Former prisoner calls getting a jury summons 'one of the best days of my life'

When I was picked recently to serve on a jury, I immediately felt trapped and panicky as  I realized I'd be spending the next several days in a stuffy courtroom full of strangers. Until I heard the voice of one of my fellow jurors describing how he felt getting his jury summons.

"It was one of the best days of my life," said the former prisoner, explaining that the letter was his official invitation back into society.

That was cool. 

I had groaned when I got my summons. And I'm guessing most everyone else called in with me that week did, too. 

But not the convict I will call John. To John, that letter meant he had successfully rehabilitated himself and reinstated his rights to vote and to serve on a jury.

He had waited years after his release from prison to apply for those rights. And once he did, "six months later I got that summons," John said, adding that he'd never been considered for a jury before because of a criminal past that began in his teens.

But while our fellow potential jurors did everything they could to show resentment toward law enforcement, often relaying second or third-hand accounts in the hopes of being excused from service, John said he had no hard feelings toward the people who administered his punishment.

"I know the bailiff there because he arrested me," John said of the handcuffs that had put him in prison for several years.

The first morning of the trial, I told John he had given me valuable perspective. Such as how sitting in comfortable chairs, being offered many breaks with the freedom to go outside and eat whatever we wanted during the day, then going home every night to our families and sleeping in our own beds was nowhere near like actually being in prison.

Except in one surprising way it was. 

When I asked John if there was anything he missed about being in prison, he described a culture of mutual respect he had appreciated. On the outside, he quickly noticed, people often give no thought to others they pass, not even acknowledging the presence of, let alone holding a door open for, someone they will likely never see again. 

But since prisoners are crammed together day after day as they eat, sleep, bathe and use toilets within inches of the same people over and over, they quickly learn that even the smallest act of respect will be remembered and reciprocated.

And I felt such careful respect in every action of our judge in the courtroom, starting with how he greeted us every morning, and excused us every afternoon, by sincerely thanking us for carving time out of our lives to serve on a jury. 

The judge was so considerate, in fact, he had water put on a table for us to access any time we wanted, even adding his own cough drops and chocolates for us to enjoy. And when my service was completed, I got a letter from the judge personally thanking me one last time for my time and commitment.

That, too, was cool.

 

Update: Of course, this was written before the Covid-19 pandemic and therefore does not address the new layers of anxiety and risk now associated with certain aspects of jury duty. However, my appreciation for the perspective my fellow juror offered me has not changed.

Poem: Canoe

I am in your canoe.

Until we capsize,

Or you throw me overboard,

I will be paddling next to you.

Justine Frederiksen

For years I saw a man in the cemetery every morning. One day, I stopped to talk to him.

A man brings red roses to his wife's grave on their anniversary.

Most days I drive by the cemetery I see a man visiting his wife's grave. 
When it's hot he wears a hat and short sleeves; for the rain he brings a raincoat and umbrella. First he tidies up the flowers and grass near the headstone, then he stands with his arms folded for about 15 minutes.

For years I've wanted to talk to him, always hesitating for fear of disturbing him. But something made me stop recently and approach him with a small wave. When he waved back I asked, "Are you visiting your wife?"

"Yes," he said, nodding at the fresh red roses lying on the grass. "Today is our wedding day."

That was cool.

"We were married for more than 66 years," he said of his high school sweetheart. "And you're not going to believe this, but in all those years we never had an argument."

"We both grew up in homes where people were always yelling at each other, so we made up our minds that we weren't going to do that," he continued. "And we didn't. We had a lot of discussions, though, with time for me to talk and for her to talk. And by the time we went to bed, we had worked everything out."

To stay married, he said, you've got to be "willing to listen and you've got to be willing to admit when you're wrong.  And usually, my wife was the one who was right. As a husband, there are two things you should say every day: 'I love you' and 'Yes, dear.'"

When asked what he liked about his wife when they met, he said it was her beautiful smile.
"I don't think there was another woman with a more beautiful smile. And she was pretty inside and out."

