38 years

A big party in a park would've been better, but you do what you can.

The energetic Ms. V graduated -- er, retired -- last week after lawyering for almost 38 years. A great career. Her first job was as a lackey at a small law firm in Milwaukee -- collecting overdue bills and taking out the trash (at least, that's what it sounded like to me) -- before signing on with the Legal Aid Society, closer to her heart, where she stayed for 16 years, rising to chief staff attorney for the guardian ad litem division, which represents the interest of children in cases of abuse or neglect. A tough job. 

For the last 20 years she worked for the county as a judicial court commissioner. Starting in June 2000 she presided in many different courts, including small claims, children's, and criminal intake. She made decisions regarding bail in intake court, placement and safety decisions regarding children in juvenile court, and did soup to nuts in small claims court -- performing marriages, ruling on neighbor disputes, debt collection and eviction actions.  

I heard a lot of stories -- storytelling is a Vosper family trait -- such as one about a child kept in an attic by her neglectful family who found the strength to reach safety; kids on the brink of redemption who, in a moment, became involved in a car theft or worse, affecting the rest of their lives; weddings in small claims court with sometimes happy, sometimes contentious participants.

She would tell you that among her most satisfying experiences was the day same-sex marriage was legalized in Wisconsin, when the courthouse doors remained open late into the night and she got to  perform some of the state's first gay marriage ceremonies; and the day when a mother who had battled addiction for years at long last was reunited with her children after success in a drug treatment program.  

She's been assigned to small claims court in recent months. With the pandemic raging, all of it is done online, and the most difficult cases have appeared in evictions court -- tenants frantic to be given time to pay and landlords frantically facing months of lost income. There are never enough solutions, there is never enough time. Every day she would come home feeling like there had to be a better way of getting through this covid crisis. 

This retirement has been long-planned. She says that the scary days she spent in the ICU trying to will me back to health in August 2019 gave her time to see that life is short and retirement shouldn't be -- and this was well before the pandemic upended the world. Now we start our new (mostly) calendar-free life together! Clearly, the first priority is to get her a good road bike.