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.

Herman, Jo Pa and Us

Yes, we have cable connections at our beds.  Most guys have TV’s:  clear plastic, 13 inch color sets (remotes are prohibited) that cost over $200.00 but can be purchased in catalogs for $70.00 (electronics are covered by the exclusive contract DOC has with Keefe.  Inmates – just as with commissary, phone calls, and CDs – pay exorbitant mark ups for “personal property”.  And most guys do their time watching TV – a lot of it.

Sports, as you can imagine, dominates TV watching in here (closely followed by BET and Univision (the Spanish network that specializes in beautiful women 24/7).  This past week all eyes were focused on two huge scandals and news and sports converged into a perfect storm of opinions.  Herman Cain, black Republican candidate for President, has been dogged over allegations brought by four white women that years ago he sexually harassed them.  As that story swirled around the building with debates over the veracity of the accusers’ stories and underlying racial component to it, the tragedy that has become Penn State broke.

Penn State:  Football, Jo Pa and pedophilia.  Newscasters flocking to “Happy Valley” to “report” (I use that word tongue in cheek) every scurrilous detail.  With self-righteous indignation, talking heads tell the viewers exactly what the proper moral response should have been from Joe Paterno, the athletic director, the grad assistant and everyone else involved.

And the news reporters:  what must Edward R. Murrow be thinking?  They report as “breaking news” every lurid tidbit they can find.  Each mention of “anal penetration” brings another spike in their Network’s Neilsen rating.  And the notion of innocent until proven guilty?  “Screw that.  We can speculate why Sandusky wasn’t offered a head coaching job anywhere. “

Meanwhile, as their grandfatherly head coach is forced out, Penn State students gather and chant, “Jo Pa” until the cameras show up and the night mixes with alcohol and anger and cars are turned over and windows broken.  All the while we sit in our prison dorm and watch and argue.

Herman Cain.  You want black inmates to feel sympathy for a Republican, run the stories the way they’ve come out about Cain.  The entire episode smacks of the century old fears that black men are hypersexual.  The fact that the black man in question is a conservative Republican only adds to the feeding frenzy.

Penn State.  Regular inmates hate sex offenders, especially pedophiles.  Though this – and all compounds – have their share of them, they survive in prison under the constant fear their crimes will be found out.  If my crime and education carry special status with respect and admiration, theirs is at the opposite end of the spectrum.  At higher level facilities child sex offenders are routinely raped, beaten and murdered.  They spend their bids in “pc” – protective custody – for fear of what the general prison population would do to them.

Here, they are taunted (“diaper sniper”, “clown hands”), pushed around and robbed.  A year ago I wrote a blog detailing my ambivalence dealing with sex offenders.  How, I wondered, do I meet my Christian duty to be merciful with my disgust over a man who would find sexual release with a child?  I reached an uneasy equilibrium, a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach that allowed me to treat each man the same, to not pass judgment.  And then came Penn State. 

Is Sandusky guilty?  I don’t know.  Should Joe Paterno morally have done more?  I don’t know all the details.  I know this – in a frenzy to get ratings our “Fourth Estate” has sold their souls and we collectively encourage it each time we buy into the “breaking news” of the day mantra.

I know one other thing.  The New Testament Book of James (my favorite Book in the Bible) details in five chapters Christian discipleship.  It is not an easy path.  As I listened to the debates in here unfold about Herman Cain, Penn State and Joe Paterno; one admonition from James kept replaying in my mind:  “mercy triumphs over judgment.”  Wise words if ever there were any.

And for all those who “know” precisely what Herman Cain did and what Joe Paterno should have done Rudyard Kipling said it best:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

to serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there nothing in you
except the will which says to them:  Hold on.”