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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