Going Home -- My Last Move

by Irene Daniel

I am going home. Soon. Home to my hometown of Florence, AZ. If you had told me this at the beginning of the summer, I probably would have scoffed. What changed? I suppose, mostly me.

41 years ago this past June, I left home at the age of 16. I had intended to return to graduate from Florence High School with classmates who had known me from the age of 6. But, as I was desperately unhappy as a teenager, which I have since learned is pretty commonplace, I stayed in Tempe, and graduated with a bunch of strangers.

At that time I could never have imagined how homesick I have become, or that this dusty little town would ever be a longed-for destination for me. It was full of painful memories and a sense of something greater elsewhere calling to me. But now it is home that calls to me.

I'm glad that I left, and that I have been able to experience a great many things that would have been impossible in Florence. Higher education, for one, as well as a chance to practice law at the Los Angeles County DA's office, the largest prosecutorial agency in the world. Had I not gone to law school at UCLA, that opportunity could never have manifested. I learned a lot there and made many friends who will always be just a phone call away.

Looking back, I realize that the success I manifested in Los Angeles was actually grounded in what I had learned in that 2 stop-light town. Even the victory in the 5th District Court of Appeal for the State of California (Mendoza v. Rast, 142 Cal.App.4th 1395, 2006), in which I represented Mexican farmers suing commission merchants for denying them compensation for their fruit, was strengthened by my memories of all the farms surrounding Florence. I felt like I knew my clients' hardships so much better because I grew up around farmers and ranchers and people who drew their livelihood from the earth. This is probably why I have always had a very healthy respect, and even awe, of farmers. Growing up in Florence made me a better lawyer, a better fiduciary and a better human being.

And as I return, I feel a sense of completeness. Wholeness. Oneness. And I am at peace with myself. For I realize now that it was my upbringing and the amazing education I got in Florence, that made everything else possible.

I realize now that, for a country girl, big city success gets old after awhile. While I have enjoyed my time here in Los Angeles, for the most part, it never filled me up the way my desert abode does now. I had to leave it to appreciate it, and I am glad that I have choices in my life. And it all leads me back home; home to my desert hearth.

Florence, Arizona -- the Cowboy Cradle of the Southwest -- is, as fate would have it, my Alpha and Omega. And for that, I am eternally grateful.


                                                                                           Irene Daniel   Copyright 2014   All rights reserved