From Engineer To Lawyer

faster than I thought

Nathaniel the train lover relishes his train rides.

Fun with ponytails.

A good cuddle with the ever patient Red Wiggly.

well, here i am

Goodness.

I look up and it's September. My periodic updates are turning into very periodic updates. Apologies, and further apologies to those of you with wonderful blogs that I wish I was reading, but I'm not. I find that I spend enough time at the computer with work that one of the last things I want to do in my free time is devote it to another screen. I do check in every so often, though, and I'm glad to see everybody seems to be thriving.

In a month I will have been a lawyer for a year. That's hard to believe. It's flown by, literally flown by. I haven't spent my entire first year doing doc review, either, like you hear. I've done some -- it is a necessary evil -- but I've done far more substantive work for the majority of it.

Summer was busy for me, not because of work, which was blessedly manageable for July and August (thank you, federal judges who prefer to vacation in the summer), but because of life in general. We contemplated buying a newer and larger house, which took a surprising amount of time to mull over. Eventually we decided against it. I'm somewhat devoted to the concept of small-house living (convenient, given that we live in the Bay Area), and don't want to commit to a significantly larger mortgage unless it is The Perfect House. Which this one wasn't. It was much larger than our current townhouse, but the location wasn't ideal, the mortgage would have been much worse, and -- perhaps the most important problem and yet the most ephemeral -- we didn't like the light. Our current townhouse gets a tremendous amount of natural sunlight, and in the summer we eat outdoors nearly every night. We weren't ready to give that up.  It took weeks of back and forth to reach that conclusion, however.

Nathaniel started Northern California peace-and-love karate this summer as well. The uniforms at this dojo all bear quotes from Gandhi on the back, and the three-year-old class is essentially a glorified yoga-meets-tumbling class in which hits, kicks or other traditionally karate-like activities are deeply frowned upon. As it was this place or the dojo with the webpage decorated with nunchuks, and Nathaniel adores it, I'm confident in the decision, but they are so very, very earnest.

Nathaniel will be four in less than two weeks. Amazing. I'll post some new pics up as soon as I can download them (so, uh, don't rush back here for them).

injustice righted

A little over four years ago, I slipped into City Hall and and sniffled my way through some lovely weddings.

Of course, those of you who have been reading my blog for that long now know what I didn't add to my post that drizzly gray February afternoon: that I was newly pregnant with Nathaniel, that the tears that snaked down my cheeks started when I imagined my unborn child with his or her partner, saying vows, in love, declaring his own little family like the beaming men I watched.

Also left unposted was the raw, primal, mama tiger anger: You say my little one, my unborn baby tucked safely inside me for now, you say my baby can't get married some day because he or she might be gay? Because he might fall in love with a man, or she might meet the woman of her dreams? Oh, hell no. That's not right, never was right, never could be right. 

Nathaniel went from a six-week-old embryo to a three-and-a-half-year-old romantic during the  time it took to get it right, but at last, it  is finally right.

and speaking of love

There's nothing quite like that of a boy and his dog, especially during a peaceful impromptu nap in the sun on a warm afternoon.

happy mother's day

Last year, while working for the judge and therefore commuting by train on some days, I bought It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons on impulse, looking for a book to keep me company after I summarily rejected Wicked after dragging myself halfway through that book.

It was an entertaining read. Deliberately abandoning books halfway through is always a minor trauma, and I needed something soothing. It worked.

I don't remember all the essays, but I clearly remember the words of one writer in particular.  "Three-year-old boys," she mused, "are quite possibly the most loving creatures on the entire planet." 

I see what she means.* Nathaniel, now a little over three and a half, is experimenting with love. Every few days brings a new declaration of his affection, a new, ever more adorable method of sharing his love. His career goals ("Mama, when I'm growed up, I want to be a mama."); newly developed worries ("Daddy, if you have to go in an ambulance I will be sad, but I will take care of you and you will be okay.");  daily distractions ("I wasn't 'hinking [about what books to read when getting read for bed]; I was 'hinking about loving."); his awareness of his newest baby cousin ("I hold Laurel** because I love her. She is vewry small and vewry, vewry lovely."); his friends at daycare ("I 'hink Alexander really really loves me."); and his awareness of his family ("Lots of the family love me!"); his constant affirmations of his love ("I really, really love you, Mommy!") -- they all bespeak a young mind wrestling with something overwhelming, and yet core to his existence. 

