Mom called

I’m at home this evening with two computers going side by side. On the desktop, I have a  several thousand page PDF of Army FOIA documents open, as I wade through KBR discovery. My laptop is up with a running digest of the interesting tidbits.  It’s my own odd-duck style of learning the case.

The phone rings, and I answer it absentmindedly.

“David Sugerman?,” asks the woman on the other side brightly.

“Yes?”

She runs on without a pause about how she’s calling to thank me for my great work and wondering whether she can help. Can she send money, or bake cookies, or weed my yard?

I stammer, “Who is this?” I have the presence of mind to not ask her how she got my number or why she’s calling a stranger out of the blue.

She chuckles lightly, “I’m just a Mom.”

“And why are you calling?”

“Because your work makes Portland great. And besides those guys are killers.”

Might be the exhaustion, or maybe it’s that I’ve lately been reflecting on my mother and wondering what she would have said about her son’s latest work. But for whatever reason, I was practically moved to tears.

Turns out that she had collapsed two people into one. She thought that Stu Sugarman, a Portland civil rights and criminal defense attorney, and I were the same person. It happens now and then…. I corrected her. And she STILL wanted to help and to send money. She wondered what she could do.

So this is what I said. “Do something great that you think matters and then drop me a line to tell me what you did.” She liked that.

A few thoughts before I go back to the mind-numbing document review.  There are some days when I know that I am blessed or–if you prefer–profoundly fortunate.  This is one.

So Mom, your call was a boost. Hope you don’t mind that I’m putting it down here. I imagine doing so will help me remember this moment as we trudge on toward trial.

Thanks and love-Just a son