Duty Calls

The summons came in the mail at the worst possible time: 14 clients a week, massive Spring events for my administrative job, preparation for a workshop on Ethics I'm conducting in April...throw a month of jury duty into the mix and life suddenly went from "overwhelming" to "batshit crazy."

My initial impulse was to use my children as an excuse to get out of serving - until I remembered that I'm not the type of person who uses her children as an excuse. I also remembered that I believe in the legal system, or at least I believe in the idea of the legal system, of which jury service is a fundamental component. Also, I like to watch Law & Order and figured I might see some hot prosecutor action.

So I reported for duty on the first Tuesday of March and made my way to the small room, the one without televisions, having recalled from my last experience with jury duty that the larger room quickly becomes crowded with the sounds of new best friends chatting, Judge Judy or Troy or Maleficent or whomever shouting and abusing and haranguing, people yelling into their cell phones, the Roni Deutsch commercial that runs an endless loop around the midday television shows. The small room, on the other hand, is quiet - at least in a relative sense (yes, I'm looking at you, Ms. I-Can't-Be-Bothered-To-Turn-Down-the-Volume-on-my-iPad-While-I-Play-Neverending-Games-of-Bejeweled-Blitz).

There's a digital screen at the front of the room that keeps track of how many cases are currently on the docket (like that word? I learned it watching Law & Order). Some mornings we walk in and the screen flashes the number 2 or 4 and everyone heaves a collective sigh of joy and relief; other days, like today, the number is much higher, and I watch as people slump down in their chairs, bracing themselves for the tedium. Most cases seem to plead out and every once in a while I hear delighted murmurs and look up to see that the number has shifted drastically downwards. When a case goes to trial and the judge needs a jury for voir dire, the clerk gets on the microphone to call the randomly selected and it is an incredibly Pavlovian phenomenon: after a couple of days the mere crackle of the microphone caused a visible stir in almost everyone around me.

I've been called to voir dire 3 times now. The first time, I got choked up when they swore us in; I was stunned and oddly moved by the sound of 50 strangers loudly and resolutely affirming that they solemnly swore to uphold the law. We live in a country where most folks don't know the words to the National Anthem and although I wouldn't call myself a patriot, there was pride and purpose in that room and it was hard not to get all worked up about it.

The case sucked, though: felony carnal knowledge of a juvenile. I hate to say it but I took one look at the guy and my perpetrator radar went off. There was no way I could have been impartial so when they went around the jury box and asked us each what we do for a living, I didn't feel too guilty when I told them I was a psychotherapist and they asked me if I thought I could be impartial and I hesitated for a moment. I was just being honest.

The next case was a home invasion, and my radar wasn't doing anything special. Still, when they asked me if I had any experience with home invasion I did not hesitate to give them both my own and my acquaintances' histories with that particular horror, and when they asked me if I could be impartial given those experiences, I hesitated, and for that I do feel a bit guilty. Granted, they likely wouldn't have picked me anyway, but that one was on purpose; I didn't want to get picked and I was playing the system.

The problem is really in the onerous nature of the commitment. In Orleans parish they require residents, when called, to serve jury duty for an entire month, 2 days per week. For many people that is a tremendous burden, and it manifests in the way people, or at least people like me, respond to the prospect of being detained. If I were called to jury duty for a couple of days or even a week, I imagine my willingness to give myself over to the legal system would dramatically increase; it's the prospect of an entire month of inconvenience that squelches my urge to serve. You see, even if you get picked and serve on a jury, you still have to report back for duty on your next scheduled day. At the voir dire for the home invasion trial, I sat next to a woman who had served on a jury until 10 p.m. the night before--and reported to the courthouse at 8 a.m. the next morning. I also sat in front of a man who, in the brief interlude when the judge stepped into chambers, proceeded to relate the details of his daughter's hysterectomy to the total stranger seated next to him - but that's another story.

Today, walking into the jury pool, I resolved to be less calculating, to give myself over to the system I supposedly espouse. I would NOT be calculating in my responses to voir dire inquiries; instead I would answer openly and spontaneously. I would NOT wish to be excused from the courtroom, but rather re-frame my thinking in terms of civic duty and pride of procedure. I would put my crazy commitments aside and focus on the matter at hand - that matter, of course, being justice, or the pursuit thereof. We shuffled into the courtroom and sat quietly for a few minutes while the judge fussed at the attorneys. I checked my phone for emails - I do have to work, after all - and just as the man next to me leaned over to ask if my phone was a Blueberry, the judge called a continuance and we were dismissed.

