(no subject)
The Crying Girl’s Lemonade
by, existence_ltd
Prison is often seen as the antithesis of freedom. While most people acknowledge that being imprisoned is likely to change a person, the nature of that change either goes unaddressed, or is disregarded altogether. To have been convicted in America presages a social and legal stigma that follows an individual all his or her life, a stain that will not fade with time. Quite often, people have their own idea of what an ex-convict is. Humor me for a moment: Which of the following do you think best describes an ex-convict?
a) A crusty dirty old man, with no teeth and ratty clothes.
b) A dangerous person who should be watched.
c) A bigger, scary-looking guy with tattoos. Bald. Scary face.
d) A ray of sunshine in anyone’s life.
Wanting to get a feel for the general attitude towards ex-convicts, I polled a college chemistry class, asking them to write down their first impressions upon hearing the term, “ex-convict.” The first three selections above are quotes from the responses I received. The fourth is how my ex-convict described herself.
Telling people that you interviewed an ex-convict often triggers for them the image of a large, tattooed, dangerous man on a motorcycle (such as the ex-con described collectively by the chemistry class). I asked around in an Internet community for an ex-convict to participate in an interview, and a member knew someone who fit the bill and passed on my email address. The ex-convict contacted me and we arranged to meet, one-on-one at a coffee shop. When I explain this, people are still rather shocked. “How daring!” they say, and, “Isn’t that dangerous?” I smile and shrug at them, amused by the instant respect I receive, and think of the woman I spoke to: Renée. Renée, who describes herself as short and round, neglecting to mention her kind brown eyes and easy smile; Renée, who is the go-to gal in her friends group when there is a need for hugs or tears; Renée, who likes gardening and bird watching… The only apparent trait Renée has in common with that grizzly man is the motorcycle; she rode to our interview on it, a lightweight Suzuki Savage that she uses to get around town. Otherwise, the differences between that constructed ex-con and she are as stark as those between being imprisoned and living free.
Renée has her own ideas about freedom, and her experience in prison did, indeed, influence them. She did not leave prison hardened and ready to commit crimes again, like people may assume (even though she did get a few lessons in criminal methods). She did not leave prison with gang or mob ties, or with a hatred for the society that put her there. Renée left prison with a newfound appreciation for freedom and a new set of values; aspects of her personality that would continue to develop throughout her life.
Born in 1959, and raised in Portland, Oregon, by authoritarian, alcoholic parents, Renée grew up somewhat rebellious, reaching her teenage years in the latter part of America’s civil rights era. Her perspectives and attitude were different than her conservative parents’. She would argue with them about race and equality, often getting upset when her parents would call African Americans offensive names. Her parents would respond by asserting that she was abnormal. “What’s the matter with you?” they would say, and, “You’re weird because you don’t agree with us.” It was a challenging situation for a young woman, with no way to win, and no outlets for her frustration.
At home, she was not even allowed to cry in front of her parents, and Renée felt stymied. Her attempts towards freedom, at the time, came in the form of disobedience, a habit that would continue into her adult life. Her parents would tell her, “No, you can’t go to that movie with your friends,” or, “No, you can’t go to the A&W drive-in,” and she would assert her personal freedom by lying about where she was going and participating in these activities anyway. “Even though they tried to cap my freedom,” she said, “I still took it back.” Renée jokingly diagnoses herself as having “obstinance disorder,” characterized by her distrust and flippant attitude towards authority. She declared to me with a smile, “Whenever anyone tells me what to do, I have to do the opposite!” She would later discover - the hard way - that being able to resist this teenage oppression was much more freedom than she would have in her twenty-first year, where “taking it back” was simply not an option.
The late teens and early twenties are a crucial stage in the development of a man or woman. For Renée, it was her first taste of liberty away from the grip and scrutiny of her parents, and, as she puts it herself, she “went a little crazy.” Exercising her freedom intruded on class and study time, and Renée got D’s and F’s during her first (and only) year of college at Oregon State University. Her parents decided then to cut off her finances, a move to which she responded, “Okay, I’m outta here!” She ended up working as a bank teller, standing at a boring job where she spent her idle time dreaming up ways to swindle the company. One day, she said to herself, “Why not?” and actually began to steal little bits of money from the bank. A hundred dollars here, five hundred dollars there - the funds for a partying lifestyle. Eventually, she withdrew money at a location where she was recognized, and that was the end of it. Figuring that she was going to be caught anyway, Renée jokingly told me that if she could, she would go back in time and tell herself, “You should have done five million dollars!”
