de Accion de Gracias

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 2014.

            Its Thanksgiving evening 2014 and the lights in the building have finally lowered. I’m watching as “Number 9,” the new guy in bed 9, throws his mattress over his shoulder. What the hell is he doing? I think. “Number 9” wasn’t there Wednesday night. Sometime after midnight – early Thursday morning – they moved him in. The bunk was open after “Cheesy Sidler” moved from “9” to “91.” “Cheesy Sidler,” college graduate, whiz on the computer, child sex fiend. I name everyone and “Cheesy Sidler” was no exception. We were standing around one morning waiting on breakfast and this guy sidles up to us. One minute he isn’t there, the next you can feel his breath on your neck. And, he has this big toothy “I just farted” grin … “Cheesy Sidler.”

            The Cheese is in on a sex crime with minors. He’s smart and, he’s in total denial. He has the arrogance of so many child sex offenders: “I’m innocent; I’m not like them.” I try not to emote anger around him but it’s tough. He looks like what I look like to the young black guys in here. Cheese was raised in Africa; his parents – Baptist missionaries. Fifty-eight years old, daughters, grandkids, a wife. They visit. He has become an Orthodox Jew. He goes to “7” building every morning to wear the small wooden box on his forehead and rock and pray. He’s Orthodox, but is he Godly? Can he atone in rhythmic chants for his perversion and crimes? It’s getting dark in the building and I wonder if that’s the real meaning of “grace,” coming to grips with your sins.

            Back to “Number 9,” he tells the CO, “I don’t like it here.” I crack up and ask my neighbor O if that works. Can I just say, “I don’t like it here,” and that’s that? 9 then gets all his stuff – a plastic trash bag of dirty, balled up clothing and his pillow – and drops it beside his mattress thrown down by the trash can in the day room. I’m exhausted but can’t go to sleep because I’m witness to a train wreck.

            “Look,” says the CO. “You can put your stuff back in your bunk area or go to the hole. It’s your choice.” Old 9, he ponders “option A” versus “option B” and chooses to return his things to his bunk … at least for the night. I climb in bed and read my verse from the morning one last time, pray, and then think about how pretty Thanksgiving sounds in Spanish, “de Accion de Gracias.”

            2008. I had lousy Thanksgivings before. There were times we thought we should split; I never told her I blamed her for losing my dreams. Maybe that’s wrong. I was willing to give every dream up just for one time hearing “I love you,” or “thank you,” or “I appreciate what you’ve sacrificed.” Instead it festered. But, pretend happiness works. So does turkey and good Scotch and oysters on the half-shell. Ah, food and drink and family and friends … an overstuffed table with wine glasses clinking. Not 2008. There were the letters; the newspaper article a week before said I stated “in open court in a clear voice ‘guilty,’” as each count was read. Counts – 1, 3, 6, it didn’t matter. I had highlighted the part where she said, “I’m praying you die in there.” Funny thing is, I prayed the same thing.

            Thanksgiving at the jail and they bring trays to the pod. It’s two-toned pressed turkey meat – low-cut, cold lunch meat, - instant mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. I’m not even hungry; I’m nauseous, and worn, and depressed. “I don’t like it here.” I wish I thought of saying that back then. “In all things give thanks for this is the Lord’s will for you.” God, I was learning had on off-kilter sense of humor. “Thanks God for ruining my life!” That I remember. “de Accion de Gracias.”

            Thanksgiving 2014, my sixth here. I arrived a week before Thanksgiving 2009 and remember that first dinner, the heaping tray with real turkey and pork roast, and candied yams and real mashed potatoes with broccoli and greens and stuffing and rolls. There was sweet potato pie and cake with banana cream frosting. I had told myself I wanted out, wanted to die and now, one year later I’m smiling, enjoying Thanksgiving in prison. In prison! That’s crazy! But, the food, the smells, the conversation, I was ok. Was it like the quail during the forty years in the wilderness? The food “appeared” and the people were sated.

            This year we’d decided to keep out regular work-out schedule. So, big meal at 12:30 (4A ate first!), a nap – why not!?) – then outside at 3:45. For a day and a half it had rained. The track, the weight pile, nothing but mud. Five of us head out in 40° mist. “Go quick,” O says because we know dark is only forty-five minutes away. We’re running, slogging through puddles, and curling bars, then dead lifting. I’m out of my shirts, so is O and Moose and our heads are steaming. I never dead lifted 240 before; I’m on 210, then 225. “Screw it” I yell and squat and lift 240, 3 no 4, no 5 reps and drop the weight with a primal yell of success. I take off at full throttle through the puddles and I’m buoyed. I don’t know why, but I feel … free and alive. “de Accion de Gracias.” I get what Paul was telling those struggling church members in Philippi while he sat alone in prison. “Live above your circumstances,” Paul exhorts his fledgling flock. No matter what, He is in control of our circumstances. Maybe that’s the toughest lesson to learn: We want life our way, in our time, on our terms. And, we keep messing up.

