ACT I
My wife Molly has a BS degree in Child Development. When we first started dating, she worked at a childcare center which our community ran for many years. After we were married, she was a sort-of gofer/secretary for one of our community's 'elders'. When she was six months or so pregnant with 1F, she left the for-pay workforce, and took up the ultimate 'Job In Her Field' - developing children of her own. So for the next fifteen or twenty years, when folks would ask me, "Does your wife work?" I'd answer, "Not outside the home for pay."
And so it went. About ten or twelve years ago, she got in on a very part-time gig proctoring state licensing exams. Guys who want to get licensed as plumbers, or electricians, or whatever, have to take a state exam to get licensed, and Molly is part of a crew of women who do the check-in procedures, and then walk around during the test, making sure everyone stays on the straight-and-narrow. Her proctoring gigs are two or three days in a week, three or four times a year, so it isn't too demanding in terms of family time.
(And besides all that, something about spending the day in a room full of aspiring plumbers or electricians, will often inspire a certain, shall we say, horniness in my wife - all those butt cracks, no doubt, or maybe a room full of male pheromones - so even beyond the paycheck, her proctoring days often work out to my benefit, as well.)
The proctoring gigs sort of came and went; whenever we had another baby, she'd have to take a year or two off from proctoring, until the baby could be left for a whole day. Even so, as sparse as the jobs were, it was a fairly benign thing.
In 2000, she got in with Board of Elections (or whatever it's called), and started working elections (yeah, Bush v. Gore was her 'learning curve'). She's one of those folks who checks your name against the list of registered voters, and hands you the ballot, and gives you the little 'I Voted' sticker when you're done. She also gets to be in on taking the ballot box downtown to get counted by the official vote counters. Those are pretty long days, and thus fairly demanding on the rest of the family, but it's only for one day, it pays really well, and it only comes around every couple years.
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Last year, when my employer's continuing viability became suddenly very uncertain, it seemed prudent for Molly to get more regular employment, just in case I suddenly had none. So she looked around a bit, without much success (the same economic forces which were placing my continued employment in doubt were also rendering available jobs for her scarce). One day, she subbed at the daycare center attached to the Catholic school our kids attend, and that resulted in an offer for a regular job at the center there. It was only eight hours a week, and the hourly rate was pretty low, but under the circumstances, it was better than nothing.
She got a line on doing some house-cleaning, which in turn led to a gig with a friend of hers, who brought her in for some jill-of-all-trades work doing cleaning, administrative, and even some handy-woman stuff. Which was maybe half a day per week, but again, better than nothing.
This fall, the childcare center increased her hours from eight to fifteen, and gave her a small raise. And then, another friend of hers, who has multiple sclerosis, asked her to come in for a few hours every morning to help her with stuff around the house. It's not really nursing-type care (and Molly is not a nurse, so that's cool), but it does include bathing her and getting her to the bathroom. Molly couldn't do every morning, but she and another woman share the hours. And (say it with me, now) it pays pretty well.
So, if you're keeping score at home, Molly is now up to something like 25 hours a week of outside-the-home-for-pay work.
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ACT II
Molly is 53 years old. She is very bright and energetic, but her energy levels have abated some from what they were in her 20s/30s. She is at the age at which women commonly experience menopause, aka 'The Change of Life'. And her body is showing all the signs that 'The Change' is just around the corner. Her cycles, which, while not exactly like clockwork, have always been pretty reliable, have, in recent months, become quite a bit more erratic.
Another symptom of the impending (or, more truly, ongoing) hormone shift has been that she is tired. Way more tired, way more often, than I've ever known her to be. And both of us have struggled just a bit in adapting to this new, less-energetic state of affairs. The day-to-day parameters of our lives have been remarkably stable for many years, but we find that we can't just take a 'business as usual' approach. She needs more sleep than she used to, and she can't cram her schedule quite as full as before. Which winds up putting us in a bit of a bind, because the day-to-day needs of our family life aren't any less than they ever were. The kids and I have gotten used to Molly carrying a pretty large share of the load, and when she can't carry as much as she used to, it's a challenge to 'redistribute' the work-load to account for her new energy level.
Which brings us to the present day. Molly has less energy than before, and she's working more hours outside the home than ever before, but the demands of home life are the same as they ever were - the same number of meals need to be prepared, the same amount of laundry needs to be done, the same number of kids need to be chauffeured to doctor appointments, sporting events, etc, and etc, etc, etc. . .
Do you perceive the problem? We've been trying various approaches to the 'distribution' problem, mainly involving the kids doing their own laundry (we've even instituted a Sunday evening 'Family Fold-In/Movie Night'), helping with the food-prep, and things of that sort, which, in the past, Molly could easily handle all by herself, but not any more. And I've tried to pitch in more, where I'm able; which is a large part of why I used to read three or four books a month, but now struggle to keep up with my two remaining magazine subscriptions.
But, asking people to make new sacrifices which they've never had to make before, can take a while to get 'institutionalized', and at least at first, they can be somewhat, um, uneven in the execution.
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ACT III
One of the starkest ways in which this hits home for me, personally, is that, at the end of the day, Molly is much more likely to be tired, than what I've been used to. For many years, we've had a regular pattern of Monday evening husband-wife meetings. Not 'Date Night' (although that could certainly qualify), but mainly just some dedicated time to touch base with each other on the things we need to be in communication about. Schedules, budgets, the kids' lives, goals we have for the family, etc. And heck, just for the two of us to sit down and talk to each other about anything at all, is a good thing, and setting aside some committed time for it, helps to ensure that it actually happens (and besides all that, an hour or two of relaxed spousal communication can, um, get the juices flowing, if I can say it that way; which is an incentive all its own for having the meeting. . .)
In recent months, however, our husband-wife meetings have been a bit less regular than is good for them to be. Some of it couldn't be helped - other things came along, at school or wherever, to usurp the time. But sometimes, we just weren't very diligent to make it happen, and the time slipped away.
After 29+ years of marriage, we're pretty familiar now with what happens when we miss too many of our husband-wife meetings - things get out-of-sync, stuff that should run smoothly starts being frantically thrown together on the fly at the last second, and we start getting cranky and irritable with each other. We've been through a few cycles of it, and by now, we recognize the symptoms.
And, by a couple weeks ago, we were recognizing the symptoms. And so, we agreed that that week, we would make a concerted effort to have our husband-wife meeting, and to have it be a good one, not slapdash or careless. I made a point to leave work in a timely fashion, not staying late to 'tie up the loose ends', we had dinner together with the kids, the cleanup got done, the next day's lunches were made, Molly read to the little guys before bed, and all was in readiness for our meeting. So, we retired to the bedroom (which is virtually the only 'private space' we have these days), and stretched out for some relaxed meeting-time.
And Molly fell asleep.
(You could see that coming, couldn't you? Yeah, well, I didn't.)
All the good vibrations, all the concerted effort, all the we-need-to-reestablish-communication-so-we're-not-all-cranky-with-each-other. . . gone, with the Sandman.
And, I'm sorry. . . I got pissed.
Not that I should have. Not that her falling asleep wasn't completely understandable in the context of what-all is going on in her life. Not that it was remotely constructive of anything. But I did.
And so, in the time-honored tradition of mature husbands down through the ages, who were hoping for some Sweet Lovin', but whose wives fell asleep. . .
I pouted.
(Some of you may recall the last time I posted about pouting; and you know, don't you, that I post about ALL of my whiny, self-centered pout-fits, whenever they happen, every three years or so. . .)
And it was a goooood pout. A full-bore, I've-got-a-good-head-of-steam pout. The next morning, I walked out the door without kissing Molly good-bye, leaving the breakfast she'd made for me sitting on the table, not even taking the lunch she'd made for me (because, you know, I didn't want her to put herself out on my account) (you know, it never makes nearly as much sense in hindsight). And I stayed late at the office, so she'd be gone to her women's-group meeting before I got home. Then I went to bed early, and was asleep before she got home (and Molly, in the best tradition of The Golden Rule, will NEVER wake me when I'm sleeping). And the next morning, I repeated the cycle.
I didn't stay quite so late at the office that day (she had nothing on her calendar for the evening, so she'd be home no matter when I arrived), and as I drove home, I took some of my idle drive-time to turn to prayer, and I 'heard' God speak to me.
"You're being stupid," He said. "Stop it."
Oh. OK. I guess I am, aren't I?
"Yes, you are."
OK; I'll be done now.
"Good!"
God can be so Paternal with me, sometimes. . .
And so it came to pass that I walked in the back door, through the family room, and into the kitchen, where Molly was busy making dinner. She looked at me, warily. I greeted her, sheepishly.
"Hi," she said. "Are you done being mad yet?"
Yeah, Sweetheart, I'm done.
"Oh, good!" Then, "What the heck was that all about?"
And I suddenly realized - she didn't even know what I was upset about! Sheesh! What's the good of a pout, if the person you're mad at doesn't even know why you're mad? I mean, it's pretty pathetic when you invest so much energy in a good pout, and all you get for it is, "What the heck was that all about?"
(*sigh*) I know; I'm such a Drama Queen, sometimes. . .
So, we had our dinner, we fixed our relationship, and even covered most of the husband-wife-meeting stuff that we'd missed two nights previously.
And the Make-Up Sex was pretty amazing, too. . .
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Jury Duty, Chapters 3 & 4
In my previous post, I told you about my first two experiences of sitting on a jury, and how, to varying degrees, neither of them had been a happy experience for me. Particularly my second trial, in which we had acquitted a guy of rape, when it was clear as day (to me, at any rate) that he had certainly done something for which he deserved to be punished. . .
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It was a few years before I received my next summons, and this one was also a criminal case, with a charge of attempted murder.
The defendant was a dumpy-looking 19-year-old black kid. I found myself wondering how this kid had gotten himself charged with attempted murder; he looked like anything but a badass. And his father was in court every day of the trial, sitting behind the defense table.
The bare facts of the case were that the defendant and a buddy were walking down the sidewalk one day, when they encountered the would-be victim, sitting on a friend's porch, while the defendant and his buddy walked by. Words and insults were exchanged, and the defendant and his friend walked on. A few minutes later, the WBV drove his car around the corner, onto the street where they were now walking, and the defendant jumped out into the street, pulled a gun from his pocket, and started blazing away at the WBV's car. Those are the essential facts of the case. (As an aside, this all happened about six blocks from where I lived; the judge instructed us not to make any 'personal side trips' to the crime scene, and in my case it almost meant that I had to take an alternate route home at the end of the day.)
The defense claimed that the WBV threated the defendant with his car, driving up onto the sidewalk, and that the gunshots were defensive (which strained credulity a bit, but that was the claim). It was probably unfortunate for the defense that the defendant's buddy, when he took the stand to testify, was enchained, and dressed in a prison jumpsuit (since the incident in question, he'd been convicted in a separate case).
When the jury took up our deliberations, I was again chosen to be the foreman. After my previous experience, I was not about to volunteer for the job, but it had come out, in our earlier casual conversations, that I had sat on a previous criminal jury, and I suppose that my fellow-jurors thought of me as a kind of 'voice of experience'. But, as irresponsible as my previous jury had been, this jury was admirable in their determination to execute their duties with all due seriousness. There were people who had strongly-held opinions, including one woman who felt that 'the system' sent far too many young black men to prison, but they were all able to objectively consider the facts of the case, and render a decision based on those facts.
We deliberated for something like six hours, meticulously considering all of the testimony, and analyzing the photographic evidence of the bullet holes in the WBV's car, and what that meant for where the shots were fired from, and the possible angles of things, etc. Two of the bullets left marks on the windshield just above the edge of the hood, directly in front of the driver. If the gun had been more powerful than a .22, the windshield would have shattered, and the driver would have been killed. It was clear enough that the shooter's intent had been to kill the driver.
So, after many hours of deliberation, we finally voted to convict. And again, as the foreman, it was my duty to inform the judge, and the court, of our decision. And, even as I was utterly satisfied that we had done our duty as a jury, it broke my heart - as he had been every day of the trial, the defendant's father was sitting directly behind his son, and I was acutely aware that, in announcing our verdict, I was telling this father who, as far as I could tell, was admirably conscientious, that his son was going to prison for quite a while.
And it broke my heart, because that young man had no business being in that position. It came to seem that here was a young man who was perhaps insecure in his budding manhood, and had fallen in with some badass friends, in an effort to enhance his own sense of manliness. Perhaps I was mistaken, but that's what it looked like.
And again, the judge and the prosecutor came back to the jury room for a 'post-mortem'. They confirmed what many of the jurors had suspected - that this was an instance of 'gang-related violence'. The defendant (and most especially, his walking-buddy) and the WBV were members of rival gangs, and this was not an isolated incident 'from out of the blue'. But, for whatever 'legal' reasons, that fact couldn't be introduced into the trial.
