Sofia (2) | (49.04)

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Sofia (2) | (49.04)

Post by mragland » Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:21 pm

2.23.2048 – Brooklyn, New York


“On the record? Tom was a man who was very career oriented, very driven. He tried to make time for family on weekends and holidays, but he was often unsuccessful. Managing the firm, particularly after Gerald passed, was a large demand on his time. This inevitably led to strain at home, but we were both committed to keeping the family together.

“Off the record? Just between friends? I don't think he had any positive role models in his own family growing up. I think he just didn't know how a good father or husband behaved. His own father, frankly, could be a bully, verbally, and his mother was distant to the point of absence. I think Tom started to avoid the household because, unlike his work, it didn't offer him the chance for any big wins. Parenting is a grind and its rewards are small and subtle. They can seem meager. I believe this frustrated him to the point that it was just easier to stay at the office. Also, he had trouble dealing with the children as children. He wanted them to make sense, to be reasonable. You can imagine how disappointed he must have been.

“Potty training would be a good example. When we were going through it with Clara, our oldest, he just could not comprehend why a child would rather soil itself than sit on the little pot. As they were growing up, he kept wanting to send them to therapy, to have them seen by childhood development experts. He was convinced they were broken in some way, but they were just kids being kids. I think he would have been fine if he could have just fast-forwarded to when they were 18, when he could talk to them more or less as adults. He loved them. I never doubted that, but he had a terrible time expressing it.

“Back on the record now? No, I wouldn't say the first pregnancy was planned, but it wasn't expressly avoided, either. I wasn't at all sure that I wanted children. Even before the kids came, I had a pretty good idea where the burden of care was going to fall between the two of us. I had my own career to think of. I was still working for the Southern District. They took me off Financial Fraud, for obvious reasons, and I moved to Public Corruption...

“Yeah, I suppose you could say there was some overlap there.

“Anyway, I still had a career at that time. I was young, twenty-nine. I had spoken with some of the older female attorneys who had children, and they all said same thing pretty much; that there was no such thing as a convenient time, but if you wanted a family you could make it work. It was possible to do both, but damned hard to do both well. Tom and I talked about it, starting a family. I went off birth control and we just let the chips fall where they may.

“I didn't realize how much I wanted a kid until I actually had one. Throughout the pregnancy I was worried about that. What if she comes and I just feel nothing?

“What, like a nanny? No, I had seen the kids who had gone though that process and I didn't care for the results. If my kids were going to be spoiled little snots, it was going to be my own fault. I was determined on that point.”
Morris Ragland
President, Baseball Ops, Beirut Cedars (8/25/46 - 10/23/47)
President, Baseball Ops, Valencia Stars (10/24/47 - present)
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"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." - W. Churchill

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