Previously: Ask Bear: Is This a Good Idea? If you have a question for Bear, The Butter’s new advice columnist, send it along to asking.bear@gmail.com.
Dear Bear,
I pled guilty to a non-violent drug crime and am now facing 6-12 months in federal prison. The good news is that in my case, there is no mandatory minimum sentencing and I have many people willing to write character letters on my behalf, so there is a possibility that I could avoid prison time and do only probation, though my lawyer says that is a very slim possibility.
My question is, when should I tell my two children (ages 12 and 6) about prison? My first instinct was to wait until after my sentencing hearing, so that if I am going away I have a concrete time period that I’ll be gone. However, my wife pointed out that after sentencing I will only have a couple of weeks before I need to turn myself in to the prison, which may not be enough time for the kids to process this huge transition.
So which is worse? Telling them now, and having it hang over their heads for a month and a half? Or telling them after, and having it be a sudden shock before I’m gone? For what it’s worth, these past few months of not knowing if/for how long I’ll be going to prison have been a nightmare for me and my wife.
Any help you can provide would be appreciated, we really don’t know what to do.
Dear Brave Correspondent,
Phew. Thank you for trusting me with this. I would like you to know that we took the editorial calendar by the nostrils and shook it hard to make space for this reply right away.
I strongly feel that you should tell your children as soon as possible. Partly this is for them. You’re right, they’re going to need time to have their feelings, ask questions, ask them again and again in slightly different ways as they parse what it all means. Partly, also, this is for your wife: if you tell them and then bounce, she’ll be left answering all the questions while you’re away, and that’s a fairly crappy situation. What will help you here, I really believe, is to be all on the same page – to have a common goal and a united front. Talk about the possibilities of how long it might be in the best case, the worst case, somewhere in the middle. Don’t put up too brave a front, because it’s bullshit and kids hate to be bullshitted (remember how you could always tell when your parents were trying to make something different than it was? Remember how it sometimes made you misname or mistrust your own feelings? Don’t do that). Tell them with every shred of honesty you can muster how you will miss them and how glad you will be to return to them. Imagine together things to do or say in a hard moment of it – a code word, a talisman, letters to be written ahead, a song, whatever, that will allow you to feel connected. Help them be brave by modeling actual bravery, that is: feeling scared and sallying forth anyhow, buoyed by love and justice.
I used to work for a couple of years teaching creative writing and theatre in a medium-security jail, much like the one you will likely find yourself at unless you live in a very large city. Here is what I will tell you about jail, based on my experiences and those of my students: it is a humiliating experience, and that is the sworn and stated goal of most of the people who will be in charge of you. They want you to be humiliated, to suffer, to feel sorry (how sorry you may feel or what you might have already paid is immaterial). I am telling you this because the entire situation is going to be a faceful of suck and you are going to be helped immeasurably by knowing that beyond the horrible, always-sticky, off-colour walls are your people – the beautiful people who love you, who are having pancake breakfast on Mondays so you can pretend to be eating pancakes too while you’re grimacing down whatever-that-is. Their solidness will give you a lighthouse, a fixed point you can focus on when it’s time to make choices.
Because here’s the thing: if you leave in all the upheaval, your wife will be stuck either sharing all the upset, which will upset you more, or sucking up and keeping it all to herself, which will be equally awful but later. A very hard thing about coming out of prison is that you get out and you’ve been struggling and suffering and you come home ready to adore the people who have been writing you letters every day and sending you drawings and only talking about happy things on the phone. You get home, and for a couple days it’s all laughing and crying and steak and sex.
But there’s a backlash. All of everyone’s feelings about you being away have to get expressed. They’ll develop even if you go away super-solid – something will need to be done while you’re gone that you’re the only one to ever do (bake nut-free cookies for the little one’s class party or dust the ceiling fan or get an oil change or unclog a toilet), or you’ll miss a play or a birthday, or whatever. Feelings Will Be Had. So you’ll be home full of relief and bad dreams and unlearning the habit of waking up at 6:15am every morning for a count, and they’ll all be warring internally between being super glad to see you and hella mad at you for being gone. The more that gets processed before you go, the better your lines of communication are, the more you have a plan — a legit plan, the kind where there are charts and maybe even graphs — the better off you’ll be.
I don’t know how your family communication is right now, but you’re all going to get better at it promptly, that’s for sure. And if a miracle should occur, if your community letters and so forth save you from having to go at all, or if you can do weekends, or community service and probation, or whatever – every one of those channels you’ve created to deal with the difficulties to come will carry the joy. And, if you maintain them, they will be there for everything else, too.
Last two things: do your kids have any non-parental close adults? Aunts/uncles, close friends of yours, people who they are comfortable spending time with without you in fun and freedom? Activate them. The 12-year-old especially will need them if you go away; s/he won’t want to upset your wife more, but s/he’s going to need an outlet so s/he can “dump out” the stress. Bring them into the mix, too. Plan for the kids to get some extra one-on-one attention from other adults while you’re away.
And also, plan for your wife, who is going to get stuck with an awful job in this. Start organizing people to take the kids for weekends or overnights so she can go out with her friends, or stay home and have her feelings, or just read a book and drink a beer. Hide love notes with the Halloween costumes, in the pockets of her winter coat, in the holiday silverware, in the seed box. Project yourself into her path like a new sweetheart – what will she want? What does she like? Do you need to arrange flowers for her birthday before you go, or a recurring bakery order, or tickets to the opera or the RUSH concert or the folk festival? Find some ways to be in her mix.
Tend your family like a garden, with nourishment, with brightness, with sweat in the afternoon, with the expectation of delicious things to come, with the knowledge that some of your hard work may be for naught but that well-loved soil will carry everything again. Plant and pat, wash up and do it again, and even if this year’s crop is a little small for all the work you put in, you’ll be eating volunteer tomatoes next year, Brave Correspondent. Eating them and laughing.
Love and courage,
Bear
