A friend’s birthday happened recently and, in a cruel twist of faith, she had a court hearing scheduled. You’ll ask me what the court hearing was for and I’ll tell you, honestly, that I have no idea. None. All I know is that she was nervous about it and it was a serious enough a thing that she asked me write a reference letter for her ahead of it.
A couple of years ago, this friend surprised me with one of my favorite cards/notes for my birthday. I still pull it out and look at it from time to time. It’s amaze me how big a difference small things can often make in our lives. Well, my life, anyway.
So, the idea that I could maybe help my friend by writing a letter, well, it was a no-brainer for me. I just wasn’t sure how to go about it.
I mean, not knowing what the court case was about and not wanting to ask (I figured, if she wanted me to know, she’d have told me) I wasn’t sure what angle to take in providing a character reference. I thought about my friend, about all the things we’ve shared and the stories she’s told me about her life and I tried to find a path forward, through her art and through her looking out for others. If her court case was tied to the custody battles she’s had over the years with her son’s father, well, that would be a good tack to take. Same, too, if the case was somehow criminal in nature. I figured, it was pretty safe ground either way.
This is what I was able to come up with:
Re: Amanda A————-
Your Honor:
I have been asked to say a few words about the character of Ms. Amanda A————- and I’m happy to do it. Mandy, as I know her, is a passionate, compassionate, creative woman who’s a devoted mom and a very committed animal rights activist. I’m guessing I’ve known Mandy for the better part of fifteen years at this point, at least, having met her when her son, I———, was really young and long before she gave birth to her daughter, J———. She’s always been there for me as a friend, always willing to listen when I needed an ear. There are plenty of people in this world who will give you advice and tell you what they think but, in my experience, there are a lot fewer people who will really take the time to listen to you. Mandy is one of those people.
When I think of Mandy, I think of many things but amongst the first things that comes to mind is her creativity. She’s always had an amazing eye for photography and is a very talented painter. Her photography skills have led her to work in mixed media, as well, giving her yet another medium she can explore and express herself in. Mandy’s got a great eye for capturing detail and seeing things others miss. It’s an artist thing, really, that being able to see a few levels beyond the rest of us. It is also a trait that’s tied in to the way she experiences the world and how she feels about things. When you see deeply, it stands to reason you’ll feel deeply, too.
Being a creative can be tough. You see things, you feel things, you are being bombarded with all this sensory data and the thoughts and feelings it all stirs up within you and you’re left to sort through it all and make sense of it in a way that you can then take and turn into art in one medium or another. Mandy takes the raw materials life hands, raw materials that aren’t always sunny and shiny and happy and is able to take everythng she gets and still produce some really memorable work in the process.
I don’t know if your honor has had the chance to view any of her work but, with respect, I might suggest it. Art says a lot about us. Of course, it says a lot about us, the viewer, as we bring our own lives to whatever art we are viewing and our experiences color our perceptions of it. The artist pours a lot of themselves into every work they create, however, making each work they create a mini autobiography of sorts. Every piece we look at is a microcosm of who the artist was, where they were in their life and what they were feeling at the time it was created. There are myriad ways you can try to get a sense of who Mandy A————- is, this character reference being just one of them, but nothing may provide you a clearer and more powerful picture of who Mandy is as a person than looking at her art work.
My favorite Mandy story, one that I think sums her up in many ways, has to do with a time when she was pregnant with her daughter, Jazmine. She passed a large homeless encampment and was struck by a sense of the vulnerability of everyone there. Maybe it was the pregnancy, maybe it was something hormonal, biochemical or, maybe it was just her recognizing the humanity in people that we as a society tend to marginalize and denigrate. Whatever it was, whatever the reason, Mandy felt like she had to do something.
I’ve lived here in Albuquerque since I was a kid, your honor. It’ll be fifty years for me next summer, the summer of 2026. Up to the time I started attending UNM, I don’t remember ever seeing anyone who I could identify as ‘homeless’. Over the decades since, what was once rare in my life has become increasingly commonplace. The NE Heights, where I’ve always lived, used to be a place where homelessness was rarely if ever seen and, now, I can’t go more than a few blocks before I see reminders that a lot of folks here in the Albuquerque area are struggling.
