freedom realized

this morning i picked up the phone and dialed 10 digits and my brother answered, “what up?” as if this was an every day occurrence.

for the past six years I have had to listen to a disclaimer about receiving a collect call from an inmate at a colorado state correctional facility before I could speak to tommy. those calls were limited to about 25 minutes-today we spoke for nearly an hour. today he was at his girlfriend’s house when we spoke. my nephew, (little tommy,) was nearby watching star wars episode 3. tommy had never operated a dvd player before and certainly had not seen one in a car, which he did when he was released from prison yesterday.

we talked about what he will be getting up to, job opportunities and such. we talked about my daughter, whose name tommy tattooed on his neck but whom he has yet to meet in person. we talked about my recent wedding, which prison kept him from attending. we talked about the child Faith carries in her womb, who that little person will turn out to be. we talked about little tommy and the challenges big tommy must face to help him steer clear of the mistakes his father made. we talked and talked.

it is hard to imagine how good tommy must feel. I guess he is worried some, too. i hope he values the thing he was deprived of more than ever.

i love my brother but that love has manifested itself to me in a way i would not have previously comprehended. people say they love each other and there are certain motions we can all be seen to go through, we stay in touch and talk about the weather, life’s travails, people, events, occasionally ideas, but there is and has been implied in most of my relationships, a distance born of insecurity.

my brother and i are men. there is a stoic, machismo-oriented sense about our interaction that feels like an unbridgeable divide. i sense it and i try to overcome it by speaking my mind but it is as omnipresent as the underlying pain and love we share.

tommy has lived in colorado for many years now, three times as long as this incarceration, i think. but the distance of free men is not comparable to that of one who is shackled. i visited him perhaps four times during the past six years and on one of those occasions, i traveled only to be denied access on the basis of a prison lockdown associated with an outbreak of violence inside.

life is not static. i was living and evolving and changing while tommy was behind bars and despite the constraints, tommy was doing the same thing. i know he does not hold it against me i did not visit more often. i know he appreciates the many books i sent him these last years. i can hardly wait to see my brother even though there is not a plan at present. it will happen.

the correspondence tommy and i have shared is an amazing thing. had he not been imprisoned, it never would have happened. in the letters we sent one another, we rarely practiced small talk. there was little in the way of weather discussion and only occasionally did we turn to what would normally be our favorite fodder, sports. (i should have known he would be paroled in a year when his beloved steelers won the superbowl.)

instead we talked about the big picture, about ideas and ideals, about raising a boy from prison, (or not raising a boy from prison,) about violence and racial tensions and revolt. in some of tommy's letters i saw him regress. i saw him put on his gang mentality like a cloak of invincibility, like a raging boy's defiance. other times i could see the man tommy nuzzling up to the truths i continue to see him embrace.

on his last night in prison he wrote me a letter, (mailed on his way out the next morning.) he wrote about an eerie feeling as if he was walking out to a death chamber. he wrote about the other men inside, men who would never ever leave those confines. he mentioned his tattoos and the state of mind he was in whenever he added one. it was fatalism he felt when he imagined he would never leave the institution.

tommy takes some pride in having endured. he is confident in his ability to convey his experience to others and in that, he feels special, and positive. in this letter he speaks of authenticity, of not portraying himself as someone he is not. he wrote, "...men like me, thugs, gangsters, beautiful losers, inmates, convicts and fathers, well, authenticity is of utmost importance to us."

i read that this morning and the urge to sob welled up inside me. he went on remembering having read about men who attract people by their way of life, ('beautiful losers.') i'm almost certain he is conjuring leonard cohen. my brother, the knucklehead, quoting leonard cohen. the power of art never ceases to amaze me.

tommy recalled his early days of incarceration and how devoid he was of any tangible sense of it ever ending. he contrasts that with the intensity of the light he sees at the end of the tunnel on this his last night of confinement, and how it mixes with images of his son and beautiful women and other things he has been deprived of.

as he readies to walk he reminds me i walk with him and he calls me and others his angels. he says we have accompanied him always. he says he has love to leave and love to receive.

this is my favorite letter ever. and the best part is how he signed it. i thought it represented a certain humility i think he will need. he wrote,

"Tommy
Parolee"