IT'S HARD TO RAISE A KID WITH A PHONE

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

By February 2023, our writing group at Oregon State Penitentiary had found its rhythm and conversation was cooking. In an exercise about silver linings, Kenny (who at this point had served 20 years) read that his son said, “I took all the best parts of you.” Without missing a beat, Chris Lewis replied, “It’s hard to raise a kid with a phone.”

At that time, Chris submitted a piece called “Father Away: The Voice of a Parent Behind Bars.” We agreed that he would expand it for the journal. Circumstances have put a pin in that plan. Chris was transferred to another facility. Any editorial work on the essay has been stalled by correspondence. The Lakota Oyate-ki club received a kyte from him just this week with Winter Storm, a poem he wrote in 2018. Chris has a knack for insight at the right time in a conversation, or in this case, delivering a piece that fits the moment. We were looking for examples that express how parental love extends beyond the boundaries of time and space:

To be there to bear
Your burdens and discord,
With shoulder and hand.

So that next picture
When taken will define
True happiness and peace.

Maintaining relationships with family members is difficult, visits are expensive, particularly if the facility where you are housed is near the far reaches of the valley. Snake River Correctional Institution houses 3000 people on the Idaho border, easily a 6-hour drive from Portland. Consider winter weather, and school calendars, and the cost of gas, overnight stays … visits are few and far between. A parent in prison lacks agency to attend to the immediate, which is typically the concern of a child. Phone lines provide calls measured in 30-minute increments. Too soon into the conversation, the help with homework, the domestic problem at hand, a voice comes on with a one-minute warning which is rarely enough time to satisfactorily wrap up and then, the line goes dead. It punctuates the separation.

Nolan James Briden read Herkimer’s Friend, a tribute to his ailing mother during PowWow. His voice rose from the yard on a sunny August day to provide her comfort, though she was miles away. Here again we have that persistent problem of boundaries. Despite this, his love for his mother transcends those 20 feet walls and in turn, he carries her love in his bones.

Your laughter heals in troubled times,
sending electric waves that re-awaken your baby boy's heart.
Intrinsic Being belonging to spirit,
you are a sacred woman  —  a courageous woman — a kind woman.
You are the world to so many — you are the world to me.

As I read this poem, I feel admiration for this woman who contained troubles and strength, who taught her son that it was OK to cry. Their bond flows in all directions. No doubt this is the grace she has taught her family.

Love is a constant.
Love is a constant.
Love is a constant always flowing and never ending.

Love is constant. Love is transcendent. And still, we need those concrete stories of baby boys being held close. We need families reunited. Last summer, Kenny came home at last to his son and his two grandsons. | TDS