We knew how tired I was from the week of preparing for testimony, and then the testifying itself, when we got to the airport Thursday morning and found I had no i.d. Because I had no wallet.
Panic. Steve quickly called the hotel to ask if they would check our room and see whether I'd left my wallet there. We thought of the rental car: could the wallet have fallen out of my back pocket and be in the seat? Steve dug through our bag of dirty laundry as the kind airline agent stood by watching wrinkled shirts, underwear, and what not cascade onto the floor in front of the check-in desk--a fountain of shame, since one's dirty clothes do appear somehow shameful when exposed to the whole world in this unflattering way.
Fortunately, there the wallet was, in the back pocket of the shorts I'd worn after my testimony was done, when we'd walked an hour and a half on the beach to wash the experience of the courtroom out of our souls. And, of course, it goes without saying that the shorts were at the very bottom of the bag of dirty laundry, the last thing to be unearthed from the bag.
Then, when we get to Atlanta and spend time in a sitting area across from the too-crowded one designated for our flight, after we move to the proper area, we find I've misplaced my reading glasses. I've left them behind on the arm of the chair in which I was sitting across the way.
So, tired. I don't normally forget things, leave things behind in this way. These are reminders to me of how much the past week or so has taken out of me. They make me remember the day in the late 1990s when we had to have two of our dogs put down at the same time, since both were suffering terribly from terminal cancer. On that day, I was so stunned by grief that I found myself putting a carton of milk into the pantry while the box of cereal went into the refrigerator.
All of this is to say I'm sorry to be slow to respond to your comments here in the past several days. I am exceedingly grateful for them. I do intend to acknowledge them more directly, as I can find time and energy to do so. What "spare" time I had yesterday on our first day back from our trip, I spent putting up 9 quarts of pear preserves, pears we'd picked from a neighbor's tree before we left and put to ripen on newspaper spread across the dining room table.
When we returned home, we found that many of the pears had not only ripened, but had begun to rot, so that it was necessary to can them immediately, or they'd be lost. I can't say I enjoy the fiddling work of paring and coring and slicing, especially when I manage to cut fingers on either hand in the process as I did yesterday, but it was work that helped me settle my soul and to pray, as I thought about how unlikely it was that justice would be accorded the person for whom I testified last week, given the institutional and monetary power standing behind the truly evil character who violated his rights, but has been permitted to behave this way over and over again with many people she regards as little people, never paying a price for her cruelty and injustice and the sociopathic way in which she carefully frames innocent people as scapegoats to divert attention from her lack of leadership ability. And from her well-attested sociopathic personality.
Well, there's always God. And the only kind of prayer I seem to know how to pray any longer--the crying out for God to be manifest in a world torn apart by deep injustice, oppression, greed, and cruelty, much of it masquerading in the most sickening way possible as holiness.
And I promise to do my best to try to catch up on responding to your very welcome comments here in the next several days.
No comments:
Post a Comment