Christine Nicholas was born in Lynn, Mass., an old mill town on the ocean, and grew up in Lynnfield, Mass., in the Boston area. She is the fifth of seven children in her family, and has three brothers and three sisters. She was the captain of her field hockey team in high school, loved skating on ponds behind her house in the winter, and was “kind of horse crazy.”
Nicholas says she fell in love with the Stanley Basin on family summer vacation cross-country trips from Massachusetts to Twin Falls. And so, after getting a bachelor’s degree at the University of Massachusetts School of Business Administration, she decided she wanted to go to law school and wanted to move to Idaho. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Initially, she was unsure which direction she would take, but found she really enjoyed the “problem solving” part. “I knew pretty quick I did not want to be Perry Mason,” Nicholas says. “I wanted to be a business lawyer, help clients buy and sell businesses, to buy, sell and develop commercial real estate. I like to put things together,” she says. “I feel I partner with my clients to help them achieve their business goals.”
Nicholas says her personal philosophy of “do the right thing” has always been a guiding factor, and lists her parents as being the most important influences in her life. From her mother, she says she learned the value of putting others above self. And her father taught her the importance of self-discipline. She remembers going to her father after getting into a fight with her brothers. He told her: you should have had the self-discipline not to get involved. “I have found that self-discipline is an important trait to have,” Nicholas says.
In addition to her role as president at Moffatt Thomas, she says being named a Fellow in the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, being named a Fellow in the American College of Mortgage Attorneys, and getting the 2009 Burton Award for Legal Excellence have been her greatest accomplishments. Of the latter, she was doubly thrilled to receive the award at a Library of Congress ceremony featuring Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
In her spare time, Nicholas spends time with her husband of 32 years, Brian, and her two daughters, Rachel and Emily. She loves working with her horses – she has two Arabians – and hopes to be able to one day compete in a horse show. She is the designated “lawnmower of the family” and enjoys just “sitting on the back patio and contemplating the wind in the breeze.” She’s looking forward crossing off a bucket list item next summer when she goes on a rafting trip down the Middle Fork of the Salmon.
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I’m leaving for 8 days in Hawaii tomorrow morning. I suspect the lure of my website will be weakened by the force of the tropical paradise so don’t expect much in the way of updates.
Imagine feeling like you know so little about someone you call a friend and there’s nothing more you need to know about someone you’ve just met.
Imagine being spontaneous and sparkling and thinking that you’ve done this too many times with too many people.
It’s him. The last memory of him has him in a green shirt, just like this one. The spectacles are exactly the same, as is the square-cut face. Not an exact match since he was last seen, years ago. So this is him, is it? Older, nicer, easier to be with?
But wait, this isn’t him. It’s someone else. A perfect stranger. But my god, the resemblance! You can’t unsee it now that you’ve seen it. Present, dinner with friends merges into a frame from the past, nostalgia colouring in the details in this sketchy outline that is sitting in front of you. Him. HIM. HIM.
Odd it took so long to figure that out though. Really, really odd that someone who feels like he’s embedded deep inside, one with your cells, is so hard to recognise in the face of another. He eats a bit differently, though. He never used to like caramel custard and you don’t think he knew how to use chopsticks. The chopsticks click, the spoon clatters. And again the frame shifts. It’s not him. Someone else. Stranger. No, not a stranger. A friend of a friend. You turn to look at the person you arrived with, clinging to the present, to a notion of who you are now.
Maybe memories crumble like over-thumbed bits of paper and after awhile, all you have left is the vague recollection of something that used to occupy that place. A stray browned scrap of paper that floated off, after the original disintegrated. The memory of a memory.
You find yourself miles away from that once-so-familiar picture. That must have been someone else, a different you. That happened to someone else, someone who became the you that you are now. But that was another person it happened to. You find your hold slipping. You realise the memory doesn’t stick to your soul and prick you anymore. He? Who’s he? Who was he? Somebody that happened to someone you don’t even know anymore. You’re not a part of that story. That story doesn’t even exist in your world now, without you. It doesn’t exist because it is without you.