"No" ...means you aren't talking to any of the boys or young men that so desperately need to hear from you!
Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils
Time to talk
Have you talked to your son today? Or yesterday? Or last week? Have you talked to somebody else’s son? Or grandson?
If you answered no, think about this: Every boy or older is somebody’s son, somebody’s grandson, so a “No” to either of the opening questions means you aren’t talking to any of the boys or young men that so desperately need to hear from you!
I talked to my cousin a few days ago, a cousin three or four years my junior. She had a son, very early in life, and she doesn’t have that son any more. No, he’s not dead. He breathes. He walks. He eats… And he regrets. And so does she.
As I have shared before, growing up, I never got to know my cousins, so now that I have, it’s like having a half dozen sisters I never had… going from 0 to 6 in less than 10 years! Being “old school,” I feel a connection with these “sisters-come-lately,” all on my mother’s side, if not from her womb; and, family means “you love, you share, you be there for each other.” So my conversation with her earlier this week grieved me deeply.
I got a call. Just back from visiting her son, her only son, she needed me. I know. That doesn’t sound logical, but let me explain.
My cousin’s son is in New Jersey, and she is in Illinois, almost 1,000 miles away. That’s not so bad; the distance could, in ordinary circumstances, be mastered. The circumstances, however, are anything but ordinary. He’s in prison serving a 100-year sentence. I don’t know exactly what he did, but I know one thing he did: He destroyed his life, and his mother’s right along with it.
Visiting, I can see, was hard. Privileges, already minimal, had been sliced because a visitor had been caught attempting to transfer drugs via a kiss. Add to that a simple error with a bag of snacks from the machine, which the prisoners are not allowed to use: She bought a bag of chips and made the mistake of giving it to her son, instead of pouring them onto a plate as required.
Other things she shared with me were heartbreaking, and I was grateful that no such experience had ever crossed my mind. It caused me to think about the many “boys” who play “hard,” who grab a gun, point it at someone, and “show him.” In their minds, they are bad, tough. They “don’t take no crap from nobody. I snuffed that MF.”
How many of our boys know what lies ahead for them, that the swagger in the courtroom will wilt like an uprooted dandelion in the noonday sun, their “stiff neck” will wobble a bobble head, that they will be reduced to nothingness, denied the right to drop coins into a machine for a simple thing like potato chips… to be shaken into a dish like Kibble ‘N Bits?
How many realize the shame their mother – that woman who was on the tail end of total disrespect – will experience begging relatives to help her visit them for a handful of minutes every other year, if she’s lucky?
Back to the original question… You know, there’s this thing called “face time.” You think maybe you oughta try it?
Story Posted:11/18/2016
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