I wake up and I hear the crackling of the icing rain coming down outside; much like the world is crying, as am I. Today is the day that my mother died. Regardless of what today is for me, everyone else equates today with Groundhog's Day. If the groundhog, a/k/a Punxsutawney Phil, sees his shadow there will be winter for six more weeks. To me, if the groundhog sees his shadow, my mom gets to die for the next six weeks in a row. I hear the icing rain and my heart tells me that metaphorically the world is at a loss because my mother was truly one of the best people anyone could have ever known.
By all accounts of the looks outside and every weather report across the country, it does not matter who sees their shadow. We are having a brutal winter and even Wrigley Field is not sacred from the elements' damage. Icons in history may fall, but the community around them lifts them up; and they, in turn, lift themselves for their community.
Being a grab-and-grip-your-bootstraps type person I focus on what I can do. I focus on how I live my life and how I am a reflection of my parents. I know that what I do lets my mother live on. I know that what I do is done because of the way I was raised. I am proudly my mother's daughter. I go out of my way just a little to add some niceness to someones otherwise ordinary day for no reason other than it is what mother would have done. I do this because I learned by example, not by being told. I am who I am because I had the best parents in the world who actually parented.
Just as I attended school the very next day after her passing, I will go to work today and bear the elements to get there on time as always. Not because I want to, but because I do. This I do because that is how I was raised and that is what we Midwesterners of origin do. That is what my mother would have done.
Today I will listen to Defendants and defense counsel orchestrate bologna sandwiches far before lunch and long past breakfast. I often wonder if it is somehow a worldly metaphor that while the Defendants are in the lockup they are fed a bologna sandwich for lunch. I wonder if their attorney ever actually thought of that, or if he completely overlooked the irony while he was busy making a bologna sandwich for the court. Sometimes I want to just pack a grocery bag in the morning instead of my briefcase. I want to pack bologna sandwiches and pass them out to all the defense counsel and say, "Here! I already have plenty of bologna sandwiches, I don't need yours!"
However tempted I may be to add some humor to DC Superior Court today, I refrain from going to the kitchen and preparing these actual meat and bread metaphors. Today is not the day. The Judges are in a much better mood during baseball season, and we are not there yet.
Today again I will hear every excuse for being late. I will hear every excuse as to how the defendant did not do it, how they need more time or how they have "found a new witness." Just once, I want to hear someone stand up and say it like it is. Just once I want to hear a domestic violence case where the Defendant stands proud and says, "Yes, I hit the bitch. After listening to her go on and on and on, don't you understand why?" I want to hear the Defendant tell the Court that he could not take it anymore and he found more peace being in jail than spending the night listening to the blah blah blah of baby mama drama. I want to hear the Defendant in a bad divorce case point out to the Judge that in a 20 year marriage of hate he could have served less time if he had killed her. I just want today, for once, for someone to have their lightbulb light up, Instead I will be forced to be entertained with low wattage; or worse, possibly the loss of electricity.
