He has worked power with his arm, he has scattered those who are arrogant in the thought of their hearts; he has pulled dynasts down from thrones and exalted the humble, He has filled the hungry with good things and sent th rich away empty.
Luke 1:51-53
Sherry and I went to prison for Christmas. Someone we know is incarcerated. Not my first rodeo. My dad had been before I was born. My brother did a stretch. Two nieces and a nephew, too. I only just squeaked past the reach of Corrections on a couple of occasions during my own turbulent and occasionally reckless younger years.
Arrived just before sundown. The paling light glooomed on tiers of razor wire containing hundreds of unseen women in dull indigo uniforms. Two hours is the limit, and both the visitor and visitant have to submit to detailed and intimate searches before the visit . . . the visitant to another afterward.
The visting room was filled, more than we’d ever seen. It was Christmas after all. The stores have been packed lately, too. We were the first through the pre-screen, putting our shoes and socks and belts back on and waving to [——-] as we approached, then embraced by turns. The visiting room is wall to wall vending machines, for which visitors have to purchase a card and fill it with digital value. Three white women waited with seven black women.
Cheap food and lack of exercise had them all pudgily soft, perhaps by design, and yet everyone had gone to some lengths to have their hair and makeup done. I felt sorry for them, as we were the first visitors in, sitting at their lonely tables from where they can’t even rise during the visitations (the visitors have to use the vending machines for them). Who could tell what landed them there? Stealing money? Dealing drugs, or dealing drugs to get the drugs upon which they’d come to depend? Prostitution to get the drugs? Kiting checks? That fucking devil, Meth (you can tell by the teeth)? Maybe assault and battery, murder even . . . though these are more common for men. Sitting there, they just looked like women, and not well-to-do women, but most (one imagines) from what Johnny Cash once called “the hopeless, hungry side of town.”
Then, one by one, or group by group, more visitors arrived, and with each new entry, a prisoner’s face would come alight. Mothers came. Fathers came. Siblings came. Children came. Smiles, tears, tears-with-smiles, the famished holding of children. The room filled with chatter and laughter, and for that brief moment, love overcame everything . . . and the sadness of it all was enfolded in a joy that made the sadness all the more sad and the joy all the more joyous.
In two hours—less for some—they’d all be returned to their common exile, with it’s insanities, its boredom, its control, the terrible food, the cell block recipes, the shitting in the open, the televisions, the longings, the anger, and the cliques. But there, in that hideously fluorescent room with its big, surly guard and vending machines sentries, something else broke through, stole in like a thief in the night . . . like a promise.
And he will wipe away very tear from their eyes, and no longer will there be death, no longer will there be sorrow or lamentation or pain, for the first things have passed away. And the one who sat on the throne said, “Look: I shall make all things new.”
Revelation 21:4-5
I love this, Stan. Thank you.