He dislikes painting, but painstakingly painted a flowerpot for me for Mother's Day, then carefully potted a sunny orange marigold in it.  Then he spilled the beans in passionate detail several days before Sunday, unable to keep his excitement contained. "I made a flowerpot for you, Mommy, because I love you, and it has purple on it, and blue, and I painted it, and it has an 'M' for Mama in it, and, and . . . ."

It is beyond sweet, and yet, for me, also tinged with an edge of sadness. He openly loves the world now.  But it is only a matter of time before he learns that the world does not love back with equal grace and force.  He's already run into some minor exclusion at preschool, but he rationalizes it away ("Connor said he isn't my friend, but even if he says he's not my friend, Connor still loves me.").  As he's well-liked by both the other children and the teachers, Nathaniel perceives any exclusion as a mistake, just an honest mistake, made by the other child.  He loves the world; surely the world loves him back. He does not yet doubt.

Happy Mother's Day, everybody.  Remember to call your mama.  She worries about you.

* She neglected to mention that with the love comes the sass -- at times I am certain Nathaniel is 13, not 3 -- but that's a blog post for a different day.

** Born just a few days ago to my sister the doctor (as opposed to the dentist), and, just as with my other sister, I held her leg, cheered her on, and witnessed little Laurel's birth and her passionate first scream, uttered not even fully out of the birth canal.

fire truck briefs

One of the exciting events that occurred over the past few months: potty training. Or, potty learning, in the parlance of our local overly earnest parenting discussion list. Training is now oppressive and crushes childrens' spirits, shames them into compliance, engenders psychosexual hangups, and inevitably means they will vote Republican when they grow up. We can't have that, so we learned but did not train. To my inexperienced eyes the processes looked remarkably identical, but I am after all a neophyte at this.

Our potty learning process was guided largely by the fact that we are lazy. We do not enjoy cleaning up "accidents," as they are so euphemistically termed. Plus, diapers are easy. Child does his business in the diaper, we make a joint trip into the bathroom, and we're done. I think I had it down to a few minutes per change. Underwear-wearing prior to the acquisition of solid potty skills is, in contrast, a messy and time-consuming process.  So, lazy, but that gave me the ability to say to the local playground busybody, with a credibly straight face,  that we deeply believe in child-led potty learning. I believe I may have batted my eyelashes.

Two days after Christmas, Nathaniel woke up and asked for underwear. By Twelfth Night, he was in underwear fulltime. It was a quick and easy process once he decided that the time had come. Hurray for parental laziness child-led potty learning.

The entrance into big-boy underwear has come with a great deal of previously unknown challenges. Nathaniel is currently strongly opinionated in his fashion choices. His shirts must feature a wheeled vehicle of some sort. The addition of underwear provided an additional fashion consideration. He is happiest when he leaves the house matching: concrete-mixer shirt paired with construction themed underwear, fire truck shirt paired with snazzy fire truck briefs featured bright orange fireballs.

The challenges are not just for Nathaniel. I also recently faced a hitherto unexpected challenge about a month back. On a walk, regrettably far from any plumbing, I was asked to explain the mechanics of the "standing-up pee." I successfully negotiated step one: the pulling down of the pants. But as it turns out, there are multiple steps to this process.

"Okay, now you hold it and pee, sweetie."

Nathaniel paused, looking up at me expectantly. "Where I hold it? Here?" He demonstrated. "Or down here?"

Now, I ask those of you not in possession of the ability to pee on a tree standing up: do you know the answer to that question? Have you ever studied the mechanics of the art? I had no idea there were even holding options available.

"Um, hold it where you can aim."

That was not enough detail. Time for a different tactic. I picked him up and held him horizontally up in the air, face down, so that the aiming question would not be an issue. This was also rejected as "not how Daddy does it." It is true that Daddy does not pee while somebody hovers him three feet horizontally above the ground. I could not argue with his logic.

