I make a pretty good wife–as long as you don’t expect much in the way of fancy cooking. I manage the intrusions of the outside world, I manage the interpersonal relationships within the family, I clean up messes, and I do a reasonable job of making us look presentable to the outside world. That’s why my boss should be glad I “married” her.

I am not the boss of the office. I have no official management title. I have no official management power. Nevertheless, I work with the secretarial staff and with my boss on projects, small and large. I run things when no one else is around.

I don’t do it for the glory. I do it in a desperate attempt to preserve what autonomy I have left.

I became a public defender partially because I have a high need for autonomy. When I first joined the office, people from the administrative office in the capital barely knew my office existed. Many of the people I worked with felt slighted. I felt liberated. I’ve never met a vacuum I couldn’t fill with self-organization. The lack of hierarchy was opportunity. It allowed me to take calculated risks with my cases and career.

Now, I am expected to let the powers-that-be review my briefs before I file them–even though, as one of the senior members of my office, I review the briefs of others when the boss is away. Don’t get me wrong. Before she was my boss, I used to ask my boss to comment on briefs I was having trouble writing. My objection is not to the comments, it’s to the veto power (and to the extra time the process takes). For a while I used to write “Mother, May I?” on a post-it note on all the briefs I submitted for approval but I grew tired of the child’s role.

As a child, one rarely gets the keys to the car. As office wife, I’m the only one who knows where the keys to the state car are.

So, I’ll happily buy paper towels, keep the calendar, computerize the logs, and soothe hurt feelings—but you’re on your own for lunch.

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