Shadows on a cloudy day

Gray. Rainy. Windy in my corner of Belgium.

I gather in the bus shelter with the others who are waiting for the bus to the Metro station. As usual, no one speaks. In America, there might have been a bit of idle chitchat, a comment about the horrid weather or someone saying they hope the bus arrives on time, but here there is a civil silence. We are all together but we are far apart.

When the bus arrives and I take my seat next to a fogged and rain streaked window, my mind wanders into prayer. Lately the list of people I know dealing with heartache or health problems or difficult situations seems especially long, and I use the silence and quiet hum of the bus ride to reach out across time and space to those in need: a young woman in unrelenting pain, high risk pregnancies, a baby that needs a liver transplant, a friend awaiting biopsy results, a woman who has had sinus surgery, a former neighbor battling cancer, E’s mom struggling to walk again, and toughest of all, a little girl we know who appears to have a massive tumor on her kidney.

My bus journey ends, and then my Metro trip begins. Traveling in a bubble of anonymity, I continue to string prayers along like beads, trying to focus and visualize each person, each need.

At Arts-Loi, I step off the Metro and straight into a crisis. Someone has collapsed onto the station floor and is surrounded by several people kneeling nearby. I see black oxfords and pants, a pale face turned to one side with brown hair spilling across the brow, eyes closed, breasts rising and falling underneath a forest green t-shirt, movements that make me think “seizure.”

I pause for just a moment, wanting to dive in and help, but I realize in the same instant that multiple people have already done just that.  I’m blocking people trying to get off the train, I need to get out of the way, I should move on even though part of me feels rooted in the moment, the desire to DO SOMETHING.

I go left and walk away, refusing to join the crowd that is growing around the woman’s body. I’ve always felt it was wrong to linger at the scene of an accident or crisis, that it violates the victim’s privacy at one of their most vulnerable moments, that curiosity should not be indulged. But as I put distance between myself and the drama at the Metro station, I think about the crowd in a different way. For a moment I can see them as a small community, united in concern and sympathy and wishing for a happy ending. I want to be part of it but I continue to trudge up the steps.

Emerging from underground, I cross Regentlaan and see a police van parked in the median and two officers standing beside it. Do they know about the problem under their feet? Should I approach them?

My thoughts are interrupted by approaching sirens, a yellow panel truck screaming down the access road. Ah, it’s an emergency response truck. They park and two men get out in orange vests and yellow suits, toting red packs. They head into the Metro just as an ambulance comes into view and double parks to follow. First one police car, then a second, pulls up with sirens blaring.

What the hell is going on? I’d assumed the woman on the floor of the station was ill; I never considered she might have been injured. Had I just left a crime scene? Had someone attacked her? I have no idea.

With the rain pelting my umbrella, I turn my back on all the activity, the flashing lights, the professional helpers, the unexpected victims and heroes, the unfolding story in the station.

As I walk away, I add the woman in the green t-shirt to my string of prayers.

February 28, 2007

© 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.

Birthday joys and sorrows

Tuesday was my 45th birthday and I'd be lying if I said I didn't face it with some trepidation. It is always a day laden with emotion for me. Fortunately, I'm blessed with friends and family who remind me of all I have to celebrate in life, and I had a great day. The following post was originally a newspaper feature I wrote 10 years ago for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was honored with an award from Virginia Press Women and remains one of my favorite pieces of writing.

I was born on a snowy day in January. My father loved to tell the story. A volunteer fireman, he was fighting a fire in the bitter cold the night before I was born.

As he stood in the eerie glow of the blaze, he was comforted by the thought of my pregnant mother cozy in the bed of their home. The image warmed him and gave him hope.

Shortly after he made it home and slipped his weary body into bed, my mother delivered the news he didn’t want to hear: “Honey, it’s time.”

In the darkness before dawn, they set off for the hospital in a raging winter storm. My father’s Ford could barely navigate the icy roads as it slid on the hills and turns. It was hard to tell if my mother was gasping from pain or fear or both.

Despite the drama, they made it to the hospital and a short time later I arrived: red-faced, red-haired, and crying.

January 30, 1962.

My sister immortalized the date. On my 13^th birthday, she gave me a 14-karat-gold oval locket, engraved on the front with two hearts and on the back with my name and the date.