I can't say I wasn't relieved.

Why Mardi Gras is Better Than Christmas (H/T Sydney Roux)

* Begging for toys at Christmas is considered gauche, but if a float rolls by and you don't scream and yell for beads and trinkets and just one more plastic cup to add to the collection that occupies approximately 3/4 of the space in your pantry, people might ask you if you're feeling alright.

* While I have heard that it can be hard to be a Jew during Christmas, during Mardi Gras that base is covered.

* You may be able to find a King Cake in December, but it's probably not as good as this or this or this.

* Sure, on Christmas morning you may find yourself lounging in your pj's a bit longer than usual, heck you might even indulge in a pre-brunch Mimosa, but Mardi Gras casts a lovely spell over the rhythms of daily life, for weeks on end. People tend to take vacations at Christmas, but during Mardi Gras we take sabbaticals. Baths are taken in the morning, so as not to interfere with parading. It's generally considered appropriate to consume alcoholic beverages before 9 a.m.--same goes for fried chicken and King Cake. Work, traffic, laundry, school, and pretty much every other activity of daily living stops about 5 days before Fat Tuesday, and at some point in that span of time between the halt of normal routine and the day we're supposed to repent and have our foreheads smeared with ashes, many of us will look down at our bare feet, or catch a glimpse of our face in a random rearview mirror, realize we've already been smudged, and consider our duty done.

* At some point during the Christmas season, the age-old dilemma about whether or not the Santa Claus myth counts as lying to your kids is bound to come up in conversation. During Mardi Gras there's no such moral ambiguity. Sure, you might have to make up some sort of story about the guy "taking a nap" on your front lawn, but trust me, that's definitely for the best.

this is love

you should totally live here

because sometimes, and maybe on a day when you're not feeling so great about life, the universe, and everything, and you're sitting at a random stoplight on a random streetcorner with your son in the backseat, on your way to pick up your daughter from school--sometimes you might see something like this:



(you could totally see something like this, if you lived here.)

That's My Boy

Most mornings, Evan accompanies me to the daily assembly at his sister's school. It's usually a fun way to start the day, with music, dancing, puppets, etc. He likes to sit up front in the class line with Sydney and takes pride in being a Big Boy--hanging with the Big Kids. Sometimes he likes to stay with me and play "race car," a game he devised which involves me sitting cross-legged on the floor with him in my lap and us "racing" around invisible corners and around invisible obstacles. He knows the rules of the assembly and, most recently, the Pledge of Allegiance.

Recently, though, his behavior has taken a turn towards the Twos. We have a lot more defiance and the occasional mind-blowing, patience-mangling, confidence-wrecking meltdown. And he is such a boy, too, with the Legos and knights and footballs and ridiculous sports trivia (go ahead, ask him who won the Super Bowl this year), the nimble footing of a born athlete and, of course, the obsession with his penis (playing with it, talking about it, talking to it, etc.). I swear we haven't instilled these biases--at least not intentionally--but they are there nonetheless and I feel kind of foolish for all those psych courses where I ardently maintained that personality and temperament are both nurtured and natural. I mean, they can stop the research now because I have solid evidence that nature has everything to do with everything.

Last Friday, Evan was restless at the beginning of Morning Meeting as the teachers and staff worked to quiet down the student body. One of the kids took the stage with the flag, to lead the group in the Pledge, and silence descended. Evan took his fingers from his mouth and into that brief and total stillness shouted "POO POO DO DO POO POOOOOOOOOOOOOOO." Heads turned, but I was the only one laughing (sort of like the time the magician at the 6-year-old's birthday party announced that he was going to bake some "magic cookies." I guess I was the only one who went to college.)

I don't tow the line with stuff like this, for a few reasons, most of which have to do with my own temperament and propensity to find humor in twisted shit (I have been known to laugh at a few funerals). But it's also about--and maybe here's the nurturing part?--not wanting to squash his boyishness, that little bit of wickedness that I see, frankly, as a life force. I want my kids to be a little wicked, to get in some trouble, to find the inappropriate path and sometimes take it. Don't get me wrong, I'm also pretty old-fashioned when it comes to raising kids and I expect mine to have manners, to act kindly, to treat elders with even more respect than they show their peers. I insist on responsibility and thoughtfulness, and have no issue with imposing my own beliefs about what is required to live a productive, meaningful life. My kids know not to cross me and while some might find that a bit too authoritarian, it's my style and it seems to work for us.