The idea of consequences for this activity was unimportant to young Renée. She thought that, since hers was a white-collar crime, she would get a slap on the wrist and reprimand. She described her sentencing as somewhat of an anomaly, suggesting that the judge must have really wanted to “get her” for some reason. According to Renée, most people who commit similar crimes to hers get punished in the form of restitution and probation - or only one of the two. She was sentenced with both of those, plus prison time: one year in federal prison in California.
Both women and men were inmates of this particular prison. Although the security systems and safeguards were the same for both sexes, it was defined as maximum security for women, and minimum security for men. The women Renée associated with there were convicted for crimes like drug possession, helping Mexicans sneak across the border, conspiracy, and various forms of fraud. Renée said that she rubbed elbows with Lynnette “Squeaky” Fromme, the woman who attempted to assassinate then-president Gerald Ford five years prior in 1975. Renée maintained a positive attitude. She told me what she said to herself back then: “If I’m going to have this experience, I am going to make it as positive as possible. It’s nobody’s fault but my own that I was there; I wasn’t blaming my parents or society or anything like that. I took full responsibility and I really did use the experience.” Her time was spent working in the prison warehouse, and then managing it, exercising her body and mind when she could. She was released on parole, and came back to the free world no longer a young student - now she was a young felon. Intent on doing good and never again being put in a situation where she was denied her freedom, Renée committed to building a life.
After a number of leadership jobs, voluntary community services, activism, and nearly three decades of keeping her nose clean, Renée still needs to report on every application that she has been a convicted felon. “I’m an ex-felon, not a recidivist,” said Renée, “It’s not like I’m a career criminal.” Ever since she was jailed nearly thirty years ago, she is obligated to check that conspicuous box. This leads to paperwork, questions, and quite often distrust, all of which become a persistent hassle for everyone who has been convicted. Renée has an opinion on that:
Come on! When is enough enough? It’s never, and I think that’s wrong. There has been
reform in how prisoners are treated while they’re in prison, but there hasn’t been any
reform in how you treat prisoners afterwards. They’re let out, and if you’re met with
that much obstacle - having that stuff shoved in your face every time you try to better
yourself - where is your incentive to better yourself? There’s way more incentive to go
back and do it wrong again. ‘Cause that’s what you know, and that’s what’s easy, and
that’s what you learned in prison.
To avoid this situation and the prejudices that spark from it, Renée has, over the decades, found ways to be her own boss. She started a newspaper in Portland, owned a hotel on the Oregon coast, as well as other small businesses here and there. These endeavors went untainted by the fact that she was an ex-convict, except for the newspaper. She started this paper in the early nineties, a competitor with Portland’s popular Willamette Week. When it became known to her staff that she had been convicted for stealing money from that bank so long ago, they accused her of doing the same from the paper and forced her to leave. She is still bewildered as to how she could steal money from the company she owned. True to her philosophy of making a good experience out of a rough situation, though, she made the best of it and moved on to her next project.
Now, Renée is settling down, tired of the hassles concomitant with being the boss. She is going to school to become a construction manager and has applied for a job with the City of Portland. The inevitable questions that rise from having had to check the “I am a felon” box on the city’s application is not something she looks forward to, but hopes to get through successfully. She does not have to face this alone, however; having left her biological family behind, she has built her own, established through bonds of love and friendship. She has crafted and holds around her this close weave of new family, tied by a common thread that she feels connects all humans, superseding racism, social status, and enmity. This common thread is the binding and driving force that sustains the close-knit group.
In all situations, Renée does her best to find that thread, particularly when someone is having a rough time. Those who know Renée come to her when they need to cry, and she will cry with them. When she was telling me this, she wanly smiled through moist eyes and called herself a “portable wailing wall.” A ray of sunshine is what she strives to be. I asked her how she accomplishes this, and her little smile widened: “I make lemonade out of the lemons.”
