Four Doors Away

"And these here, they're in for life..."

I'm inside the medium-security section of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. I'm here to do a radio project that gives a special troop of Girl Scouts the chance to voice their stories of living life with a mother in prison.

Around me moms and daughters are sitting close together, laughter tinkling around the room as they spread the peanut butter on their sandwiches with plastic knives. The coordinator of this program is explaining to me that the 'N/A' next to some moms' names on this list means this is all their gonna get. There will be no more comparing this time in here with what they might someday do out there. They are here for the rest of their lives.

Only a few names say that -- most will get another chance to raise their own daughters -- but there are those few... and for them i stand in total amazement. What a feat of strength it must be, to see your daughter leave through the locked doors after just a short time.

Four locked doors away is the sweet still air of a sunny Saturday in Oregon. In a couple hours, the girls here today will say a sorrowful goodbye to their mamas, and wait another two weeks to come back. Even if they do come before that--on a regular visit and not one with Girl Scouts--they won't be able to sit on their mom's laps like they are today, or hug them for as long as they want to. The special rules for this Girl Scout troop are just one of the ways these mothers are getting back their basic humanity, even while behind bars.

As a parent, I can't comprehend the idea of not being able to embrace my own daughter. It sets the hairs on my arm on end to think about it. I want to tear up or run out of the room, or call my daughter on the phone just to see how she's doing. I have a profound respect for these women for what they must go through, when the fourth door slams shut.

I can hear the more traditional people in my life whispering, "well they're in there for something, so don't feel too sorry," but I don't think of it like that. Convictions or not, overworked DA's or not , three-strike-rules or not, racial profiling or not, suspended sentences for petty crimes or not, Measure 11 or not -- it's unnatural to look at your baby through a layer of glass, or have restrictions upon how and when you can snuggle them.

In just a few minutes, I'll leave through those four locked doors. I'll be grateful when I get to the other side, watching the way a puff of a cigarette rises above the parking lot, in a place where nothing else moves, the way the October light plays on the dappled back of a horse, ridden by a little girl across the street from the prison, and how everything out here seems to move so slow and so fast... and how freedom feels different, after only mere moments of not having it...

The mothers and daughters from the local Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program will be featured on my radio show, Bread and Roses, on KBOO 90.7 FM in the coming months. Stay tuned for times and dates right here, or at www.kboobreadandroses.blogspot.com and www.nicolevulcan.com.

Switching things around

It's not that i don't love writing on this forum. That's not it at all. It's just that when you're a scrappy freelance writer, you often have to write the stuff that pays money first, and sometimes late in the night, you can twist your head around writing for fun. I wonder what that is sometimes...

Amidst all of that, I'm also getting more serious about my online profile. That's why I've created www.nicolevulcan.com to establish a web presence that doesn't necessarily present me as the harried mother of a spirited child (right off the bat anyway-- they're gonna figure it out eventually!). I'll also be moving this blog over to Wordpress one of these days, to give the whole thing a classier look.

For now, drop by my new site and leave me comment, telling me what you think. If you do i'll be your bestest friend and love you forever.

Chillin' green

As you will see from the right-hand side of this blog, it is supposed to be about self-sufficiency, single parenting and social change.

Sometimes i deliver, other times i ramble about the woes of raising a rambunctious kid. (Who, by the way, is doing much better about listening to her teacher these days -- no thanks to my woeful whining on this forum.)

But once in a while, i actually have epiphanies that combine the self-sufficiency, single parenting and social change all in one. Maybe they're not that revolutionary to all of you, but they make me feel better, and they save me a few coins.

So here's one:

When the wind starts blowing and cold air is seeping in, making you not want to set foot outside your door, you have a couple choices to make. You could crank up the heat and resign yourself to paying out the nose for the next six months, or you could stave it off a bit longer by snuggling. Yep, i just told you to snuggle your way out of your cranking up the furnace, and using the fossil fuels that bring the unhappy bill to your door.

I've probably admitted at least once that i sleep with my kid. I try on occasion to get her back in her own bed, but then cold weather comes along and she becomes my own little sustainable heater. Imagine it. Instead of having the heat cranking all night, you are curled up around a 98-degree body, eight hours a night, times 6 months. That's not a little coin--it's a lot.

Just add food and water, and she will warm my bed all night -- no gas bill involved.

Birth and Growth

It comes around every year. Our house gets doused in black and orange; more garishly than we dare to go for the Christmas green and red.

We just love Halloween -- because it's near the girl's birthday, and because we get to invent characters for ourselves that we may or may not really want to be. I tend to go for the grotesque-ish versions of real life people -- J.D. the androgynous personal trainer, Cindy the sleazily-polyestered 70's skiier, Rodney the Butt Rock Roadie. I get really damn serious on this blog but in real life i am kind of funny. The kiddo, meanwhile, goes for the princess kind of stuff -- tiaras, gowns, and Tinkerbell. I tried to get her to put in the ugly teeth i got in a three-pack this year, but she was having none of it.

Last year I wrote this blog about sustainable Halloween. All of it still applies -- only this year we added a huge pumpkin patch to the garden to harvest our own jack-o-lanterns too. I had grand illusions of selling my orange beauties at the farmer's market, so my dad rented a tiller early in the spring and got the ball rolling. When my copious planting yielded only about 30 pumpkins, some smaller than a softball, I decided to use them as painting projects during the kiddo's birthday, instead of hawking them in the rain at the amateur's table.

By the way, I wrote a story about the girl's birthday last year around this time too -- so i suppose now is a good time to reflect on that one as well. Happy 6th, my love!

Changes

It's eight o'clock at night and i'm rousing myself from a warm spot under the covers of my daughter's bed. She drifted off to sleep about thirty minutes ago. Me, i pretended to be wide awake for about five, then slid slowly into rest and comfort for the next 25. Counterintuitively, now i'm pouring myself a glass of wine to wake back up.

It's just so quiet here, with the house all to myself...

But this the way i've wanted it -- just me, my kid, and the starry black night to fill in whatever way i choose. I've relied on the presence of other people to fill my time and thoughts for too long, perhaps at the expense of my child, and i'm through doing it. I'll take the lonely pop of a bottle that will be drunk by only me over the sad flash that crosses my daughter's face, when she realizes her home may not be the safety zone she thought it was.

It went like this:

I had to make a choice between an old old friend (and roommate) recently, and the little girl in the other room, who's turning six this week. If you have any conception of the strength of a mother's love, then you know which one i chose. But it was hard -- pushing the friend to the side over the wrong words spoken, and knowing that i'd be facing more poverty and quiet nights because of it. Knowing that i may lose a friend over something that could be twisted into being not that big of a deal.

What i realized though, is that my daughter was watching. She would know that i had allowed someone to treat her with disrespect, and she would remember. What would i want her to remember -- that a roommate had spoken to her the wrong way, and i had passed it over? Or that her mother had wrapped her arms around the sanctuary that is our home and said "no more"?

The word 'sanctuary' kept running through my head, and i knew i would have to make this decision over and over, should i keep choosing to have roommates.

So among the other changes that are upon us due to kindergarten, there's another one -- that our house is our own. No late-night forays to the back patio for a glass of wine and conversation with the old friends and roommates, but no deciding who is more important than who either.