It was an elegant and expensive gift for an awkward adolescent more at home in jeans and hiking boots than skirts and sweaters. I felt unworthy of it and yet secretly treasured my sister’s vision of me. Fourteen years my senior, she was also my godmother, tied to me by blood, spirit, and sacrament.

She would never fully comprehend the significance of her gift and of the date on the locket. Only seven years later, she died of cancer on my birthday.

January 30, 1982.

That evening my stricken family gathered in a circle around the kitchen table and ate my birthday cake in silence. Perhaps we were all thinking the same thing: “Heaven’s gate swings both ways.”

Each moment in eternity sees souls ascending and souls descending in a sacred dance. It seemed surreal to celebrate my birth and experience my sister’s death on the same day.

Three days later, I had plenty of time to reflect on the bittersweet nature of life’s rhythms as my mother, father and I battled a fierce winter storm on the way back from Louise’s funeral.

Were we sighing from pain or fear or both as we struggled home in the gray winter twilight?

A decade later, I buried my father in July and my mother in September of the same year. As fall turned into winter, my world grew smaller and darker, sadder and colder. I faced my first birthday without my parents with dread.

January 30, 1993.

My father wasn’t there to tell the dramatic story of my arrival. My mother would not bake a cake or sign a sentimental card. My sister had been dead for 11 long years. That birthday I felt so alone in the world: red-faced, red-eyed, and swollen with grief.

I clung to my gold locket as a talisman, a souvenir of the golden circle of my family. Two hearts—my mother and father, my sister and me—and the date that changed all our lives. January 30. My reminder that on any day, heaven’s gate swings both ways.

Two years later, my husband and I were ready to start our own family. I conferred with my doctor and was surprised when I calculated the optimum date for conception.

January 30, 1995.

It was snowing that night. I was wearing my gold locket and my mother’s wedding ring. Whiteness glimmered outside our frosted bedroom window, and in the heavens beyond the clouds, a gate silently swung open….

It’s been 45 years since my story began. During these long winter nights when wind and snow and memories press against the darkened windows, I cherish the company of my first born, my son, conceived 12 years ago on the date that Louise had carved in gold: January 30. A day of destiny.

January 31, 2007

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.

Kinky boots, ruby slippers, and the magic of shoes

Last night E and I watched the movie Kinky Boots, which is based on the true story of a traditional shoe factory in England that was on the brink of closing until it ventured into an unexpected niche market—making stiletto heels for drag queens.

The movie was very well done, mixing comedy and drama as the makers of wingtip oxford for respectable men move to creating quality red patent leather and snakeskin high-heels for men who enjoy dressing as flamboyant women.

To paraphrase the factory manager, “We’ve always made a certain type of shoe for a variety of men. Now we’ll be making a wide variety of shoes for a certain type of man”

In the process of telling the factory manager’s story, the film engages the viewer in thoughts on entrepreneurship, loyalty, family expectations, and the slippery slope of gender and sex roles.

The movie brought back memories of my years selling shoes in the Midwest, and my brief encounters with a transvestite who came in every so often looking for women’s pumps in Size 12.

We never had anything even close to his size, a message the store manager always delivered in a brisk authoritative voice that conveyed, “Don’t even ask, and please get the hell out of my store.”

It wasn’t until I saw Kinky Boots that I considered the drag queen’s point of view and how much courage it took to enter a family shoe store in Oklahoma and ask about getting a pair of red pumps in Size 12.

Then again, I’m not so sure the drag queen fully recognized he was pushing boundaries because he didn’t seem to be fully clued into social norms in general. I think he had some larger mental health problems and cross-dressing was probably the least of his issues. He was a fixture in the downtown area, sometimes appearing in drag, sometimes dressed as a man, always seemingly lost in his own world in a way that was disconcerting though not menacing.

During my years as a Shoe Selling Grrrl, I belonged to the Episcopal Church that was downtown and served on the altar guild. On certain Saturday nights, I went to the church to set up for the next day’s service. My role included polishing the silver chalice and paten, washing and ironing the altar linen, and shining the brass candlesticks, collection plates, vases, and other items used on the altar. It took an hour or two to get everything done, and I tried to do it all late on Saturday afternoons to avoid being alone in the church complex at night. It was a little creepy after dark.

