From Failing with Grace: Apologia of a Professional Alcoholic Mom, my memoir:
I am an alcoholic. I am a lawyer. I am a mom. I did not plan to be any of these things. When I was growing up, I imagined being an astronaut, President of the United States, a college athlete. After becoming a lawyer, I imagined a life, about ten years out, that included partnership in a law firm and all that came with it: money, power and devoted admiration. Because I needed this simple, childish vision of success to survive, to provide some hope, some sense that I might someday achieve something meaningful, my dream of law firm partnership persisted long after its impossibility was obvious, fueled by the wild delusions only excessive drinking can conjure. When my son was born, about three years into my legal career, my blatant failure as a drunk trying to care for and nurture another life shattered any hope that my life might turn out like the success I imagined. It was a dizzying free fall fueled by alcohol that should have ended in death, either by suicide or some other alcohol-related demise. But it didn’t. I am still here, and so is my son. And so, though much changed, are my dreams.
Excerpt From The Pajama Lawyer, A Short Story
That day, my office smelled like shit. The shit was not mine. It could have been, my hangover stabbing my bowels loose, but it was not: the poop belonged to my two-year-old son, neatly contained in his diaper. Hastily dressed in backwards jean shorts and an almost-too-small dinosaur shirt stained, he sat behind me, his legs, knees, feet bare on the scratchy commercial-grade carpet, sitting in the way the doctors insisted meant he might have a sensory processing impairment. Ignorant to the meaning of his comfort, he briefly examined a red ball, a light-up music box with the sound off, a crinkly green dinosaur with soft wings, before putting them each in his mouth, getting bored, and wanting to do something else. I thought I had provided what he needed–toys, space–but he inconveniently refused to be ignored. His shit demanded more than I wanted to give.
The theme park was hotter than she remembered from her childhood visits. The heat radiated in waves from unshaded painted concrete walkways, faded now to a dirty light pink instead of the bright red it was when she visited years ago with her mom. The park was also more crowded than she remembered, so many sweaty families looking mostly miserable or walking quickly, with so much purpose and speed they noticed little else, tired couples, children sleeping in strollers, overwhelmed by the day, thousands of people alone in their own plans for the special day, or weariness from them, or numb with disappointment. She and her nine-year-old son were there for excesses of sugar and amusement, things so absent from their daily life that the indulgence overwhelmed. She was uncomfortable, and the thought of a drink came into her mind. Just one. Thankfully, her next thought was that a drink was no longer an option.
— From Amusement, a short story by Kathryn Mardones
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