My Beloved World

When George Pavia and Dave Botwinik tell Sotomayor she has made partner, George tells her he knows she is “destined for the bench”; Dave believes she will make it to the Supreme Court (297). They ask only that she stay with the firm as long as she is in private practice, an “unusually generous” offer (297). The following spring, Fran dies, leaving everyone devastated. For Sotomayor, it is a reminder of her own mortality and invites her to reflect on whether she is living her life meaningfully.

At her 37th birthday party in June, she has a low-blood sugar incident. Few of her friends know she has diabetes. Sotomayor had been averse to revealing she has it, worried her revelation would be interpreted as “a play for pity” (299). Though she has prided herself on her self-reliance, she also knows it cost her marriage and that she is “more vulnerable” than she is “willing to admit” (299). Secrecy about her illness was the norm during her childhood, and when she went to college, she saw no reason to divulge her condition since she was managing it with a shot a day and a careful diet. She had stopped checking in at Jacobi Medical Center’s clinic and was not aware that treatment advances had been developed.

When she settles in Brooklyn, at thirty, she seeks out a Type 1 diabetes specialist, and the quality of her treatment improves. Her longevity prospects also improve, and the risk of complications decreases. Still, fever, infection, trauma, or stress can cause her sugars to soar. Even with her meticulous regimen, her life can be put in danger by a sudden swing in her blood sugar, as happened at her party as well as during college and while on a visit to Venice. In both latter cases, she was fortunate to have friends turn up at the right time to prevent the worst from happening. It reinforces her feeling that Abuelita is watching over her, but that is not reason “to push [her] luck” (303). She realizes she needs to be more open about her disease.

Though her diabetes is part of the story of her self-reliance, it is not the whole story. That belongs to her mother, Sotomayor’s “most constant emotional paradigm” that informed her character “for good and ill” (304). Like Celina, Sotomayor is a caring, non-judgmental listener, but she does not ask the same of others. Though surrounded by friends, “inside [she] remained very much alone” (305). Sotomayor has faith in her “potential for self-improvement” (305). She has also seen that “admitting your vulnerabilities can bring people closer together” (306). She knows friends want to be helpful, and knowing how to accept help graciously is a virtue. As a child, she saw her mother as aloof. Understanding what caused this in Celina and hearing her confess her “emotional limitations” enable Sotomayor to forgive her mother and help shrink the emotional distance between them. When Sotomayor feels angry, she remembers the hot nights when her mother would sit by her bed with a sponge and bucket of cold water. Sotomayor’s models for demonstrating warmth and affection are her friends. She practices with her mother, and the gestures are reciprocated. Over time, they have become more “affectionate and demonstrative” with each other (307).

Sotomayor’s friend Elaine takes her shopping, and she helps Sotomayor discover what flatters her. She realizes dressing badly has been a “refuge” for much of her life, forcing people “to engage with [her] mind” rather than her “physical presence” (309). Elaine shows Sotomayor that she can enjoy her feminine side without diminishing the rest of herself. 

In 1990, Sotomayor returns to her office after a vacation to find all her files gone and an application for a federal district judge on her desk. She believes she is too young to apply, but Dave Botwinik tells her Senator Patrick Moynihan’s judicial selection committee is recruiting qualified Hispanics. Dave has taken her files and will return then only after she completes the application. She will have to take a pay cut to be a judge—which “has discouraged” many talented potential applicants, she says—but as a young partner without children, she can do it. She acknowledges that “most of the choices” she has made over the years “anticipated this very moment” (313). With the help of two assistants and a paralegal, preparing the application takes a week, and Sotomayor prepares “as thoroughly as [she] would have done for a criminal prosecution,” reading, researching, and soliciting feedback from friends and colleagues with insight into the process (314).

At her interview, the search committee chair asks her if she feels learning to be a judge will be hard. She responds that challenges have never intimidated her. Her trial experience holds up well “under scrutiny,” and she feels the interview goes well (315). Moynihan’s office invites her to meet with him in Washington. Their conversation is so engaging that she almost forgets she is “on the hot seat” (316). At the end of their hour-long discussion, he tells her he would like to nominate her. He warns that “the confirmation process” will “not be easy,” but if she sticks with him, he will get her through (316).