I often chastised myself for being anxious about being alone in the church at night. What exactly was I afraid of? What made me shiver when the lights were out? Was it instinct? Intuition? Or a foreshadowing of what lay ahead?

Because one Saturday night someone did end up entering and robbing the church, but they didn’t take the valuable silver altar pieces or search for money. Instead they stole several chausables, the vestments the priest dons before celebrating Holy Eucharist. Those are the ones that resemble big ponchos and usually feature gold thread embroidery and other lavish embellishments.

Who would steal chausables? The very thought made my skin crawl. Was someone using them in punked out religious rites? Were there Satan worshippers in our small town in the Bible Belt? Did someone think this was funny?

Nope. As it turns out it was nothing that sinister, someone just thought they were the ultimate fashion accessories. You can guess who. Yes, the chausables were stolen by our friendly neighborhood cross-dresser. He was busted when the police spotted him pedaling his bike downtown wearing the richly decorated red chausable that was normally worn on the feast of Pentecost.

Apparently, the guy who was willing to risk censure by entering a family shoe store looking for sexy red pumps was unafraid to slip into a church closet on a Saturday night and check out the rich colors and high quality fabric used on the chausables. I’m willing to bet the appliquéd flame motif on the red one made him swoon with thoughts of being the first one sporting this hot new style on the street.

I never saw him dressed in his  "Sunday best,"  but I liked to visualize him in the chausable, pedaling nonchalantly around town.

Did its generous folds flapping in the wind behind him make him feel powerful, like Superman, the alien do-gooder who wore a red cape? Or maybe he felt powerful like a priest issuing absolution? Like those who harbor the power to love and to forgive? Like those who could have special ordered a pair of red shoes for a customer without asking questions or issuing judgements?

Power for good and evil is always in our grasp. 

And red shoes, be they patent leather boots or ruby slippers, have a power all their own, a magical way of transporting us into better versions of ourselves. Maybe the right pair of red shoes would have taken the town "weirdo" to a better place, a light-filled joyful space where he never had to worry about what others thought of him, a place where he could kick up his heels and enjoy his shoes in peace.  

January 30, 2007

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.

Letter to My Godson

(My godson is graduating from high school in May, and last week he attended a retreat. I was invited to write a letter to him that would be incorporated into one of the sessions. In considering what advice I could offer him at this stage in his life, I had an opportunity to consider how my own faith has evolved.  I thought I'd share the letter with you.)

When your parents asked me to be your godmother, I considered it a great honor. Living on the opposite coast (and now the opposite continent!), I knew from the beginning I wouldn’t get to watch you grow up nearby, but your mom kept me abreast of your activities, and I enjoyed the times we had an opportunity to visit. I watched you grow up in the photos, letters, and newspaper clippings she sent, and while I had no right to be proud of you, I was proud anyway, especially when you made Eagle Scout.

Now as a senior so much of what you have worked toward has been accomplished. Your classes are nearly completed, your high school athletic career drawing to a close, your friendships with your peers, teachers, coaches, and mentors have matured. Up to this point, life has moved along in a neat linear series of grades and milestones, each marking your progress, but things are about to change in a big way. New adventures and new challenges await you, and success will be harder to measure.

Remember the board game Chutes and Ladders? Just when you’re closing in on the 100^th square, you might find yourself on a slide that takes you back down toward the bottom of the board. College will be like that and so will life as a young adult. Faith is like that too. There will be moments when your confidence may falter, when the tasks before you seem overwhelming, when not only will you not know what comes next but you won’t even be sure what you WANT to come next. It can be disconcerting to deal with all the questions and unknowns that adulthood brings.

My advice is simple: learn to live in the moment and embrace the questions that faith and life present. Seek answers and don’t fear your doubts. We serve a God that is bigger than anything we can conceive—allow Him to reveal Himself bit by bit in the people, events, and places you experience. It’s tempting to grab easy answers to the big questions in life and uncomfortable to admit that sometimes we’re not sure exactly what we believe and what it all means. There are moments when life and faith don’t make sense--and that’s OK. Your role is to soldier on. Cowards use doubt as an excuse to do nothing, but the wise keep seeking answers and God’s presence.

As you graduate and move on, look for the places in your life and in the world where the mundane and the Divine intersect, where larger truths are revealed in everyday moments, where nature and circumstances reveal miracles. Even when God feels far away, work to better your corner of the world and appreciate the miracle of your life, your family, and those who love you.

