The University of Cincinnati College of Law sent off the Class of 2007 into the world yesterday at our graduation ceremony.  It is always a reflective day for the faculty, as we watch with pride as each of the graduates march confidently across the stage to collect his or her diploma from the dean.  It is hard to believe that almost three years have passed since I welcomed 1/3 of them to law school in my week-long Introduction to Law course.

It was an especially touching graduation ceremony.  Our speaker, Unity Dow (right), co-founder of the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project, member of International Women’s Rights Watch, and Botswana’s first female High Court Justice, gave a stirring talk.  But far more than the eloquent words she spoke, I will remember the sight of a proud mother hooding and then embracing her daughter Cheshe on the stage on Mother’s Day weekend.

This has been a nostalgic few days for me, as I have just returned from the ABA Tax Section’s May Meeting in Washington, D.C.  One of the highlights was having lunch with a former student who is now a high-level tax staffer on the Hill and who had several speaking roles at the meeting.  It was cool to hear that I played a small role in launching him into his tax career, and cooler still to hear that he reconnected with me through this blog.

As I spent two days at the Grand Hyatt, though, I couldn’t stop thinking of something else.  Not the many interesting talks I have heard there or the many fun meals I have enjoyed with colleagues through the years, not even the opportunity to host a plenary session at the 2003 May Meeting on our Tax Stories book.  Instead, I was was flooded with memories from the separate trips I took with my two kids when they were pre-teens, as we did the Washington tourist stuff (White House, monuments, museums, etc.), as well as a Hillary Duff movie at Union Terminal with Jayne (left), and an Orioles-Red Sox game with Reed (right).  As I worked out in the health club this week, I remembered how not so many years ago my kids were happily splashing about the hotel pool.  As a wise lion once said:

It’s the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life