Rainy Saturday Observations

I was all set to go run, clear my head, breathe deep and think and feel and “13” – the C/O in charge of movement whose job it is to stand in the middle of the boulevard and radio in and out of the buildings – he let me know, “there’s a storm moving in, no morning rec.” No morning rec. No 5 or 6 mile run to loosen up from a week on the weight pile trying to do “cross fit” with guys half my age. Prison is schedule; schedule is everything. You organize and discipline yourself or you and your mind turn to mash potatoes …

I’m sitting here and listening to the rain pelt the dorm building roof and it’s rhythmic and entrancing and I feel, for just a second at least, that I’m not in here. I have Johnny Cash playing in the CD player; he’s singing “Long Black Veil” and the peddle drum matches the “thwap” of the rain: “Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me …” Damn Johnny made great music. He did time; his life was a mess and then, well then God saw fit to tell Johnny “You don’t have to fight anymore. You don’t have to carry all that anger and guilt and pain anymore,” and he was free.

Funny the things you see in here when you scan the building. Seventy men; seventy stories, some worse than others. DC, he’s become the “bird man” of Lunenburg. A few months ago, not even sure why, but he decided a few small birds needed crumbs of bread. Now I see him heading to our ball court with a quart and a half bowl full of breadcrumbs. Twice each day he goes out and feeds dozens of birds, and two small field mice who now venture close.

He’s tearing up bread – I can’t even tell how many slices he’s pulled out of the chow hall this morning – and I’m laughing because he’s so damn precise with his efforts: crust off first (“I shred that between my palms main man!”); then small cube-like pieces. His cut is awash in bread scraps; crumbs flying everywhere; he’s oblivious, focused only on the bread. 

Guys, young mostly – but hey, in here anyone below 40 is considered young – don’t have a clue how you do laundry. There’s a guy jamming everything he has – 3 jeans, 3 blue shirts, sheets, blankets – into the washer and he’s measuring out boxed “All” detergent. Problem is, we buy “All” in one-load boxes and that half of box sprinkled on tap of a non-agitating load of clothes won’t clean anything. “Should I add some shampoo?” he asks.

Look guys, here are a couple of simple rules. First when you use the bathroom you wash your hands (you’d be surprised how many in here don’t bring soap into the bathroom). The shower is for your bathing, not washing your tees and boxers. Second, laundry. You need detergent to clean your clothes. And, washers are built around the principle of agitation and then spin. Don’t over fill. And whatever you do, don’t put your washcloths and towels straight from the shower and throw them in the dryer!

I watch these guys. They don’t know how to make a bed, do a load of laundry, wash a dish, or keep themselves clean. I think we need “life skills” classes. You want to be a “grown ass” man (a favorite inmate expression) then learn to live independently! Institutionalization – you get comfortable letting the institution take care of you. They do. Frankly, it’s easy for them if they can provide for you. You lose your self-respect. You forget everything comes at a price.

Three sex offenders, all white middle-aged guys who in a prior life and without their warped predilections, could have lived in my neighborhood – carry on; they “know more” than anyone. I find myself angry watching these three guys because there’s an undercurrent of racial and economic superiority in their demeanor. None of them will admit to any wrong doing; all “misunderstandings.” Sure those kids (yup, all child sex offenders) asked to be touched and photographed.

What’s the issue? Seems the school has a rule: No sex offenders can work in “academia.” These three all have degrees. The young guys in here can’t stand them – they’re arrogant and abrasive (funny, but at higher levels child sex-offenders don’t behave that way; they become “cell rats”). Me? I work every college class – 3 new ones starting in a week with female faculty who know they can trust me and know there won’t be any crap in the classroom. I read a piece a few weeks ago about “hearing” when God calls you to your vocation. I understand that now.

There is redemption in suffering and atoning. These three don’t get that. They feel persecuted, wronged. Their wives still visit; their lives “outside” still exist (except for that little “registration” requirement!) and yet they feel that they are the victims. I don’t get the mindset …

Rain still falling. There’s a whiff of mackerel in the air. It’s 10:00 am and this guy is microwaving pouch mackerel. “I need 30 grams of protein,” he’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. Health and fitness are big topics yet guys don’t know the first thing about anatomy, physiology, kinesiology. The other day I ran a 6:45 mile – smoked past four young muscle-bound guys half my age. “How’d you do that?” Iggy asked me. “Know your body. Forget 600-pound squats. Get your cardio right. Stretch.

