It’s the season for cherry blossoms scattering across the sidewalks, for running outside in a t-shirt, for falling in love (again) with the state I’ve grown to call home over the past decade. It’s also the season for dusting off this blog from its winter sleep, although I last updated in March. (Still, I’ve driven through a snowstorm since then.)
I’m supposed to be grading papers tonight. Grades are due on Friday or something, and we have conferences next week, and I have a large stack of senior essays awaiting feedback from my purple Pilot pen. (I prefer green, but I can’t find any of my green pens. I have about six purple pens floating around and so they will have to do, but I think the absence of green in my little red canvas pen pouch is inhibiting my ability to just get this done.) I hauled these essays to Montana with me last week and spent several hours grading them at my favorite coffee shop in my hometown, then spent a few more hours grading them at my parents’ dining room table after my kiddos were tucked into their beds, but after a day of that I decided not to let them have any more of my spring break.
So spring break is partly where I’ve been, and before that, it was jury duty, to which I reported rather cheerfully on a Monday morning a few weeks ago, not really believing I’d be chosen to serve on a trial but would spend a day or two sitting around and reading a book. Out of a couple hundred of us, what were the odds? But of course I was picked in the first group, and in that group, despite my valiant efforts, I found myself sitting in a jury box. Right in front. Juror #2. For two weeks.
The timing couldn’t have been worse, really. I had just spent two full weeks out of the classroom for senior IB orals, and I couldn’t even comprehend a month. I taught each class a grand total of two times between finishing orals and beginning jury duty. Still, when we were given the opportunity to explain why serving would present a hardship, the handful of people who were excused said things like, “I’m the only wage earner in my family, I have three kids, and if I don’t work for two weeks, we’ll have a tough time making rent.” I had to scramble a bit, and it certainly wasn’t ideal, but I know exactly how fortunate I am to have a job in which I still get paid for jury duty and don’t have to use any of my sick days.
And anyway, it’s a great experience. I was a little surprised at the amount of “advice” I received on getting out of jury duty. I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of it wasn’t serious -- at least I hope not, because I can’t imagine actually representing myself as a total whackadoo just to avoid it. Also, at the end of the trial, the judge thanked us and said, “We know it’s a great inconvenience for just about everybody to take this much time away from their lives, but if we only kept people for whom it was easy, we would only have one kind of juror.” A fair point. Also, I learned a lot. I honestly gained a tremendous amount of respect for both lawyers and judges. The courtroom proceedings were occasionally boring (mostly after lunch, which is a tough time of day for me to sit still and not speak or move -- yawn) but mostly fascinating. And it wasn’t lost on me that the twelve random people on this jury would be responsible for making decisions that would impact real people in real ways. When my students asked me if I’d do it again, I said yes, I absolutely would. It wasn’t always fun, but it felt important. And I found small ways to make the experience enjoyable, since it was outside my daily routine; to counter the afternoon chaos of driving to pick up Suzannah from my friend Bonnie’s house or Morgan’s work and switching cars at the transit center before dashing to pick up Isaac so late in the afternoon, I left a little early each morning -- early enough to walk to the coffee shop across from the courthouse and drink a hot chocolate as I watched the streets shake off their morning sleepiness. I read half of Midnight’s Children. I wrote a lot. I took some quiet, head-clearing, solitary walks. I had a nice long lunch break each day, much longer than what I get at school. All that, I will miss. (Sometimes it’s good to step just outside the boundaries of normal, everyday routine, and find the hidden graces there.)
Oh -- and I was the presiding juror. No one seems surprised by this, which, I guess, means I’m bossy. All I know is that no one else seemed to want it (which surprised me), and also, facilitating conversations is actually part of my job, and maybe I was missing that just a bit.
We finished up just in time for Easter weekend, a visit from my parents, and spring break. The day after Easter, the kids and I drove back to Montana with my parents and spent four blissful, relaxing days in Bozeman. April is generally not the most attractive time of year in my home state. When we spent spring break there five years ago, Suzannah built a snowman with her grandma in the backyard, and I went jogging through piles of slush on the roads. Three years ago, we drove to Montana for my grandmother’s eightieth birthday and encountered snow worthy of December. This time, we were blessed with sunshine and temperatures nearing seventy degrees, but the newly-melted snow left the grass matted and brown and the trees are still mostly bare.
And yet, as I breathed the sweet air of my home state as spring struggled upwards from that muddy ground, I understood that I was feeding my soul exactly what it needed. I unplugged. I didn’t read Facebook. I barely checked my e-mail. I ate my mom’s homemade muffins with gjetost in the mornings, I jogged up the highway towards town in a light spring rain, I drank the same coffee I loved when I was twenty-one years old. I spent a couple of hours with someone who changed my life sixteen years ago and who I love to this day. I spent a morning with my mom and the kids at the Museum of the Rockies and followed that with lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza. I ate my dad’s popcorn, made in his 44-year-old popcorn popper -- something I insist upon every time I go home. I had no real agenda. It was a perfect week.
Matt stayed home all week, not really feeling like he could take five days off right now, but he flew into Bozeman late on Friday night. On Saturday afternoon after brunch, the Winslows headed west once again, stopping overnight in Spokane. (We always drive straight to Bozeman from Seattle on the first leg of a trip; heading home, we like to relax.) A cozy dinner at a brewpub, an early night in a comfortable hotel, a leisurely brunch at Huckleberry Bistro before we hit I-90 once again -- it was a lovely end to the week and a nice transition back into teaching and some sort of normalcy, if that’s what you call it.
And even though I appreciate the occasional departures from the normalcy, from the routine -- the hot chocolate across from the courthouse, the solitary walks along unfamiliar streets, a temporary return to the home of my childhood -- it’s also pretty sweet to settle back into the life I live every day here and remember why I love that, too.
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