Raising a boy feels different than raising a girl. While I'm certain that at some point in her toddler-hood Sydney shouted potty words in inappropriate environments, I don't think she ever deliberately waited for total silence before doing so. Evan's timing was pure comedy, and I'd be lying if I denied feeling proud of him for that. I probably shouldn't have laughed, or shouldn't have let him see me laughing, but I just couldn't help it. I was born that way.

this is what growing up feels like

Get on a plane headed for the only place in the world you ever felt you belonged, do some half-hearted work on your laptop while your mind thrums with anticipation and longing. Do some more half-hearted work in the airport bar while you wait for your friend's plane to arrive; experience a surge of pride when the bartender asks for your I.D. Feel like a fool when she proceeds to card the octogenarian who sits down next to you. Meet your friend in the terminal and talk the rental car guy into upgrading from a minivan to a Mustang convertible. Experience a surge of youthful abandon, riding next your beautiful friend as she drives down the interstate toward the place you were born, with the ragtop down so your hair can blow.

30 minutes later, experience an acute existential crisis as you stand at the edge of the highway, staring at the ruined bits of metal and rubber that was once the rental car, before the truck driver decided to turn into your lane and his trailer hitch nearly flung you off the 60-foot overpass. Take deep breaths. Call 911 and debate about whether or not you need an ambulance (you did hit your head pretty hard). Decline the ambulance--a hospital would take too long. Tell yourself the dizziness and nausea are related to shock, not concussion. Sit down in the grass, then stand up. Call your husband, who is in Amsterdam, and realize as the phone is ringing that it is 3 a.m. where he is. Listen to your voice cracking, fight off the panic that overtakes you when you realize that you have to go sleep in a hotel that night, far away from your family. Hang up when the truck driver approaches, insisting that your friend shared fault for the accident. Wait for the state trooper, watch as he tickets the truck driver, then wait some more for the tow truck. It's cold and raining and you haven't eaten since New Orleans, but all you are thinking about is what the overpass looked like as you approached in slow motion, how you tried to remember what you knew about positioning your body for impact--how you knew you would die anyway, but thought you needed to give it a shot, for your kids. Your kids.

Hold hands with your friend and talk about all sorts of inappropriate things as the tow-truck driver sneaks sideways glances and feigns interest in the radio song. Get a new car--a minivan!--and drive to the hotel. Head immediately for the hotel bar, your old college haunt, and buy your first pack of cigarettes in 8 years. Declare to your friend that all bad behavior over the next 4 days will be excused by the near-fatal accident. Fight against giant waves of existential panic. Go to the bathroom and cry over the sink; emerge to find a group of friends you haven't seen in years, the people you love most in the world. These are your people and you tell them what happened and they are appropriately horrified but also wonderfully hilarious, they re-affirm that all bad behavior is now permitted and perhaps even encouraged. Sit with your Tanqueray and Tonics while wave after wave of beautiful people walk through the door, laugh until your cheeks burn with the strain, marvel at the fact that we all look the same and everything still feels so right, so easy. These are your people and it is a damn good thing that you didn't blow their reunion weekend by getting yourself dead on the first night.

Spend the next 3 days reconnecting, networking, showing kid pictures, drinking way too much; stay up until 4 a.m. each night, dancing in the middle of the campus like you did 15 years ago. You've still got it; you can still hang. Walk into Hamilton Center and find your old friends immersed in a game of ping-pong, as if no time had passed at all. Hug your old advisor and realize, as relief washes over you, how worried you'd been that he was disappointed in you for not becoming an academic. Listen to the music department performances and feel like the luckiest fool on the planet to be connected with these genius people--to be one of them. Spend an entire afternoon lolling on the Bayfront, drinking beer and turning your face to the sun, so fucking grateful to whoever is responsible for luck or fate or whatever it was that not only saved your ass the other night, but guided you to New College, this unbelievably beautiful place, this Center of the Universe, all those years ago.

On your last night, sitting at the hotel bar with your old friends, discover a Haiku, written on a bar napkin, tucked away inside a giant Maori mask mounted on the wall. Watch as your friends construct a Haiku response and tuck that inside the mask for the next friends to discover. Thank the Universe again for life and fellow travelers.

