When it Rains It Pours: A Crazy Few Weeks for My Family

The past few weeks of my life have been an absolute shit show in every sense of the word.

It’s funny how stressful events come in clusters. All of a sudden and all at once, things in our household and our professional lives got extremely busy.

Several unexpected events happened which have left me exhausted, depleted and otherwise looking and feeling like a bus hit me, backed up, and then hit me again. This is not a rant or a laundry list of complaints, I promise! This is just a glimpse into one chapter in the life of a busy working mom/step-mom where real life is often messy and crazy. We all go through rough patches, and some are rougher than others, right? I hope some of my experiences help other people see that none of us actually have it all together and we are all trying to stay above water. I try to do two things in my writing: find the humor and find the lessons in whatever I am experiencing. This is how I lean in to the hard stuff.

The shitshow started 2 weeks ago.

All of a sudden, my work schedule got very busy and because of the type of work I do, there is a lot of behind the scenes preparation for every case and sometimes not much notice when a case is officially going to trial. You always need to be ready. Even if you’re not. Turns out, I am usually wrong in predicting which cases will end up as trials. Despite being a litigator for over a decade, I am also terrible at using my calendar. Why on earth did I set a trial for the Monday after Mother’s Day? The worst part is I did this to myself once before and sure enough, it was a trial then, too. But now that I am a mom, the day matters to me and the last thing I wanted to do was work. Such a rookie mistake! My trial partner ended up having a death in her family and so she was working in between the funeral and family stuff, and we were both pulling some long hours. We were truly working our butts off. Then…. I lost my voice.

I woke up the Saturday before Monday’s trial and I. Could. Not. Talk. I had no other symptoms except that it was effort to talk above a whisper.

If you know me, I talk a lot and at a volume that greatly exceeds a whisper! So that was challenging because on Monday morning during jury selection, I could barely get my words out. Thankfully there isn’t a lot of talking I had to do during that process. I was able to save my voice just a little bit. It was an exhausting three days and just as I do in every trial, I tried to learn a little about life. In this case, I learned (more like re-learned) that unavoidable things will happen, usually at the most inconvenient time. Funerals and sickness happen to even the best of us and we have to support one another and step in when a member of the team is “down.” That goes for both family and work. My partner and I tried the case, had a decent outcome and I am proud of us for powering through when it would have been so easy to ask for a postponement.

The day after the trial ended, my husband had a medical procedure, and he couldn’t drive so I was the chauffeur. I waited in the car like a good spouse, just relaxing and listening to a podcast and catching up on emails. Until the car died. Oops. Turns out, my brilliant idea of saving gas by keeping it on but not running the engine wore down the battery and it died.

I feel like the drained battery is a metaphor for this entire story (I am the battery).

The worst part was that after 38 years and 10 months of being alive, I actually had no idea what to do. I couldn’t remember if we had Triple A and all I could think was that he was going to wake up from surgery and we would be stranded. I scrolled through my phone and tried to think who to call. Younger Tasha would have called her Dad, but my dad is 74 and doesn’t really drive so much anymore. After a few minutes frozen in panic, I called a work friend who came over and gave my car a jump just in time for my husband to wake up.

The lesson here is a good one: Don’t ever get so educated that you overlook the importance of learning every-day life skills.

I don’t know how to change a tire.

I didn’t learn to do laundry (correctly) until my 20’s.

I don’t know where my husband keeps the number for the roadside assistance that we pay for through our insurance.

I am the first to admit that I lack survival skills and I think some of that has to do with being spoiled as a kid (Sorry, mom and dad). If you’re reading this and you’re raising a young woman, buy her a Triple A membership instead of a Sephora gift card for the next birthday present. It is so much more useful than a drawer full of $25 lipsticks, which as it turns out don’t help you when you’re in a pickle. And if you’re a young woman, try to anticipate situations like this and have a game plan so you aren’t stuck. Keep some jumper cables in the back of your car and watch a You-Tube video how to use them. I wish I had done that.

I am capable of doing hard things, but I must have been absent for several important lessons in Life 101. As women, I think we sometimes delegate too much to the men in our lives and that means that we risk ending up dependent. I know Amy would have known exactly what to do in my situation and been prepared. That woman can change a tire and win cases in court probably in the same day. In heels. She probably had jumper cables in her trunk in college, while I only had shoes in mine.

The day after my husband’s surgery, I had a medical procedure of my own. It was far less eventful as he did not drain the car battery or do anything irresponsible while I was in the OR. But it has been a really painful recovery and I haven’t relaxed as much as I should. It is so cliché, but I have been too busy to rest.

The same day as my surgery, my 16 month-old injured his leg at school and we don’t know how because it happened when the kids were outside and no one saw exactly what he did. He won’t put any weight on it, and we were concerned it was broken. If only he could talk and tell us how he did this! For the past several days, we have been driving all over to the after-hours pediatric urgent care, the regular pediatrician, a walk-in orthopedic clinic and now we are waiting to see a pediatric orthopedic specialist. So far, we have met several doctors and other professionals who all have absolutely no idea what is wrong with him. According to one doctor, it could be nothing OR it could be this one really terrible thing, but of course, he was not sure. I felt utterly exasperated with every professional who has seen us over the past week.

Why does no one have any answers or solutions? This is my child, my baby, and he cannot walk! I consider that an emergency. I saw a different side of myself come out today in the doctor’s office when we were waiting 30 minutes for him to come into the room and see us, after waiting 30 minutes in the reception area. I felt angry and my inner mama-bear came out. Roar! I wasn’t concerned with being nice or polite as I am 99.9% of the time. This was a situation where I had to advocate for my child to be seen by the right person and “nice” wasn’t going to make that happen. I think there are people who might consider this being a bitch. I hate the word, but as Tina Fey once said, bitches get stuff done.

Will and his granola bar

That is the lesson from this part of the shitshow. Oh, and don’t assume doctors (or lawyers!) have all the answers. Sometimes you need to be your own advocate or you are going to end up sitting in a lot of waiting rooms getting the run around. We are now going to see this other specialist and it’s pretty agonizing to keep waiting, but I am trying to just take it one step at a time. My son is happy and appears perfectly healthy. He apparently loves waiting rooms and charming people into buying him snacks from the vending machine. One of the receptionists was kind enough to give him a very battered looking Nutrigrain bar, and he devoured it! Her kindness meant the world to me because I was really struggling sitting there for hours with a hungry toddler.

My kid has such a great little spirit. He has acted pretty chill about the whole situation. He has smiled more than he has cried, and at least five times a day he starts giggling uncontrollably. That makes me feel like this is going to be okay. I guess laughter can be a great form of medicine.

That is how I am trying to approach the past few weeks; with humor. He still can’t walk on his left leg and so he is back to crawling and attempting to hobble around which makes me sad. However, he has found a way to adapt, and I think that’s an important skill to have when life throws curveballs like this.

If you have somewhere to go, you just might need to crawl until you can walk.

Sometimes life is smooth sailing and sometimes it is a shitshow like this chapter. It ebbs and flows and twists and turns. I am trying to keep it all in perspective and see the light at the end of the tunnel. There is always a light.

There will be much harder days that we will have to face, but I also know that there will be brighter and better ones too. For now, I will let myself laugh and cry as I lean into this wave and ride it out.