The whole story

You might recognize this picture from a post in August, vaguely referencing "Mom's adventure." Only a few were aware that Mom took the shot while she was in Chicago on a weeklong tryout at the Chicago Tribune.

A recruiter from the company had called in May, actually the weekend we were in Massachusetts for Rachel's wedding. Mom's resume was on file with a journalism organization, and they'd found it and called out of the blue. Mom didn't know they had any openings.

The company is in the process of going private, transitioning to the new owner, Sam Zell. So they were doing some buyouts, but obviously still needed people to publish the newspaper. That's where Mom came in.

There were intense talks for a few days in May, with the decision finally being that Mom should hold off coming to town for a tryout, as she was quite pregnant, and the doctor just that week had said Linc could come any time (ha!). However the Trib people asked her to keep in touch, and maybe something could be worked out later in the summer.

After Linc was born, Mom called back, and they ended up asking her to come for the tryout the first week in August. So off Mom went, leaving her newborn son, her daughter as the newly assigned big sister and Dad, the new father of two. We had great help, though, from everyone; Granddaddy came for a couple of days, and Gram and Papa were already scheduled for a visit.

Anyway, it went great at the tryout. It was so fun for mom to be back in newspapers and she tried hard not to be starstruck while sitting in the middle of the newsroom. The job is on the copy desk for the National/International section, basically the "A" part of the paper. The Trib has dozens of national and international bureaus, and people on the desk were calling Pakistan and places, talking to reporters. It was wild.

So they ended up giving the job to the guy who tried out the next week. But they said Mom had done well on the tryout, that they anticipated more openings and would call me when they did.

OK, well, that's that, Mom thought.

Fast forward to last week: the recruiter calls back, says she anticipates an opening and wants to know if Mom is still interested. Sure, Mom said. A few days pass and she calls back and offers Mom the job, on Tuesday night.

We spent most of the week in negotiations, trying to make the numbers work first of all. We ended up close to what Mom had asked for, after they said they'd made the final offer on Friday. So we took the job that night.

We asked Lev what she thought, and at first she was all excited. But later during dinner, she suddenly said, "But I want to live in Louisville for a long tiiiiiimmmmmmmmeeee ... " and proceeded into a very sad cry. Mom and Dad tried hard to be understanding and brave throughout. She has lots of questions: what will happen to our couch, will they have tissues there, can I take my milk jug (her trickortreat project from school), can we take our house with us, etc., etc. Needless to say, we're trying our best to be gentle and work through this, and Grandy has supplied a great list of suggested reading. Lev will be able to relate to stories about moving.

The start date is Dec. 3. The realtor is coming to the house tomorrow. Hang on everyone; deadline is approaching!