Author: mbcoudal

This morning a train was pulling into the station. The sky was that perfect autumn blue, blue, blue. And I was thinking, Oh, I love this moment so much. This moment right before the train arrives, I must take a picture. The bright silver Long Island Railroad and its approach. The white headlight.

But a picture would only capture a fraction of the experience. And my picture might even be a bit cliche — train’s a’coming, Ma! — we’ve seen that picture.

A picture would not catch the noise – the steel braking against rail. The feel of the cold Autumn air in my hair. The way the cement platform sways, ever so slightly. Or the smell and taste of my not-very-warm-enough coffee.

I was coming from Queens (and last night drove my girls to a Sweet Sixteen in the Bronx — too much with the boroughs, girls!)

Char was in a webseries (and I’d look it up but I’m too tired, (ready for bed)). We wondered if the webseries was legit so I offered to join her and check it out. We were a little suspicious becasue the writer/director’s phone number was six digits, not seven or nine. And the subject of the episode seemed to be about the kidnapping of a teen.

“Is the material even appropriate, hon?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” she said. Ugh! Thus I was on the Auburndale platform in Queens early on a Sunday morning.

As soon as I saw the set, I felt at ease. The episode was being shot a comic shop. Other parents hovered around their star teens like unnecessary satellites. I remembered my own foray into an independent film series when I was way young., Yes, the Adventures of Go Girl! And we shot our episode in a comic shop too.

I wondered, if Charlotte ever has a daughter, Will she shoot her independent film in a comic shop too? Will comic shops even exist then? Will I exist to meet any possible granddaughter? These were questions I asked myself, waiting on the train platform.

It’s no secret that my favorite night of the month is book club. This month we read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. How good is this book! Don’t read it before bed because it is too disturbing — the way our justice system is fixed — against children, women, people who have no money for counsel, African Americans, and people with mental illnesses. And God forbid, you fit more than one of those categories, you are done for. Locked up and forgotten. Or worse, abused, raped in prison. And that’s all before your hearing even starts.

And despite the nausea that these stories induced — over the miscarriages of justice — there is so much brilliant writing. Take this:

My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression and not be broken by it.

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy…

Wow. The work of racial and social justice — changing broken systems — is a kind of mindfulness. An invocation of our shared human experience. We have to give one another the dignity, a dignity that we would want for ourselves, our family members, be they judges, jailers, prisoners. In Just Mercy, Stevenson does offer
a strain of hope — a light when the wrongfully charged are freed. It is an important book.

I will be honest. I did not vote for this book. (We have a complicated voting system to pick our books.) I was hoping for fiction. But maybe next month. In any case, I’m glad I read this and I hope you will read it too. And then talk about it.