Flashback

The word for today is FLASHBACK. A FLASHBACK can be a device in a story that includes an incident that happened before the present time of the narrative; a FLASHBACK can be a spontaneous hallucination induced by drug use; a FLASHBACK can be a recurring image of an old traumatic experience. The local classic rock station uses the term FLASHBACK to label a chunk of programming devoted to music from a particular year. I'm at the tail end of the baby boom, so the musical FLASHBACKS I listen to go all the way from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. The Beatles to Pearl Jam--that pretty much sums up my reference points for pop music.

Whenever I go into the Whole Foods, the soundtrack is full of musical FLASHBACKS. Their marketing department must figure that customers will buy more products if they're grooving to a particularly fine musical FLASHBACK.

Sometimes I tell people that once upon a time I was a lawyer. Once upon a time I was a lot of different things, but lawyer is a very difficult identity to shed. I remember (a memory, not a FLASHBACK), my father and other relatives telling me that in law school you learn how to think, as if all the other forms of higher education taught something not quite as valuable.

Recently, I met a man who is a trial attorney. He invited me to come to a deposition with him, and out of a combination of curiosity, intrigue and (yes I will admit it) interest in this man, I went. I had not been to a deposition in almost 20 years. I got dressed up in lawyer clothes, heels, pantyhose, a dress and a linen jacket. I heard myself clip clop along the cement sidewalks, trying to keep up with my friend, trying to be with it. We got to the deposition (he was deposing the defendant's expert witness) and he introduced me as his partner, assistant, or colleague (I really cannot remember).

My friend is a middle-aged white man, the opposing attorney was a middle-aged white man, the expert witness was a middle-aged white man. The only other woman in the room was the court reporter. I flashed back to my time as a young associate at an insurance defense firm. I flashed back to all the times I sat in the name partner's office waiting to discuss my research on a case, while he took phone calls from his colleagues and recounted his son's feats as a hockey star at Boston College. I flashed back to the performance review another partner conducted with me in the car as we drove back from a deposition in Boston--the only time he could spare. I flashed back to the horrible degradation I felt, to my inability to function in the male lawyer world, for my inability to know myself, be myself, speak up for myself. All I could think to do was leave. Within two years I did. I left the firm before the firm could ask me to leave. I landed some part-time work with a legal services organization; later I used my skills in social services.

When I am with my lawyer friend I FLASHBACK. I FLASHBACK to a time when I did not know who I was. Then I come back. At the deposition I realized that I am no longer a 30-year-old junior associate; I am a 50-year-old woman, who has had some real accomplishments in the professional world, who has spent an enormous amount of time and energy learning to understand and live my values. I am no longer intimidated by white men in suits.

I am even thinking of taking the bar exam next winter. I'm thinking of how I can use my dormant legal skills to advance my values. I'm thinking of how I can live in the present, move forward, and not be detained by the power of a FLASHBACK.