Renée cries for herself as well, and with good reason. Her parents are distant and cold. The last time she had a conversation with her mother, she was told, “You just pretend that I’m dead, and I’ll just pretend that you’re dead.” Despite the shroud of estrangement that obscures their relationship, she wishes she could reestablish her connection to her parents, but it seems impossible. Renée likened the situation to a Grand Canyon of time and distance between them, feeling helpless. “I have this little fantasy of Oprah bringing us all together,” she said. “It would have to be something like that. I’ve even run into them at funerals. [I] went up and said hi, but after that, still nothing. When my grandmother died, they didn’t even contact me to tell me.” Renée’s eyes misted, and she sniffed, and I, who rarely can cry alone, felt my throat tighten and tears threaten as I watched her unearth difficult memories. There is a sort of therapy that comes from a good cry, and Renee agrees with that; the release is healthy. She pointed out that laughter is much the same, seeing no contradiction in being both quick to laugh, and quick to cry.
“I have my chosen family now, people I’m close with,” she said. She lives for these people, the family she has built around her, and through her experiences has learned to not look too far in the future. Her motto is to just make life the best it can be in the here and now.
I’m pushing fifty - I’ll be forty-eight this year and my partner is sixty-three and she
just retired and she’s looking at some health issues that definitely will shorten her
life. She’s looking at maybe another good ten to fifteen years. I look at that and I
think gosh, we’ve been together eleven years, and that just flew by. So if you think
you’ve only got another good ten or fifteen, what am I lookin’ at? Don’t want to look too
far ahead. I’ve always lived my life for just now. I never look ahead. I never set
five-year goals. Everyone says you gotta have those five-year goals, ten-year goals - I
just want to be alive in five years… Even at this stage you think you’re gonna live
forever… I had a partner who died of cancer, I had a business partner who died of AIDS.
I’ve had death in my life - People who were my age, that I was close to. That’s where I
got my live for today attitude. It’s all you got. You know you’ve got this, right now.
Five minutes from now, I don’t know I’ve got that. A year from now, I don’t know if I’ll
have that.
This is Renée: She lives for the freedom of the moment and the bonds that twine us all together. She has had difficult times and met them with tears and tenacity. True to her ethos, she has taken the lemons that life has thrown at her and squeezed, with all the vivacity of a girl who enjoys the taste of freedom - and drinks deep from the juice.
by, existence_ltd
Prison is often seen as the antithesis of freedom. While most people acknowledge that being imprisoned is likely to change a person, the nature of that change either goes unaddressed, or is disregarded altogether. To have been convicted in America presages a social and legal stigma that follows an individual all his or her life, a stain that will not fade with time. Quite often, people have their own idea of what an ex-convict is. Humor me for a moment: Which of the following do you think best describes an ex-convict?
a) A crusty dirty old man, with no teeth and ratty clothes.
b) A dangerous person who should be watched.
c) A bigger, scary-looking guy with tattoos. Bald. Scary face.
d) A ray of sunshine in anyone’s life.
Wanting to get a feel for the general attitude towards ex-convicts, I polled a college chemistry class, asking them to write down their first impressions upon hearing the term, “ex-convict.” The first three selections above are quotes from the responses I received. The fourth is how my ex-convict described herself.
Telling people that you interviewed an ex-convict often triggers for them the image of a large, tattooed, dangerous man on a motorcycle (such as the ex-con described collectively by the chemistry class). I asked around in an Internet community for an ex-convict to participate in an interview, and a member knew someone who fit the bill and passed on my email address. The ex-convict contacted me and we arranged to meet, one-on-one at a coffee shop. When I explain this, people are still rather shocked. “How daring!” they say, and, “Isn’t that dangerous?” I smile and shrug at them, amused by the instant respect I receive, and think of the woman I spoke to: Renée. Renée, who describes herself as short and round, neglecting to mention her kind brown eyes and easy smile; Renée, who is the go-to gal in her friends group when there is a need for hugs or tears; Renée, who likes gardening and bird watching… The only apparent trait Renée has in common with that grizzly man is the motorcycle; she rode to our interview on it, a lightweight Suzuki Savage that she uses to get around town. Otherwise, the differences between that constructed ex-con and she are as stark as those between being imprisoned and living free.
Renée has her own ideas about freedom, and her experience in prison did, indeed, influence them. She did not leave prison hardened and ready to commit crimes again, like people may assume (even though she did get a few lessons in criminal methods). She did not leave prison with gang or mob ties, or with a hatred for the society that put her there. Renée left prison with a newfound appreciation for freedom and a new set of values; aspects of her personality that would continue to develop throughout her life.
