Category Archives: grief

frustration, grief, Motherhood, Motherhood/body image, Stress

The third person

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I believe I have hit upon the reason mom’s refer to themselves in the third person. For example:
“Mommy is busy right now honey, please wait until I am done.”
“No honey, Mommy can’t turn the t.v. up right now, Mommy is in the shower.”
“Mommy is still in the shower honey, I can’t get to the remote right now! Please wait until I am out of the shower!!”

It is in part do to the interaction with the infant, but I think it is really because mommies have three personalities, therefore Mommy is personality number three, the third person.

My first person is a young woman who loves to go dancing, stay up until dawn, smoke cigarettes and toss back one too many tequila shots. Sadly, she was put into a coma about 6 years and 9 months ago, so the chances of anyone seeing her again are slim. However, she occasionally invades my consciousness with a sweet memory and the smell of freedom, often when I am driving in the rain and turn the music up a little louder than I should.

My second person is a serious lawyer ready and able to save the world. She is dedicated, tireless, and armed with the tools needed to wreak havoc on opposing council. She wears sexy yet serious business suits and sensible heels. She is witty at cocktail parties and political functions, and still amazes her husband with her intellectual prowess and social capabilities.

My third person is a mom. She is always there for tears, problem solving, lunch making, real and imagined insults, boo boo kisses, and upset tummies. She cleans the house, buys the groceries, prepares the food. She showers at night because she is usually showered in baby spit up several times during the day. She is a napkin, a washcloth, and more. She doesn’t sleep, hasn’t worn make-up in months, and lost her ability to put together a decent outfit ages ago. She is an expert in getting smiles and giggles, diffusing kiddo stress and consternation, and removing stains from laundry. She can change a really messy diaper in under three minutes with only three or four wipes.

However, she is the hardest personality to acknowledge and accept. She is much more disheveled than the other two parts of me, much more emotional, and seemingly less capable, though really, she is just dealing with more. After all, how often does a lawyer have to handle complex billing negotiations with a screaming baby vomiting on their suit? How many young and carefree women have to schlep children through the grocery store?

Anyway, the reason I think I refer to this third personality in third person is simple, it places distance between the sleepless, pale, disheveled mad woman in the mirror and myself. After all, carefree woman and slick lawyer are rarely interrupted in the shower by anyone for any reason, much less a six year old needing help with the television.

I really am still the young carefree woman and the slick lawyer. They are just currently hidden behind a river of baby spit up and burp cloths. Until I can see them again, or at least small parts of them, I will likely still continue to refer to the rest of me, that tired, spit up covered woman, in the third person.

grief, Monkey, parenting, pregnancy

Alien refuses to leave mothership…

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Still no baby here, though his family is certainly enjoying the alien moments created by his wiggles. He loves to give me crooked belly, and alien belly, and stick his foot out, etc. I can only be pregnant for so long before he gets here, so I am trying to be mellow about it all.

This weekend I was teasing Monkey by telling her that chocolate milk came from dark brown and light brown spotted cows from Wisconsin. She did not believe me and used the following phrase to create a majority over her father and I: “All of my stuffies and toys that have two eyes agree with me, so I win.”

What could we say against that? It was a fairly compelling argument.

Today I went to the outlet mall with Ellen and Tiff and spent an obscene amount of money on a new summer wardrobe for a certain tall beauty whose most recent growth spurt rendered her current clothing stockpile virtually useless. She was appreciative. Oddly, while she is hugely independent on everything else, she is fine with me picking out her clothes. I guess they simply don’t matter they much to her, or I have really good taste. I will go with the latter.

She and I both had a hard time with Nick’s death today, I spent the early morning hours awake again, pacing the house and trying to stop dreaming about him. No nightmares this time, just dreams of the time we spent together before he died. Sadly, they wake me up as much as the nightmares do, since even in my sleep I seem to realize something is wrong and that realization pulls me from rest. I am becoming very friendly with the hours between 2 and 5 am.

Monkey spent the last half hour of her school day in tears, crying about how much she misses him. Unfortunately, she had a substitute, and she really didn’t know what to do. I explained the situation again when I got to school and then made hot cocoa when we got home and we snuggled a little. Still, it is hard to explain this to her, because at 31 I don’t know when I will begin to feel normal again, so how can I set expectations for my 5 year old?

I still feel like some kind of friendship amputee, I can still feel my friend, I can hear him, and I keep waiting for him to call me. He is never far from my thoughts, and it is very hard to get through a whole day without crying, or really wanting to, at least once. I haven’t slept well in days. So how do I explain to Monkey that missing him is okay, feeling sad is okay, but being happy and forgetting about him is okay too? That she shouldn’t be completely morose about his death? She doesn’t have to remember him all the time in order to mourn him?

Hard conversations at our house lately. Tonight she asked if Nick was a ghost, I told her I didn’t know. She said “I hope he is, because I really want to see him again.” I suggested she talk to him, and told her some people believe people can hear us after they have passed away. She is currently in her room talking away, shedding some tears and hopefully learning how to cope. She is too small and too young to have to cope with this. He was a wonderful friend to her, I wish she had not lost him so early. Really big feelings are very scary and hard to deal with when one is so small.

Of course, this is hard to deal with even when one is big, so I can only try my best to answer her questions honestly, and be open to talking about him. That is the hardest part, whenever I seem to be having a day when he is not constantly on my mind, she brings him up, and there I am again, feeling like I could almost touch him, or hear him, and having to remember he is gone.

grief, Law

Job opening…

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Wanted: Hopeful optimist.
Duties: Remind me that the system works a lot of the time, and that when it doesn’t it is better to fight for change, than to rail at the powers that be uselessly. Remind me with newspaper clippings, email alerts, and phone calls that there are others out there fighting to make the system work, and the protect the rights and lives of others.
Compensation: Appreciation and love.

This morning I awoke to a world that doesn’t make sense. The legal stuff going on with Vonage indicates to me that our system of patents is broken. It is no longer protecting the creative and intellectual property of innovators so they can see profit from their ideas, but instead is curtailing innovation, and preventing creative thinkers from expanding the technology of our country. It is allowing big business to monopolize markets and drive competitors out of business, not with superior product, but with vaque, overbroad patent filing.

The idea behind the patent was to insure people continue to create and innovate by protecting their work, by limiting those who would profit by it to the innovater and their family for a number of years. It was intended to protect actual inventions and processes. It was not intended to limit innovation in an entire arena.

For example. Milk production. A person or company is not supposed to be able to patent milk production. A machine that produces milk more effectively, or more organically, sure, but not the production of milk itself.

One of the three patents upheld by the court basically allows Verizon ownership of milk production. It is a hugely over broad patent, limiting other businesses from being able to compete in the voice over IP market. Further, it allows Verizon to profit from prior art, in existence without any innovation or creativity on thier part, simply because they filed the patent first. They are using the patent system to monopolize the market, as Vonage has a more well known and less expensive VOIP product that theirs. Instead of innovating and creating a better product than Vonage, Verizon is saying to it’s customers and the rest of the country “Don’t worry, soon you will only have our paltry VOIP product to choose from, then you won’t miss the cheaper, more effective service.”

Sadly, when this case first went to trial, I actually thought the factfinders would be able to see that this is not an innovator protecting hard work and creativity, but a massive corporation seeking to drive competition out of the market. They didn’t. They upheld the patent. Now hope rests in the appellate court.

Which is why I need a hopeful optimist. Nick held the job prior to his death. He would always remind me why the system generally works, point out the reasons behind the flaws, and encourage me to find a way to fight to correct the system. Unfortunately, he is no longer here to provide that much needed service. Anyone else wish to step up to the plate?