Love,

V

January 14, 2007

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

Journey of the Magi

As I mentioned yesterday, this is one of my favorite Christmas poems, written by T.S. Eliot. It's the story of faith--and doubt--and what we leave behind and journey toward. 

December 21, 2006

St. Peter's Basilica

You can’t appreciate the grand scale of St. Peter’s until you’re heading up the steps,  dwarfed by its gigantic columns and the towering ceilings on the portico. The architecture puts you in your place--your sense of self is diminished by its vastness, your perspective opened. When you step inside St. Peter's, it's easy to briefly lose your bearings in the ambition of Michelangelo’s design and Bernini’s altar.

If the Sistine Chapel seemed spiritually static, St. Peter’s offers a dynamic sense of the sacred. The dome is aligned over the place where Peter was martyred and buried. Former popes rest in the grottoes below. There are chapels and shrines everywhere, and as always, the ceilings draw the eyes and the soul heavenward.

In a chapel on the right is the sculpture I've waited most of my life to see: Michelangelo’s Pieta. I will never forget experiencing  it for the first time. Mary’s face is seared in my memory as the face of Grief. Her expression holds all Sorrow, her arms the broken body of her only son. While her right hand supports him, her left hand is held palm up toward heaven in a gesture that conveys both strength and resignation. As promised by the angel in the gospel,  her heart has been pierced. You can see it, and you can feel it in your own chest. It's painful to gaze on the Pieta, but impossible to turn away.  Its power is palpable, its message eternal and timeless.

I can't believe Michelangelo was only 25 when he sculpted it. The Pieta makes me believe in divine inspiration.  How else could he know? How did he channel Grief and give it form and a face? How did he create something so achingly beautiful, so painfully poignant? How did he make the stone speak truth not just to the people of his time but to all people?  I wept when I saw it.

The week before we came to Rome, I had a string of e-mails and letters from friends, each detailing a personal crisis, each leaving a trail of sadness. I retreat behind a velvet curtain to a quiet corner of the Basilica set aside for prayer and meditate on all these situations, all these people. Each prayer leads to another, strung together by faith, hope, and love. I can’t seem to stop crying. Finally I quit trying. Why ration my tears for joy or for sorrow? If I can’t open my heart here, where can I open it?

E-Grrrl comes and sits besides me and holds my hand. She whispers, “Daddy says you’re probably thinking of Louise and your parents,” and I am.

This trip is haunted by the past. So many memories intersect in this time, place, and holiday. My Italian grandparents emigrated from a small village 25 miles outside of Rome, and my mind tries to see Italy through their eyes, to understand what they left behind to come to America. Though they’re long dead, I want them to know I’m here, that I know how much courage it took to leave all that was familiar behind and start fresh in a new country.

I’m haunted too by memories of my late sister Louise, who came to Rome when she was 24 and whose steps I’m sure I’m retracing.  I wonder what she thought of St. Peter's. I wonder if it made her cry.  Finally, I can’t run away from memories of Thanksgiving celebrations from the past and how much I miss my parents and Louise. What I would give to sit around a table with them one more time...

But my sense of loss is offset by a larger sense of my blessings—the opportunity to be here and live in Belgium, the breadth of my circle of friends and family, the miracle of my children, and the steady presence of the man who knows my secret sorrows.

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

November 27, 2006

Visiting the Vatican

We waited in line for an hour to get into the Vatican Museum. Before I researched Rome, I always thought the Sistine Chapel was part of St. Peter’s. It is actually part of the Vatican. The Vatican Museum is a section of the Vatican itself open to visitors. Research the museum before going into it because it is JAMMED with tourists even in the off season. Unlike a conventional museum where each item is marked and labeled, here the art is part of the buildings, integrated into the design and thus not “displayed” museum-style with descriptions under each piece.

The Vatican is as ornate and luxurious as any palace we’ve visited in Europe. Every square inch of every surface is embellished. Frescos. Paintings. Mosaics. Tapestries. Sculptures. Inlaid marble floors and walls. There’s no end to the rooms and corridors and plaques and inscriptions glorifying past popes.