Programmed to Receive

A friend recently pointed out the fact that I hadn't blogged in a while. The reason is mostly about laziness, which Natalie Goldberg says is "fear, masked as inertia." I'm not a stranger to resistance about writing, but there were some other good reasons I didn't write about my endlessly fascinating life over the last few months:

* I was busy running. Not long after my last post, I ran the Gulf Coast Half-Marathon, on a warmer-than-expected morning when my stomach was out of whack and my legs felt wobbly. About halfway through, I started running with a young woman who told me her goal was to run the race in under 2 hours, a wall she'd never managed to break through: her closest time was 2 hours and 15 minutes. We ran together through the last 6 or so miles, my stomach roiling, her will collapsing, and I found myself saying things like "If you stop now and walk, you'll hate yourself later." I think at one point I actually called her "girl," as in "Come on, girl, you need to pick up the pace." When we crossed the finish line in 1 hour and 55 minutes she was sobbing, I mean crying hard, and I wandered off in search of beer and Chee-Wees as she fell into her whooping boyfriend's arms. So that was cool.

* I ran some more. 3 weeks after the Gulf Coast race I did the Children's Hospital Jazz Half, on a chilly but not-quite-chilly-enough morning when my stomach felt fine but my legs felt unsure of themselves. I told myself at the starting line that I would take it easy (go ahead, laugh), that I would take my time and run the race slow, not faster than 2 hours. I envy those folks who walk the marathon, who chat with friends along the route and don't worry that the 70-something in knee socks is passing them easily. I wanted that kind of experience, but what I got was this: around the halfway point, I found myself running alongside a young woman who--you guessed it--was desperately hoping to break 2 hours. So of course I stuck with her and bullied her through the 10th and 11th miles, when she wanted to stop and walk, and in the final stretch watched her dart ahead of me, sprinting across the finish line, arms held high in triumph. We finished in 1 hour and 58 minutes. I was so, so tired.

* But seriously, ya'll, I kept running. The Turkey Day race on Thanksgiving morning is my favorite race of the entire year, and this past year was no exception, even though it was warm and humid and I had volunteered to cook just under 1,000 complex dishes for our large family gathering later in the day. But boy, was it worth it: at the starting line I overheard a man tell his buddy that his only goal for the race was to "beat at least half of the chicks," and I will tell you it felt damn good to wait for him at the finish line, beer in hand, slap him on the back and say "I think at least half of them were behind me."

* I finished my 5,760 hours for clinical licensure. That's a lot of hours.

* I got a new job! It's a super cool new job.

* Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, yada yada yada.

And also, I've been ruminating. A really amazing psychiatrist came to the agency in the fall to do a workshop on Mindfulness Practice with the clinical staff, and during one of our meetings he read the following story:

A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor's cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. "It's overfull! No more will go in!" the professor blurted. "You are like this cup," the master replied, "How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?

I've heard many versions of this story over the years, and the point has never eluded me, but for some reason lately I've been turning it over and over in my head. I have been such a full cup, for most of my life: some of it comes from being small and young-looking, the need to impress people with my wisdom and competence. Some of it comes with the territory of being an oldest child of a divorced family. But some of it is just straight-up hubris which, as I get older, is a quality I find less and less desirable. But true humility is hard, right? And all those athletes and movie stars and politicians who talk about being "humbled" by awards and accolades can suck it, because those sorts of things aren't humbling--they are the exact opposite of humbling. What's up with that, anyway?

I can think of lots of humbling experiences. A humbling experience is one in which you've hurt a friend who is already hurting with your harsh words and impatience and lack of compassion, and that friend confronts you about it and you react with defensiveness and anger and later you realize what an asshole you've been and you ask for forgiveness. That is humbling. A humbling experience is one in which you make contact with your former best friend who you abruptly broke off contact with many years ago and have an open, honest discussion about what went down, where you accept responsibility for your share of the breakdown, where you sift through the awkwardness in search of that little nugget of forgiveness. A truly humbling experience is one in which you apologize to your child for your harsh words, and promise to try harder next time to be patient and kind.

These are humbling experiences, ones that force you to empty your cup and abandon your Ego. But of course these haven't happened to me; I mean, seriously, I was just giving some examples.