So, I was completely satisfied that we had done our duty, but it gave me no joy whatsoever to have done it. . .
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My fourth case was another civil case - a retired army sergeant and his wife had purchased an RV, but from the very beginning of their ownership of it, it had leaked, and suffered from a plethora of other defects. They sent it back to be repaired under warranty on multiple occasions, and finally lost patience and demanded their money back, under a new 'Lemon Law'.
Without spending undue (and boring) time on the evidence, I'll simply say that the jury interpreted the evidence as demonstrating that the RV manufacturer hadn't been good to their own word, and hadn't dealt in complete good faith with the plaintiff, and we decided the case for the plaintiff (minus the punitive damages the plaintiff sought).
And again, the 'post-mortem' with the attorneys was frustrating in the extreme. We were told of additional facts, which, for whatever reason, had never been introduced in court, which might have demonstrated that the plaintiff was engaging in a bit of bad-faith of his own, and which, had we known of them, would have cast the other evidence in a very different light.
By that point, I expected that the 'post-mortem' was going to muddy the waters of our decision, and I could just walk away, shaking my head. At least, in this case, nobody had to leave town, or go to prison. . .
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And that is the sum-total of my experience as a member of various and sundry juries. Early on in my experience, someone told me that engineers are rarely left to sit on juries; that, for various reasons, one side or the other prefers jurors who don't think analytically, who can be easily swayed by emotional appeals. But just from my own experience, I wonder how that could possibly be the truth of the matter. Four times I have walked into a courtroom in a pool of prospective jurors that was at least triple the number of jurors that would ultimately be required. And I have never failed to end up on the jury; there is at least some finite probability that my name wouldn't be drawn, but even that has never happened. There have been ample opportunities for the attorneys to remove me from the jury, but they never have. I must have some kind of 'innate magnetism' that just draws me inexorably into jury boxes. . .
Yeah. . . 'magnetism'. . . that's it, for sure. . .
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It was a few years before I received my next summons, and this one was also a criminal case, with a charge of attempted murder.
The defendant was a dumpy-looking 19-year-old black kid. I found myself wondering how this kid had gotten himself charged with attempted murder; he looked like anything but a badass. And his father was in court every day of the trial, sitting behind the defense table.
The bare facts of the case were that the defendant and a buddy were walking down the sidewalk one day, when they encountered the would-be victim, sitting on a friend's porch, while the defendant and his buddy walked by. Words and insults were exchanged, and the defendant and his friend walked on. A few minutes later, the WBV drove his car around the corner, onto the street where they were now walking, and the defendant jumped out into the street, pulled a gun from his pocket, and started blazing away at the WBV's car. Those are the essential facts of the case. (As an aside, this all happened about six blocks from where I lived; the judge instructed us not to make any 'personal side trips' to the crime scene, and in my case it almost meant that I had to take an alternate route home at the end of the day.)
The defense claimed that the WBV threated the defendant with his car, driving up onto the sidewalk, and that the gunshots were defensive (which strained credulity a bit, but that was the claim). It was probably unfortunate for the defense that the defendant's buddy, when he took the stand to testify, was enchained, and dressed in a prison jumpsuit (since the incident in question, he'd been convicted in a separate case).
When the jury took up our deliberations, I was again chosen to be the foreman. After my previous experience, I was not about to volunteer for the job, but it had come out, in our earlier casual conversations, that I had sat on a previous criminal jury, and I suppose that my fellow-jurors thought of me as a kind of 'voice of experience'. But, as irresponsible as my previous jury had been, this jury was admirable in their determination to execute their duties with all due seriousness. There were people who had strongly-held opinions, including one woman who felt that 'the system' sent far too many young black men to prison, but they were all able to objectively consider the facts of the case, and render a decision based on those facts.
We deliberated for something like six hours, meticulously considering all of the testimony, and analyzing the photographic evidence of the bullet holes in the WBV's car, and what that meant for where the shots were fired from, and the possible angles of things, etc. Two of the bullets left marks on the windshield just above the edge of the hood, directly in front of the driver. If the gun had been more powerful than a .22, the windshield would have shattered, and the driver would have been killed. It was clear enough that the shooter's intent had been to kill the driver.
So, after many hours of deliberation, we finally voted to convict. And again, as the foreman, it was my duty to inform the judge, and the court, of our decision. And, even as I was utterly satisfied that we had done our duty as a jury, it broke my heart - as he had been every day of the trial, the defendant's father was sitting directly behind his son, and I was acutely aware that, in announcing our verdict, I was telling this father who, as far as I could tell, was admirably conscientious, that his son was going to prison for quite a while.
And it broke my heart, because that young man had no business being in that position. It came to seem that here was a young man who was perhaps insecure in his budding manhood, and had fallen in with some badass friends, in an effort to enhance his own sense of manliness. Perhaps I was mistaken, but that's what it looked like.
And again, the judge and the prosecutor came back to the jury room for a 'post-mortem'. They confirmed what many of the jurors had suspected - that this was an instance of 'gang-related violence'. The defendant (and most especially, his walking-buddy) and the WBV were members of rival gangs, and this was not an isolated incident 'from out of the blue'. But, for whatever 'legal' reasons, that fact couldn't be introduced into the trial.
So, I was completely satisfied that we had done our duty, but it gave me no joy whatsoever to have done it. . .
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My fourth case was another civil case - a retired army sergeant and his wife had purchased an RV, but from the very beginning of their ownership of it, it had leaked, and suffered from a plethora of other defects. They sent it back to be repaired under warranty on multiple occasions, and finally lost patience and demanded their money back, under a new 'Lemon Law'.
Without spending undue (and boring) time on the evidence, I'll simply say that the jury interpreted the evidence as demonstrating that the RV manufacturer hadn't been good to their own word, and hadn't dealt in complete good faith with the plaintiff, and we decided the case for the plaintiff (minus the punitive damages the plaintiff sought).
And again, the 'post-mortem' with the attorneys was frustrating in the extreme. We were told of additional facts, which, for whatever reason, had never been introduced in court, which might have demonstrated that the plaintiff was engaging in a bit of bad-faith of his own, and which, had we known of them, would have cast the other evidence in a very different light.
By that point, I expected that the 'post-mortem' was going to muddy the waters of our decision, and I could just walk away, shaking my head. At least, in this case, nobody had to leave town, or go to prison. . .
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And that is the sum-total of my experience as a member of various and sundry juries. Early on in my experience, someone told me that engineers are rarely left to sit on juries; that, for various reasons, one side or the other prefers jurors who don't think analytically, who can be easily swayed by emotional appeals. But just from my own experience, I wonder how that could possibly be the truth of the matter. Four times I have walked into a courtroom in a pool of prospective jurors that was at least triple the number of jurors that would ultimately be required. And I have never failed to end up on the jury; there is at least some finite probability that my name wouldn't be drawn, but even that has never happened. There have been ample opportunities for the attorneys to remove me from the jury, but they never have. I must have some kind of 'innate magnetism' that just draws me inexorably into jury boxes. . .
Yeah. . . 'magnetism'. . . that's it, for sure. . .
Monday, November 2, 2009
Jury Duty, Chapters 1 & 2
My new friend Michelle Hickman, over at The Surly Writer (and don't let the name fool you; she ain't as surly as all THAT) (hope I didn't blow your cover, Michelle), recently wrote a five-part series of posts about her experience of jury duty. And that spurred me to tell you all about my own experiences of jury duty. . .
I have been summoned for jury duty five times in my young life. One of those times (the fourth, I think), I went to the courthouse downtown and spent the day reading in the 'jury pool waiting room', after which I was sent home without ever seeing the inside of the courtroom. The other four times, I was sent to the courtroom as part of a pool of prospective jurors for a trial. In each of those cases, I ended up being empaneled on the jury, even though the pool was at least three times as large as the actual number of jurors to be empaneled. Twice, I was selected to be the foreman. So, at this stage of my young life, I've amassed a fairly substantial body of juridical work (if that's the right word for it).
Molly, on the other hand, has been summoned exactly once, and much as she'd love to sit on a jury, the week she was 'on the hook', she called the 'jury line' every day, but her number never even came up to go downtown and wait in the room. Such are the random fortunes of doing one's civic duty (I was sorely tempted to title this post 'Jury Doody', but that would be just a tad too cynical and disrespectful, even for me). . .
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My career as a juror got off to a rocky start. I received my first summons about a month after I started my first job out of college, and I was so dialed-in to getting off on a good foot on my new job, and I was so young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, that I completely lost track of the day I was supposed to report for jury duty. Not good. That little indiscretion won me a personal face-to-face with the judge (which I did NOT forget), in which he demanded an accounting for why I had blown off my sacred civic duty (yeah. . . "I forgot" doesn't cut much ice with your average judge; and this judge was definitely on the 'stern' end of the judicial spectrum), and impressed on me most forcefully (including threats of future incarceration for Contempt of Court if such dereliction were to be repeated) that jury duty, and his court, were not matters to be trifled with. Lesson learned, and I received another summons a few weeks later.
This time, I appeared at the appointed time, and was ushered into the courtroom with a group of prospective jurors. My name was drawn, and I answered all the voir dire questions to the satisfaction of both attorneys, and the judge, and so I was ensconced as a member of the jury.
The case was a civil one - a Chinese woman, the wife of a doctoral student at MegaState U, had taken a job at a small import shop run by an immigrant Chinese gentleman, and she was claiming that he had reneged on several of her paychecks. Since neither the plaintiff nor the defendant spoke unbroken English, the court hired an interpreter (who was herself a graduate student), and virtually all of the testimony was given in Chinese and translated into English for the benefit of the jury.
The case itself devolved fairly quickly into a variation of 'he-said-she-said', with the plaintiff presenting her side of the story, supported by cancelled checks, and other forms of confirmation that he had acted according to a stated agreement, and after a certain point, the checks came farther apart, and for less money than was agreed. The defendant, on the other hand, presented himself as a large-hearted individual who was only trying to help his fellow-countrywoman, and this is the thanks he gets. And so on, et cetera. . .
Since it was a civil trial, there were only six jurors, which was probably just as well, all things considered. Our foreman was a university professor, who seemed temperamentally incapable of rendering any form of definitive judgment. All of our attempts to pin down a decision based on the evidence at hand were met with a whiny, "But you just don't know for certain, do you?" or somesuch, from him. The evidence was pretty clearly on the plaintiff's side, or so, at least, it seemed to five of us, after an hour's discussion or so, and then we spent two more hours trying to get Dr. Dithers to land on one side or the other (preferably the one we all agreed on, but even just to get him to commit to something over which we could argue with him would have been progress). At last, he allowed as to how it seemed most likely that the weight of the argument was on the plaintiff's side, and so we had our decision.
I had no problem with the decision we'd rendered, but the experience left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Mainly that both sides had presented their case, and we were basically left to choose which side we thought was lying, and which was telling the truth (or, which side was telling more of the truth than the other). And besides which, our judgement in the plaintiff's favor was small enough that it wasn't certain that it would even cover what they'd end up paying their lawyer, who probably should have told them that. . .
I wasn't very happy for the experience, but I was satisfied that I had done my civic duty, and that was good enough.
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The second case I sat on was a criminal trial - a rape case. A woman and a man were co-workers at a small manufacturing company, and they both worked the second shift, getting out of work around midnight. He invited her over to his house after work, she agreed, and between the two of them, they killed a twelve-pack of beer, after which he thought the stars were aligned for some sweet lovin' between the two of them. She disagreed, and he decided to, uh, press the issue. Among the evidence for the prosecution was a photograph of a hand-shaped bruise on the inside of her thigh.
The evidence was so compelling, to my mind, that, when we retired to the jury room for deliberation, I volunteered to be the foreman, just to save the time it would take to choose one, and my fellow jurors were only too happy to agree. With that piece of business out of the way, I took an initial straw vote, just to see where things stood. As I perceived the facts of the case, I thought it was possible, even likely, that we could have a conviction without having to spend too many hours in deliberation. The vote was 6-6 (I tell ya, life is just crammed full of 'learning moments').
I was stunned. I had thought that this was as cut-and-dried a case as it could be, but my education was just beginning. That jury of my peers (and even the realization that they were, and are, my peers, still causes me to shudder) still stands in my mind as a ruefully fascinating study of human nature at its very worst. . .
One woman announced, in the first minutes of the deliberations, that she wanted no part in any of the discussion, and when the rest of us got to 11-0, she would just vote with the majority. She then proceeded to lie down on the couch and take a nap. Sweet; I hope that, if you ever find your life in the hands of a jury of your peers, they take your case more seriously than you're taking this, Sweetheart.
