Jury Duty

My dad has always wanted to serve on a jury. The government/history teacher in him made him crave the chance to serve. I think he's the only human being I've ever heard about who wanted to serve that badly. {Except Pauly Shore in the movie - but that was only because he needed the free housing.}

So a couple of weeks ago, Ryan got the paper in the mail about how his name was in the pot for the upcoming months. You know the paper. The one that lets you say what dates don't work for you and that kind of stuff. THE NEXT DAY he received his notification that he was up for selection.

Thanks a lot for the swell lead time with that first notice!

So he called a week ago Friday night after the appointed hour stated on the paper and found out he had to report.

I know jury duty is never convenient for anyone. That's kind of the nature of the thing. But it didn't stop me from being a little agitated that he had to get up Monday morning and commute to work for three hours and then commute back this way to report for jury duty. But he did. Showed up in his scrubs and began the long afternoon of phone-silence.

Ryan's work isn't conducive for regular contact throughout the day. When he's with patients, he has to be WITH PATIENTS, and I get that. I want him to be focused and the patients to be safe. But at least he can text me a "hey I miss you!" on restroom breaks and such. Not so with the world of the courthouse. I couldn't breathe for him that he couldn't take his phone in. And about 8 million times throughout the day, I thought of something to tell him...and I remembered he couldn't read it.

Ryan's brother, who is a police officer, had "jokingly" warned me that depending on the nature of the case, he could be sequestered to a hotel and not be able to speak to me AT ALL until the case was over.

I really don't need to pause here to tell you my thoughts on forced separation, do I? But Rod instilled the fear in me and I jumped to the ceiling when my phone rang Monday night and it was an unknown number that I assumed represented some approved phone in the courthouse.

I skipped "hello" entirely and said "Please tell me you don't have to go live at a hotel." Ryan laughed and said no, he could come home every night, but the trial would last a week.

NO.

He said they weren't quite done for the night, so I decided to run to the grocery store to kill the extra time apart. An hour an a half later, Ryan found me, socializing in the aisles. Pitiful, isn't it? I was still so sad about the upcoming week, but actually, he was pretty excited about the whole thing. He said he was looking forward to it.

You guys, it was the longest week ever. In happy news, it was lovely to have him "working" in town. We got to sleep in every morning, later than we ever do. He came home for lunch every day, and that was fun. The time between his call to say he was on his way home and actually BEING home was practically nothing. Loved all those things about it.


What I didn't love? The secrecy. We don't do secrets in our house. I don't even like keeping birthday gifts a secret from him. So to have him spend all day doing something that was really important and then to have him come home and say NOTHING - well, that didn't work for me.

Didn't love the lack of contact either. It makes me panic to not have access to him if I need something. {Like the day the judge held them over 45 minutes for lunch and I was home panicking that the defendant shot him as he left the courtroom. Seriously. I have to stop watching the crime shows.} I think I called five times and sent three texts in fifteen minutes that day.

But I persevered. I did a lot of cooking and baking:

And Thursday night, since he assumed jury duty was going to kill our previously scheduled Friday night date, he took me out ti Starbucks, which was so lovely.

It was good we did that, because Friday was the longest day OF OUR LIVES. Braeya and I were so over it by about 7 p.m. but we needed to buck up because we would not see the most handsome man on the planet until 11:30. That's p.m. As in right before midnight.

It is POSSIBLE that I drove TO the courthouse at 10:00 just to make sure there were still people there and that he hadn't gotten assaulted on his way to his car. {Not sure what I thought I was going to do if he had, but whatever.} And while I was out, I went ahead and got dinner, since I gathered by that time, we weren't going to get a pizza.

I decided that as the week progressed, I just looked older and more tired and bedraggled, so I was ridiculously grateful to have this journey behind us and to be back to whatever comprises our normal. 

So we survived jury duty. I was really proud of Ryan for how seriously he took his commitment, for the level of time and prayer he put into thinking through the evidence and offering a fair verdict, and for being a way better sport about it than I was.

And now I'm once again enjoying a life of being able to hear from him randomly, to not have secrets, and to get my socializing from him and not from roaming the grocery store aisles. LOL!