When asked what he thinks about as he stands over the headstone carved with both of their names, he said he mostly thinks of the good times. But there is a headstone to the right belonging to one of their children.

"That was the saddest day of our lives," he said, explaining that the couple bought two headstones then, one for themselves and one for their child.

When asked why he visits his wife's grave every day he said, "I'm 92 and half now, so I don't have much else to do. And she gave me her life. It's the least I can do."

To respect the man's privacy, the photo was edited to remove the names from the headstone.  

My grandmother's Tercel: I still think it's ugly, but I love driving it.

My grandmother posing in front of her orange beast.

The last car my grandmother bought herself was a new 1984 Toyota Tercel. I thought it was too small and an ugly color, but she loved it. Every time we walked up to it she would gush, "Whose pretty little car is that?"

That was cool

I had never heard my grandmother use that voice before. I only knew the one she used to complain about my father. Or to order me and my sister not to walk so far away from her. Or to ask why I wasn't wearing the sweater she bought me.

I spent most of my life afraid of my grandmother and dreading our time together. But once I learned how much she lived through before I was even born, it helped me forgive her for being so difficult to be around.

She was put in an orphanage with her brother after their father died of the Spanish Flu, then came of age during the Great Depression, which taught her to track every penny she spent for the rest of her life. She became a bookkeeper, then a single mother in the 1940s. She kept my mother, kept working, and kept lists of every dollar she spent on my mother's diapers. Plus every dollar my grandfather didn't give her for those diapers.

My grandmother and my mother in the 1950s.

My father said my grandmother only kept my mother to prove to her mother she could. But it doesn't matter to me why she kept her, just that she did. And then helped her daughter pay for college. And helped my parents buy a house. Then helped me pay for college.

It took me a long time to accept that spending her money was how she showed love. Because I always wanted a grandmother who hugged us and laughed when we played, not one who loved to remind us of every naughty thing we ever said or did.

The only time I remember sitting in her lap was when she let me drive a car for the first time at about eight-years-old. I don't remember why she put me behind the steering wheel that day, but I remember us all laughing as I struggled to guide the car through the empty parking lot. 

The next time she gave me the wheel was two decades later when she took me to England so I could drive on the left side for her. The day after we picked up the rental car I woke up with a cold that my grandmother blamed on my walking around with wet hair. "You better not be too sick to drive," she announced as I stared out the window above my bed, wishing I could just sleep.

Later that same trip she gave me a rare compliment when I miraculously drove us back to our hotel through thick fog with no GPS, maps or even road signs to guide me, and later we shared an even rarer belly laugh. We got lost while driving to see a friend of hers and stopped at a pay phone to ask for directions:
"Where are you?" the friend asked.
"We're at Weak Bridge," I said, calling out the only sign I saw.
"You're where?" her bewildered friend said.
"We're at Weak Bridge!" I said, then finally it hit me. "That's not the name of the bridge, grandma. That's just telling us it's a weak bridge!"
We collapsed into the only laughter I remember sharing with her as an adult.

Another 20 years passed before I drove for her again, but this time she didn't ask me to. She also didn't ask me to write out all her checks so she didn't pay her rent twice, or to have meals delivered to her room every day when she stopped going to the dining room to eat.

Instead, she fought my help every day until I finally cracked at the diner where she demanded to know why we weren't at the French bistro she loved (knocking over all the tiny tables with her walker) and I snapped at her before running into the bathroom to finish yelling in a stall.
Afterward as I buckled her seatbelt she said, "Are you sure you don't want to just push me out of the car?"
I sighed. "No, grandma. I don't."
And I didn't. But I did ask my husband to start driving her around after that.

A few years ago she died just shy of her 98th birthday, but she is still with me because I drive her car every day. I still hate its color. It has no air conditioning. The radio doesn't work. I can't move the driver's seat anymore and the rear-view mirror disintegrated long ago.