Another woman had herself been a rape victim (and had baldly lied when asked during the empanelment whether she had ever been the victim of a crime). Which, you might think, would bias her against the defendant, but no. She had been an idiot to let herself get raped, she said, and this girl was an even bigger idiot than she was. Besides which, it became clear that she had some kind of 'identification' with the defendant; she didn't know him personally, but somehow, he was 'her kind of people', and she wasn't about to see him get sent off, just because some bimbo was a moron one night.
Yet another juror was a college guy, whose essential position, from which he wouldn't be moved, was that, basically (without saying it in so many words), there is no such thing as rape - all sex is consensual, but sometimes the girl regrets it later, and accuses the guy of rape. And so, as far as he was concerned, all charges of rape are de facto bogus. And there was another guy, just out of college, who wasn't quite so adamant as he was, but who basically sympathized with his point of view.
So then, out of the twelve of us, there were four who, right off the top, were more-or-less firmly disposed to corrupt the process.
But they weren't even the worst of it. One of our members was himself an attorney. And that, of course, was known right up-front, when his name was first pulled from the hat. But, as I recall, he was one of the last jurors selected, and both sides were running low on peremptory challenges, and so, much as they might have wanted to remove him from the jury, they didn't. The judge was sufficiently concerned about his presence on the jury that he gave us special instructions that, just because he was an attorney, he didn't know the law as it applied to this case, any better than any of us did, and we shouldn't give his thoughts any more weight than any other juror's, in our deliberations.
Yeah, fat chance of that. He played it very cool, and said very little at first. But when he did decide to speak, he just said, "I don't know - they both had an awful lot to drink. . ." And just like that, four of the jurors who had been inclined to convict, changed their vote, because, see, this guy was a lawyer, and he knows the law better than we do. . . (*sigh*) (*very EXASPERATED sigh*). So just that fast, we were 10-2 to acquit.
It took the majority another hour to convince the other 'convicting' juror, so that we stood 11-1, with me the only remaining vote to convict. The basic line of reasoning in favor of acquittal was that, since they'd both had so much to drink, how could anyone know where consent may or may not have been given? And there was a strong sentiment that for her even to go to his house after midnight carried with it a certain implied consent. And all I could say in response was that being an idiot doesn't mean you deserve to get raped. And a hand-shaped bruise on her thigh looked to me a lot like a lack of consent.
I'd like to tell you that, right out of Twelve Angry Men, I carried the courage of my convictions, and single-handedly convinced all the other jurors of my point of view, but I didn't. Eventually, I let myself get worn down on 'reasonable doubt', related to the large volume of alcohol consumed, and we voted to acquit. And I, being the foreman, had the duty and privilege to announce to the judge and the court what our verdict was, when, even as I said it, I knew in my gut that, whatever the law was here, this guy had done something that he should be being held accountable for, and we had let him off.
We returned to the jury room to gather our things before we left, and the prosecutor and the judge came back to us to discuss our decision with us. And I have to tell you that those little 'post-mortems' are one of the most utterly frustrating aspects of being on a jury. Because then the prosecutor told us the facts of the case that couldn't come out in court. This dude was a bad guy - a BAAAAD guy - who'd been in prison before, and just an all-around badass. "She's gonna have to leave town," the prosecutor said, regarding the victim. I was sick to my stomach.
After the other jurors left, I hung back and told the judge and the prosecutor about the other members of the jury, and how I thought they had failed in their duty. The judge shook her head, saying, "You always hope that you'll get a jury that takes their job seriously, but there are no guarantees." The prosecutor then told me how, when I announced the verdict, the defendant had very dramatically said "Thank you!" to the jury (which I'd seen, and which turned my stomach), at which our erstwhile rape-victim-juror smiled, and blew him a kiss, mouthing 'You're welcome' (which I hadn't seen, but which now made me puke in my mouth a little). It took me a few weeks to more-or-less 'get over' that experience, and my own sense of having failed miserably in my responsibility to do justice. . .
I'd like to tell you that that's the end of the story, but it isn't; not quite. A year or so later, I ran into the prosecutor (her daughter and mine played against each other in a grade-school basketball game). I recognized her, and went to talk to her, telling her that I still regretted not sticking to my guns on that case. She remembered the case, and told me not to worry about it, that rape cases are notoriously difficult to get convictions on, and so forth. Then she told me another piece of information that utterly stunned me. Our lawyer-juror, the guy who'd done so much, with so few words, to turn the deliberations toward acquittal, had actually himself been, at the time of the trial, accused of a domestic-violence charge, but that information didn't cross paths with his jury summons. So he'd had his own incentive to subvert the process. As bad as I thought our jury had been, it had been even worse than I'd thought. . .
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So at that point, my experience of jury duty was pretty uniformly unhappy. One way or another, it had left a bad taste in my mouth, and even left me sick to my stomach. But these are only the first two chapters of my jury story. I'll save my other two trials for the next post. . .
I have been summoned for jury duty five times in my young life. One of those times (the fourth, I think), I went to the courthouse downtown and spent the day reading in the 'jury pool waiting room', after which I was sent home without ever seeing the inside of the courtroom. The other four times, I was sent to the courtroom as part of a pool of prospective jurors for a trial. In each of those cases, I ended up being empaneled on the jury, even though the pool was at least three times as large as the actual number of jurors to be empaneled. Twice, I was selected to be the foreman. So, at this stage of my young life, I've amassed a fairly substantial body of juridical work (if that's the right word for it).
Molly, on the other hand, has been summoned exactly once, and much as she'd love to sit on a jury, the week she was 'on the hook', she called the 'jury line' every day, but her number never even came up to go downtown and wait in the room. Such are the random fortunes of doing one's civic duty (I was sorely tempted to title this post 'Jury Doody', but that would be just a tad too cynical and disrespectful, even for me). . .
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My career as a juror got off to a rocky start. I received my first summons about a month after I started my first job out of college, and I was so dialed-in to getting off on a good foot on my new job, and I was so young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, that I completely lost track of the day I was supposed to report for jury duty. Not good. That little indiscretion won me a personal face-to-face with the judge (which I did NOT forget), in which he demanded an accounting for why I had blown off my sacred civic duty (yeah. . . "I forgot" doesn't cut much ice with your average judge; and this judge was definitely on the 'stern' end of the judicial spectrum), and impressed on me most forcefully (including threats of future incarceration for Contempt of Court if such dereliction were to be repeated) that jury duty, and his court, were not matters to be trifled with. Lesson learned, and I received another summons a few weeks later.
This time, I appeared at the appointed time, and was ushered into the courtroom with a group of prospective jurors. My name was drawn, and I answered all the voir dire questions to the satisfaction of both attorneys, and the judge, and so I was ensconced as a member of the jury.
The case was a civil one - a Chinese woman, the wife of a doctoral student at MegaState U, had taken a job at a small import shop run by an immigrant Chinese gentleman, and she was claiming that he had reneged on several of her paychecks. Since neither the plaintiff nor the defendant spoke unbroken English, the court hired an interpreter (who was herself a graduate student), and virtually all of the testimony was given in Chinese and translated into English for the benefit of the jury.
The case itself devolved fairly quickly into a variation of 'he-said-she-said', with the plaintiff presenting her side of the story, supported by cancelled checks, and other forms of confirmation that he had acted according to a stated agreement, and after a certain point, the checks came farther apart, and for less money than was agreed. The defendant, on the other hand, presented himself as a large-hearted individual who was only trying to help his fellow-countrywoman, and this is the thanks he gets. And so on, et cetera. . .
Since it was a civil trial, there were only six jurors, which was probably just as well, all things considered. Our foreman was a university professor, who seemed temperamentally incapable of rendering any form of definitive judgment. All of our attempts to pin down a decision based on the evidence at hand were met with a whiny, "But you just don't know for certain, do you?" or somesuch, from him. The evidence was pretty clearly on the plaintiff's side, or so, at least, it seemed to five of us, after an hour's discussion or so, and then we spent two more hours trying to get Dr. Dithers to land on one side or the other (preferably the one we all agreed on, but even just to get him to commit to something over which we could argue with him would have been progress). At last, he allowed as to how it seemed most likely that the weight of the argument was on the plaintiff's side, and so we had our decision.
I had no problem with the decision we'd rendered, but the experience left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Mainly that both sides had presented their case, and we were basically left to choose which side we thought was lying, and which was telling the truth (or, which side was telling more of the truth than the other). And besides which, our judgement in the plaintiff's favor was small enough that it wasn't certain that it would even cover what they'd end up paying their lawyer, who probably should have told them that. . .
I wasn't very happy for the experience, but I was satisfied that I had done my civic duty, and that was good enough.
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The second case I sat on was a criminal trial - a rape case. A woman and a man were co-workers at a small manufacturing company, and they both worked the second shift, getting out of work around midnight. He invited her over to his house after work, she agreed, and between the two of them, they killed a twelve-pack of beer, after which he thought the stars were aligned for some sweet lovin' between the two of them. She disagreed, and he decided to, uh, press the issue. Among the evidence for the prosecution was a photograph of a hand-shaped bruise on the inside of her thigh.
The evidence was so compelling, to my mind, that, when we retired to the jury room for deliberation, I volunteered to be the foreman, just to save the time it would take to choose one, and my fellow jurors were only too happy to agree. With that piece of business out of the way, I took an initial straw vote, just to see where things stood. As I perceived the facts of the case, I thought it was possible, even likely, that we could have a conviction without having to spend too many hours in deliberation. The vote was 6-6 (I tell ya, life is just crammed full of 'learning moments').
I was stunned. I had thought that this was as cut-and-dried a case as it could be, but my education was just beginning. That jury of my peers (and even the realization that they were, and are, my peers, still causes me to shudder) still stands in my mind as a ruefully fascinating study of human nature at its very worst. . .
One woman announced, in the first minutes of the deliberations, that she wanted no part in any of the discussion, and when the rest of us got to 11-0, she would just vote with the majority. She then proceeded to lie down on the couch and take a nap. Sweet; I hope that, if you ever find your life in the hands of a jury of your peers, they take your case more seriously than you're taking this, Sweetheart.
Another woman had herself been a rape victim (and had baldly lied when asked during the empanelment whether she had ever been the victim of a crime). Which, you might think, would bias her against the defendant, but no. She had been an idiot to let herself get raped, she said, and this girl was an even bigger idiot than she was. Besides which, it became clear that she had some kind of 'identification' with the defendant; she didn't know him personally, but somehow, he was 'her kind of people', and she wasn't about to see him get sent off, just because some bimbo was a moron one night.
Yet another juror was a college guy, whose essential position, from which he wouldn't be moved, was that, basically (without saying it in so many words), there is no such thing as rape - all sex is consensual, but sometimes the girl regrets it later, and accuses the guy of rape. And so, as far as he was concerned, all charges of rape are de facto bogus. And there was another guy, just out of college, who wasn't quite so adamant as he was, but who basically sympathized with his point of view.
So then, out of the twelve of us, there were four who, right off the top, were more-or-less firmly disposed to corrupt the process.
But they weren't even the worst of it. One of our members was himself an attorney. And that, of course, was known right up-front, when his name was first pulled from the hat. But, as I recall, he was one of the last jurors selected, and both sides were running low on peremptory challenges, and so, much as they might have wanted to remove him from the jury, they didn't. The judge was sufficiently concerned about his presence on the jury that he gave us special instructions that, just because he was an attorney, he didn't know the law as it applied to this case, any better than any of us did, and we shouldn't give his thoughts any more weight than any other juror's, in our deliberations.
Yeah, fat chance of that. He played it very cool, and said very little at first. But when he did decide to speak, he just said, "I don't know - they both had an awful lot to drink. . ." And just like that, four of the jurors who had been inclined to convict, changed their vote, because, see, this guy was a lawyer, and he knows the law better than we do. . . (*sigh*) (*very EXASPERATED sigh*). So just that fast, we were 10-2 to acquit.
It took the majority another hour to convince the other 'convicting' juror, so that we stood 11-1, with me the only remaining vote to convict. The basic line of reasoning in favor of acquittal was that, since they'd both had so much to drink, how could anyone know where consent may or may not have been given? And there was a strong sentiment that for her even to go to his house after midnight carried with it a certain implied consent. And all I could say in response was that being an idiot doesn't mean you deserve to get raped. And a hand-shaped bruise on her thigh looked to me a lot like a lack of consent.
I'd like to tell you that, right out of Twelve Angry Men, I carried the courage of my convictions, and single-handedly convinced all the other jurors of my point of view, but I didn't. Eventually, I let myself get worn down on 'reasonable doubt', related to the large volume of alcohol consumed, and we voted to acquit. And I, being the foreman, had the duty and privilege to announce to the judge and the court what our verdict was, when, even as I said it, I knew in my gut that, whatever the law was here, this guy had done something that he should be being held accountable for, and we had let him off.
