The Craftsman
The silver-haired man sitting next to me at dinner said not a word the whole evening. He listened patiently to the judge on my left and nodded along as we all discussed the Legal Ethics scenario for the evening.
He seemed a real southern gentleman. A quiet, pensive man who started life as a hardworking youth and grew into a hardworking adult. His mind had been trained with the words and writings of the law, but his hand stil yearned for the skills of his more fulfilling life.
He was a craftsman. A tinkerer through and through. His joy came from tying strong knots of fishing line onto a hook or carving a block of wood into a toy soldier for his grandson.
It was the same attention to detail that made him an excellent lawyer. His days were spent arguing for his clients. I could imagine him in action during his prime – commanding the attention of the judge and jury in all the terror and power of the courtroom stage. But the night I met him, he spent the evening lost in his own contemplation, with his hands in his lap, not in prayer, but doing what came naturally to their skills. One of the tines of his fork was oddly bent, and over the course of the night, it was reshaped and reformed by his wrinkled but strong hands.
I learned more from his silence that night than from the tableful of respected attorneys giving their opinion on someone else’s life. At the end of the night, when he shook my hand warmly, I could truly say to him, “It was a pleasure to meet you, sir.”