I was taken aback the first time one of the incarcerated men referred to going to his prison cell as going home.
He said he had something he’d written in a notebook but had left it home and would remember to bring it next time we met. I considered that I’d be waiting around from 5 to fifteen years for him to retrieve it until it dawned on me that he called his cell his home.
I suppose if you can call a cage a cell, you can call a cell home. The state provides them with the basic essentials; clothes, towel, a blanket… and they are allowed to order a certain quantity of items from the “prison” catalog (that also marks up prices) and so in their most minimalist existence, they create a space that is their own.
These few possessions are pretty much all that they have which I imagine gives them some semblance of ownership. They live in a world that has stripped them of their identity and their existence is silenced to less than a whisper behind the iron gates and barbed wire walls that is their community. Knowing that the few items that they own can be taken away at any given minute, they still have a small piece of territory that they can call “home”.
I didn’t want to ask (but I did) if they decorated their cells for the holiday. I didn’t think they had Xmas trees, lights or fresh evergreen wreaths; but I wondered did they do anything to create an atmosphere that if nothing else ignited the spirit of Christmas? They tell me about the Christmas caroling at San Quentin and ask me about my new kitten, Bocce. They wish they could see a picture of him. I tell them he is the world’s most beautiful cat. He seeks out small cave-like spaces. The irony is not lost on us.
I sit by the fire at my house with a cup of hot chocolate admiring my own perfect tree. I pet my thirteen-week-old kitten, Bocce, who I’m quite sure is contemplating how many leaps it will take to grab an ornament (his favorite toy so far is unwrapping wrapping paper). I can hardly blame him considering I’ve been dangling things in front of him for the past couple of days; ever since I drove him home from a town north of where I live; Cherokee, CA. population 76.
I recount the story of driving down a very long road in the middle of nowhere to get to my destination in the center of no place. I had a tinge of fear and considered turning around, but the call of this kitten was way too strong. When I first saw his picture, I fell totally in love with him, but he had already been claimed. Apparently, there was some snafu and I just happened to be online when the reserved post was changed to available. I phoned the owner and she told me the post had only been up for twenty minutes. It was destiny.
It was also a long road to getting Bocce for other reasons. After my fourteen-year-old dog Mo died, my husband wasn’t’ ready to replace him. I agreed Mo could never be replaced but told him that love doesn’t have limitations. (After you have your first kid you think you could never love another one as much. But. He wasn’t convinced so I countered with a cat. My argument being that since he worked full-time, I was alone most of the day and missed having a companion. Be it a bouncing dog, a sleeping cat, a totally unassuming parakeet - for me the presence of a pet is a touchstone of home.
I’ve lived at my current address for just over 6 years when I moved into my husband's house. This is the longest I’ve lived in one place in fifty years. After I moved to California in 1977, I “settled” down when I had my two daughters. I was a single Mom and while I never switched school districts, we moved about thirteen times in fifteen years due to circumstances that don’t really matter. Each time I would unpack the boxes literally the instant we were in the door and be totally moved in by breakfast.
When my daughter was driving home for Christmas her first year in college, she called me on the road because having moved yet once again but after she went off to school, she realized she didn’t know our current address. When she arrived, Mo greeted her at the door of yet another new home, with a new tree; same old ornaments and her room made up with the same bed, blankets and other items that we’d unpacked thirteen other times.
She told me that one of her friends asked her which house she considered her home. She answered: Wherever Mom is living now.
Growing up I lived in the same house for eighteen years and while we had a couple of pets, I longed for the day when I would be able to have as many as I wanted. I went a little overboard when I lived on a farm (a few dogs, cats, pet pig, pet goats, horses, even a house-trained rabbit) but by the time I arrived on the west coast,
I was pet-less.
Sure, it would have been nice to live in one house, but in Marin County (where San Quentin prison is located) you’d be pressed to find a 6x9 parcel for under a couple of hundred thousand. So we moved. A lot. But each place we lived was home in every sense of the word. So I guess when I think about it, for the incarcerated men at San Quentin, even though there’s a strict no pet policy, they can find some piece of peace and comfort in their cell/homes.
Be it ever so humble.
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