Birthday

            A little story – I had just finished a five-week trial, my first big case as a lawyer. I was defending four prominent local citizens who served as directors in a small East Tennessee bank. The bank failed – part of Tennessee’s 1982 bank run that led a few lawyers to suicide, ruined a number of politician’s careers, and led young lawyers like me into battle after battle in court.

            Here I was, less than four years removed from law school and I was trying a multimillion-dollar shareholder suit. Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t in over my head. I was a good, aggressive trial lawyer. I wouldn’t quit and I didn’t like to lose (two traits that helped me survive my early days in prison). I was in court eight to ten hours each day; then, to the office for three to four hours (plus weekends). Finally, home to an eight-month pregnant wife.

            The jury stayed out a day and a half. Finally, a little after lunch, they came in with a verdict: for the defense on all counts. My clients were vindicated. I drove home and walked into a completely cleaned house and huge meal (a new recipe she was trying – beef stroganoff). I didn’t know what “nesting” meant until later, that surge of energy right before birth.

            I settled in to watch the NIT final. It was a little after eleven when she told me her water broke. “It’s too early.” I said (we were three weeks from his due date). We went to the hospital got her in a room, and less than three hours later I saw him born. He was beautiful. And I held him moments after he took his first breath. I looked at him and knew there was a God. And I don’t know why, but I leaned in close to him and sang my favorite Bob Dylan song, “Forever Young.” It was for me, every wish I had for my precious son.

            There are a thousand memories like that floating in my heart and head right now. There’s the time I was the only dad in the pool during “Mother-tot” swim and he and I swam circles around the others. There was 1993 and my beloved New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup, their only one since the 1940s. It was nearly 1:00 am and I went up to his room and picked him up and carried him down to our living room. As the players skated around the ice and Natalie Merchant’s song, “These Are Days” played, I held him and told him this is why we stay loyal to our teams, to our families – it’s for days like these.

            For so long we were inseparable. He thought I was perfect – the perfect lawyer, father, husband. Maybe that was the problem. Or maybe, I led him to believe the world was black and white. Either way, my arrest changed us. It destroyed a family and for that I am solely responsible. Someone asked me a question about my “ex” the other day and in a moment of unimaginable honesty I told her I live with more heartache over my ex and my sons than anyone knows. There is nothing that prison could do to me that cuts me quite like that.

            My older son turns 26 tomorrow. He is a remarkable young man – An honors graduate of a prestigious liberal arts college and a soon-to-be law school grad. He married his college sweetheart who is as beautiful as she is brilliant. He has his whole life ahead of him – a great job already lined up; a young wife who loves him. And I miss him terribly.

            Birthdays, anniversaries, so many memories. Those are my real prison sentence. But, like Paul in his letter to the Romans put it, “But we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”

            Maybe Paul Simon explained it better. I found myself singing this song as I ran this morning:

            “Oh little darling of mine

            I just can’t believe it’s so

            And though it seems strange to say

            I never been laid so low

            In such a mysterious way

            And the course of a lifetime runs

            Over and over again

            But I would not give you false hope

            On this strange and mournful day

            When the mother and child reunion

            Is only a motion away.

            Happy Birthday son. I love you. Dad.

All in Your Head

It was bitterly cold here the other morning.  The temperature, in the upper thirties, along with wind gust hitting thirty-five miles per hour made it feel even colder.  But like so many other days with lousy, frigid weather, my friend DC and I went out to run and workout.  Neither of us wore sweats.  And it was cold.  Once I got moving, I forgot about the chill, but it still took awhile to get use to.

We both headed in on a door break and guys looked at us like we were crazy.  “How can you go out there like that?” one guy asked DC.  He smiled and said “It’s all in your head”.  His words got me thinking.

Perhaps there is no better known Hymn in America than “Amazing Grace”.  That song crosses generations, races and denominations.  Something about the words, “saved a retch like me” – most of us don’t even know what a retch is – just resonates with us.  We claim it corporately; it’s a deeply personal, moving song that somehow makes sense to everyone.