We returned to the jury room to gather our things before we left, and the prosecutor and the judge came back to us to discuss our decision with us. And I have to tell you that those little 'post-mortems' are one of the most utterly frustrating aspects of being on a jury. Because then the prosecutor told us the facts of the case that couldn't come out in court. This dude was a bad guy - a BAAAAD guy - who'd been in prison before, and just an all-around badass. "She's gonna have to leave town," the prosecutor said, regarding the victim. I was sick to my stomach.
After the other jurors left, I hung back and told the judge and the prosecutor about the other members of the jury, and how I thought they had failed in their duty. The judge shook her head, saying, "You always hope that you'll get a jury that takes their job seriously, but there are no guarantees." The prosecutor then told me how, when I announced the verdict, the defendant had very dramatically said "Thank you!" to the jury (which I'd seen, and which turned my stomach), at which our erstwhile rape-victim-juror smiled, and blew him a kiss, mouthing 'You're welcome' (which I hadn't seen, but which now made me puke in my mouth a little). It took me a few weeks to more-or-less 'get over' that experience, and my own sense of having failed miserably in my responsibility to do justice. . .
I'd like to tell you that that's the end of the story, but it isn't; not quite. A year or so later, I ran into the prosecutor (her daughter and mine played against each other in a grade-school basketball game). I recognized her, and went to talk to her, telling her that I still regretted not sticking to my guns on that case. She remembered the case, and told me not to worry about it, that rape cases are notoriously difficult to get convictions on, and so forth. Then she told me another piece of information that utterly stunned me. Our lawyer-juror, the guy who'd done so much, with so few words, to turn the deliberations toward acquittal, had actually himself been, at the time of the trial, accused of a domestic-violence charge, but that information didn't cross paths with his jury summons. So he'd had his own incentive to subvert the process. As bad as I thought our jury had been, it had been even worse than I'd thought. . .
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So at that point, my experience of jury duty was pretty uniformly unhappy. One way or another, it had left a bad taste in my mouth, and even left me sick to my stomach. But these are only the first two chapters of my jury story. I'll save my other two trials for the next post. . .
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Meaning It. . .
I have, once or twice over the years, mentioned my friends Hal and Faye. Hal and I go way back; we were college roommates for a couple years, we lived in a house together for a year after we graduated, we were each other's best men for our weddings, and for something like 15 years, we lived a block away from each other (since we moved ten years ago, we've lived five blocks apart), and our kids were each other's best friends, to boot.
Faye and Molly, in part driven by the long-standing close friendship between Hal and me, have also become good friends, although their respective personalities sometimes have an odd oil-and-water interaction between them (from time to time, Hal's-and-my tight friendship has put a bit of 'pressure' on our wives to be better friends than they might have been, left to themselves). Molly is a very bright, outgoing, spontaneous, sanguine personality, and Faye is a more thoughtful, brooding, deliberate woman. Which has, on occasion, led to some fairly spectacular fireworks between them, which would be almost comical, if they weren't so exasperating. But, the two of them really do hold each other in great affection, and enjoy each other's company. Most of the time.
Hal and Faye have four children, three daughters followed by a longed-for son, Hal Jr. H/F's eldest daughter is virtually the same age as our 1F, and the two of them have been best friends their whole lives (which is just way cool; that kind of thing doesn't happen so much anymore). Hal Jr. is an age-peer of 3M, and their two 'middle daughters' are close enough in age to both 1F and 2F that the five of them functioned almost like a group of sisters for much of their growing-up years. Their three girls are all very conscientious and earnest young women; all three are now married, and have four children among them.
Hal Jr. has been a pretty 'Wild Child', somewhat analogous to how 3M was for us. He's been in and out of trouble with the law, and, like 3M, came way closer to not graduating from high school than should ever have been true of a young man with his talents. And that has caused his parents all manner of heartburn and grief. And perhaps all the moreso, coming as he did after three 'perfect' sisters, and being the one, solitary, longed-for son. Whereas we had eight children, and five sons, so none of our kids had quite so many parental 'eggs' in any of their individual 'baskets', so to speak.
(It has become something of an amusing anecdote, in retrospect, but after Hal Jr. was born, and they had four kids in the time it took us to have three, Faye openly fretted that her life would be spent tending to her large number of children, for years after her friends had moved on to exotic travel and grandchildren. And here we are today, with four-and-two-halves children living at home, and 10+ years until 8M graduates high school, while the two of them are virtually empty-nesters, having been on a few international vacations, and with four grandchildren on whom to dote, while our only grandchildren are sort-of 'once removed' from our family. It goes to show that Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates - You Never Know What You're Gonna Get. Or something like that. . .)
Hal Jr did graduate from high school (probably with just a bit more skin left on his teeth than what 3M had), and moved on to the local community college, where his party-animal ways continued to cause his parents grief (especially on the few occasions when they had to retrieve him from jail).
But none of that prepared them for the bombshell that burst upon them last winter. Junior had taken up with a young woman, and while she didn't quite come from the type of family that they hoped their son would attach himself to, she - call her Cathy - was a nice enough girl. And, in the course of her contact with their family, Cathy undertook to join the Catholic Church, quite on her own, and unsolicited by any members of their family. Certainly not Hal Jr., who by that point was distancing himself from his Catholic upbringing as much, and as fast, as he could manage. So Cathy's determination to become Catholic was the cause of some consternation on her boyfriend's part. He went to none of the instruction classes with her (his next-older sister was Cathy's 'sponsor'), and basically had as little to do with her nascent 'popery' as he could (although he did attend the Vigil Mass at which she was formally received into the Church; even rebellious Catholic sons have their sense of propriety). Anyway, Cathy, who had grown up in a pretty-much 'irreligious' family, made up her own mind, and took up her own course, and became Catholic for reasons of her own, independently of any 'solicitation' from anyone else.
But, before she completed her instruction and was recieved into the Church, Cathy had some other news of a rather different sort - she was pregnant. Which instantly threw the Hal/Faye household into a whirlwind of turmoil. This was a situation for which Hal and Faye had very few reference points - nothing like this had ever happened in either of their families. As it turned out, our experience with 1F was helpful to them, at least insofar as giving them an example demonstrating that an out-of-wedlock pregnancy was survivable, even for an otherwise 'good' family (although, holding our family up alongside theirs, I hesitate to call ours 'good'; you may read into the 'scare quotes' whatever degree of irony you like).
Hal Sr.'s first impulse was to urge his son to marry the mother of his child, to 'do the honorable thing', but it was clear enough to him that a 'shotgun wedding' wasn't a good idea, especially given his son's continuing rebelliousness and immaturity. Beyond that, there really wasn't much for him and Faye to do. They were relieved when Cathy told them that she was determined to see her pregnancy through to her baby's birth, and they promised to help her in any way they could.
I am not sure what manner of interaction Cathy had with her own parents. She was not living in their home at the time. But her determination to bring her baby to birth, and her further determination to raise the baby herself, regardless of whatever Junior's inclinations were, put her in a bit of a bind, financially. She couldn't keep her job while tending to a newborn, and even continuing in school would be virtually impossible. It seems that moving back in with her parents wasn't an option, so she was in a pretty major bind.
And it was at this point that Hal and Faye did what I consider to be an amazing thing. They offered to have Cathy move in with them, to give her a place to live, and look after her baby (who was also their grandchild). They even told Junior, who had been living with them, that it was time for him, at 21 years of age, to find his own place to live, so that his 'baby-mama' could move in with them. They would force him to take at least that amount of personal responsibility for having begotten a child. And so, a few weeks ago, their 'grandbaby-mama' moved in with them, and in due course bore them their fifth grandchild, a baby boy.
As I said, I consider their actions to be nothing short of amazing, and more-than-sufficient confirmation of the high esteem in which I have long held both of them. They bore no real obligation to Cathy, even though the child she carried was their own flesh-and-blood. And yet, they offered their support to a young unwed-mother. I'm sure that their 'biological' connection to the child played a part in their thinking, as did a certain sense of 'making good' for their son's irresponsibility. But they were not bound or required to do anything for her, or the baby (as I said, I don't know what interaction she had with her own parents, if any, but it seems that they were at least less eager than were Hal and Faye to give her tangible support).
And of course, the circumstances of my own life - having been myself, once-upon-a-time, someone's 'unwanted pregnancy', and having been reunited with my own birth-family too late to have ever known any of my grandparents, except one, who was senile and within weeks of her own death when I met her - only serve to increase my admiration for what my friends are doing for their grandchild and his mother. To say nothing of our experience with 1F and her daughter; we didn't even make such an offer to our own daughter, much less to someone else's.
There is a down-and-dirty, rubber-meets-the-road realism to the whole situation. Those of us who bear the label of 'pro-life' have sometimes been criticized for upholding the life of the unborn, but caring less about them when they cross over into the ranks of the born. I generally regard that criticism as something of a cheap shot, but I also admit that it has more justice to it than I wish it did. But my friends Hal and Faye looked square into the face of what it would cost them to care for one particular unwed-mother, and they didn't flinch from it at all. Again, I can scarcely express my admiration for what they've done.
I don't know the full extent of the support they're giving Cathy, whether it is 'open-ended', or subject to re-evaluation, or what. I know nothing about the 'terms and conditions'. Perhaps they intend simply to give her enough time to figure out a more 'permanent' situation for herself. Perhaps they mean to 'buy time' until Junior is enough of a man to follow through and marry the mother of his child. Perhaps none of those things; perhaps many more than those. But I do know that they have 'put their money where their mouths are' in a remarkable, and utterly admirable, way. . .
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(edit 29 Oct) - I should hasten to add that, at least so far, Junior seems to be responding very well to the 'crisis' in his life. He's seriously curtailed his drinking (and his 'herbal usage'), and has been taking a newly-serious approach to his studies, and to life in general. Perhaps it's the shock of leaving his parents' home and living on his own for the first time (I am well-acquainted with that effect); perhaps fatherhood (such as it is, just yet) has smacked his psyche upside the head (uh, so to speak). But he is, today and in recent weeks, a more serious, responsible young man than he was before. As the grandfather said in Little Big Man, "Sometimes the magic works. . ."
Faye and Molly, in part driven by the long-standing close friendship between Hal and me, have also become good friends, although their respective personalities sometimes have an odd oil-and-water interaction between them (from time to time, Hal's-and-my tight friendship has put a bit of 'pressure' on our wives to be better friends than they might have been, left to themselves). Molly is a very bright, outgoing, spontaneous, sanguine personality, and Faye is a more thoughtful, brooding, deliberate woman. Which has, on occasion, led to some fairly spectacular fireworks between them, which would be almost comical, if they weren't so exasperating. But, the two of them really do hold each other in great affection, and enjoy each other's company. Most of the time.
Hal and Faye have four children, three daughters followed by a longed-for son, Hal Jr. H/F's eldest daughter is virtually the same age as our 1F, and the two of them have been best friends their whole lives (which is just way cool; that kind of thing doesn't happen so much anymore). Hal Jr. is an age-peer of 3M, and their two 'middle daughters' are close enough in age to both 1F and 2F that the five of them functioned almost like a group of sisters for much of their growing-up years. Their three girls are all very conscientious and earnest young women; all three are now married, and have four children among them.
Hal Jr. has been a pretty 'Wild Child', somewhat analogous to how 3M was for us. He's been in and out of trouble with the law, and, like 3M, came way closer to not graduating from high school than should ever have been true of a young man with his talents. And that has caused his parents all manner of heartburn and grief. And perhaps all the moreso, coming as he did after three 'perfect' sisters, and being the one, solitary, longed-for son. Whereas we had eight children, and five sons, so none of our kids had quite so many parental 'eggs' in any of their individual 'baskets', so to speak.
(It has become something of an amusing anecdote, in retrospect, but after Hal Jr. was born, and they had four kids in the time it took us to have three, Faye openly fretted that her life would be spent tending to her large number of children, for years after her friends had moved on to exotic travel and grandchildren. And here we are today, with four-and-two-halves children living at home, and 10+ years until 8M graduates high school, while the two of them are virtually empty-nesters, having been on a few international vacations, and with four grandchildren on whom to dote, while our only grandchildren are sort-of 'once removed' from our family. It goes to show that Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates - You Never Know What You're Gonna Get. Or something like that. . .)
Hal Jr did graduate from high school (probably with just a bit more skin left on his teeth than what 3M had), and moved on to the local community college, where his party-animal ways continued to cause his parents grief (especially on the few occasions when they had to retrieve him from jail).
