OPPORTUNITY

6 February 2012   

When I sit down to write these pieces it reminds me of the years I spent as a painter, before breaking my neck sent me in another direction. During those years, most of them in upstate New York, I spent a lot of time in the car, commuting to work over a mountain, or taking the back road to my daughter’s school, and yes, driving to different liquor stores in the valley so I wouldn’t be seen going into the same one everyday.

During these drives a sunset seeping through woods, thawing snow on a rough-cut field, the fading blues of the Adirondack mountains, or the way a stormy sky jarred against a hilltop, all these images snapped themselves onto my retina and slid into some spare drawer in my brain. At days end, when the kids were in bed, I’d go to my studio with a bottle of brandy and just stand there staring at the blank paper or canvas until one of the day’s images surfaced with the kind of insistency which made me want to reiterate it.

This form of impressionism is still with me – and gratefully I no longer need the bottle of brandy to give myself permission to explore creative possibilities. So it is with writing; I am aware during the course of a day or days, of various images and situations that interest me and without analyzing or justifying them I file them away. Then, when I sit down to the blank page, I wait patiently for the one that surfaces most insistently and let it take me on a journey.

I’ve been sitting here for quite a while now, going through the kaleidoscope of events from the past week and the one that keeps demanding my attention is the very one I wish to avoid. I had hoped Friday’s bossa nova concert out in the wilds of Long Island might be the winner, or perhaps walking along the beach with our dear friends, the sun barely winning over an icy wind. Surely I could write a page on Babette’s; who knew Easthampton housed the best vegan carrot cake. Really? Tofu icing tastes that good?

Or how about a dissertation on the letting go of the need to have a particular chair for my study and then 10 minutes later stumbling across a building of vintage 50’s and 60’s furniture – my favorite era in design – only to find this chair needed me, and at half the price of the one I’d had my mind set on.

That’s a phrase worth looking at: I had my mind set on…..fill in the blank. Talk about rigidity and limitation. It reminds me of something our friend said over the weekend. L is an avid reader with an ability to retain what he reads that is truly awesome. Not so me. Avid reader, yes. Retention? Zero. So I don’t remember who he was quoting but it had to do with some pope decreeing the virtue of opinion and habit and I thought well, yes, that’s religion for you: the insistence of opinion devolving into dogma and habit, the lazy man’s discipline.

But once again, I digress. All of these events I’ve just mentioned, and many more besides, have filled the recent days with pleasure, and yet the event that keeps insisting on first place is being on jury duty last week.

It was my first summons as, although I’ve lived in America for many, many years, I only became a citizen two and half years ago. Before that I lived life as an alien, and proudly I might add. Being summoned is daunting. I wanted to do my civic duty but didn’t want to be inconvenienced. Call me selfish. I’m human. And we have tickets for Europe at the end of this month so sitting on a jury for a murder trial is not up my alley right now. Yet I didn’t want to lie. So I started thinking of all the things that might get me disqualified as an impartial, unbiased juror, like the fact that I’ve been raped, beaten up and held at gunpoint for a weekend. Like the fact that I lost custody of my child. And there you have it. That’s why I don’t want to write about jury duty. That’s why, when I walk up the steps to the courthouse in downtown NY I’m back in San Francisco, 1977, dressed in my best with the only lawyer I can afford. It’s her first case. The case can’t be tried there, we find out, because the joint custody agreement is under NY jurisdiction and as my child’s father resides in NY “the child” must accompany him back there. My child was 4.

I vaguely remember reaching the bottom of the steps of that courthouse. The lawyer apologizing. I seem to recall a fountain. And then a bus ride with no destination, just a place to sit and sob until the stares of mute passengers turned my agony into hatred. The handing over of my child the next day to her father. Her little hand patting me on the back as I hugged her goodbye. The months of waiting for the next court date in New York. Her father’s lawyer adept at keeping it off the calendar, long enough to make her father’s home the one representing stability. The date, some nine months later, finally arriving, my representing myself because I couldn’t afford a lawyer, my last shred of naiveté trusting in justice.

Maybe that’s why last Wednesday, when I sat in the courthouse downtown, watching the infantile “orientation” video and Diane Sawyer mentioned justice, I let out a hoot of derisive laughter that turned every head in the room. I was right back there in the courthouse in Kingston, NY watching the Judge as he fell for the expensive lies the opposing lawyer told. And then I was alone in the hallway having just lost custody of my child.

So, last Wednesday I decided I wouldn’t lie. If I was needed to serve maybe I could make a difference in some poor soul’s life. As it turned out we were all dismissed on Thursday afternoon and I had mixed feelings as I walked back down the steps: glad to be going to Europe soon, sad not to be of service.

It was many years before I was allowed the right to be a mother, and I’m still learning how. But what I have learned is that opinion is dangerous and habits must be broken. Justice? It’s in the eye of the beholder, which is maybe why she wears a blindfold. Opportunity, however, is boundless. It’s up to us to take it when it comes knocking. The opportunity to listen to bossa nova in a potato field. The opportunity to walk a winter beach. The opportunity to sit by a fire with open-hearted friends. The opportunity to become sober, to survive a broken neck, to fall in love. The opportunity to revisit a painful memory and soften the resentment. The opportunity to learn patience and trust in order to wait for the day your child calls you, like mine just did, asking for a loving ear and a bit of advice.