Practice Management

Lindsey, England

By Dan Hull

My mother was the mom that all the other kids in the neighborhood wanted to be their mom. A photogenic only child, she started working as a model, first in Chicago, when she was quite young. She is tall, almost 5'10", and angular, with dark hair, and still athletic. In boarding school and college, she was always the homecoming queen--but that rare one without enemies. All my life, I've both heard men and women remark how beautiful she is--and how nice she is to them. She is never ever interested in herself. She loves children and big sloppy dogs (for a while we had four at one time).

She has a very private but active spiritual life, and natural class. She is comfortable with, and genuinely interested in, everyone she meets, anywhere in the world. She lights up all rooms. She puts up with me, and my father, and I wish I could be more like her. She's led a charmed life, which she views with gratitude, humility and grace. Her side of my family came from the still-tiny village below to Massachusetts in 1632. I visited Lindsey, which is in Suffolk, in 2003. Her family's name is still on some of the stones in the churchyard.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. --Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895.

Full post as published by What About Clients? on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).