But none of that prepared them for the bombshell that burst upon them last winter. Junior had taken up with a young woman, and while she didn't quite come from the type of family that they hoped their son would attach himself to, she - call her Cathy - was a nice enough girl. And, in the course of her contact with their family, Cathy undertook to join the Catholic Church, quite on her own, and unsolicited by any members of their family. Certainly not Hal Jr., who by that point was distancing himself from his Catholic upbringing as much, and as fast, as he could manage. So Cathy's determination to become Catholic was the cause of some consternation on her boyfriend's part. He went to none of the instruction classes with her (his next-older sister was Cathy's 'sponsor'), and basically had as little to do with her nascent 'popery' as he could (although he did attend the Vigil Mass at which she was formally received into the Church; even rebellious Catholic sons have their sense of propriety). Anyway, Cathy, who had grown up in a pretty-much 'irreligious' family, made up her own mind, and took up her own course, and became Catholic for reasons of her own, independently of any 'solicitation' from anyone else.
But, before she completed her instruction and was recieved into the Church, Cathy had some other news of a rather different sort - she was pregnant. Which instantly threw the Hal/Faye household into a whirlwind of turmoil. This was a situation for which Hal and Faye had very few reference points - nothing like this had ever happened in either of their families. As it turned out, our experience with 1F was helpful to them, at least insofar as giving them an example demonstrating that an out-of-wedlock pregnancy was survivable, even for an otherwise 'good' family (although, holding our family up alongside theirs, I hesitate to call ours 'good'; you may read into the 'scare quotes' whatever degree of irony you like).
Hal Sr.'s first impulse was to urge his son to marry the mother of his child, to 'do the honorable thing', but it was clear enough to him that a 'shotgun wedding' wasn't a good idea, especially given his son's continuing rebelliousness and immaturity. Beyond that, there really wasn't much for him and Faye to do. They were relieved when Cathy told them that she was determined to see her pregnancy through to her baby's birth, and they promised to help her in any way they could.
I am not sure what manner of interaction Cathy had with her own parents. She was not living in their home at the time. But her determination to bring her baby to birth, and her further determination to raise the baby herself, regardless of whatever Junior's inclinations were, put her in a bit of a bind, financially. She couldn't keep her job while tending to a newborn, and even continuing in school would be virtually impossible. It seems that moving back in with her parents wasn't an option, so she was in a pretty major bind.
And it was at this point that Hal and Faye did what I consider to be an amazing thing. They offered to have Cathy move in with them, to give her a place to live, and look after her baby (who was also their grandchild). They even told Junior, who had been living with them, that it was time for him, at 21 years of age, to find his own place to live, so that his 'baby-mama' could move in with them. They would force him to take at least that amount of personal responsibility for having begotten a child. And so, a few weeks ago, their 'grandbaby-mama' moved in with them, and in due course bore them their fifth grandchild, a baby boy.
As I said, I consider their actions to be nothing short of amazing, and more-than-sufficient confirmation of the high esteem in which I have long held both of them. They bore no real obligation to Cathy, even though the child she carried was their own flesh-and-blood. And yet, they offered their support to a young unwed-mother. I'm sure that their 'biological' connection to the child played a part in their thinking, as did a certain sense of 'making good' for their son's irresponsibility. But they were not bound or required to do anything for her, or the baby (as I said, I don't know what interaction she had with her own parents, if any, but it seems that they were at least less eager than were Hal and Faye to give her tangible support).
And of course, the circumstances of my own life - having been myself, once-upon-a-time, someone's 'unwanted pregnancy', and having been reunited with my own birth-family too late to have ever known any of my grandparents, except one, who was senile and within weeks of her own death when I met her - only serve to increase my admiration for what my friends are doing for their grandchild and his mother. To say nothing of our experience with 1F and her daughter; we didn't even make such an offer to our own daughter, much less to someone else's.
There is a down-and-dirty, rubber-meets-the-road realism to the whole situation. Those of us who bear the label of 'pro-life' have sometimes been criticized for upholding the life of the unborn, but caring less about them when they cross over into the ranks of the born. I generally regard that criticism as something of a cheap shot, but I also admit that it has more justice to it than I wish it did. But my friends Hal and Faye looked square into the face of what it would cost them to care for one particular unwed-mother, and they didn't flinch from it at all. Again, I can scarcely express my admiration for what they've done.
I don't know the full extent of the support they're giving Cathy, whether it is 'open-ended', or subject to re-evaluation, or what. I know nothing about the 'terms and conditions'. Perhaps they intend simply to give her enough time to figure out a more 'permanent' situation for herself. Perhaps they mean to 'buy time' until Junior is enough of a man to follow through and marry the mother of his child. Perhaps none of those things; perhaps many more than those. But I do know that they have 'put their money where their mouths are' in a remarkable, and utterly admirable, way. . .
-------------------------
(edit 29 Oct) - I should hasten to add that, at least so far, Junior seems to be responding very well to the 'crisis' in his life. He's seriously curtailed his drinking (and his 'herbal usage'), and has been taking a newly-serious approach to his studies, and to life in general. Perhaps it's the shock of leaving his parents' home and living on his own for the first time (I am well-acquainted with that effect); perhaps fatherhood (such as it is, just yet) has smacked his psyche upside the head (uh, so to speak). But he is, today and in recent weeks, a more serious, responsible young man than he was before. As the grandfather said in Little Big Man, "Sometimes the magic works. . ."
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Sun and Moon, Bless the Lord. . .
Fall is my favorite time of the year - the crisp, cool air, and the multi-colored trees (like Nature's own tie-dye, eh Lime?) just quicken my steps and bring a joyful smile to my face. When I'm out on my bike on days like that, I simply can't keep myself from grinning as I pedal, just from the sheer joy of being alive in such a world. And I think of how, at the end of each Day of Creation, "God saw that it was good."
It calls to my mind our vacation this past summer, when Molly and I and our four youngest kids stayed for a week in a cabin Up North. A few times during the week, we visited the nearby Cross In the Woods, a Catholic shrine a few miles from where we were staying. The shrine is run by the Franciscan order, which organizes its life around the teachings and ideals of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis is a very interesting man, eccentric and holy in the way that is almost unique to certain canonized saints of the Roman Catholic Church.
At the Cross In the Woods, there is a lovely little nature walk (and if you know anything about St. Francis, a nature walk is right up his alley, so to speak), with little stations along the way, each displaying a verse from St. Francis' Canticle of the Sun, a nature hymn which Francis wrote shortly before he died. I had generally ignored the Canticle, figuring that, as popular as it was among certain Catholics of an 'enviro-leftist' persuasion, especially back in the 60s/70s, that it might be somewhat dubiously 'orthodox'.
But, you know, I've grown in some ways, in the last 30 years, and I've come to appreciate many things of which my younger self was dubious. And I've always enjoyed walking in the woods. So, on our recent vacation, I happily set out to enjoy the shrine's nature walk, and the thought and spirit of St. Francis. And I found the Canticle, at least as rendered into English on the walk, to be utterly delightful. And so, I offer it here for the enjoyment of my friends:
-------------------------
Canticle of the Sun (St. Francis of Assisi; ca. 1225)
Most High, All-Powerful, All-Good Lord!
All praise, and honor and glory are Yours, and all blessing.
They are Yours alone, Most High,
And no one is worthy to mention Your Name.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through all that You have made,
Especially Brother Sun, who brings the day and the light.
How beautiful is he, and how radiant;
He bears Your likeness.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon, and the stars.
In Heaven You made them, bright and precious and fair.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
And through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather
By which You cherish all that You have made.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom You light the night.
He is beautiful, playful, robust and strong.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother,
Who feeds us in her sovereignty,
And produces various fruits and colored flowers and herbs.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through those who grant pardon for love of You,
And those who endure sickness and tribulation.
Happy are those who endure in peace;
By You, Most High, they will be crowned.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through our sister, Bodily Death,
From whom no one can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
But happy are those whom she finds doing Your holy will;
The second death can do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord,
And give Him thanks,
And serve Him with great humility.
-------------------------
St. Francis here is much more than a 13th-century proto-enviro-greenie. He rejoices in the Creation, and offers his gratitude to the Creator who shows His love to us, His creatures, in and through the goodness of the world He created for us to live in.
There are echoes here of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures, especially Psalm 148 and the deutero-canonical Canticle of the Three Young Men (in Catholic/Orthodox bibles, it is placed in the Book of Daniel between verses 23 and 24 of chapter 3), which was sung by Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from within the fiery furnace. Also the hymn All Creatures of Our God and King, which was a favorite of our minister in the church in which I grew up (and which, it turns out, was specifically intended as a musical rendition of St. Francis' Canticle).
God is good, and worthy of thanks and praise, for He made the world good, and gave it to us to live in. . .
-------------------------
(edit 25Oct) - I got out on my bike yesterday; the 27 miles I got in put me over 1200 for the year (for the third consecutive year). It was a damp, dank, dungy gray day, but these are the peak-color days around here; for mile after mile, even though it was gray and overcast and occasionally spitting rain, I was riding through brilliantly yellow, orange and red trees, mixed with the last remaining bits of green. And today, the sun is out and the colors are just luminous.
Did I mention that fall is my favorite season? . . .
It calls to my mind our vacation this past summer, when Molly and I and our four youngest kids stayed for a week in a cabin Up North. A few times during the week, we visited the nearby Cross In the Woods, a Catholic shrine a few miles from where we were staying. The shrine is run by the Franciscan order, which organizes its life around the teachings and ideals of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis is a very interesting man, eccentric and holy in the way that is almost unique to certain canonized saints of the Roman Catholic Church.
At the Cross In the Woods, there is a lovely little nature walk (and if you know anything about St. Francis, a nature walk is right up his alley, so to speak), with little stations along the way, each displaying a verse from St. Francis' Canticle of the Sun, a nature hymn which Francis wrote shortly before he died. I had generally ignored the Canticle, figuring that, as popular as it was among certain Catholics of an 'enviro-leftist' persuasion, especially back in the 60s/70s, that it might be somewhat dubiously 'orthodox'.
But, you know, I've grown in some ways, in the last 30 years, and I've come to appreciate many things of which my younger self was dubious. And I've always enjoyed walking in the woods. So, on our recent vacation, I happily set out to enjoy the shrine's nature walk, and the thought and spirit of St. Francis. And I found the Canticle, at least as rendered into English on the walk, to be utterly delightful. And so, I offer it here for the enjoyment of my friends:
-------------------------
Canticle of the Sun (St. Francis of Assisi; ca. 1225)
Most High, All-Powerful, All-Good Lord!
All praise, and honor and glory are Yours, and all blessing.
They are Yours alone, Most High,
And no one is worthy to mention Your Name.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through all that You have made,
Especially Brother Sun, who brings the day and the light.
How beautiful is he, and how radiant;
He bears Your likeness.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon, and the stars.
In Heaven You made them, bright and precious and fair.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
And through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather
By which You cherish all that You have made.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom You light the night.
He is beautiful, playful, robust and strong.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother,
Who feeds us in her sovereignty,
And produces various fruits and colored flowers and herbs.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through those who grant pardon for love of You,
And those who endure sickness and tribulation.
Happy are those who endure in peace;
By You, Most High, they will be crowned.
All praise be Yours, my Lord, through our sister, Bodily Death,
From whom no one can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
But happy are those whom she finds doing Your holy will;
The second death can do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord,
And give Him thanks,
And serve Him with great humility.
-------------------------
St. Francis here is much more than a 13th-century proto-enviro-greenie. He rejoices in the Creation, and offers his gratitude to the Creator who shows His love to us, His creatures, in and through the goodness of the world He created for us to live in.
There are echoes here of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures, especially Psalm 148 and the deutero-canonical Canticle of the Three Young Men (in Catholic/Orthodox bibles, it is placed in the Book of Daniel between verses 23 and 24 of chapter 3), which was sung by Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from within the fiery furnace. Also the hymn All Creatures of Our God and King, which was a favorite of our minister in the church in which I grew up (and which, it turns out, was specifically intended as a musical rendition of St. Francis' Canticle).
God is good, and worthy of thanks and praise, for He made the world good, and gave it to us to live in. . .
-------------------------
(edit 25Oct) - I got out on my bike yesterday; the 27 miles I got in put me over 1200 for the year (for the third consecutive year). It was a damp, dank, dungy gray day, but these are the peak-color days around here; for mile after mile, even though it was gray and overcast and occasionally spitting rain, I was riding through brilliantly yellow, orange and red trees, mixed with the last remaining bits of green. And today, the sun is out and the colors are just luminous.
Did I mention that fall is my favorite season? . . .
Friday, October 16, 2009
Friday Night Lights, Desmond-Style. . .