Yet, the history behind the song is more profound.  John Newton was a British slave ship captain.  He’d made a number of cross-Atlantic trips from Africa, to the Caribbean, to the Eastern seaboard of the American colonies, then finally back to London.  Each trip was the same:  human cargo piled in cramped, filthy ship holds to the islands and colonies, and then crops and products back to England.

It was a good life.  He was paid well and regarded with respect by this peers.  In the eyes of society he was a success.  His life, however, took an abrupt turn on one return trip from the colonies.  Off the coast of Carolina, near Hatteras, Newton’s ship was caught in a horrendous storm.  The ship was forced onto the rocks and began to break apart.

It was dark.  The wind howled.  The rain poured down.  And, Newton’s ship cracked and tore open as the sea’s waves slammed it over and over against the jagged rocks.  Newton knew he was going to die.  This life-long member of the Church of England, a good loyal subject of the King and country, knew he would drown.  In those hours of fear and desperation he prayed not just to live through the night but also he faced God with his life.  He realized what a sinful life he led.  And, he asked his God to forgive him.

The next morning, he awoke to find calm seas and his ship still there on the rocks.  The sky around him was blue.  The sun shone.  He realized God had spared his life.  He wasn’t sure why, but he knew, God’s hand was in his life.

Sometime later, Newton penned the song “Amazing Grace”, built around his survival that night in the storm.  He returned to England, resigned his ship captaincy, and began a career as a church worker.  He was one of the driving forces in Britain’s decision to outlaw slavery.  For the remainder of his life he tried to understand the mystery that was his God.  He was saved for a reason.

This past week, I finished reading major league pitcher RA Dickey’s autobiography, “Wherever I Wind Up”.  It is not a typical sports story.  Dickey’s career has had more than its share of ups and downs.  To describe him as a journeyman pitcher would be an understatement.  He went from Olympic team member and first round draft pick to the minor league circuit, barely hanging on, occasionally getting called up.

He carried great secrets, baggage.  Sexually abused as a child, he presented the image of a happy, faithful husband and father.  Infidelity almost cost him his marriage.  An inability to throw effectively almost cost him his dreams.  He was separated from his wife, on the minor-league circuit, barely making enough to support himself and his family when he bet some teammates he could swim across the Missouri River.  He tried…and almost drowned. 

It was the beginning of a new life for Dickey.  His pitching improved. His marriage began to rebuild as he dealt with the pain and torment caused by his abuse.  Last year, Dickey won 20 games and the National League Cy-Young award.   Dickey’s book opens with the Latin maxim.  “Dum, spiro, spero”, which means “While I breathe, I hope.”

The human mind is indeed a funny thing.  It is capable of great thoughts, powerful, merciful, healing thoughts.  It is also capable of great evil.  “It’s all in your head”.  My friend DC doesn’t understand how truly insightful his words are.

In “Forever Young”, the classic ballad written by Bob Dylan, a father tells his children all his wishes for their future.  As I’ve written before, just moments after both my sons were born, as I held them for the first time and looked on the God-given miracle that is life, I whispered Dylan’s words to them as though by reciting them they would be imprinted with those characteristics of righteousness, mercy and courage.  One line, “May you always know the truth and see the light surrounding you”, would cause me to choke up, perhaps because I wanted desperately to feel that light around me.

I have come to see life in a new way in here, surrounded by men with lives so broken, angry, and lost.  In reality, they’re no different than anyone else.  We all have baggage and it builds up, weighs us down, and eventually we find ourselves pushed against the rocks.

There are days in here when I just can’t make sense out of what these men do.  I see utter mayhem in Syria, I see the tiny white coffins in Newtown, and I wonder what is going on.  None of it – my own feelings included – makes sense.   It is as if the whole world is drowning.  Then, I remember the season, Christmas, a time of hope, and I think RA Dickey was right.  “Dum, spiro, spero.”