There’s no denying the value of the art, the beauty of the spaces, the sheer volume of the collections, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. As a Christian, I found the display of wealth in the Pope’s headquarters and residence hard to swallow, a sad tribute to a Church that at times has seemed more in love with its power and status in the political arena than with its mission to share Christ’s message with the world. It seemed as if each pope tried to out do his successor with the art and decorations he commissioned.  It's easier to accept such lavishness when it's part of a church building, accessible to all, designed to edify the faithful and presumably offered to God in worship.

How big is the portion of the Vatican open as a museum? Even if you don’t stop and look at anything, it will take you 20-30 minutes to walk to the main attraction, the Sistine Chapel.

The Sistine Chapel itself is not nearly as big or grand as I imagined it would be. It is a long rectangular room decorated with magnificent frescos by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael, and other greats of the Renaissance. It is dimly lit, and while the art is magnificent, it’s overwhelming in its scope and position. How long can you tilt your head back and look up at the ceiling? It's hard to get far enough way from the wall frescos to see them in context. Of course, the chapel, which was devoid of any furniture other than an altar table, was packed with people and no, you could not sit on the floor and look up. There was limited seating around the perimeter.

It was impossible to devote the time the frescoes deserved. We took them in in small doses and resigned ourselves to the reality that we missed as much as we saw.

Though visitors are expected to be silent in the chapel, there’s no sense of the sacred there. For me, it was like an art gallery devoted to a single theme, not like a place of worship. It was a feast for the eyes but it didn’t stir my soul, unlike many of the other churches we visited in Rome.

(Next: St. Peter's Basilica)

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

November 26, 2006

The legacy of Thanksgiving 1981

It’s been 25 years.

Twenty-five years since I stood up in the small church I attended in Fredericksburg and told the members of the congregation I needed a ride to New Jersey for Thanksgiving.

My sister Louise was dying of cancer, but I don’t think I told them that. I was 19 years old, in my second year of college, and I wasn’t ready to speak that truth out loud. Still, what my mind couldn’t say, my heart knew.

When my mother told me my sister wasn’t up for the trip to Virginia for Thanksgiving, I vowed to find a way to be with her instead. And thus even though I was the shy type, I stood and placed my need in front of everyone in the church. After the service, two or three people offered to help me.

I’m ashamed I don’t remember the name of the family that turned out to be the answer to my prayers, but I have never forgotten their kindness. They packed me and my suitcase into their overcrowded car for the trip north, wedged in the back with their two children. They were warm and welcoming but blessed me by not asking too many questions.

My sister Louise lived in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and her husband agreed to meet me at Paramus Mall and drive me back to their house. It was dark when I got to the mall, and in the days before cell phones, I had to find a pay phone to use to call him. It was late, and I was nervous.

When Jim showed up, he loaded my bag into the car and tried to brief me on Louise’s condition but nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared me for what I saw when I got to the house.

My sister looked like she’d stepped out of a concentration camp, her skin gray, her face skeletal and misshapen, her head covered with tufts of fine hair that she usually hid under a wig. She was on the final leg of a horrific journey.

About three years earlier, doctors had discovered a large, malignant tumor nesting in her sinuses, threatening to encroach on her eyes and brain. They’d operated on it by accessing her sinuses through the roof of her mouth. In that initial surgery, she not only lost most of the tumor, she also lost an eye, half her top teeth, and part of her palate.

My dark-haired, dark-eyed sister, the one who looked a lot like Marlo Thomas, wore an eye patch and a dental prosthetic afterwards. Because of nerve damage to her face, she worried about drooling, but even with one eye and a slightly crooked smile, she was still beautiful--and fun-loving enough to dress as a pirate on Halloween.

But when I saw her in the fall of 1981, every last shred of her beauty and health was gone. She was in the process of going deaf, the vision in her remaining eye was very blurry, and the eye itself didn’t sit right in the socket. Her forehead was lumpy, and I could almost smell the decay the cancer was causing. She could still walk and get around a bit, but she could never get or stay comfortable for long. At that point I think the cancer was moving into her spine.

I was devastated by her condition and unprepared for what would be the longest long weekend of my life. I didn’t know what to do or what to say or how to celebrate Thanksgiving with my dying sister. I only knew I had to be there, though I felt I wasn’t much use.