I have not spent much space in this blog on regaling you with tales of my athletic prowess of bygone days, and for two good reasons. First, I am all-too-aware of how pathetic it can be to listen to some middle-aged (or older) guy trying to recapture the glory of his younger days, and I don't want to inflict that pain on you, who might still count me as your friend. And second, I just don't have all that much in the way of Stories of Bygone Athletic Prowess. I suppose, in order to tell Stories of Bygone Athletic Prowess, it helps to have actually had some Athletic Prowess, once upon a time. . .
And yet, this time of year, I am always reminded of one particular football game from my high school days; you all would be very kind to indulge me. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, for purposes of athletic competition, high schools are divided into four classes, according to enrollment. Class A schools are the largest, and Class D are the smallest. In the northern two-thirds of the state, which includes the town I grew up in, there were only five Class A schools, in my high-school days (there are a few more now), and my school was one of them. Which presented us with a bit of a challenge, when it came to competing against similar-sized schools. Typically, we wound up playing the other four northern Class A schools, maybe a Class B school or two, and then travelling 'downstate' for the rest of our games.
Another thing which we did, to save some travel costs, was to have our JV team play against the varsity squad of a few of the Class C/D schools, of which there were several, within an hour's drive or less of us. On this particular night, I was on the JV squad, and we were playing the varsity of a Class D school about a half-hour up the road.
I was the center for our team (that's the guy who initially lines up over the ball, and 'hikes' it to the quarterback to begin the play). Over the course of the season, the center and the quarterback develop an intimate, close relationship; I'll just say that Molly, and whoever changed my diapers when I was a baby, are the only other people in my life whose hands have spent so much time on that part of my body.
Anyway, before the game, our coaches were reviewing with us what to expect from our opponent that night, and how we were intending to deal with it. Speaking to our defense, the coach said, "Basically, their offense consists of one guy, and his name is Godfrey; they've only got three plays - Godfrey left, Godfrey right, and Godfrey up the middle." So apparently this Godfrey guy was quite a horse.
My best buddy (who was also my backup center) and I, being conscientious fellows, raised our hands, and asked, "This Godfrey - does he play on defense for them?"
The coach paused for a second or two, before saying, "I think he's their noseman, but I'm not sure."
Well, now, the news that Godfrey, who was already morphing in my brain into something out of a bad horror movie - more like Godzilla than Godfrey - might be the noseman - the defensive player who plays across from the center, and who I'd thus stand to spend virtually the entire game trying to block - might be the noseman, but my coach - my coach, who was charged, among other things, with assuring that I be safely returned to my parents after the game - wasn't sure. . . Well, this news suddenly became a matter of grave concern for my young life. Bearing in mind that I was a 14-year-old sophomore, and Godzilla was a senior. He might've been the only decent player on his whole team (as it turns out, he was a Class D all-stater), but he was gonna be my problem for the next 2-3 hours. . .
Our team won the coin-toss, and received the opening kickoff, and then our offense, including me as the center, took the field. And sure enough, there he was. I broke the huddle, turned and trotted up to my position over the ball. And there was this. . . this huge THING there, waiting for me, his malevolent breath panting over my ball. Red glowing eyes stared evilly out at me from inside his helmet, and a three-day stubble adorned his chin. "Senior, hell!" I thought to myself. This guy's a freakin' Vietnam vet, who's been beheading communists with piano wire, up until last week.
"What's your name, kid?" he grunted at me.
Figuring that he was trying to intimidate me, I gave what I thought would be a suitably 'tough' response - "What do you care?"
"I need to know what to put on your gravestone."
I wanted to congratulate him on his wit; you know, "Touche! Good one!" or somesuch, but before I could get the words out, he charged out of his stance and drilled me, sending me ass-over-teakettle about five yards into the backfield, taking out my quarterback as I flew past. The referees blew their whistles and threw their yellow hankies, and duly marched off fifteen yards against Godzilla and his teammates for the Unsportsmanlike Conduct of kicking my ass before they told him it was OK to do so. But the message had been sent, and, you can be sure, received. I was in for the ass-kicking of my life that night; my young manhood was about to receive its sternest test to date.
And, continuing from my first snap, it proceded apace. Godzilla, who outweighed me by something like 50 pounds, and out-meaned me by a much greater margin, whipped me up one side of the field and down the other. I became intimately acquainted with his right forearm, which smashed across the bridge of my nose on every play, within milliseconds of the ball smacking into my quarterback's hands (I should mention here that this was also our first game of the season, and we hadn't yet received all of the best equipment that was on order; so my facemask, instead of being a 'lineman's mask' with a vertical bar protecting my nose, was a simple 'two-bar' facemask, which afforded a space slightly larger than the width of Godzilla's forearm between the edge of the helmet, and the top bar of the facemask. So Godzilla's forearm, which I think was made of weapons-grade steel, or maybe depleted uranium, hammered the bridge of my nose on each and every play, the entire game long; by the end of the game, my nose was approximately triple its normal width).
After the first few plays, I was past the point of trying to block him. On a couple of occasions, Godzilla, who also had the reflexes of a nervous jaguar, was past me, into the backfield, almost before the ball. I only tried to get myself between him and where the play was going, hoping to slow him down a little in the process of steamrolling me. It very quickly devolved into a Rocky-esque scenario of just taking my beating, and staying determined to do what I could, and not quit until the game was over.
And that's pretty much what I did. By the third quarter or so, I was pretty much shell-shocked, and my coach took pity on me and sent my buddy, the backup center, in for a series. But my buddy was 50 pounds lighter than I was (which had something to do with why I was the starter), and Godzilla treated him like a chew-toy. But at least I got a few minutes' respite from the hailstorm, before I had to go back out into it.
-------------------------
Now, it really was true that Godzilla was virtually the only decent player on that team - I don't think they had a single other player bigger than 175 pounds, much less 200, and these weren't wiry-athletic skinny guys, either. Godzilla was pretty much playing us 1-on-11, and I was designated to absorb the full brunt of his fury.
One of his teammates, the defensive tackle who played the next position up the defensive line from him, was a tall, skinny guy - maybe 6-1 and 145 pounds or so - and as nearly as I could tell, his role on the defense was something like the Heckler. He had a whiny, nasal, high-pitched voice, and every play, as I once again assumed my position and steeled myself for yet another onslaught of Godzilla's rage, he would commence with the performance of his duties. "Center!" he'd yell, in his sing-song, nasal whine, "center, you're gonna get killed, man! He's gonna kick your ass, man! You're gonna get killed!" And he repeated that same song before every snap. Which, in a perverse way, motivated me to keep going. If this skinny dork wanted me to quit, he was having the exact opposite effect on my psyche. And pissing me off, besides - HE wasn't the one kicking my ass, but he was the one crowing about it, and I just wanted to say, "Bring it, Stick-Boy! Let's see how bad you are when it's you and me!"
And so it came to pass that lo and behold, for one play, late in the third quarter (and alas, it was the only such play the entire game), just as I was beginning to question my own sanity for continuing to submit to the every-30-seconds beatings, the clouds parted, and a light shone down from the heavens. We broke the huddle, and I trotted up to the ball, and lo! Godzilla was not there! Oh, Hallelujah! They were in a different defense, and Godzilla was playing a middle linebacker position, a couple yards off the line. And my skinny Yakker was across from me! At that point, I completely forgot what the play was that we were running, or what my blocking assignment was. For one play, my eyes flashed red and glowed. My voice dropped in pitch by at least an octave (even though I said nothing; strange how that worked), as I glared across the line. I snapped the ball and fired out, right through the chest of my erstwhile tormentor. I knocked him on his back, and ran up his chest, on my way downfield to find someone else (preferably, someone not named Godzilla) to block.
The next play, Godzilla was back across the line from me. But the Heckler was quiet for the rest of the game.
-------------------------
We actually won that game, narrowly - Godzilla couldn't whip our whole team all by himself, but he sure wreaked a lot of havoc by the time he was done. I was able to join my teammates in rejoicing over our victory, even while I absorbed some good-natured teasing over the ass-kicking I'd taken (not unmixed with a sense of relief on their part, that it hadn't been them). Even just by willingly taking my whipping every play, I'd made my contribution to our victory, and my teammates, and my coaches, were duly appreciative.
And, within a week, my nose was even pretty much back to normal. And I got my lineman's facemask. . .
And yet, this time of year, I am always reminded of one particular football game from my high school days; you all would be very kind to indulge me. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, for purposes of athletic competition, high schools are divided into four classes, according to enrollment. Class A schools are the largest, and Class D are the smallest. In the northern two-thirds of the state, which includes the town I grew up in, there were only five Class A schools, in my high-school days (there are a few more now), and my school was one of them. Which presented us with a bit of a challenge, when it came to competing against similar-sized schools. Typically, we wound up playing the other four northern Class A schools, maybe a Class B school or two, and then travelling 'downstate' for the rest of our games.
Another thing which we did, to save some travel costs, was to have our JV team play against the varsity squad of a few of the Class C/D schools, of which there were several, within an hour's drive or less of us. On this particular night, I was on the JV squad, and we were playing the varsity of a Class D school about a half-hour up the road.
I was the center for our team (that's the guy who initially lines up over the ball, and 'hikes' it to the quarterback to begin the play). Over the course of the season, the center and the quarterback develop an intimate, close relationship; I'll just say that Molly, and whoever changed my diapers when I was a baby, are the only other people in my life whose hands have spent so much time on that part of my body.
Anyway, before the game, our coaches were reviewing with us what to expect from our opponent that night, and how we were intending to deal with it. Speaking to our defense, the coach said, "Basically, their offense consists of one guy, and his name is Godfrey; they've only got three plays - Godfrey left, Godfrey right, and Godfrey up the middle." So apparently this Godfrey guy was quite a horse.
My best buddy (who was also my backup center) and I, being conscientious fellows, raised our hands, and asked, "This Godfrey - does he play on defense for them?"
The coach paused for a second or two, before saying, "I think he's their noseman, but I'm not sure."
Well, now, the news that Godfrey, who was already morphing in my brain into something out of a bad horror movie - more like Godzilla than Godfrey - might be the noseman - the defensive player who plays across from the center, and who I'd thus stand to spend virtually the entire game trying to block - might be the noseman, but my coach - my coach, who was charged, among other things, with assuring that I be safely returned to my parents after the game - wasn't sure. . . Well, this news suddenly became a matter of grave concern for my young life. Bearing in mind that I was a 14-year-old sophomore, and Godzilla was a senior. He might've been the only decent player on his whole team (as it turns out, he was a Class D all-stater), but he was gonna be my problem for the next 2-3 hours. . .
Our team won the coin-toss, and received the opening kickoff, and then our offense, including me as the center, took the field. And sure enough, there he was. I broke the huddle, turned and trotted up to my position over the ball. And there was this. . . this huge THING there, waiting for me, his malevolent breath panting over my ball. Red glowing eyes stared evilly out at me from inside his helmet, and a three-day stubble adorned his chin. "Senior, hell!" I thought to myself. This guy's a freakin' Vietnam vet, who's been beheading communists with piano wire, up until last week.
"What's your name, kid?" he grunted at me.
Figuring that he was trying to intimidate me, I gave what I thought would be a suitably 'tough' response - "What do you care?"
"I need to know what to put on your gravestone."
I wanted to congratulate him on his wit; you know, "Touche! Good one!" or somesuch, but before I could get the words out, he charged out of his stance and drilled me, sending me ass-over-teakettle about five yards into the backfield, taking out my quarterback as I flew past. The referees blew their whistles and threw their yellow hankies, and duly marched off fifteen yards against Godzilla and his teammates for the Unsportsmanlike Conduct of kicking my ass before they told him it was OK to do so. But the message had been sent, and, you can be sure, received. I was in for the ass-kicking of my life that night; my young manhood was about to receive its sternest test to date.
And, continuing from my first snap, it proceded apace. Godzilla, who outweighed me by something like 50 pounds, and out-meaned me by a much greater margin, whipped me up one side of the field and down the other. I became intimately acquainted with his right forearm, which smashed across the bridge of my nose on every play, within milliseconds of the ball smacking into my quarterback's hands (I should mention here that this was also our first game of the season, and we hadn't yet received all of the best equipment that was on order; so my facemask, instead of being a 'lineman's mask' with a vertical bar protecting my nose, was a simple 'two-bar' facemask, which afforded a space slightly larger than the width of Godzilla's forearm between the edge of the helmet, and the top bar of the facemask. So Godzilla's forearm, which I think was made of weapons-grade steel, or maybe depleted uranium, hammered the bridge of my nose on each and every play, the entire game long; by the end of the game, my nose was approximately triple its normal width).