“It’s all in your head.”  After finishing my workout I always stretch.  I lay down on the concrete, close my eyes, and recite Bible verses as I loosen my legs.  I lay there, eyes closed, saying in a whisper the words from the final four verses of Isaiah 40.  I memorized those verses my first week in jail as I struggled with my very survival.  They are words of hope and encouragement for a people who thought their God wasn’t seeing their loss and pain.  Isaiah reminded his people that God heard their cries.  “The everlasting God, the Lord, does not grow weary or tired….”  And then he reminded everyone that those who wait on the Lord will be given new strength.  “They will soar on wings like eagles.”

“Look at that, Larry.”  It was DC.  Directly overhead was a huge eagle, wings spread wide.  He was floating on the air currents circling round and round our ball court and rec yard.  He never flapped his wings; just soared.

Was it a sign?  I don’t know.  I know there are a lot of things wrong right now.  People are hurting – in here and out there.  So many are suffering.  Lives out of control with divorce and rejection, war, violence, loneliness.  But at this particular moment in time I choose to look elsewhere.  “It’s all in your head.”  There is good news.  Dum, spiro, spero.  While I breathe, I hope.  And hope will see us through.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

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.

I Shall Be Released

A great many tunes go through my mind whenever I run. It’s like I have an iPod in my head sometimes. Early on in here I bought a portable CD player/radio and a handful of CD’s. I bought music I know and love: Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, to name a few.



Music, songs I know, helps get me through. That is, until this past week. I noticed that all the new shows were using songs that mean something to me, songs that remind me of what I’ve lost.


This past week “Parenthood” used a classic Dylan song, “Forever Young” in an episode. I sang that song to both my sons’ moments after they were born. It resonated with me as my prayer for them.


“May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the sun,
And climb on every rung
May you stay Forever Young.”


That song plays on in my head each day as I run the track. Only now it is from a father who is separated, alienated from his sons. I hear that song and my heart breaks a little more each day.


A new show, “Raising Hope” was on the other night. A baby refused to stop crying. A woman came in and began quietly singing Loggins and Messina’s “Danny’s Song”, a beautiful ballad about a father seeing his first born and telling his wife even though they have little, he is fulfilled.


“Even though we ain’t got money
I’m so in love with you honey
Everything will bring a chain of love.
In the morning when I rise
Sweet tears of joy to my eyes
And tell me everything’s gonna be alright.”


I choked up. I used to hear that song all the time when I held my kids, when I watched my wife sleep. Now, the loss of her, the emptiness, the loneliness weighs me down. I feel as if in mourning. I’m not complete without them.


My folks come monthly for a visit. They mean well, yet they don’t realize (or don’t want to realize) the pain they cause me with each conversation reminding me of what I lost. “She is shopping with. . .” “The kids are doing . . .” I go a week, maybe two, thinking the pain, the sorrow, the emptiness, is lessening, then the visit and the songs begin again.


I was down this afternoon after the visit. Big S went outside with me. I told him how I feared I’d never get over the loss of my wife, how I still loved her even though I knew I’d never see her again. I told him how much I missed my sons; “how much more”, I asked him, “can I lose”? We walked around the track. His words helped. I am blessed with a friend like him, part son, part best friend.


I began running sprints and the song came to me. Dylan and the Band:


“They say every man needs protection
They say even man must fall
But I swear I see my reflection
Somewhere so high above the wall.
I see my life come shinin’
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released.”


There are lonely, difficult days in here. Sometime I have to remind myself God’s way isn’t like my way. Sometime I have to expect that my hardship, my struggle – as difficult as it feels – is still part of His promise to me.


I hate this place. I hate the damage I’ve done to the three people I love the most. But, everyday gives me hope. I am reminded of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Trouble Water”:


“When you’re weary
Feelin small
When tears are in you eyes
I will dry them all
I’m on your side
When times are hard
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled waters
I will lay you down.”


Days in here come and go, but my hope remains.