Born in 1959, and raised in Portland, Oregon, by authoritarian, alcoholic parents, Renée grew up somewhat rebellious, reaching her teenage years in the latter part of America’s civil rights era. Her perspectives and attitude were different than her conservative parents’. She would argue with them about race and equality, often getting upset when her parents would call African Americans offensive names. Her parents would respond by asserting that she was abnormal. “What’s the matter with you?” they would say, and, “You’re weird because you don’t agree with us.” It was a challenging situation for a young woman, with no way to win, and no outlets for her frustration.
At home, she was not even allowed to cry in front of her parents, and Renée felt stymied. Her attempts towards freedom, at the time, came in the form of disobedience, a habit that would continue into her adult life. Her parents would tell her, “No, you can’t go to that movie with your friends,” or, “No, you can’t go to the A&W drive-in,” and she would assert her personal freedom by lying about where she was going and participating in these activities anyway. “Even though they tried to cap my freedom,” she said, “I still took it back.” Renée jokingly diagnoses herself as having “obstinance disorder,” characterized by her distrust and flippant attitude towards authority. She declared to me with a smile, “Whenever anyone tells me what to do, I have to do the opposite!” She would later discover - the hard way - that being able to resist this teenage oppression was much more freedom than she would have in her twenty-first year, where “taking it back” was simply not an option.
The late teens and early twenties are a crucial stage in the development of a man or woman. For Renée, it was her first taste of liberty away from the grip and scrutiny of her parents, and, as she puts it herself, she “went a little crazy.” Exercising her freedom intruded on class and study time, and Renée got D’s and F’s during her first (and only) year of college at Oregon State University. Her parents decided then to cut off her finances, a move to which she responded, “Okay, I’m outta here!” She ended up working as a bank teller, standing at a boring job where she spent her idle time dreaming up ways to swindle the company. One day, she said to herself, “Why not?” and actually began to steal little bits of money from the bank. A hundred dollars here, five hundred dollars there - the funds for a partying lifestyle. Eventually, she withdrew money at a location where she was recognized, and that was the end of it. Figuring that she was going to be caught anyway, Renée jokingly told me that if she could, she would go back in time and tell herself, “You should have done five million dollars!”
The idea of consequences for this activity was unimportant to young Renée. She thought that, since hers was a white-collar crime, she would get a slap on the wrist and reprimand. She described her sentencing as somewhat of an anomaly, suggesting that the judge must have really wanted to “get her” for some reason. According to Renée, most people who commit similar crimes to hers get punished in the form of restitution and probation - or only one of the two. She was sentenced with both of those, plus prison time: one year in federal prison in California.
Both women and men were inmates of this particular prison. Although the security systems and safeguards were the same for both sexes, it was defined as maximum security for women, and minimum security for men. The women Renée associated with there were convicted for crimes like drug possession, helping Mexicans sneak across the border, conspiracy, and various forms of fraud. Renée said that she rubbed elbows with Lynnette “Squeaky” Fromme, the woman who attempted to assassinate then-president Gerald Ford five years prior in 1975. Renée maintained a positive attitude. She told me what she said to herself back then: “If I’m going to have this experience, I am going to make it as positive as possible. It’s nobody’s fault but my own that I was there; I wasn’t blaming my parents or society or anything like that. I took full responsibility and I really did use the experience.” Her time was spent working in the prison warehouse, and then managing it, exercising her body and mind when she could. She was released on parole, and came back to the free world no longer a young student - now she was a young felon. Intent on doing good and never again being put in a situation where she was denied her freedom, Renée committed to building a life.
After a number of leadership jobs, voluntary community services, activism, and nearly three decades of keeping her nose clean, Renée still needs to report on every application that she has been a convicted felon. “I’m an ex-felon, not a recidivist,” said Renée, “It’s not like I’m a career criminal.” Ever since she was jailed nearly thirty years ago, she is obligated to check that conspicuous box. This leads to paperwork, questions, and quite often distrust, all of which become a persistent hassle for everyone who has been convicted. Renée has an opinion on that:
Come on! When is enough enough? It’s never, and I think that’s wrong. There has been
reform in how prisoners are treated while they’re in prison, but there hasn’t been any
reform in how you treat prisoners afterwards. They’re let out, and if you’re met with
that much obstacle - having that stuff shoved in your face every time you try to better
yourself - where is your incentive to better yourself? There’s way more incentive to go
back and do it wrong again. ‘Cause that’s what you know, and that’s what’s easy, and
that’s what you learned in prison.