In the end, he declined to pee, a direct reflection on my shoddy abilities to explain the process. Nathaniel, the child of two engineers, likes clear direction, and I had not met his expectations. He sighed. "Mama, it is better if you call Daddy to get us. I pee at home."

Recognizing the wisdom of surrender, I gave in and called my husband. He came and we hurried a now-dancing Nathaniel into the car and back home, where he sequestered himself in the bathroom for a discussion of the mechanics of the entire endeavor with somebody who actually knows something. Unlike, say, me.

 

gene skipping

My father is a consummate train-lover. I may have mentioned this at some point. I have visited every single running historical railway in California, as well as a smattering of railways across the country.  I believe my father is privately of the opinion that a vacation is not worth the name if there is not a railroad involved at some juncture, but he is resigned to the fact that none of his children, even my two brothers, are willing to spend all vacations chasing down rickety old steam engines.

He called me up yesterday. "T., there is a train exhibit tomorrow at the Cow Palace. I was thinking maybe Nathaniel might like to go."

Does Red Wiggly wiggle? Nathaniel has only grown more obsessed with trains as he has aged. He is nearly three and a half and has a knowledge of trains that far surpasses mine. My father, his grandfather, is delighted. The family believes the train gene skipped a generation. I must be a recessive carrier.

I assured my father that Nathaniel would love to accompany his grandfather to the Great Train Expo. My father paused, clearly finding his words. "Now, I don't want to take this away from you, um, I would love to take him, but if you want to take him instead, just let me know."

I reassured my father that he was not in fact stealing an opportunity from me, deciding not to mention that I'd already started planning out a blissful, sunny Sunday morning the minute he mentioned it. Between you and me, four hours at a train exposition is about three hours and fifty minutes too long for me.

Nathaniel struggled for some time with his fashion choices this morning. Would the blue shirt with a large diesel or the white shirt featuring our closest steam engine be more à la mode? Should he wear his engineer's cap, or would it block his vision of the trains too much? Eventually he settled on the steam engine, no cap, and off he went with my father.

I went to the gym, came home with coffee, threw open the windows and doors to the gorgeous spring weather, and finally, after three months, sat down to write.

                                                                               ***

The good news is that first-year associate life has not rendered me entirely speechless. I did go through a period there for a few months -- okay, since Thanksgiving -- where I was not sure how to blog. It's not that I don't love blogging, but since there is so much I cannot talk about, I've had to think about how I want to blog. My blog until this point has been fairly open about the experience of law and motherhood, but employment is an entirely different matter.

After mulling it over, I've decided I will share general experiences and impressions of my life in general. My posting frequency will be on the order of a post every few weeks or maybe once a month. I've missed blogging regularly, and I feel like I've been able to reach an agreement in my head as to how I can responsibly blog.

Nice to see you again.

supervisor

Many warm and deeply appreciated thanks to all of you for your wonderful good wishes and comments. I'm still a little dazed by the news. Mostly, though, I am very, very happy and hugely relieved. I am so glad I don't have to go through that again.

While I agonized and fretted over the upcoming bar results, Nathaniel grew increasingly pleased with expanding capabilities of his little cousin. She started off a little slowly, but his cousin is finally showing some (in his opinion highly overdue) interest in the things that truly matter in life: cars and trucks.   She's not perfect, but she's learning.

Fortunately for her, she has an older cousin who is very, very aware of the proper way that toy trucks and cars should be manipulated. (And, yes, in case you're wondering, she does have more hair at eight months than Nathaniel did at two.) He supervises her very carefully. You never know what those wild and crazy eight-month-olds will do to a car.

He's still game for a sticky-faced portrait, though. Even with all those supervisory duties.

they can't just say "hey, you passed!"

Because that would be in plain English. Must obfuscate instead.

What I saw when I logged in tonight:

Application Number:	1234
File Number:	56789
Name:	TRANSMOGRIFLAW

The name above appears on the pass list for the July 2007 California Bar Examination.

consolation

If I get bad news tomorrow, you can send me one of these cards.