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I think of December as my first draft for New Year’s resolutions. I’m resolving to wake up before everyone else and write. When I do, my writing resembles a stream of waking thoughts then it coalesces around something. This morning, that something was a letter to my prison pen pal. I pause my stream to review his file. Then I set to writing Andre by hand. We can’t use email and so we rely on the postal service. I force myself to write one and only one draft. It feels like a high wire act. There’s no place for revision. And I’m a terrible speller.
Andre is my third prison pen pal. The first stopped writing. The second just got out. So I write knowing little about Andre. If men like Andre want to participate in the program they fill out a card with their age and interests. They hand it in. Time passes. They forget about it until someone like me sends them a letter. I learned from my second pal not to read into what is on file.Â
So I introduce myself to Andre. I ask him how are you, what are your interests. I’m not supposed to give many specifics about myself. I can’t tell him about my family or job or home. I can’t tell him I’m a licensed attorney, but I don’t practice. I can’t tell him that I was trying my best to give this letter my all while remaining as quiet as possible because my son had fallen asleep on the couch. Last night he returned home from two days of IVIG treatment. Then he threw up all over the living room and kitchen. He’d been watching WallyKazam, a cartoon that teaches vocabulary while entertaining.
IVIG is administered intravenously through a drip into a vein for six hours.Â
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My son is twelve, autistic, and engages in self injurious behaviors. The IVIG is meant to cure those behaviors.
After my wife cleaned him up. I gave him my hoodie. He laid down on the couch and we fetched him a blanket and a pillow. My wife slept in the living room in case he woke up in the middle of the night.
So I write to Andre by the light of our Christmas tree.
I tell Andre that it gets dark before 5 and stays dark past 7 in the morning. Andre lives in Arkansas; thier winter’s have more daylight. Â
The lights do not put me into the holiday spirit, but I feel l need to write about Christmas.
The Society of Malta, a Catholic organization, runs the progmam. Visiting the imprisoned is a corporal work of mercy by Catholic teaching. That work is one of seven works and comes between visiting the sick and burying the dead.
The first disciples lived in a culture that viewed sickness as punishment for a moral failing. Our culture views imprisonment as punishment for a moral failing. The Torah of their time prioritized restitution for the victims over punishing the offender. Prison as a long term punishment only appears from outside Jewish culture. In Genesis, Joseph is thrown into an Egyptian prison for falsely assaulting the wife of his master. In his own book, Jeremiah is imprisoned during the Babylonian captivity for speaking out against the government. In the New Testament, Barabas and Paul are imprisoned by the Romans for insurrection. Jesus, too, spent a night in jail for testifying he was king.
Imprisonment serves political means in our culture. Some politicians want to show they’re tough on crime, others want scapegoats, still others revenge.
I don’t need to explain this to Andre.
I don’t know how religious Andre is. Some people think the most important thing about you is your relationship with Jesus Christ and they're always trying to figure out where you stand with him.
When I wrote my first pen pal, I wanted to signal virtue and achieve perfection. I needed to distance myself from the undesirable elements of a church that I am no longer with. I couldn’t empathize with my pen pal. I wanted to justify myself.
I learned from that relationship like any mindful relationship.
I tell Andre that I’m writing in the dark by the light of a Christmas tree. I explain that metaphor, not knowing my reader. I’m in the dark about him and so many things. I’m writing in dark times, but I don’t elaborate because I am on the outside. I am sitting in a quiet home. Warm.Translating my thoughts to the page.
I will stop writing to make my son chocolate chip pancakes; his stomach is better. I will pour my creamer in my wife’s coffee; we’re up. I will walk though my town to board the train into the City where I will swipe into my job that affords me the means to pursue my passions. I will drop Andre's letter at the post office during my lunch break. The letter will be postmarked by the Wall Street office. And he will know that I am rich.
Dave Nash (he/him) is writing and revising stories about masculinity’s complexities. He is a slush pile reader, book club joiner, positively positive workshop commenter, and off-beat rhymer. Get more facts about Dave Nash at https://davenashwrites.substack.com/.