I
read an interesting devotion the other morning about Mary, using her to
describe the seasons in our lives. Imagine her joy, he wrote, at the birth of
her son. How awed and proud must she have felt when the Magi came and knelt
beside her newborn or when an elderly Simeon lifted her baby boy up in the
temple. Was their trepidation in her
heart as she watched her adult son carve out his own path, traveling the
countryside and proclaiming news of Israel’s God? Was she afraid as she watched
him take on the powers that be? Imagine her pain at the foot of the cross as
she watched her son die.
Mother’s
lives are forged in pain. Bury a child and you bury a part of the mother. It is
a difficult, painful role a woman undertakes when she becomes a mother. So many
fail. So many of their children’s lives don’t turn out as hoped or planned.
So
guys in prison prepare for Mother’s Day just like you would outside. There are
cards to send out and calls to make. And, there are the visits. This past
weekend the visitation room was full with moms, wives, and “baby mommas” coming
to see their men in prison. I learned early in this experience that you could
tell a great deal about any man locked up simply by his relationship with his
mom. A guy whose mother gave up on him was as close to lost as there was.
See,
moms don’t give up on their kids. Moms ride with you through the disappointments,
and pain of lost relationship, or jobs, or even prison. My mother makes no
apologies for letting me know she hates this place. She undergoes humiliating
pat downs and searches just to come spend a few hours with me each month. I’ve
been here at this facility almost four years and not a month has gone by that
my mother hasn’t reminded my dad, “We need to get up to see Larry.”
There
aren’t words I can find to explain what that means. Following my arrest, it was
my dad who refused to talk to me. For nine months we didn’t exchange even a
hello. Fathers, you understand, have expectations for their sons. And, the
consequences of breaking those expectations are swift and sure. My mom never
stopped writing, never stopped talking to me, never stopped crying and praying
for me. It was my mom who one day just said “I’ve had it. Bud, talk to your
son.” That simple act began the healing between my father and me.
Mothers.
Being blessed with a good mom doesn’t mean you won’t screw up. Being cursed
with a mother who doesn’t love you isn’t a ticket to failure, but the
relationship, that mother and child relationship, matters so much, especially
when your life turns and you find yourself in here.
So
guys prepared and preened to get ready for a visit with their moms. A few guys
whose moms had already passed quietly went about their days.
Life
isn’t easy. It doesn’t usually go as planned. There is heartache, and
difficulty, and disappointment. For those like me who are fortunate, there is
the constant presence of a mother who believes there is a future for their
child.
Then,
there is Dom. A mid-thirties Black man, Dom has spent his entire adult life in
and out of prison. Three years for robbery here, four years for assault there.
He presents himself as a hardened man, no emotion, no feeling. And yet, he told
me how his mother – seventeen when she had him, drug user, alcoholic – left him
at two months old with his grandmother.
“She’d
show up every year or two when she thought she could get state aid as a single
mother with children.” Dom was in and out of family court from the time he was
two. His mother was in and out of his life. It had, it still has, an effect on
him.
Last week he was sending out cards. He had one
for his mother. She’d started writing two years ago and came to his college
graduation last January. “She’s trying,” he said, “maybe trying to make up for
the past. And, she’ll always be my mother.”
I
got that. Like my mom with my failures, I will always be her son. Maybe that’s
the key to the mystery that is mothers and children that even prison can’t
break. It is a relationship forged in hope in the future.
