Letter From My Wife

Yesterday as I was waiting for my name NOT to appear on the trans-pack list, the mail call came. I received six pieces of mail: 3 from friends, one from my Dad, one from my younger sister and one from my wife. I usually save the letters from my wife, mother and sponsor for last. Today I opened all the other wonderful pieces of mail and one of the letters from my friend informed me of some news regarding my sponsor and my younger sister’s letter was sent prior to the letter I received from her the day before. I can’t figure out the mail system and sometimes reading some of these out of order letters can be a little confusing but her letters are wonderful.

After reading all the other pieces, I opened the manila envelope my wife sent. It is a treat receiving something from my wife and this was her third letter. As soon as I opened it, I saw the pictures she sent. They were of my children on their first day of school and my wife was also in one of the pictures. There was also a picture of my daughter and son walking in a parade with their soccer uniforms on alongside my wife. Finally there was a picture of the three of them at the Jersey shore. Oh my how my children are growing. My daughter is as pretty as ever and her hair is much longer then I remember it. My son is so handsome and has grown so much in these few months. When I saw these pictures I had tears in my eyes and so wanted to cry. These two are growing so much and my wife is so beautiful. How could I leave the three of them behind??

I have an incredibly wonderful and loving family. I am so blessed to still have them as part of my life. I look at these pictures and want the time to fly by. I want so much to be with them and hold each one of them. However, this will have to wait at the most for the next 21 months if I don’t get into fire camp. If it is a fire camp it will save me a few months and anytime sooner is better. Man I screwed up but thankfully I have found a Program which will allow me to finally be a part of my family’s life. As long as I practice the principles of the Gamblers Anonymous Program I will be able to watch and be involved in the growing up of my children for my lifetime.

I have picked up these pictures at least fifty times in these past two days. Each time I pick them up I can only look at them for a few seconds. The longer I look at them the more my eyes well up with tears. These are great pictures of a magnificent family. Fortunately, they are making the best of this situation and life in New Jersey is moving along. I have not spoken to my family in over two months and counting. This makes it doubly difficult when I look at these pictures to know I can’t even speak with them until I get to my next destination. This will have to wait at least another week.

Also in the manila envelope was a letter from my wife, a letter from my daughter, and a picture my son drew. The letter from my wife was very upbeat and encouraging. The letter from my daughter was so cute and well written. Each sentence the font color changed and made for a very colorful letter. She wrote she can’t wait until I come back. This certainly makes two of us. She signed the letter “Love your only daughter”, how very cute. The picture my son drew was of the two of us holding hands. What I wouldn’t give to hold his hand right this very minute.

No matter how sad I get, I love receiving letters and pictures from my wife. I love seeing my children and how they are growing up so quickly. I am fortunate they are surrounded by so much love from our families. This is the best place for them and I know everything will be fine over these next 21 months. Love does conquer all and I love them so very much.

I did take off from working in the kitchen but in keeping with tradition I have something to report. I did schedule myself for the day off for a few reasons: one, I needed a day off to break-up the monotony, two - I didn’t want to deal with the kitchen supervisor two days in a row, and three - I was interested to see how the oven guys would do without me and having three oven items which were scrambled eggs, beans, and grits. This last one may seem self-serving and it is, sorry! Apparently, there was a little issue with the grits (incidentally the hot cereals have become my responsibility over the past six weeks) and they had to hold the line several times in order to refill the grits. The reason why they (the grits) were delayed was the kitchen supervisor forgot to turn the power to the ovens on until 5:30pm which is an hour after they are supposed to be turned on. I am not sure why it took an hour to have the power turned on and I do wonder if this would have happened if I had been there. As an aside I did notice that the other oven guy doesn’t seem to pay close attention to detail as he probably should. On several occasions, I noticed the ovens that had been opened by him and subsequently closed by him were not properly closed so they wouldn’t heat up.

Who knows if I would have made a difference and they were able to get the grits on the line in order not to completely delay the overall service. However, it was quite nice to hear this report along with several others of the kitchen workers who told me they sure did need me there this morning. Of course this is nothing but an ego-boost and makes my head swell even more. No, not really, I try to maintain an even keel and the last thing I want to do around here is to walk around with a swelled head. This is just one of those little things which help me get through each day and yes, it is not much but it doesn’t take much.

In the category of little things as I lay in bed after breakfast this morning, I listened (couldn’t help not to listen because it happened two feet away from me) to an argument over why someone was preparing the brown paper bags for the people who were trans-packing this week. Every Saturday the inmates who appear on the trans-pack list must place all the items they are taking with them in brown paper bags. These bags have the inmates name, CDC number and prison to where they are going written on the outside. There are inmates who prepare these bags and one inmate took offense that another inmate was preparing these bags. It developed into an argument with a heated exchange. The entire time of this argument I kept saying to myself this is crazy, they were arguing about nothing. However; as I listened I became aware - although it certainly was nothing in my opinion - one of the inmates thought they were losing credibility and needed to stick up for himself. They wanted to save face and it had everything to do with power. I had no idea writing names on paper bags have anything to do with power but apparently it does. This conflict was resolved when one of the parties gave up and gave the paper bags over to the person who was complaining. Now I can see how prison riots can start over such tiny issues and it is truly much ado about nothing.

One of the principles of the Gamblers Anonymous Program is NOT to take inventory of others and constantly take inventory of yourself. This would be a great rule in a place like this because it seems the opposite holds true. There would much less and quite possibly make all the arguments non-existent. However; unfortunately this is not the case and I just need to sit back and mind my own business, do my time and get back to those three wonderful people in New Jersey.