The Visit

I googled the prison and double checked the visiting instructions. I zoomed in on dress code and money...I wanted to get it right!

2 rings, 1 necklace, 1 bracelet -

$20 in $5's allowed for me and $20 in $5's allowed for him -

No hoodies -

No sagging or holes in jeans -

Visiting 1 to 3 -

 I had taken my outfit out 2 days before. My kids say I'm "particular" everything has to match. Freshly ironed, coordinated, and hung up, just like when I was in prison, anxiously, with fear and excitement I waited.

 Early Friday morning, I started the drive north from Portland and realized the prison is not where my friend said it was. It was further north, much further north. My whole day began to kaleidoscope, but one thing was certain - Visiting was 1 to 3. I had to be there.

 I called and canceled my hotel on the south end of Seattle, Monroe is an hour north and it wasn't "outside of Olympia" as I had been told. I rescheduled my late lunch to an early dinner. On the phone, the hotel clerk refused to accommodate my requests to cancel my reservation for free, so that meant a pit stop for a face-to-face! Her boss made her apologize!

 I arrived at the prison at 1 pm - my friend had been moved. Typically, this is the end of the story...because driving back home not having a visit isn't a tale worth telling. It’s heartbreaking!

 However, my friend had been moved from medium custody to minimum custody, inside the main facility where I was. Visiting wasn't 1 to 3 here. It was from 12:30 to 7.

 Before entering the facility, I did what I do whenever my freedom is out of my hands, I texted my sister. "Visiting is from 1 to 3." That was our way of saying, "if you don't hear from me by 3:30 there's a problem", but now inside the facility, I had no way of telling her I would be staying longer.

 For the next 3 hours, my friend and I whom I hadn't seen in 5 years; my friend that I thought I wouldn't see for 25 years, we laughed. We laughed big and hard, and deep. We talked of memories, prison politics, and reckless shenanigans. Behind these walls and locked doors, we had found escape. Escape to a place of joy and laughter. Escape to a place of friendship and love. Escape to a place of momentary freedom. It was a priceless moment!

 My heart wanted to stay until 7 until they said "Visiting Over", but I couldn't. I knew my sister's heart at 3:01 would start to worry. I had to balance her free worry, against his locked up need. I stayed until 4:30. With each passing minute dreading my exit and anxiously looking forward to it, I tried to stay focused and present with my friend. We spent all the money on vending machine snacks, sandwiches, ice cream, and sodas. We purchased photo tickets, but the camera broke. No memories to be held except the ones in our hearts.

 I left quickly through the prison entrance to the guarded parking lock. “DO NOT RUN” echoed in my mind as I recalled the facilities rules. I reached my rental car and when I turned on my phone there was my sister...calls and texts. I hurriedly called her back to assure her that freedom was still mine. I told her of our laughs. I told her how he asked me to come back, but I wasn't sure if I had clothes for that. He said, "wear that again". My "particular" self said, "I can't wear this two days in a row" He laughed and said, "I'm gonna wear this two days in a row".

 Through the laughter then and now, tears began to cascade down my face. So much joy inside of darkness, so much love in the midst of pain. I switched from telling her about the jokes we told, to uncontrollably crying and rehearsing my own gratefulness for her and my mother, my kids, and their mothers NEVER missing a visit.

 For three and a half years, every week without fail I got to hold and be held by a loved one. For three and a half years every week, I got to laugh about life inside and outside of prison. For three and a half years every week I got vending machine spoiled (I'm sure my mother’s response to this will list the dollar amount she claims I owe her, but if she don't know by now she gone learn today  JESUS PAID IT ALL - take it up with him).

 There is something POWERFUL about visiting. It anchors the incarcerated in the assurance that they are not forgotten and still loved. It repels some of the harms that prison offers by declaring to guards and others "I'm cared for. I matter". It snatches back the curtain of incarceration and opens the door into a glimpse of future and freedom.

 I am certain, that some of the greatest harm done to incarcerated folks is in the disconnect from family, friends, community and human touch. The sense of abandonment demands an answer far too often found in the bosom of prison gangs, forcing off the person we once knew metamorphosed into an image and identity foreign to us.

 It is this new identity, void of our visits, our touch, our connections, that often walks out of prison and back into the lives of people familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Expected to be who they were, but lost in many ways to their own selves, and complete strangers to a world that has moved on without them.

We lose our loved ones not so much to prison itself, but rather to our own failure to hold on even tighter to them when they are snatched up into that system. A system designed to decimate black, brown, and broke(n) communities. A system born out of slavery, institutionalized by the constitution, and capitalized on by greedy businesses and government entities.

 Over 7 million folks are under some form of correctional supervision - in 2019 I challenge you to set aside your fear, your shame, your ignorance and visit a loved one in prison or sponsor a family member to do so. Just because our loved ones are locked in doesn't mean that we have to be locked out.