After the first few plays, I was past the point of trying to block him. On a couple of occasions, Godzilla, who also had the reflexes of a nervous jaguar, was past me, into the backfield, almost before the ball. I only tried to get myself between him and where the play was going, hoping to slow him down a little in the process of steamrolling me. It very quickly devolved into a Rocky-esque scenario of just taking my beating, and staying determined to do what I could, and not quit until the game was over.
And that's pretty much what I did. By the third quarter or so, I was pretty much shell-shocked, and my coach took pity on me and sent my buddy, the backup center, in for a series. But my buddy was 50 pounds lighter than I was (which had something to do with why I was the starter), and Godzilla treated him like a chew-toy. But at least I got a few minutes' respite from the hailstorm, before I had to go back out into it.
-------------------------
Now, it really was true that Godzilla was virtually the only decent player on that team - I don't think they had a single other player bigger than 175 pounds, much less 200, and these weren't wiry-athletic skinny guys, either. Godzilla was pretty much playing us 1-on-11, and I was designated to absorb the full brunt of his fury.
One of his teammates, the defensive tackle who played the next position up the defensive line from him, was a tall, skinny guy - maybe 6-1 and 145 pounds or so - and as nearly as I could tell, his role on the defense was something like the Heckler. He had a whiny, nasal, high-pitched voice, and every play, as I once again assumed my position and steeled myself for yet another onslaught of Godzilla's rage, he would commence with the performance of his duties. "Center!" he'd yell, in his sing-song, nasal whine, "center, you're gonna get killed, man! He's gonna kick your ass, man! You're gonna get killed!" And he repeated that same song before every snap. Which, in a perverse way, motivated me to keep going. If this skinny dork wanted me to quit, he was having the exact opposite effect on my psyche. And pissing me off, besides - HE wasn't the one kicking my ass, but he was the one crowing about it, and I just wanted to say, "Bring it, Stick-Boy! Let's see how bad you are when it's you and me!"
And so it came to pass that lo and behold, for one play, late in the third quarter (and alas, it was the only such play the entire game), just as I was beginning to question my own sanity for continuing to submit to the every-30-seconds beatings, the clouds parted, and a light shone down from the heavens. We broke the huddle, and I trotted up to the ball, and lo! Godzilla was not there! Oh, Hallelujah! They were in a different defense, and Godzilla was playing a middle linebacker position, a couple yards off the line. And my skinny Yakker was across from me! At that point, I completely forgot what the play was that we were running, or what my blocking assignment was. For one play, my eyes flashed red and glowed. My voice dropped in pitch by at least an octave (even though I said nothing; strange how that worked), as I glared across the line. I snapped the ball and fired out, right through the chest of my erstwhile tormentor. I knocked him on his back, and ran up his chest, on my way downfield to find someone else (preferably, someone not named Godzilla) to block.
The next play, Godzilla was back across the line from me. But the Heckler was quiet for the rest of the game.
-------------------------
We actually won that game, narrowly - Godzilla couldn't whip our whole team all by himself, but he sure wreaked a lot of havoc by the time he was done. I was able to join my teammates in rejoicing over our victory, even while I absorbed some good-natured teasing over the ass-kicking I'd taken (not unmixed with a sense of relief on their part, that it hadn't been them). Even just by willingly taking my whipping every play, I'd made my contribution to our victory, and my teammates, and my coaches, were duly appreciative.
And, within a week, my nose was even pretty much back to normal. And I got my lineman's facemask. . .
Monday, October 12, 2009
Thanks for Noticing
At one of our recent prayer meetings, Molly was wearing a sleeveless top, and the effects of her newly-rigorous workout program were showing on her lean, tanned arms and shoulders. One of the college guys stopped her for a second after the meeting.
"Mrs. Jones!" he exclaimed, "You're buff!"
That's right, kid, she is. And she's all mine. . .
"Mrs. Jones!" he exclaimed, "You're buff!"
That's right, kid, she is. And she's all mine. . .
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Piling On
I was talking on the phone to my dad recently, and in the course of it, he asked if I had heard the latest about my sister Katy and her husband (call him Dan). I hadn't, and when he told me, I was floored. . .
[Katy and Dan were married the same summer as Molly and I were, a couple months before us; Molly and I sang Paul Stookey's Wedding Song at their wedding (we also ditched their wedding reception for a bit of mutually-naked fun in my parents' swimming pool; weddings have always had a very erotic effect on my psyche. But that's another story for another time)]
They were visiting their son Kevin, who remains in jail a couple states from home, still awaiting trial for his misadventures in that state, which aims to get its own pound of flesh out of Kevin before sending him home to face much more serious charges. While they were there, Dan came down with a cold, which he mostly ignored in order to deal with Kevin's lawyers, and the pressing business of looking after their son's well-being. Within a few days, though, Dan was laid-out, in much more serious condition than merely a cold. He went to the ER, where he was diagnosed with the H1N1 flu, and a case of pneumonia, to boot.
Dan's condition continued to deteriorate, and by late last week, the docs told Katy to get Dan's next-of-kin (their daughter, her kids, and Dan's sister) down to see him, because they gave him no better than a 5 percent chance of surviving the weekend. . . And in the midst of all this, Katy came down with H1N1 herself. But since her case was caught early, she kicked it in a couple days.
Holy Shit! Here is my poor sister, already bearing the burden of her mother's illness, and the stress of her son's legal troubles (and her own misplaced guilt over them), and, under the effects of her own illness, they tell her she's about to lose her husband of 29 years. That comes to seem gratuitous, like Piling-On on the part of the Universe; c'mon ref, throw the flag!
-------------------------
Molly and I understand what it's like to feel like the Universe is just kicking your ass, when a wave of intractable problems crashes onto the ones you already had. But our troubles, in retrospect, seem minor by comparison. 1F and 3M, for all their troubles of a few years ago, are mostly on their feet, and trending positive. Kevin is looking at many years of hard time, and he has yet to even face the most serious charges against him (right at the moment, part of his legal strategy seems to be to keep things in the 'other state' for as long as possible, so as to delay facing the murder charge in his home state). And then to add to that the prospect of Dan's untimely demise. . . what can you even say to that?
Over the weekend, Dan's condition improved. He's not 'out of the woods', yet, but at least things have taken a positive turn. So it's increasingly likely we won't be having Dan's funeral quite yet. Thanks be to God, for that.
-----------------------
But seriously - how does one even make sense of circumstances like these? As I said before, my sister isn't perfect; I've occasionally been critical of her and Dan and some of their life-choices, in the past. But this is beyond 'paybacks' from the Universe, or 'karma', or however you want to parse it. Obviously, Molly and I continue to keep them in our prayers, but it's hard not to kind-of turn my gaze heavenward, and wonder just what the hell is going on here. Can my sister catch a break here, or do You intend to just keep tossing her around like a chew-toy?
Lord, have mercy. . .
[Katy and Dan were married the same summer as Molly and I were, a couple months before us; Molly and I sang Paul Stookey's Wedding Song at their wedding (we also ditched their wedding reception for a bit of mutually-naked fun in my parents' swimming pool; weddings have always had a very erotic effect on my psyche. But that's another story for another time)]
They were visiting their son Kevin, who remains in jail a couple states from home, still awaiting trial for his misadventures in that state, which aims to get its own pound of flesh out of Kevin before sending him home to face much more serious charges. While they were there, Dan came down with a cold, which he mostly ignored in order to deal with Kevin's lawyers, and the pressing business of looking after their son's well-being. Within a few days, though, Dan was laid-out, in much more serious condition than merely a cold. He went to the ER, where he was diagnosed with the H1N1 flu, and a case of pneumonia, to boot.
Dan's condition continued to deteriorate, and by late last week, the docs told Katy to get Dan's next-of-kin (their daughter, her kids, and Dan's sister) down to see him, because they gave him no better than a 5 percent chance of surviving the weekend. . . And in the midst of all this, Katy came down with H1N1 herself. But since her case was caught early, she kicked it in a couple days.
Holy Shit! Here is my poor sister, already bearing the burden of her mother's illness, and the stress of her son's legal troubles (and her own misplaced guilt over them), and, under the effects of her own illness, they tell her she's about to lose her husband of 29 years. That comes to seem gratuitous, like Piling-On on the part of the Universe; c'mon ref, throw the flag!
-------------------------
Molly and I understand what it's like to feel like the Universe is just kicking your ass, when a wave of intractable problems crashes onto the ones you already had. But our troubles, in retrospect, seem minor by comparison. 1F and 3M, for all their troubles of a few years ago, are mostly on their feet, and trending positive. Kevin is looking at many years of hard time, and he has yet to even face the most serious charges against him (right at the moment, part of his legal strategy seems to be to keep things in the 'other state' for as long as possible, so as to delay facing the murder charge in his home state). And then to add to that the prospect of Dan's untimely demise. . . what can you even say to that?
Over the weekend, Dan's condition improved. He's not 'out of the woods', yet, but at least things have taken a positive turn. So it's increasingly likely we won't be having Dan's funeral quite yet. Thanks be to God, for that.
-----------------------
But seriously - how does one even make sense of circumstances like these? As I said before, my sister isn't perfect; I've occasionally been critical of her and Dan and some of their life-choices, in the past. But this is beyond 'paybacks' from the Universe, or 'karma', or however you want to parse it. Obviously, Molly and I continue to keep them in our prayers, but it's hard not to kind-of turn my gaze heavenward, and wonder just what the hell is going on here. Can my sister catch a break here, or do You intend to just keep tossing her around like a chew-toy?
Lord, have mercy. . .
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
(*sigh*)
So, my Tigers will be sitting out the playoffs, after having led their division since the middle of May (OK, so it was a lousy division; so what?), having had a 7-game lead with 21 to play, and a three-game lead with four to play. It ain't quite the '64 Phillies, or the '87 Blue Jays, but it'll join the list of egregious late-season chokes, for sure. Take nothing away from the Twins, though - they were relentless, and finishing 17-4 in their last 21 games is simply astonishing.
But, aside from being a Tiger fan, that was an amazing 12-inning game last night, with Never-Say-Die heroics on both sides, from the 7th inning through to the end. But come on, guys - twice, you had a runner on third with less than two out, and didn't score (and Curtis Granderson, what were you thinking, getting doubled off first base on a one-out liner in the 9th, when the lead run was on third in front of you? That was horrible. . .). But Rick Porcello pitched like a veteran, not a 20-year-old rookie (and since when are major-league ballplayers younger than my own sons, anyway?); and Ryan Rayburn throwing out the winning run at the plate in the 10th. . . that was take-your-breath-away dramatic.
(*sigh*) Maybe next year. . .
But hey, at least my Spartans beat the hated Wolverines last weekend (and you can trust me when I say that the Wolverines are hated in these parts); so we've finally beaten them in consecutive years for the first time since I was eleven years old. . .
And Molly left a monkey in my lunch today. . .
But, aside from being a Tiger fan, that was an amazing 12-inning game last night, with Never-Say-Die heroics on both sides, from the 7th inning through to the end. But come on, guys - twice, you had a runner on third with less than two out, and didn't score (and Curtis Granderson, what were you thinking, getting doubled off first base on a one-out liner in the 9th, when the lead run was on third in front of you? That was horrible. . .). But Rick Porcello pitched like a veteran, not a 20-year-old rookie (and since when are major-league ballplayers younger than my own sons, anyway?); and Ryan Rayburn throwing out the winning run at the plate in the 10th. . . that was take-your-breath-away dramatic.
(*sigh*) Maybe next year. . .
But hey, at least my Spartans beat the hated Wolverines last weekend (and you can trust me when I say that the Wolverines are hated in these parts); so we've finally beaten them in consecutive years for the first time since I was eleven years old. . .
And Molly left a monkey in my lunch today. . .
Friday, October 2, 2009
What's In a Name?
A short (OK, maybe not so short) follow-up to the previous post on my reunion with my birth-mother. . .
I am now the same age my birth-mother was when we first met (since she was, for all intents and purposes, 20 when I was born). It is hard for me to describe what it has meant for me to have had her in my life these past 20 years. Just knowing where I came from, and that I didn't fall out of the sky (or, as my friend Lime is wont to say, that I wasn't hatched from an alien egg) counts for a lot. But having the kind of 'intrinsic' connection that flows from shared DNA has been a unique delight, all its own. Besides which, I really like her; she's a neat lady, and I'm glad I can know her.
-------------------------
One of the things that is on my mind as I ponder this anniversary is names. We all have one (heck, most of us these days have three of 'em, or more), and, in whatever odd and mysterious way, it identifies us uniquely. Parents give a lot of thought to naming their children, and the vast majority of those children accept the name their parents gave them as somehow intrinsic to their own identity. Having a name - being given a name - seems to signify our personhood (or somesuch hi-falutin' stuff).