But I love driving it. Because now in that car I can spend time with the grandmother I choose: all the best parts with none of the bad. Inside her car, I don’t think about the woman who spanked me for spilling cereal milk on her bedspread. I don’t think about the woman I drove to doctor’s appointments after cleaning poop off her shoes. 

The first visa she got to live in France at age 56.

Instead I think about the woman who drove me to countless museums, operas, ballets and Broadway shows. I think about the 56-year-old who moved to Paris for a year so she could learn French. And the 80-year-old who walked miles and miles of that city with me during a transportation strike. The 83-year-old who took me to New York. The 90-year-old who filled her tiny car with everything that would fit and drove herself to her new senior apartment complex in Petaluma. 

And I hope that the more time I spend with that determined, independent woman now, the more likely it is that I'll still be driving myself around when I'm 90. 

Update: I recently found a 3 x 5 card that she had typed details about Tercel on: 
Purchased from Toyota Santa Cruz on 8/31/84. Cost: $6538.30

You can see the Tercel starring in video below:

 

How they met: "I delivered his mail"

Debbie worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 30 years. And on one of her first few routes delivering mail in Southern California, she met her husband David.

That was cool.

David watches Debbie dance to a video game.

"He lived in one of the apartment complexes I delivered to, and had a perfect view of me putting mail in the box next-door," she said.

But when David finally worked up the nerve to talk to Debbie, she wasn't impressed.

"He walked by and asked, 'How's it going?' and I just waved him off,'" Debbie said.

So David asked a guy who worked with Debbie to talk to her. But she brushed him off, too.

"My friend would like to meet you," her co-worker said.

"Yeah, right," Debbie said. "You don't have any friends!"

But eventually the stoic guy who rarely smiles got a date with the sarcastic gal who rarely stops laughing. At the end of the night David said, "I had a great time."

"I said, 'Yeah, I could tell,'" Debbie recalls with a laugh. "And I guess that did it for him!"

Next year,  they will celebrate their 25th anniversary.

In the limo after their wedding in Las Vegas.

Poem: If My Life Were a Campsite

If my life were a campsite,
the dog might be the light.

But my husband is the tent
the campfire
and the hotdogs.

And me?
He says I'm the marshmallows.

I carry my own toilet paper everywhere. Don't you?

I carry paper napkins in my purse. Not because I'm always spilling stuff, but because I never know when I'll need toilet paper.

Empty roll? No problem.

The habit began long ago in a bar in South America when a woman I was drinking with stopped me on my way to the bathroom.
"Here, take this," she said, handing me a cocktail napkin. "There's never any toilet paper in the bathrooms here."

That was cool

Cassandra, if you're reading this, I love you for that. You not only saved me from a miserable situation that night, but created a habit that has saved me from countless more miserable situations since then at toilets with no paper hanging next to them.

And this compulsion to have my own toilet paper handy at all times helps not just in countries like Chile (where the plumbing at the time of my visit was so bad that bars preferred to not offer toilet paper rather than trust their customers to drop it in the bin instead of the bowl) but just about everywhere I go these days. Especially now that I'm hiking as much as possible. 
Because there's two things you quickly learn about the bathrooms near trails: 1) you can't trust that the door actually locks, and 2) you can't expect to find toilet paper.

This is especially true for a park bathroom I use nearly every day. Ideally, the maintenance guy comes once a week to clean it and refill all the paper products. But the toilet paper disappears fast, even with the new rod that locks on one end. Before the lock, all the toilet paper would be gone the next morning. Then the paper towels. Then the seat covers. By the weekend, there wasn't an inch of paper in any form to be had.

This was left by the elusive toilet paper fairy.

Which is how its been again for two weeks now since the last time he came, so only those of us with paper towels folded in our packs having been using that toilet lately.
Until today, when I saw that someone even nicer than Cassandra had arrived: a toilet paper fairy who left a skinny roll propped on the empty rolls for everyone to use.

That was cool, too.

But you can't wait on the toilet paper fairy, folks. Trust me. She comes like every three years. Carry your own toilet paper.