Tag Archives: writing

A Beautiful Day, and a Long One

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Saturday past was our Christmas Market. That’s when the medical students who have spent the year working with a rent-controlled apartment complex (making meals, playing sports, running crafts and edutainments) bring all their donations and spread them out on tables. Kids come with a list of people they want to find presents for, and shop with help from a med student. Everything is free.

Then they get the presents gift wrapped (we always get the future surgeons to do this; they make the best wrappers) and go home happy. They got to choose things and a bunch of adults paid attention to them. The med students go home happy from making the kids happy. The parents are ecstatic because we’ve solved a problem looming large in their mind.

Some people told us early on that we were being terrible, taking yard sale leftovers and presenting them as giftables.

Those people didn’t know shit. One of the kids, walking around looking at all the donations, said “This is the most generous place I’ve ever been to. This is awesome.”

The med students arrived at 9 am and we spread out the stuff. The market opened at 2. One of the med students discovered there was a Santa suit, and he went off with it when we broke for lunch. Since he was about 21, skinny like a beanpole, and Hindu, I had my doubts, but he came back with a squishmallow strapped to his stomach, the beard on askew, and a large tub of candy canes he picked up at Walmart “to make it official.”

His “Ho Ho Ho” came out “hu hu hu” and the kids LOVED him. We ran out of tape and started packing presents into donated purses and backpacks, then slapping bows on these. “Double presents” we told the kids, with just a hint of mania behind our Christmas cheer.

It was a glorious day. The parents thanked us, the kids left sticky candy canes all over the place, and the med students removed several sharp implements from the donations as we spread them out. We went home covered in tape, tinsel, and joy.

This is Christmas.

OCCUPIED: Day 25

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So the lawyer’s assistant called yesterday, apologetic. They can’t get a court date until Jan. 12. This is for many reasons: a week off for the Holidays, a week in which court is designated only for bond and arraignment hearings, a week in which my lawyer will be out of town. The fact that they waited until Wednesday to file, and the court clerk says they won’t serve it until next week, and that means it can’t go to court within 15 days, which means it would get thrown out and we’d have to start again…..

So she’s planning to file the writ Dec. 29 and we get Jan. 12 as a court date.

It rankles. I pressed upon the lawyer, back when he first called me to discuss representation, how important it was to move this guy out before winter set in hard and fast. Partly because of the danger of pipes breaking and partly because my house is now up for sale, and I need to move someplace. Not to mention move my stuff into someplace.

So it’s annoying, this “can’t be helped” wait that could have been helped had they moved just three days faster. But it reiterates something that everyone who has been in this situation says: be your own advocate. Do not believe your lawyer cares what happens. Only believe that once you get to court, your lawyer will know what to do and do their best at it. Between now and then, be your own best friend and leave no stone unturned.

Talking with my lawyer reminds me of an Aesop proverb: a hound chases a rabbit who gets away, and up in a nearby tree, a crow makes fun of the hound. “You’re so fast and you couldn’t catch a critter so much smaller and slower?” The hound looks up at the crow and says, “You are forgetting to factor in motivation. I was running for my supper. The rabbit was running for its life.”

This is what it feels like to have a lawyer looking after your needs. Every time you have a conversation with them, they need to be reminded of pertinent specifics to the case. And they talk around the parts they know you don’t want to hear. Pay attention when your lawyer leaves holes in a conversation. Those are the ones where you wind up with court dates six weeks after you could have had one.

And so it goes.