New Mom Old Mom

I was a newspaper reporter in my former life (my life before kids). I mostly covered the cops and courts beat. My dad was a cop, so the whole crime and punishment thing was a natural for me. I wrote about some serious tragedies, like this one and this one.  I interviewed the families of these victims, sometimes within hours of their loved ones’ deaths. I interviewed the family of the man sentenced to death  in this case within hours of his arrest. I even met my husband at a memorial service for a police officer killed in the line of duty — I was covering the service for my newspaper. None of this  bothered me. It was simply part of my job.

These days, in addition to being a mom, I’m a freelance writer and public relations professional, and I still do some newspaper writing. Even though it doesn’t pay nearly as well as my “corporate” work, reporting was my first love and I want to keep those skills sharp. One of my former newspaper colleagues is now the editor of a local paper in my community, so she sends story assignments my way from time to time. And since she knew me when I was a “tough” cops reporter, she didn’t hesitate to assign me a story about a young woman who was killed in a car accident on Christmas day.

I didn’t hesitate to take the assignment, either — that is, until I had to make the phone call to the young woman’s parents. I was secretly hoping they’d refuse to talk to me, and I’d simply write the story from the police reports with a few quotes from the cops. But not only did these parents agree to talk to me, they insisted I come to their home and talk with several family members and look at pictures of their lovely daughter and really get to know who she was.

I talked with these kind people today. The interview that I dreaded all weekend ended up being a lovely way to spend an hour this afternoon. I got to  meet a family that really knows how to celebrate life. I wish I’d known their daughter, because she sounds like she was amazing. Still, doing the interview wasn’t easy. And I might think twice before taking another assignment like this one.

My husband asked me what happened to the tough reporter that he knew all those years ago. I think she died in childbirth.