I like to consider myself a compassionate person but, your honor, I’m the first to admit that, when it comes to the homeless, if I see a homeless person coming my way, I look for a chance to cross the street and get some distance between me and them. The homeless scare me. They depress me. I often wonder how far I am from sharing their fate? One paycheck? Two? What sort of turns in the wheel of life could send me spiraling in the wrong direction and land me on the streets of Albuquerque, struggling to survive?
I mention all this because, where I’m a person who’d cross the street to get space between me and a homeless person, when Mandy saw a homeless encampment, she did something completely opposite of that. She went and bought food, lots and lots of food, she filled her car up with it and drove back to the encampment to give it to those in need.
She was pregnant at the time. Is there a time where a woman is any more vulnerable than that? If so, when is it? She didn’t go to social media to share pictures she took of the encampment and bemoan the state of affairs that had befallen these people. No, she went and did something for them, something concrete, something practical, something useful. She fed them.
No, it’s not Jesus washing a homeless person’s feet-level holiness here but how many people do you know, pregnant or not, that would do the same? She willingly put herself and her unborn child at risk so she could deliver food and comfort to people she saw needed it. It ranks as one of the bravest and most compassionate things I’ve ever heard of anyone doing. To put this in a little further perspective, Mandy rarely is doing well enough financially to have money she can just spend on an outing or a get-away or a vacation or…feeding a homeless encampment. Still, she did it anyway. I think that speaks volumes about the person that she is.
When I think of Ms. Amanda A————-, this is the person that I think of. I hope that, when you think of her, you’ll think of this as well.
Respectfully,
M. R. McCaffery
I heard later that the court hearing got postponed and, so, my friend’s birthday went ahead without the immediate stress of that, which to me, is a good thing. Still, the court hearing hangs over her head and has been rescheduled for next month. I’m hoping all goes well.
I’m not sure that my letter will help but, I’ll be happy so long as it doesn’t hurt. Depending on the nature of the hearing, I’m good with my letter just being background, white noise that doesn’t count against my friend in any way. Still, the whole idea of writing a letter set me to thinking about character and references and judgments.
What is my character? Who am I? How does a person who has never met me, for instance, answer that question? How does someone brand new to me determine who I am? By my words? By my deeds? Through the evaluation of others? I have written about my fascination with identity multiple times here on Substack so, you are free to surf the archives but, I’m not sure how we determine someone’s character. The best answer, I guess, is going to be through our personal experiences but that, admittedly, is pretty limited.
Let’s say I meet a guy who’s hella’ cool, smart and helpful. I need to talk, he’s there, he’s a good listener. He seems genuinely interested in my issues and offers respectful bits of advice. My interactions with him are positive. We join other friends and hang out at the park and he seems great with other people, dogs love him, kids like him, there are no obvious red flags in play. Does this mean this guy is a ‘good guy’?
Maybe this guy has anger issues in his relationships? Maybe he’s beaten his wife? Maybe he shoplifts or skims money from the cash register at work? Maybe he killed someone in a drive-bye shooting as a teen? Maybe he’s a serial rapist? If he asked me to give him a good reference, to say something good about his character, I would based solely on my limited information about him. He could still be a serial killer, for all I knew, with multiple bodies stored in his basement. My limited perspective though would not catch any of that, I just know the guy the way I know him. In my eyes, he’d be a ‘good guy’.
My judgment of this hypothetical friend is based solely on my limited experience. Someone else though, they might see a totally different view, have completely opposite experiences. If that’s the case, who’s view is right? Which experience of this friend points to the truth? Mine or the other person who’s seen this friend be awful and manipulative and violent? Or, is the truth only arrived at by adding the different experiences together?
Thinking about judgement and all that, it just makes me happy I’m not a judge. I could never do that. I could never weigh the evidence and feel confident of any judgement I’m passing on a person. How would I be able to cover all the angles, be sure I hadn't missed anything. I can’t imagine how judges feel confident in their decisions because I can’t imagine how I could, personally. It’d just be too damn hard.
Funny that I think that way though, while I’d feel hard-pressed to pass judgement on someone else, I almost never have a hard time passing judgement on myself. I wonder, if I sat down to do it, what a character reference letter to myself would look like. What would I write? What would I try to communicate to someone else? If writing a character reference letter for a friend was tough, imagine what writing a character reference letter for myself would be like.
I should sit down and try it sometime, you know, just as a writing exercise. If I ever do, I promise, I’ll keep you posted.