I was too young to know the rituals of the sick, too shell-shocked to rise to the occasion. Mercifully the years have erased most of the memories, though the ones that remain haunt me.

I remember collapsing in tears in a stairwell and sobbing because Louise was in a lot of pain and had begged me to get Jim, and I couldn’t find him.

Unbeknownst to me, her house had a finished basement and Jim had an office tucked down in a remote corner of it. When I didn’t find him in the main living areas, I assumed he was gone, and I went to pieces in the face of her agony and my helplessness. I didn’t know what to do; I was afraid to go upstairs and tell her he was gone. When he popped up a short while later and told me he’d been in his office in the basement, I felt foolish but relieved.

The Saturday night after Thanksgiving, I remember sitting with Louise in her den watching the movie Miracle on 34^th Street. The blue glow of the TV screen illuminated her face, and when I glanced over at her in the dark, I saw a single tear making its way down her cheek from her eye.

Was she crying for herself, for her husband, for me? How could we carry on with the knowledge that despite endless prayers, there wasn’t going to be any miracle in Ridgewood, New Jersey, that holiday season?

I left on Sunday, quietly shutting the door behind me. Standing outside her Dutch colonial house with the stone sidewalks and wood shutters and ivy climbing the chimney, I thought of all the pain and horror hiding behind those charming walls, and I was secretly relieved I could step outside of it.

Sitting in the back of the taxi that would take me to meet my ride home to Virginia, I pondered how the meter could put a price on time and distance.

That was the last time I saw her.

I rode back to school in silence, cradling my anguish, wondering how I could possibly set foot back on campus and spend time with people whose greatest concern was getting through finals and finding a date for New Year’s Eve. I thought about E and our upcoming wedding and wondered how I could embrace all the good things in my life while she lost everything.

As with most life-changing experiences, the legacy is in the questions, not the answers. I carry them with me like a smooth stone in my pocket, worrying them with my fingers: Do I appreciate what I have? Am I grateful for each day in the world? Am I compassionate in the face of suffering? Am I truly thankful for the gift of health?

Are you?

November 16, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com.

Should Saddam hang?

The Dalai Lama has asked that the life of Saddam Hussein be spared.

Quoted in an AFP news story posted on Yahoo, he says:

“The death penalty is said to fulfill a preventive function, yet it is clearly a form of revenge," the Nobel peace laureate told reporters.
"However horrible an act a person may have committed, everyone has the potential to improve and correct himself," he said.
"I hope that in the case of Saddam Hussein, as with all others, that human life will be respected and spared."

This gave me pause because somewhere along the line I became a person who believes that some people will not change, that evil begets evil, and the best way to end the cycle of snowballing acts of violence, deception, and immorality is to end the life of the perpetrator.

But wait, isn’t this what terrorists believe?

Isn’t this what the U.S. government believes?

Isn’t this the rationale that’s used to justify torture and killings the world over?

As a young news reporter, I covered the local police beat and the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. I saw crime scene photos of blood splattered walls, graphic images of people who had been murdered in their homes, and read pages and pages and pages of documents detailing heinous crimes.

When the pardon and parole board would meet at the state’s maximum security prison, I spent two full days immersed not only in the crimes that landed people in prison to start with, but also the crimes and offenses they committed once they arrived there. During the hearings and some other events at the prison, I sat next to murderers, sex offenders, and notorious criminals as well as drug addicts and pushers, drunk drivers, burglars and robbers, and wrong-time-wrong-place offenders.

I heard a woman who had doused her four children with kerosene and set them on fire explain to the parole board chairman that she’d “been under a lot of stress at the time.” I heard the testimony of someone who had stabbed a woman in a Safeway parking lot because of a disagreement over who was entitled to a particular parking place. I covered a re-trial that resulted in the release of a man who had been in prison for years and years. I saw his relief and the family of the victim’s grief wash over their faces in equal measure. This wasn’t a TV show or a drama, these were real people and real lives, damaged and ruined. Beyond repair?

At one point in my brief journalism career, I was summoned to the prison and asked to meet with an inmate who was holding a woman nurse hostage in the prison infirmary. The male inmate wanted to talk to a reporter from my paper, and the warden and prison psychologist hoped that if I met with him, I might be able to negotiate the nurse’s release. I never thought of saying no even though I was ill-equipped for the job.

