Sometimes Justice Comes at Sunset

Photo: a winter evening sky, facing south west, is streaked with rose, smoke-grey, and gold. The black outline of bare and evergreen trees cast a sharp silhouette against the vivid sky.

     In 1997, T. Rivers was 21 years old, hooked on drugs and barely able to read. He had snatched the purse of a woman walking down the street. While he was able to grab the bag and run away with it, probably taking a paltry sum of cash, he caused the 85-year-old woman to fall. Two weeks later, the elderly woman died from her injuries. Though the evidence presented at trial establishes that he never intended to kill or even harm her, Pennsylvania's concept of "felony murder" said that his crime would keep him in jail for life, without the opportunity for parole.

    Today, Rivers is 43 years old and has spent more than half his life in prison. Growing up in a rough part of Philadephia, he didn't understand the concept of "life without parole" when it was handed to him. In prison, he took classes, he received drug and alcohol treatment, worked with hospice patients, and mentored the many young men who were arriving at the facility. "The student has become the teacher," he said. 

    In 1965, 26-year-old P. Davis was a captain in the Special Forces, leading a team of specialists who fought alongside a ragtag company of South Vietnamese volunteers. A grenade blasted out some of his teeth and blew off part of his trigger finger. As enemy fire took out his lead sargeant, then the demolitions specialist, then the only medic, he fired with his pinkie finger, and despite being shot five times, rescued teammates and refused to leave the fight. He somehow made it out alive and was immediately nominated for the military's highest recognition - the Medal of Honor. But somehow the Army misplaced his nomination.

    At first, his commanding officer resubmitted it, and time and again the paperwork was "lost". His teammates pursued the nomination over the next few decades, but each time the request was met, they said, "with silence and indifference." Today, Davis is 81 years old, long retired from the Special Forces, and lives in Alexandria, Virginia. He harbors no ill will, but recognizes that something was not right about what happened to him.

    I heard about both stories in a single morning, felt heartsick with compassion for both situations. You could say that they are at opposite ends of the spectrum - one at the point of causing the end of another's life, and the other at the point of risking his own life to save others. But the two men have something in common - they are both Black. At such young ages, they made decisions that would affect their entire lives. Why was the inquiry into the fairness of their situations so late in coming?

      Tyreem Rivers acknowledges that what he did was wrong, and that someone died because of his actions. "I would like people to know that I am not a bad person," he says, "I made bad decisions in the past. I have a sense of regret and remorse for my actions, and I am a man of change." Where other states have sentences of 2 to 10+ years for manslaughter and give the chance for parole to allow a person to pay their debt to society and become "reformed", Pennsylvania does not. There are currently two groups suing the state on behalf of Rivers and five other people who were convicted in their late teens, who have already served a total of 200 years in prison. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Amistad Law Project argue that the felony murder punishment is cruel and unconstitutional.

    There are those who say, "let 'em rot in prison" but would those same words apply if it were your son, your brother, your cousin, whose bad decision, or reckless action, as a young person had resulted in the death of someone else? Why do we assign offenders to a "corrections facility" if there is no intention to see to their reform? Even the act of placing someone in jail for the safety of others requires that there be some result of that jailing. There are countless cases of Black men aging in prison for minor offenses like stealing a television set, or food from a convenience store. While some argue that this is essentially making an example for others, many agree that such harsh sentences only lead to a loss of hope - and hopelessness only leads to more recklessness.

    The comrades of Ret. Col. Paris Davis received a sign of hope, after 55 years of trying. In January, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller personally ordered a review of the nomination to be completed by March. If it makes it up the chain of command and all sign off, he may finally be recognized for his bravery. In a recent interview, Davis shakes his head and smiles, downplaying the delays and oversights, "all this stuff, medals and all that," he says. "People need to keep on keepin' on. We've got to make this a better world. That's how I feel."

    Can we make a better world? Can people change? Can we make a difference? 

    I believe that justice, even when it comes at the sunset of someone's life, is still due, and that it is often bittersweet when it finally arrives. If we cannot treat people compassionately and fairly, that says much more about us than it does the person on the receiving end. And just like sunset, at the close of the day, we all deserve to have a reckoning of our actions and be allowed some peace at the end.

The Before Time

Photo: the red stems in the foreground are a bright contrast to the white snow behind, and further back is a stand of mature spruce against a cloud-streaked winter blue sky.

    In a moment of frustration and melancholy, I lamented aloud to my family during a phone call whether we will ever see each other again in person. Don't get me wrong - I am fully aware of the lingering danger of this virus pandemic and dutifully wear my mask wherever I go. We have continued to avoid gatherings large or small, and the last time we were socially in the presence of actual human beings was on New Year's Eve when we gathered with a few (read: three) neighbors for a socially-distanced campfire and snacks out in the snow. It was bracingly cold that day, but the warmth of the fire and the longing for company made it feel practically balmy as I gratefully played host.

    But this people-person's patience is wearing thin. Our video dance card remains full, with almost daily Skype calls with our grandson in Austin, twice-weekly phone calls with our son in Seattle, online game-nights with extended family, Zoom chats with friends near and far, and as many business video calls as a person can handle. My husband and I are fortunate to have each other as we binge-watch streaming TV episodes and first run movies all from the cozy comfort of our living room. We play cribbage and mancala, we listen to music and do craft projects. We plan meals - elaborate culinary creations and comfort-food feasts. Even as we enjoy these activities and diversions, I miss the good ol' days. 

