­gers, “Seat belt, dri­ve safe, call when I get there.”

They smile at each oth­er, both fight­ing back tears.

“Well, bye,” he chokes out. “I love you.”

She walks back to him, and they embrace again. “I love you too, dad­dy,” she says softly.

They step back and look at each oth­er for a long moment. She walks back to the car, hes­i­tates, then faces him. “And thanks for … every­thing.” She climbs in the car. As it pulls away, she waves to him from the window.

Wip­ing tears away, he waves back.

I’ve seen that tape fifty times. I cry every time.

I relate to the beefy guy.

My son’s last night at home, we sat up watch­ing tele­vi­sion for an hour after Cindy and the girls went to bed. We didn’t say any­thing. We didn’t need words. We knew the next day he would take a big step through the por­tal pass­ing from child to man. I want­ed it for him, but I mourned the loss of my lit­tle boy.

I kept him up as late as I could with­out spoil­ing his next day, then took a deep breath, and stood. “Good night, Josh.”

“Love you, dad.”

“Love you, too, Josh,”

I lay awake half the night, remem­ber­ing the good times.

The next morn­ing, we drove him to Pep­per­dine. The cam­pus sits on a moun­tain­side above Mal­ibu. His dor­mi­to­ry over­looked the base­ball sta­di­um, where he would play left field, and beyond that, the Pacif­ic Ocean, glis­ten­ing sil­ver in the morn­ing sun­light. We moved all his stuff into his room, stalled as long as we could, then hugged him, and left him sit­ting at his desk. When we walked across the court­yard, he called out from the win­dow, “Bye, dad.”

My heart broke.

It mend­ed, of course, as I watched him con­front chal­lenges, over­come set­backs, make life-long friends, and meet his future wife.

When the time came for our old­er daugh­ter to leave the nest, I thought I’d get through it eas­i­er. It was my sec­ond rodeo, after all.

I was wrong.

When Devon was a lit­tle girl, we had friends over for din­ner. We were talk­ing in the liv­ing room when she climbed up in my lap. Cindy had dolled her up in a frilly dress and put lit­tle red bows in her silky blonde hair. I was primp­ing her, mes­mer­ized by her, as always, when our friend smiled and said, “Looks like some­one has dad­dy wrapped around her lit­tle finger.”

And that was true.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San­ta Cruz was tai­lor-made for Devon and she loved it when she toured the cam­pus, but when her last day at home final­ly arrived, she didn’t want to leave us. As we drove north toward the school, she cried.

I wracked my brain for some way to ease her pain about the sep­a­ra­tion. When we got there, she and I shared a qui­et moment alone. I told her there was an invis­i­ble string that ran from my heart to hers, like an elas­tic spi­der web that would stretch across any dis­tance. “It nev­er breaks. It lasts for­ev­er, and our feel­ings for each oth­er will always pulse through it.” I told her she had the same mag­i­cal con­nec­tion with Cindy, Chelsea, and Josh, and she would always be with us.

She said it was a beau­ti­ful thought, and it seemed to help her.

But when we left her there, my beau­ti­ful thought didn’t work as well for me as it did for her. I broke down in the UCSC park­ing lot and choked back tears all the way home.

That wound healed, too. UCSC was a car­ing, nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment. Devon found her pas­sion for art there and start­ed down a path to a hap­py suc­cess­ful life.

I retired before the baby of the fam­i­ly grad­u­at­ed from high school. Spend­ing more time at home, I watched all Chelsea’s swim meets and water polo match­es. We worked out togeth­er. She couldn’t stop laugh­ing when I col­lid­ed with a stop sign on one of our long runs, and my excru­ci­at­ing­ly painful, ill-con­ceived attempt to leap-frog a tall cement trash can pro­voked anoth­er hys­ter­i­cal fit.

When the time came to take her to col­lege, I thought I was ready because I was a hard­ened vet­er­an of two bruis­ing treks down that rough road.

But I wasn’t ready.

Cindy and I kept our com­po­sure when we moved her into the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, hugged her, and said good­bye, but lat­er in the car, we cried.

To avoid the lone­li­ness of our emp­ty nest, we start­ed trav­el­ing. Cindy and I had just checked into the Boar’s Head Inn in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, when the phone rang in our room. “Dad, this is Chelsea. The police are here. They read us our rights. They want our com­put­ers, but I won’t give them up. What do I do next?”

After Cindy picked me up off the floor, Chelsea filled me in on the details and I asked to speak to the offi­cer in charge. “I don’t even know why I’m talk­ing to you,” he said in an exas­per­at­ed, some­what intim­i­dat­ed voice. “Your daugh­ter has noth­ing to do with this.”

The police thought Chelsea’s room­mate was involved in a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, but Chelsea didn’t believe it. She knew her roommate’s rights, and she was hold­ing the police at bay. In the end, it turned out Chelsea was right. The police had made a trag­ic mis­take, and her room­mate was innocent.

From there on, I knew I didn’t have to wor­ry about her. I was the proud father of a warrior-woman.

And the pain of my third and last heart-wound eased off.

Foun­da­tion for a Bet­ter Life, a non-prof­it for the pro­mo­tion of good val­ues, pro­duced the tape about the beefy guy and his teenage daugh­ter. At the end of it, after the girl thanks her dad, the narrator’s voice-over deliv­ers the tape’s mes­sage, “Grat­i­tude. Pass it on.”

I appre­ci­ate the mes­sage, but I’d revise the script slight­ly to show that grat­i­tude runs from the beefy guy to his lit­tle girl, too. I’d add these lines for him: “Thanks for all the good times, for your love, and for grow­ing up to become some­one I admire and respect. Thanks for … everything.”

Post Script: The lyrics of Because You Loved Me run both ways, too:

For all those times you stood by me
And all the truths you made me see
For all the joy you brought to my life
For every dream you made come true
For all the love I found in you
You’re the one who saw me through it all.

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I could­n’t speak
Because you loved me.