I went face to face with the guy, talking to him through a wide crack in the door he’d propped open. Part of the shock of the experience was recognizing that this person, who was not that much taller than me and wiry in build, had locked down an entire prison for more than a day by threatening one person with a small, sharpened piece of metal.

She was cowering on the floor with a tear- and mascara-stained face while I listened to her captor ramble on about his crimes and how he didn’t deserve to be in prison. It was hard to concentrate on what he was saying and ask questions. My brain froze, and to this day, I struggle to remember what he said--something about a bartender in Florida who could provide him with an alibi. Though I've forgotten his words and even his name, I can still see his face. He had red hair and brown eyes, just like me.

The moment I turned my back on him and walked away, heading down a corridor, he hung himself.

The SWAT team that was covering my ass while I talked to him stormed the infirmary, cut him and down, and saved his life.

They could have turned their heads when they entered that room. They could have focused on getting the woman out and paused for just a moment longer before cutting him down, letting him die in the process.

But they didn’t.

They saved him from himself and put him on a gurney. The hallway filled first with the horrible gurgling sound of his strangled breaths and then with the unearthly sound of his wails. He survived, and at his hearing on the hostage-taking incident, he tried to attack a news photographer.

Working as a reporter, I realized some people live only to create discord, pain, and violence in every setting they find themselves in, and in my mind, I found a lot of justification for the death penalty, and yet the desire to preserve human life in all its permutations is overwhelming.

Had I been alone in that room with that man when he hung himself, would I have let him die? Despite my intellectual support of the death penalty, would I have volunteered to cover an execution at the prison? Would I have been able to flip the switch, empty the syringe, or release the trap door on someone sentenced to death? I know I wouldn’t have been able to do any of those things, then or now.

Despite the nightmares that haunted me for years after I quit work as a reporter, despite my feelings that some people don’t deserve to breathe good air and see the dawn of another day, my instinct is to preserve life, even life I abhor.

Still, I flinched when the Dalai Lama made a plea for Saddam’s life. As a Christian, I know Jesus offers redemption to all people in all times and circumstances, but there are moments I don’t want to consider the implications of that truth. It can be easy to dismiss as well-intentioned and idealistic the pacifists and people of many faiths who eschew violence in all forms, yet I understand the thought process that acknowledges the danger of the path we set our feet on when we see killing as an unpleasant means to a noble end.

Do I want to see Saddam hang for the atrocities he committed? Would that pave the way for a fresh beginning for the millions who suffered at his hand? Would that deter his supporters from trying to carry on his legacy? Is an imperturbable, matter-of-fact, zero tolerance policy that delivers consequences for actions effective? Is it just?

Or would I prefer to see Saddam’s life spared and a message delivered on the power of non-violence in the peace-making process?

Do I believe either policy makes the world a better place or have I given up hope on shifting the balance between good and evil in the world? Such a loss of hope may be the most dangerous thing of all.

This morning I have no answers. Just questions to follow me through this day and the days to come.

November 13, 2007

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com.

Insomnia

2:14 a.m. Sleep recedes like a blanket that slides off the bed, and I’m wide awake—vulnerable to the darkness, my fears uncovered.

I worry about my son as he inches toward adolescence. So many concerns as we try to strike a balance between equipping him to be independent while providing enough structure and consequences to hold him accountable for his choices. Isn’t there a verse somewhere in the Old Testament that celebrates a time when “justice and mercy have kissed”? I can’t remember it here in the dark, so I pray in my heart to balance justice and mercy as I struggle with parenting my son. 

The dark knows no boundaries and my anxieties balloon and rise. I wonder about how we’ll transition back to life in the U.S. when we return in 2008. Where will we live and where will the kids go to school? They went to private schools before, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to afford that option if we move closer to Washington. Wondering about my work situation…and whether I’ll ever live in our cozy Cape Cod on Cleveland Drive again. The night is full of questions, not answers.

Like a toddler, I bring the blanket to my cheek and listen to E breathe. I look for a comfortable place to rest my mind and my body. I try to exhale my fears, to push them away and let them drift into nothingness.

Sunday morning is coming with all its rituals--pancakes and bacon and all of us together around the kitchen table and then church and communion, with the four of us lined up in a pew and then along the altar rail.  Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. I have to keep faith that we're going to be OK.

September 10, 2006