            Thirty-three years ago. I stood in a church and looked a beautiful girl in her eyes and recited vows. You know, looking back, I didn’t take all that seriously. I knew what I wanted and I wouldn’t let anything stop me. We chose Thanksgiving weekend because, well it fit right before my law school exams. At jail I dreaded Thanksgiving and the knowledge that I failed … and those dreams,

            “If dreams were lightning thunder was desire

            This old house would have burnt down a long time ago”

            Dreams. Vows. Weight lifted – real and imaginary. “de Accion de Gracias.” Cheesy Sidler, Number 9; I’m ok. I’m falling asleep thinking about what was, so long ago, and what will be.

            “Just give me one thing that I can hold onto

            To believe in just living is just a hard way to go”

            Live above your circumstances. I keep thinking about those four words in the meaning of “grace,” accept God’s forgiveness and be what He intends you to be. You can’t run from, or hide from, your past but you can overcome. Maybe Nike is right, “Just do it.” “de Accion de Gracias.” I like the sound of that.

Raisin Thoughts

The great African-American poet Langston Hughes wrote,

            “What happens to a dream deferred?

            Does it dry up

            Like a raisin in the sun?”

            This week, the college humanities students read and watched “A Raisin in the Sun,” the moving story of the Younger family by Lorraine Hansberry. This group of twenty students is beginning Humanities 220, an African-American literature class. The class is evenly split: ten white students and ten black students. It’s being taught by a blond, petite, late thirties PHD in English. That’s college … inside.

            Race is at the forefront of almost every moment inside prison. You can’t escape it; race matters in here. My time inside has caused me to question and reevaluate every preconceived idea I held about race in America. The issue, like the country, isn’t black and white. There is a dialog that has to take place in America between Black and White, Brown and Yellow. Without it, we are doomed to live apart while we reside together.

            “A Raisin in the Sun.” Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee starred in the 1960 film adaptation. It is the story of a Southside Chicago black family post World War II; three generations crammed into an old, two bedroom, apartment. The family matriarch awaits insurance money from the passing of her husband. Lena (mama) has a son, Walter, who “dreams big.” He wants the money to open a liquor store; he wants to buy his wife pearls; he wants to be “something,” not just a chauffeur driving “wealthy white folks” around.

            There’s Beneatha, Walter’s sister. “She’s gonna be a doctor.” She’s bright and pretty, and she rejects everything from her mother and father’s life … all the while afraid to venture out on her own. Ruth, Walter’s wife, struggles with an unplanned pregnancy and trying to come to grips with a life of disappointment. And, there’s Travis, the precocious 7 year-old son of Walter and Ruth who still has hope, still believes in his family.

            I watched as the men, black and white, listened to the bitterness in Walter’s voice as one more dream failed. I wandered if they saw the “Walters” in each other? So many of the young men I work with in here have “big: dreams, dreams of money, and fame, and fulfillment. But, like Walter, they miss the “big” picture: It isn’t money that makes the man, it’s his heart and his character. They dream “big,” but they don’t understand how to get to their dreams, how they need to read, work hard, and move forward.

            Do they see the “Beneathas” in each other? So many take on “non-government” names – Swahili or an “attribute” of their personality. They speak of Africa, yet they know nothing of the continent or their families’ lives there, or here. They are ignorant to the history, the culture, the current circumstances of Africa. They see Africa as a monolith – a large, unitary, “Black” world. They miss the tribal, the vegetation, the cultural and religious components that thrive and create great upheaval.

            In the climactic scene at the end of the performance, Walter becomes the man of the family. He tells a white homeowner visiting the drab little apartment in a quest to convince the Youngers not to move into an all-white neighborhood, “My son is the sixth generation in this country.” He tells the white man the family’s America story and he ends with this:

            “And we have decided to move into our house because my father- my father- he earned it for us brick by brick.”

            Brick by brick. Powerful words. So often we want, we desire so much that we see and we ignore all that it took to get us to that place. And yet the story matters. That is not a black issue or a white issue, it’s a human issue.

            We are separated in here so often by the color of our skin. We gather with what we know – or think we know. What I’ve found is the young black guys, from worlds far removed from any I’ve known, treat me with more respect than I deserve. They listen when I speak and take what I give them as truth. They’ve told me – politely – that I don’t know what it’s like to be black in America. And while I’ll engage them and challenge them on that point, they’re right. I know looking back on my own behavior pre-arrest, that color mattered then. Too often I made decisions about people based on the color of their skin.

            “A Raisin in the Sun.” I don’t know what it is like to be denied housing based on the color of your skin. I know the color of your skin doesn’t matter. There is a heart grabbing passage spoken by “Mama.” In it, she confronts her daughter who is ready to write off Walter who continues to fail. She says,

            “There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. When do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself cause the world done whipped him so. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”

            Those words are color-blind. Those words mean more than any skin tone.