Tag: family

parenthood and life since 2013

Not that I was doing a great job of keeping this blog updated to begin with, but the birth of our youngest in 2013 essentially turned over every apple cart in our lives. :) It’s odd how parenthood changes you very little in some ways (your eyes still open the next morning and you are still you, provided your name isn’t Gregor Samsa), but completely changes everything in your life at the same time. Perhaps marriage is the same thing, it is on some level whatever you dedicate yourself to putting into it. While I am reluctant to make generalizations about an experience as varied as the human race itself, I feel safe asserting that it is one of the life events which have a clear demarcation of Before and After, regardless of what a person’s particular lived experience might be under that top-level heading. As we’re expecting our second later this year, this blog will probably return to deep hibernation until early 2017.

For myself, I find my life is filled at once with more worries and more hope. I worry every day about whether I’m doing the best thing I can for my family, but at the same time I see our youngest growing and learning and squealing with glee for the joy of being alive (“What’s this? A ‘dog’? DOGS ARE AWESOME!”), and I have hope that things will be OK. I don’t think anything could have possibly prepared me beforehand for the tsunamis of emotion I’ve felt being a parent.

On other fronts, I have a new job leading up the technical organization for the enterprise code/document review platform, Collaborator, made by SmartBear Software. We’ve certainly undergone quite a bit of organizational turmoil since I started in the fall of 2013 (~70% layoff in the spring of 2014, for starters), but we’re still shipping on a relatively regular release schedule, delivering new things to our customers, and all things considered doing much better than I had expected on some of the darkest early days. Being the-buck-stops-here for dev, docs, ops, qa and interfacing with marketing and sales is enough to keep any three people busy and it’s all on my plate. I probably shouldn’t even be writing this but I’m waiting for a really long build process to finish.

With parenting and a very full dance card at work, I haven’t much to share from an academic standpoint. I took a Coursera course on Automata taught by Ullman at Stanford and did well enough to get a pass certificate, for whatever that’s worth, and made an A in Algorithm Analysis from Oregon State’s eCampus (<3 online programs, for all their flaws). I think I presently have the minimal set of pre-reqs to apply to most graduate programs (maybe modulo an upper-level hardware class, depending on the school), but haven't made any real steps in that direction as it seems foolish to embark on that until the second child is at least into toddlerhood.

Mary B. Jackson, June 12th 1952 – November 2nd 2010.

Mary B. Jackson, June 12th 1952 – November 2nd 2010.

My mom passed away a few weeks ago. I’m still kind of at a loss for how to talk about it; that I miss her beyond my ability to express in words goes without saying. She was such a large personality and presence the world seems so different to not have her in it anymore; just one example of her complexity would be that I’m not even sure how she best wanted her name to be. Sometimes she was “Mary”, other times “Mari”, yet other times identifying as “Prairie”. Her middle initial could be Beth, or it could be Brenneman. She was an artist in everything she touched, from painting to drawing to language itself. There are boxes upon boxes now in climate controlled storage of her work and photographs, some of her larger paintings have gone on to friends that (I hope) will respect them and keep them in good condition.

My last memory of her is her sitting up and looking cheerful in her hospital bed, as I had to leave due to the end of visiting hours. She looked hopeful, alive if a bit displeased with her surroundings. She passed on while receiving good care, in a good environment, and was sedated so she should have felt no pain or fear in her final moments alive. She had a first heart attack about eight weeks ago, and at least I was able to visit her in the hospital before she went. We talked and she seemed entirely in control of her faculties when she said she wanted a Do Not Resuscitate order in place; when she had a second attack I was called upon by the staff to verify and I could do nothing else than honor her wishes. She had spent decades in fear of dialysis, and when it became necessary I think the fear of it (no doubt amplified somewhat by her growing Alzheimer’s symptoms) probably put the stress on her body that lead to her heart attacks.

Most of her estate has been settled at this point. Mom wanted cremation and a simple memorial ceremony, both of which have been done. The only lingering aspect is a safe deposit box that I will need to probate her will to gain access to (it has some personal effects and such in it that I would like to have). That will take some time to organize (filing fee $279, plus whatever a lawyer will charge me for a simple probate app, plus a few affidavits from friends of hers of long standing that her handwritten will is in fact hers, plus travel expenses to get there and back). For now I’ve simply paid for another year’s rental on the box, and I have four years to probate the will itself. Next summer should be a reasonable time frame to get this settled. I should have my mom’s ashes by then, and plan on perhaps resettling them somewhere nice in the Texas hill country (an area she loved) during the same trip if possible… We’ll see I suppose, no big rush. Her beloved cat, Mr. Blackie (a gorgeous panther-like tom of indeterminate origin), has gone to be with my in-laws out in central Texas where he’ll have plenty of space to roam and will be well taken care of.

I keep wanting to give her a call and see how she’s doing, to share another laugh over the absurdities of politics. The image came unbidden into my mind when she passed of her and Molly Ivins laughing together over coffee in the afterlife about the latest activities of the political animal in this one. I can only hope that if there is a heaven, the two of them are there and will be filling in for St. Peter when the Bushes show up to try to get in. As the 2nd is of course Election Day, from now on every year I’ll think of mom and that image when I pull the lever for the biggest bunch of bomb-throwing liberals and yellow-dog democrats I can find on any ballot in front of me.