Her nomination takes eighteen months to clear, providing “an education in the arts of politics and patience” (319). She does not take the delays personally, realizing they are about political “sport” (319). Her interview with the Justice Department, government agency investigation, and Senate confirmation hearing do not question that she is qualified or object to her nomination. She expresses gratitude to “a chorus of voices” that rise in her support,” from her fellow PRLDEF board members, to Bob Morgenthau and others from the DA’s Office, to her colleagues on the CFB (320). She is confirmed on Aug. 12, 1992, “the first Hispanic federal judge in the state’s history” (320). The ceremony moves her “deeply” (320). The role, she says, is “vastly more important than” she is (321).

Celina moves to Florida with her boyfriend Omar. While they are en route, Sotomayor receives a phone call from Puerto Rico that Titi Aurora has died. She flies down to Florida to be with Celina when she hears the news. Though not warm and friendly with each other, the sisters were tightly bound. The fact of their connection makes Sotomayor aware that we are all imperfect, with worthy and deficient qualities. If we want “our connections to survive,” we must begin by seeing what is good in each other.

Theresa follows Sotomayor to her judge’s chambers. During her first month, Sotomayor’s doubts and insecurities flare up, as they have during all her major life transitions. She does not mind the long days but feels “metaphysical panic” when she takes her seat on the bench and feels almost like an imposter (323). Her first day in open court, she is so afraid that her knees knock together, but as she becomes involved in the case, her panic passes. She realizes that she will be fine.

For Sotomayor, taking her oath “marked the culmination of one journey of growth and understanding” and “the beginning of another” (325). Her journey as a judge has proceeded “in the same small, steady steps” and with the support of her “many families” (325). Each small step has helped her grow, overcome challenges, and achieve successes. Six years after her first appointment, she is nominated to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and twelve years after that to the Supreme Court. The confirmation hearings become increasingly difficult, “the attacks more personal, the entire process faster, more brutally intense” (325). Yet her support network also continues to grow.

More than 1,000 people attend her Second Circuit induction ceremony, 300 of whom stay on to witness her “first official act”: marrying Celina and Omar (325). The combined activities enable Sotomayor to acknowledge and honor the debt she feels to her closest friends and family, particularly Celina. Her family’s love has sustained her.

Sotomayor has had to teach herself to think like a judge, just as she once had to teach herself to think like a lawyer. As always, she has soaked up knowledge from mentors and learned by teaching and exchanging ideas in her chambers. When asked what she would like her legacy to be, she says it is for her “work on the court” to “grow in understanding beyond what [she] can foresee, beyond any borders visible from this vantage” (326).

Sotomayor recalls a high school experience she had debating a Hispanic girl who identified herself as a Marxist. While Sotomayor enjoyed the “verbal sparring” and their debates, she was surprised to realize the girl held Sotomayor in “earnest disdain” (327). When asked why, the girl accused Sotomayor of having no principles, saying, “Everything depends on context with you” (327). Sotomayor has been “grappling with” this accusation all her life (327). She acknowledges that some principles—“integrity, fairness, and the avoidance of cruelty”—should never be compromised (327). However, she also believes that the “imperative” to treat individuals “with dignity and respect for their ideas and needs, regardless of one’s own view” is also a principle as “worthy as any” other (328).

Sotomayor has learned from every friend she has known and every situation she has encountered. She hopes she has time ahead of her to “continue growing and learning” before she determines who she is “as a judge” (328). She hopes to continue evolving as a human being as well. At the same time, she sees the essence of herself reflected in the people who fill the room in which she takes her oath as a Supreme Court Justice. That moment belongs to them as much as it does to her. She feels overwhelming gratitude “unrelated to politics or position” (329). The joy she feels in the moment of her confirmation recalls a childhood memory of experiencing joy simply at the gift of being alive. That memory carries her from her childhood into the present. “I am blessed,” she writes; “In this life I am truly blessed” (329).