dare to be an optimist

At quarter after six this morning I was waiting for the train. I used to do that a lot when I was working at the Death Star. Not as much these days. The day was open-ended and I thought about whether I would make it back in time for the baseball game at five. For a moment I thought I might prefer to miss it. The Guardians had put up an anemic performance in the first game of their playoff series, and a second would almost certainly doom them. Then the train came.

I was on my way to Newark to meet a woman who had an appointment with ICE. I’ll call her Tania. Tania hadn’t been to an ICE check-in yet and had asked for someone to accompany her. I hadn’t been to one either, but Tania’s request came at the last minute, and my schedule is flexible enough, post-Death Star, that I could make myself available. I set three alarms, got myself up before the second one rang, showered and shaved and ate an English muffin, took the R train to Cortlandt Street and walked through the mall at the World Trade Center and caught the PATH to Newark Penn Station. I bought a donut and a coffee and walked to the federal building where we had made plans to meet.

The walk took fifteen minutes or so. I texted Tania; she was en camino as well. I thought about how to handle myself upon meeting this stranger. I reminded myself to be calm, which is a useless thing to think. I reminded myself to feel optimistic. The lawyer from the agency that is helping support people’s asylum claims had told me on a first meeting it was very unlikely that they would hold Tania; they would probably assign her another check-in, maybe give her a monitoring routine or an ankle monitor. There was no reason to assume the worst.

I had texted my baseball chat group a couple days ago, “there’s enough in life to be pessimistic about, there’s no sense in being pessimistic about sports.” I thought about that as I was psyching myself up to meet Tania. It’s terrifying to be optimistic. Expecting the worst is easy; you’re never disappointed. And if the best happens - or less than the worst - then your day is a little brighter. Hoping for the best - not merely hoping, but expecting the best, believing in it the way Linus awaits the Great Pumpkin - exposes us. Not just to the Lucys and Violets who can’t wait to laugh at our foolish credulousness, not just to the Sallys who excoriate us for costing them tricks or treats and bobbing for apples, but to ourselves.

But if you expect the worst, what is the point of setting an alarm for 5:15?

Tania and I met outside the federal building - the Peter Rodino Federal Building, named for the congressman who represented Newark for forty years, who among other things helped shepherd through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which enabled tens of thousands of immigrants to obtain legal status in the United States. We walked in through the metal detectors, and rode up in the elevator. She was terrified and brave. We didn’t talk much. The guard on the eleventh floor checked the letter she had received and told me I had to wait in the cafeteria downstairs.

“I can’t just wait with her?” I asked. No, he told me. Among other things, I suspect there wasn’t much room; denying a petitioner the comfort of a companion was just a side benefit for the government. I sat for three hours, reading and drinking bad coffee, under a photograph of Peter Rodino standing behind Lyndon Johnson as he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

I texted Tania every hour or so; sent her a meme of a bear sitting at a picnic table. Finally she texted me that she was done, and we met outside. I looked at the letter with a new appointment date that they had given her and recommended that she speak to the attorney again. We went our separate ways.

Game 2 starts in a few minutes.

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