To avoid this situation and the prejudices that spark from it, Renée has, over the decades, found ways to be her own boss. She started a newspaper in Portland, owned a hotel on the Oregon coast, as well as other small businesses here and there. These endeavors went untainted by the fact that she was an ex-convict, except for the newspaper. She started this paper in the early nineties, a competitor with Portland’s popular Willamette Week. When it became known to her staff that she had been convicted for stealing money from that bank so long ago, they accused her of doing the same from the paper and forced her to leave. She is still bewildered as to how she could steal money from the company she owned. True to her philosophy of making a good experience out of a rough situation, though, she made the best of it and moved on to her next project.
Now, Renée is settling down, tired of the hassles concomitant with being the boss. She is going to school to become a construction manager and has applied for a job with the City of Portland. The inevitable questions that rise from having had to check the “I am a felon” box on the city’s application is not something she looks forward to, but hopes to get through successfully. She does not have to face this alone, however; having left her biological family behind, she has built her own, established through bonds of love and friendship. She has crafted and holds around her this close weave of new family, tied by a common thread that she feels connects all humans, superseding racism, social status, and enmity. This common thread is the binding and driving force that sustains the close-knit group.
In all situations, Renée does her best to find that thread, particularly when someone is having a rough time. Those who know Renée come to her when they need to cry, and she will cry with them. When she was telling me this, she wanly smiled through moist eyes and called herself a “portable wailing wall.” A ray of sunshine is what she strives to be. I asked her how she accomplishes this, and her little smile widened: “I make lemonade out of the lemons.”
Renée cries for herself as well, and with good reason. Her parents are distant and cold. The last time she had a conversation with her mother, she was told, “You just pretend that I’m dead, and I’ll just pretend that you’re dead.” Despite the shroud of estrangement that obscures their relationship, she wishes she could reestablish her connection to her parents, but it seems impossible. Renée likened the situation to a Grand Canyon of time and distance between them, feeling helpless. “I have this little fantasy of Oprah bringing us all together,” she said. “It would have to be something like that. I’ve even run into them at funerals. [I] went up and said hi, but after that, still nothing. When my grandmother died, they didn’t even contact me to tell me.” Renée’s eyes misted, and she sniffed, and I, who rarely can cry alone, felt my throat tighten and tears threaten as I watched her unearth difficult memories. There is a sort of therapy that comes from a good cry, and Renee agrees with that; the release is healthy. She pointed out that laughter is much the same, seeing no contradiction in being both quick to laugh, and quick to cry.
“I have my chosen family now, people I’m close with,” she said. She lives for these people, the family she has built around her, and through her experiences has learned to not look too far in the future. Her motto is to just make life the best it can be in the here and now.
I’m pushing fifty - I’ll be forty-eight this year and my partner is sixty-three and she
just retired and she’s looking at some health issues that definitely will shorten her
life. She’s looking at maybe another good ten to fifteen years. I look at that and I
think gosh, we’ve been together eleven years, and that just flew by. So if you think
you’ve only got another good ten or fifteen, what am I lookin’ at? Don’t want to look too
far ahead. I’ve always lived my life for just now. I never look ahead. I never set
five-year goals. Everyone says you gotta have those five-year goals, ten-year goals - I
just want to be alive in five years… Even at this stage you think you’re gonna live
forever… I had a partner who died of cancer, I had a business partner who died of AIDS.
I’ve had death in my life - People who were my age, that I was close to. That’s where I
got my live for today attitude. It’s all you got. You know you’ve got this, right now.
Five minutes from now, I don’t know I’ve got that. A year from now, I don’t know if I’ll
have that.
This is Renée: She lives for the freedom of the moment and the bonds that twine us all together. She has had difficult times and met them with tears and tenacity. True to her ethos, she has taken the lemons that life has thrown at her and squeezed, with all the vivacity of a girl who enjoys the taste of freedom - and drinks deep from the juice.