Mumford & Sons on the CD player. Great acoustic music. Dylanesque with their lyrics. They sing, 

“It seems that all my bridges have been burnt

But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works

It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart

But the welcome I receive with the restart.”

And the rain keeps falling and I feel great. I’m six years in. I lost everything and found so much more. Should I feel this good? I don’t think that judge who sent me here expected this. I don’t think anyone did.

“You were a lawyer once, right?” The question caught me by surprise. A new “resident” of our building; big burly, country fellow with a Carolina twang and broad toothy smile. He leaned in. “My pen pal, a nice Christian girl in South Carolina reads your blog.” What? I laugh. I started this blog four years ago to document publicly what I was writing in the cells of the jail and receiving unit. I accept full responsibility for every word. I’ve pissed people off at times; I’ve whined and moaned; but I write, I keep writing every day. Why? Because I thought, what seems so long ago, that maybe – just maybe – this journey would someday matter to someone: my sons; my friends; the woman I loved and lost.

I thought, back then, if I wrote I would be steeled and courageous in whatever I faced, even I thought I couldn’t do this; I could never redeem myself. I wrote and I have had guys threaten me and curse me and officers find the blog and tell me to back off (and once, an assistant U.S. attorney read it and said, “you’re a pretty good writer.”) I wrote, I write, because I have a story and I think of Victor Hugo who said, “If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” The writing brings the light. 

It’s raining and I write because even on a slow, rainy Saturday, this matters. The men in here, so many of them anyway, matter to me. I write so I’ll never forget – good or bad – this. 

“Love it will not betray you

Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free

Be more like the man you were meant to be”

Who you were meant to be. I tell the young guys who daily gather around my cot that idea. Mumford & Sons put it to music. “Be;” “Live;” the words fall like rain…. 

Danny's Song

This past week my older son celebrated his 23rd birthday. The last contact I had with him was three weeks after my arrest. He was entering his junior year of college and within days of flying overseas to spend a semester abroad. A dear friend came to the jail with my son. Through the Plexiglas, I looked out at my boy. Tears poured down my cheeks as I longed to hug him. As our visit ended he looked at me and said “we’re gonna be alright dad; I love you.”



Days earlier I had received my only letter (to date) from him. My son, so much like me in his interests in history, politics, music, cooking; began his terse correspondence with these famous words from Thomas Paine: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Ironically, the same day that he wrote his letter to me, I penned a letter to him. My last sentence in that letter: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”


There has not been a day in that young man’s life that I haven’t recalled the precise moment, when my wife, beaming, told me she was pregnant. I doted over her for nine months, refusing to even allow her to pick up a bag of groceries. I watched how her body transformed, each day as the miracle she carried within her developed. I remember the first time I heard my son’s heartbeat, the first time I felt him stretch and kick.


The day after my wife told me she was pregnant, I was out running. On my headset I heard the beginning notes to Loggins and Messina’s ballad “Danny’s Song”. I started mouthing the words. I soon began singing the song as I ran. At the reprise, tears welled up in my eyes.


“Even though we ain’t got money
I’m so in love with you honey
and every day will bring the chain of love.
In the morning when I rise
sweet tears of joy in my eyes
and tell me everything is gonna be alright.”


It’s a song about a man expressing to his wife the love he feels as he realizes he is a father of a beautiful son.


So much has changed in the past twenty-three years. Until my arrest, both my sons thought I was the best father around. They loved me and looked up to me as only a son can toward his father. I loved my sons deeply. The three of us were inseparable.


I watched as my older son graduated high school and was admitted to a prestigious college. I was full of pride at his intellect and his character. There was never a day when we were together that we didn’t hug and say “I love you”.


Six weeks ago, my ex-wife wrote me the first in a series of letters we’ve exchanged. The reason for her first letter in over seventeen months was to let me know she had met someone through an internet dating service (a twice married man). Included with that brief piece of news (which tore apart what remained of my damaged heart) was a snippet of news on our sons. My older son, my baby boy who I cradled moments after his birth and gently sang Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” to, now refers to me as his “ex-father”.


A well meaning friend arrived for a visit shortly thereafter. “Worried” about me, he proceeded to tell me that my ex has been dating for a “long time”. She had had a long distance relationship with a Canadian band leader from a cruise she took before our divorce was final. That relationship, my friend confided, only ceased when my ex discovered the man was still in a “committed” relationship.