In my life, I have had three names. Or maybe I should say, I've had three sets of names. The first was the name I was born with. A first name, a middle name, and a last name. Oddly enough, my first name has been one of the very few constants, that have inhered to my life over the full extent of it; there's a story connected with that, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. My birth-mother says that she gave me that name because it seemed a strong name to her (the 'Names' section in the back of our dictionary makes associations with mountains and rocks; FWIW), but beyond that, it had no particular significance; it wasn't a family name, or anything like that. Just a strong-sounding one, at least to her young ears at the time. My middle-birth-name was the same as her brother's (my uncle's) middle name. And my birth-surname was the same as hers. Which fact would come in very handy when I undertook to search for her.
When I was a child, I came across a baby book that one of my foster mothers kept for me (quite an unusual thing for an adopted child to have). In it, I was identified by my first and middle birth names, which was a little confusing to me, since, at the time I was seeing it, that wasn't my name. The first name was familiar, but I didn't know what to make of the other one. For many years, I thought that it was my birth-surname (it was one of those names that could have been either a first/middle, or a surname).
My adoption wasn't final until sometime after my first birthday, as attested by the date on the adoption order. I think my birth-mother was a little reluctant to once-and-for-all sign the papers relinquishing her rights to me. My adoptive parents may have had me as their foster son for a short time before the adoption was final, but that was when it all became official. Since I was a year old, they reasoned that they should leave me with my original first name, since I was, by that time, well used to being called by it (and all the moreso, if, as I believe, they had already had me in their home for a while, and had called me by that name themselves).
They gave me a new middle name, after a famous Supreme Court Justice (why my parents were so enamored of that particular Supreme Court Justice, I have no idea). I never particularly liked my middle name (and, in the fullness of time, once I learned a little about him, I wasn't terribly happy to be named after that particular Supreme Court Justice, either). Although I did get some amusement from people trying to guess my middle name from knowing the initial (no one ever did). And of course, I got a new surname. A new family name, signifying the new family that I was being brought into.
And the family identity that was signified by that name has come to be precious to me. 'Jones' (of course, that's not really my name, but for our purposes here, pretend that it is, OK?) is associated, in my mind, and in my psyche more broadly, with a whole set of 'family' things - my dad, most especially; his dad, my grandfather; my grandpa's farm, where we went for all the holidays when I was a kid, and which had my grandpa's name prominently displayed on the front of the barn; my brothers and sisters, and my cousins from my dad's two brothers, and the fact that everyone knew we were connected to each other because we all shared the same last name; and so on, etc, etc. Even when I went away to college, I went (almost in spite of myself) to the same school my dad had gone to (and his brother, my uncle), and I was well aware that I was not the first person named 'Jones' to have walked those hallowed halls.
And such was my name, through all of my living memory, and I had no reason, nor desire, to think that it would ever be otherwise. . .
Until I met my birth-mother. When I was first starting to think about searching for her, I spoke with my parents, to try to get a 'read' on where they'd be at if I decided to do such a thing. And, in the course of the conversation, my mom (my 'stepmother', though I've never called her that) produced a torn scrap of paper with three names on it. The first two, I recognized from the baby book. The third, the last name, was completely new to me. She went on to tell me that, when she'd married my dad, she'd come across the papers pertaining to my brother's and my adoptions, and had written down our 'original names', just in case, and then hidden that scrap of paper behind a picture that hung on their wall for years. And, as it turned out, within the first year that she and dad were married, our basement flooded, and all of those records were destroyed. So, for more than 20 years, that scrap of paper, hidden behind that picture, was virtually my only connection to my origins.
Anyway, when I asked my dad how he'd be disposed to my searching for my birth-parents, he was fine with it. "If you think it's something you need to do, then by all means, go ahead." And then he added, "Just don't change your name." And I assured him that I had no intention of doing anything like that.
While I was searching for my birth-mother, I made some use of the fact that my dad had a great-grandmother with the same surname as I had been born with (he and my birth-mother turn out to be something like 8th-cousins); I could credibly (and truthfully, if not quite 'the-whole-truth-fully') say that I was researching the family whose name happened to be theirs. I also spoke with a few of her friends and relations (none of whom, by the way, figured out my true intentions), and they duly recounted their conversations with me, when next they spoke to her. And she was extremely intrigued, when she heard the name of this young man who was asking about her - the first name was the same one she'd given her son, years ago (and 'Desmond' - again, not my real name, but we can pretend - is not the most common name in the English-speaking world). Which was most curious, since she assumed that, whoever her son was, his adoptive parents would have given him a different name. Even so, she had inklings that something significant was afoot.
Once we were well and properly reunited, and I had gone to visit her at her house, and it was well-established that we were going to have a long and happy relationship, I came to lament the 'broken connection' between us, and all the years we'd spent apart, and I wanted to have some tangible expression of our connection to each other. My dad having admonished me not to change my name, planted a seed for a possible resolution to my difficulty. I was pretty sure that the 'name' my dad was referring to was our family name. And, since my first name was the same, no matter what, I thought, I could change my middle name to coincide with my birth-surname, which was also my birth-mother's maiden name. That would 'complete the circle', capturing in my name all of my birth and familial connections (and would also shed me of a middle name that I had never liked). (And besides, I've always thought those 'mother's-maiden-name' middle names sounded classy).
When I checked my hunch with my dad, he agreed that it was the family name he was concerned about, and he didn't attach all that much significance to the middle name he'd assigned me, either (beyond the fact that he had, in point of fact, assigned it to me; but he didn't regard that particular assignation as binding). And so, in 1990, just before my 34th birthday (and just before my birth-mother's first visit to our house), I went to court and legally changed my name, so that now, my birth-family-name is my middle name, to go between the only first name I've ever had, and the name of the family I was raised in, and nurtured, the family whose name I've borne for longer than I can remember.
And it all just seems to fit. My whole life, and all of my circumstances, are accounted for in my name. And it seems very good.
I am now the same age my birth-mother was when we first met (since she was, for all intents and purposes, 20 when I was born). It is hard for me to describe what it has meant for me to have had her in my life these past 20 years. Just knowing where I came from, and that I didn't fall out of the sky (or, as my friend Lime is wont to say, that I wasn't hatched from an alien egg) counts for a lot. But having the kind of 'intrinsic' connection that flows from shared DNA has been a unique delight, all its own. Besides which, I really like her; she's a neat lady, and I'm glad I can know her.
-------------------------
One of the things that is on my mind as I ponder this anniversary is names. We all have one (heck, most of us these days have three of 'em, or more), and, in whatever odd and mysterious way, it identifies us uniquely. Parents give a lot of thought to naming their children, and the vast majority of those children accept the name their parents gave them as somehow intrinsic to their own identity. Having a name - being given a name - seems to signify our personhood (or somesuch hi-falutin' stuff).
In my life, I have had three names. Or maybe I should say, I've had three sets of names. The first was the name I was born with. A first name, a middle name, and a last name. Oddly enough, my first name has been one of the very few constants, that have inhered to my life over the full extent of it; there's a story connected with that, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. My birth-mother says that she gave me that name because it seemed a strong name to her (the 'Names' section in the back of our dictionary makes associations with mountains and rocks; FWIW), but beyond that, it had no particular significance; it wasn't a family name, or anything like that. Just a strong-sounding one, at least to her young ears at the time. My middle-birth-name was the same as her brother's (my uncle's) middle name. And my birth-surname was the same as hers. Which fact would come in very handy when I undertook to search for her.
When I was a child, I came across a baby book that one of my foster mothers kept for me (quite an unusual thing for an adopted child to have). In it, I was identified by my first and middle birth names, which was a little confusing to me, since, at the time I was seeing it, that wasn't my name. The first name was familiar, but I didn't know what to make of the other one. For many years, I thought that it was my birth-surname (it was one of those names that could have been either a first/middle, or a surname).
My adoption wasn't final until sometime after my first birthday, as attested by the date on the adoption order. I think my birth-mother was a little reluctant to once-and-for-all sign the papers relinquishing her rights to me. My adoptive parents may have had me as their foster son for a short time before the adoption was final, but that was when it all became official. Since I was a year old, they reasoned that they should leave me with my original first name, since I was, by that time, well used to being called by it (and all the moreso, if, as I believe, they had already had me in their home for a while, and had called me by that name themselves).
They gave me a new middle name, after a famous Supreme Court Justice (why my parents were so enamored of that particular Supreme Court Justice, I have no idea). I never particularly liked my middle name (and, in the fullness of time, once I learned a little about him, I wasn't terribly happy to be named after that particular Supreme Court Justice, either). Although I did get some amusement from people trying to guess my middle name from knowing the initial (no one ever did). And of course, I got a new surname. A new family name, signifying the new family that I was being brought into.
And the family identity that was signified by that name has come to be precious to me. 'Jones' (of course, that's not really my name, but for our purposes here, pretend that it is, OK?) is associated, in my mind, and in my psyche more broadly, with a whole set of 'family' things - my dad, most especially; his dad, my grandfather; my grandpa's farm, where we went for all the holidays when I was a kid, and which had my grandpa's name prominently displayed on the front of the barn; my brothers and sisters, and my cousins from my dad's two brothers, and the fact that everyone knew we were connected to each other because we all shared the same last name; and so on, etc, etc. Even when I went away to college, I went (almost in spite of myself) to the same school my dad had gone to (and his brother, my uncle), and I was well aware that I was not the first person named 'Jones' to have walked those hallowed halls.
And such was my name, through all of my living memory, and I had no reason, nor desire, to think that it would ever be otherwise. . .
Until I met my birth-mother. When I was first starting to think about searching for her, I spoke with my parents, to try to get a 'read' on where they'd be at if I decided to do such a thing. And, in the course of the conversation, my mom (my 'stepmother', though I've never called her that) produced a torn scrap of paper with three names on it. The first two, I recognized from the baby book. The third, the last name, was completely new to me. She went on to tell me that, when she'd married my dad, she'd come across the papers pertaining to my brother's and my adoptions, and had written down our 'original names', just in case, and then hidden that scrap of paper behind a picture that hung on their wall for years. And, as it turned out, within the first year that she and dad were married, our basement flooded, and all of those records were destroyed. So, for more than 20 years, that scrap of paper, hidden behind that picture, was virtually my only connection to my origins.
Anyway, when I asked my dad how he'd be disposed to my searching for my birth-parents, he was fine with it. "If you think it's something you need to do, then by all means, go ahead." And then he added, "Just don't change your name." And I assured him that I had no intention of doing anything like that.
While I was searching for my birth-mother, I made some use of the fact that my dad had a great-grandmother with the same surname as I had been born with (he and my birth-mother turn out to be something like 8th-cousins); I could credibly (and truthfully, if not quite 'the-whole-truth-fully') say that I was researching the family whose name happened to be theirs. I also spoke with a few of her friends and relations (none of whom, by the way, figured out my true intentions), and they duly recounted their conversations with me, when next they spoke to her. And she was extremely intrigued, when she heard the name of this young man who was asking about her - the first name was the same one she'd given her son, years ago (and 'Desmond' - again, not my real name, but we can pretend - is not the most common name in the English-speaking world). Which was most curious, since she assumed that, whoever her son was, his adoptive parents would have given him a different name. Even so, she had inklings that something significant was afoot.
Once we were well and properly reunited, and I had gone to visit her at her house, and it was well-established that we were going to have a long and happy relationship, I came to lament the 'broken connection' between us, and all the years we'd spent apart, and I wanted to have some tangible expression of our connection to each other. My dad having admonished me not to change my name, planted a seed for a possible resolution to my difficulty. I was pretty sure that the 'name' my dad was referring to was our family name. And, since my first name was the same, no matter what, I thought, I could change my middle name to coincide with my birth-surname, which was also my birth-mother's maiden name. That would 'complete the circle', capturing in my name all of my birth and familial connections (and would also shed me of a middle name that I had never liked). (And besides, I've always thought those 'mother's-maiden-name' middle names sounded classy).
When I checked my hunch with my dad, he agreed that it was the family name he was concerned about, and he didn't attach all that much significance to the middle name he'd assigned me, either (beyond the fact that he had, in point of fact, assigned it to me; but he didn't regard that particular assignation as binding). And so, in 1990, just before my 34th birthday (and just before my birth-mother's first visit to our house), I went to court and legally changed my name, so that now, my birth-family-name is my middle name, to go between the only first name I've ever had, and the name of the family I was raised in, and nurtured, the family whose name I've borne for longer than I can remember.
And it all just seems to fit. My whole life, and all of my circumstances, are accounted for in my name. And it seems very good.
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