Ya Gotta Laff

The life of an incarcerated person is not all grim, even though I'm sure that's what some on the outside are hoping. In my son's case, there are 2,400 human personalities to make life interesting and sometimes funny.

Last week David told me about "the commissary panhandler." Now since I don't know all that much about the actual commissary setup I may not be able to describe the situation well, but what I understood I thought was very amusing. Most people do understand that "commissary" is very important to prisoners. It's where they can purchase those things that ease life, like Little Debbie cakes and other food and sundry items. There is some kind of accounting process where the minuscule pay that prisoners earn is held on deposit, minus whatever is deducted for restitution or other judgments, and the actual shopping takes place about every two weeks or so on specified days. So planning and budgeting skills are learned, although we know that's not necessarily the intent of the system.

As I understand it, the inmates scheduled to shop line up and go past a window where their orders are filled in buckets, behind the glass of course. So one particularly creative and probably impoverished individual showed up at the line with a note. I'm picturing this man saying something like, "Pssst, read this." The note asked that the reader buy extra popcorn for "ONLY 35 cents" and give it to the panhandler. As the line moved and no one was of that charitable a mind, the panhandler just kept on trying every third or so person in line, to the amusement of all who admired his creativity. This is not at all the picture that most people have of prison life, where shanks and gangs and violence and force are the stereotypical norm. But it's human and, in my mind, funny.

The other thing I found amusing that day was the scene of the visitor who apparently wasn't all that welcome by the visitee. This woman sat steaming with her mother-in-law for probably an hour while their loved one could not be located. This is a prison! I'd be agitated too if I were told that David couldn't be located. But what probably happened is that the prisoner who had likely been given a visitor pass and therefore knew he would be paged, thought he could evade an angry and scary spouse by hiding out in some corner of the yard where he could legitimately claim not to hear the page. At the very least he knew he could shorten the visit. As this woman became more noticeably agitated, and as I admired her shoes but hoped they wouldn't double as weapons, the prisoner finally appeared. After suitable recriminations and not more than fifteen minutes later they were all smiles as the obligatory visiting picture was taken. A good time was had by all?

Truth or Consequences

So two visits to David later, I'm back here. The first week in May was a wonderful time to drive through the mountains and valleys and along the rivers and also a wonderful time to reconnect with my son in a way that letters just can't accomplish. At that time he was winding up a series of Hepatitis C treatments but looked very well to me. I do think, and this was borne out by last week's visit too, that his capacity to consume junk food is less. And I was totally amazed that he actually requested a vending machine salad both last time and this.

In between visits David has turned forty. My baby, my youngest child and my only son, is forty. This time we talked some about what was going on in the world in 1968, and I shared with him a little about what I remember about that year. Of course I was pregnant for part of it, but he was born in May, after the murder of Martin Luther King and before the murder of Robert F. Kennedy, both shocking events but especally shocking to a person lke myself who admired those men a lot. There has been quite a bit of public discussion about that year, and most people who were old enough to remember it, do remember it.

1968 was smack dab in the middle of one of the favorite periods of my life. Yes, I was busy, maybe too busy, but it was a good busy and a fearless busy. Although the world and the country were in the midst of turmoil, I never thought that anything bad could really happen to anyone I knew. I was twenty-eight, a mother of four already. I lived where I wanted to live in a house I had visited on my own childhood Hallowe'en nights, one block away from where I had grown up. My children were beautiful, my then husband and I were healthy, our marriage was about what I expected. I had no clue.

Forty years later I am still probably clueless in some ways, but I have lost the ability to trust very deeply. Losses and thefts over the years have taken from me the confidence in my own ability to judge people and situations. That's not just about David. He is only one among many people who have not always deserved my trust. That simple fact is, I think, one of the things that connects me to others in my and similar situations, doing time with a loved one. We hope our current trust is not misplaced, no matter how limited it might be. Personally, I feel reasonably confident that when David tells me something, even something trivial, it's the truth. I know he is motivated to live with rigorous honesty by his own spiritual health. He has come to understand that piling up deceptions just walls one in, sometimes in a place that is hellish.

One other prisoner that David and I often see in the Visiting Room is about as prolific a liar as I have ever seen. I first noticed this young man about two years ago, and he was explaining to his parents about the privileges he had earned: among other things, a plum job and a bunk where there was a 24-hour cereal bar. Really. Few people could make that up, but given prison budgets, it takes more naivete than even I have to believe the part about the cereal bar. In my state of South Carolina, it was recently reported that the daily food allowance for each prisoner is $1.43. That's about the lowest in the nation, but Ohio's budget issues are not different enough ever to have permitted round-the-clock buffets of any kind.

Since I first noticed the "cereal bar liar," I've paid attention to the body language of his parents, and last month I thought to myself, "Even his Dad can't take it any more" as the man got up and took a walk in the aisle. Last week I noticed that his mother had her arms folded across her chest for the entire three hours of the visit. But these people love their son, whoever he really is and whomever he presents himself to be, and they visit faithfully. My prayers are with them and with all those who are doing time, inside the bars or outside.