“Even though we ain’t got money
I’m so in love with you honey…”


So, the woman with whom I stood at the front of the church, whom exchanged vows with me, the woman I still love deeply, has been able to “move on” and close that almost thirty year chapter of her life. And my two precious sons, they go forward without a passing thought about the man just three short years ago they thought could never be replaced.


If you told me on that November afternoon in 1981 when we exchanged our vows, or that early March morning in 1988 when our older son was born, or that afternoon in July 1997 when our younger son joined our family; that those emotions we shared, those words we spoke to each other were nothing but fleeting thoughts that could be disregarded in times of crisis and distress, tribulation and disappointment, I would have told you you didn’t understand the bond we shared. There was, I thought, an unbreakable chain of love that would see our marriage, our family, through.


This past week the news reported that Leroy Hassell, Jr., son of the late Chief Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court (Chief Judge Hassell, Virginia’s first African-American Supreme Court jurist, died of cancer just two short months ago) was sentenced following his recent conviction for armed robbery. He was convicted of holding a young man at gun point in his apartment as he demanded money and drugs.


This was a violent crime. This was not his first conviction (he had prior convictions for marijuana possession and shoplifting). His sentence? 15 years will 11 years, 12 months suspended. In other words, Hassell has a two year sentence to fulfill for an armed robbery conviction. Two years is less than one-sixth the sentence I am required to serve.


In the past few weeks two anonymous readers have touched me with their words. Both readers urged me to find comfort in the Lord. I can assure you, if I wasn’t sustained by my faith, I wouldn’t be here right now. I have watched everything I worked for taken from me. I have seen the three most important people in my life utterly reject and abandon me. I have cried out to God more times than I can remember and have actually had more problems, more distress thrust on me.


I remarked to a friend the other day that I have absolutely no idea what God wants from me. I am doing everything in my power to live righteously in here. I turn no one down who seeks my help. I work tirelessly for these students in here. On more than one occasion, I have asked God “what more do you want from me?” I swear to Him I can’t go on, yet the next morning, I somehow jump off my top bunk at 4:00 am and start to pray.


One of the readers told me to “remember how blessed” I am during this trial. If I didn’t realize I was blessed, I wouldn’t be able to endure what’s become of my life.


I’m not a victim. I broke the law. I violated the trust my wife and children placed in me. But the consequences of my actions are significantly in excess of the actions themselves.


Still, I have faith. Still, I love those three. I pray each morning and evening for my ex to find a happy, loving committed relationship. It breaks my heart that she rejected me, but my love for her requires me to pray that someone can give her what I obviously can’t. I pray for my sons continually.


The simple fact is God has given me a “do over”. He has given me an opportunity to care for a great deal of men I would have never given a moment’s thought about. He has given me a chance to make a difference in the lives of many who need someone to just believe in them.


I am blessed. I’ve discovered a level of love, of forgiveness, of compassion and mercy I didn’t know I possessed. And, I have endured through some very dark, terribly lonely days.


Still, my son’s birthday was bittersweet. Like Valentine’s Day – the 30th anniversary of when I proposed to my ex-wife – I am filled with many wonderful memories and a deep sadness over our present circumstances.


I was running yesterday. As on most of my four mile runs around the track, I recited over and over the 23rd Psalm and Isaiah 40. Without realizing it, I began singing “Danny’s Song”. I thought back to that morning when she walked into my law office and said “I’m pregnant”. I thought back to holding my son in my arms, kissing his forehead and whispering “May God bless and keep you always, may your wishes all come true…”


I recently heard music by a new musical group, “Mumford & Sons”. They appeared on the Grammys and sang with Bob Dylan. In a Dylanesque song called “The Cave” the following lyrics appear:


It’s empty in the valley of our heart
The sun, it rises slowly as you walk
Away from all the fears
And all the faults you’ve left behind.


So make your siren’s call
And sing all you want
I will not hear what you have to say


Cause I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it’s meant to be


And I will hold on hope
And I won’t let you choke
On the noose around your neck


And I’ll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I’ll know my name as it’s called again.


Each day another memory is brought into view: birthdays, celebrations, dinners, just a quiet night with my sons, or dancing on the deck with my wife. Memories can be a curse or sustain you. The blessing is in knowing the difference.


Two thoughts struck me as I thought about love and forgiveness.


Dostoyevsky stated “Compassion is the chief law of human existence”.


An anonymous person said: “Young love is when you love someone because of what they do right. Mature love is when you love someone in spite of what they do wrong.”


God has blessed me. At least when it comes to compassion and love He has allowed me to reach my golden years.