    I long for the days when we can just invite people over, share a meal, have drinks, hug friends, mark holidays or go on vacation with family, go to the movie theater, go to art events, enjoy live music - in short, get back to normal.

    In the Before Time, we took so many things for granted, but as it goes, you never know what you have until it is gone. Now that those times are gone, I fear that they will never be the same again. Our friends are getting their vaccines, so I know some of the fear and trepidation will be fading. As a member of the younger cohort, it will likely be summer before I qualify for the shot. So, they will likely want to protect me. But I will likely resist their protection in exchange for some interaction.

    There is a sense of PTSD - pandemic trauma stress disorder, in the way we've recoiled at continued closures, for some - the refusal to wear masks, and how soul-crushing it feels to be so distanced. In a time when a hug would mean the world it is firmly out of arms reach.  There is a lot of death and dying. Last year, my family alone lost three elders and several family friends. Whether they died of COVID or not, the fact of the matter is that nothing at all was normal. We couldn't have the customary gatherings with potlucks and story-telling. We didn't have the traditional send-offs, with flowers, blessings, and goodbyes. We could only gather feebly around a cellphone camera or a video screen at the other end.

    Some say that life will never return to its former hue, that one virus after another will color our society, and that nature at its best has always been hell-bent on destroying us. On one hand, I can't blame nature - for we are the most obtrusive and rude creatures. But we can also be nurturing, sharing, good stewards of our surroundings. 

    So, I beg Mother Nature: let us be, let us live, let us thrive. If we wear our masks, wash our hands, trust in science, and trace our contacts, can we puhleeeze have our old lives back? I promise I'll be good.

A Stitch in Time

Photo: Peter Max "Running Man in Space" from 1970s lithograph by artist, made into an embroidery kit for kids. Man, clad in rose-colored jumpsuit, is running past the outline of a ringed planet while sequin stars populate the background.

    Over the holidays, in a funk of missing our kids and their families, I hauled four boxes of 'memories and treasures' up from the basement where they'd lain for sixteen years between six jostling relocations. There I found old report cards, field day ribbons, photographs, birthday greetings and love letters - things that I collected over the last 39 years. I also found a partially completed embroidery kit from my childhood. 

    I'm not sure how it survived this long. My parents weren't overly sentimental like me so they weren't inclined to save things, but somehow it had meant enough to me that I held onto it well into middle age. I remember receiving it as a birthday gift, at a time when I was intrigued by my mother's sewing and crochet projects. This kit was the gateway to stitchery, something I could practice on my own.

    Long forgotten until I stumbled upon it, all that was left of the kit was the unbleached cotton cloth, imprinted with faint blue guide lines forming the psychedelic art of Peter Max. Max was known for vivid colors, fantasia designs, and exemplified the aesthetic of the day. It was wrinkled and faded, stitches incomplete and the work betrayed the gratification of child's play. It was stardust.

    My 56-year-old stitches were a bit more tidy than my 10-year-old ones and I felt the momentary urge to fix things, to replace sloppy shortcuts. But it just felt sacrilegious to pick out the earnest work of a kid who had no idea that her wizened adult self would correct her hasty efforts decades in the future. 

    I grew up in the 1970s, in Southern California. It was the time of free-love hippies, trippy music, bell bottom jeans and TV dinners. Somewhere beyond my periphery was Nixon, the Vietnam War, the oil crisis and attempted assassinations. I was too young to care about the wide world, but curious enough to learn as much as I could about everything, giving special-alert-ears to grown-ups' talk.

    My parents had emigrated to the US in their mid-30s, with a kindergartner and an infant. They left the security and comfort of their motherland to see their children educated in an advanced country. Life in America, rather than being easier for them, was undoubtedly more difficult: back home in Sri Lanka my father had his own business, my mother didn't work, they had domestic help and the safety net of family. They lived in a beautiful custom-built home in a nice part of the city, had cars, and lived a comfortable existence. 

    When they arrived in the US, they were only permitted to bring $200 for each of us, and landed knowing no one, save some friends-of-friends in the vast metropolis of Los Angeles. What my father lacked most back home was freedom. He felt stifled by the government and limited by what was available in that small island nation. When my father got an idea into his head, he was hard to dissuade. Especially when it came to his family. Then he was relentless.

    Before long, they'd established themselves, got jobs, bought a house, a Chevy Impala, and enrolled my brother and me in parochial schools. Though life was not easy (the streets were not lined with gold, as predicted), they were happy. Most of all, they could Do. Whatever. The. Hell. They. Wanted. They could sink or swim, do or die, succeed or fail, all on their own merits and motivations.

    As I threaded the needle with vibrant embroidery floss, filling in with satin-stitch the areas that my kid-self only outlined, I didn't blame her for being in a hurry and doing a less-than-thorough job. I had the luxury of time-management now and the experience to fix imperfections. I could even throw the whole heap in the garbage, but I decided that lovingly working, with interest/with abandon, was the most rewarding thing of all. I simply couldn't stop once I'd started.

    My stitches still were not perfect, there were gaps and misses, there were areas I couldn't fix, and it was still an old piece of cotton cloth with small stains and a few tiny holes. But the whole of it was deliciously psychedelic, a bit abstract, and well - a blast from the past that I could work on still and make better. It was incredibly satisfying to Do. Whatever. The. Hell. I. Wanted. 

Photo: Peter Max embroidery kit from circa 1972; blue lines show where the stitches go. The kit also came with tiny felt dots, sequins shaped like circles and stars to be applied as embellishments.