My Birthday With Sonia

Karen Bleier, AFP / Getty Images Watching my husband—Sonia Sotomayor’s former boss—testify for the Supreme Court nominee turned out to be a great way to spend a birthday in Washington.

"No, I'm not going to wear it, it's too flashy," said my husband, Robert Morgenthau, getting ready to go to the Senate judiciary hearings to testify about whether Sonia Sotomayor had the qualifications to be a Supreme Court justice.

"It's not at all flashy," I replied, thinking to myself, come on, you’re a legendary prosecutor and a power broker who never misses a trick.

"Senator, if I may tell you that my grandmother was born in Montgomery, Alabama," Bob said, which produced laughter from the audience and a rather deflated look from Sessions, who said stiffly "I feel better already."

"I'm not wearing both an honorary CIA button and a WWII gold medal," he said, taking them off. When he turned away to put on his tie, I retrieved the tiny medals from his cufflink box and pinned them on his jacket again, something he did not notice until after his testimony.

It happened to be my birthday, and one of the luxuries of our hotel, the inestimable Hay Adams, across from the White House, are concierges who have the savvy of a campaign advance team, and we turned out to be very high maintenance. Eric found my lost backpack and came running upstairs when we had a small emergency. Mark changed our train reservations four times and unearthed a room for Bob's daughter-in-law, Susan Morgenthau, and his grandson, Harry Morgenthau, in the packed hotel. Jack primed his favorite restaurant for my birthday dinner.

The committee had no idea when Bob would be appearing, so we all went for a lunch of fresh crab. Afterwards, Bob proceeded to the Justice Department for meetings, and Susan, Harry and I prowled around the Capitol building waiting for news. At 1:32 p.m. all our cell phones rang at once—Bob needed to be there at 2 p.m. We squeezed into a crowded elevator on our way to the hearing room. When my cell phone rang I fumbled to answer it and accidentally pressed “speaker.” Out came the booming baritone of my son Josh singing Happy Birthday, which was enjoyed by everyone in the elevator.

In the committee room we looked around but didn’t immediately see Bob. I was beginning to panic when Susan spotted him at the back, calmly leafing through his notes as if he’d been there since the janitor opened the building. At the front of the room, blinding spotlights poured over the senators, causing the bald pates of two jolly Democrats to shine like beacons. The Republicans, however, sat with tenebrous expressions that matched the black curtain hiding their legs.

Bob gave Sotomayor, a native of the Bronx who lifted herself out of poverty, her first job as an Assistant District Attorney, and during her testimony she had declared that she owed everything to him. With Bob at the witness table were New York Mayor Bloomberg and Sotomayor's star detractors, the New Haven firefighters who had sued the city for throwing out a promotion test because black firefighters did not do well on it—a ruling approved by a lower court and affirmed by Sotomayor on the appeals court before finally being reversed by the Supreme Court. Led by the chief plaintiff in the case, Frank Ricci, the firefighters were in uniform, whistle-clean, baby-faced, but in no way prepared to be manipulated by the senators.