The Novelist Portent
Johnny E. Mahaffey
October 14, 2017
BIRTHDAY M.D.
One of the most painful things of being an incarcerated father is having to miss your children's birthdays.
There's so much I could give my kids, if I weren't in here. But I have to accept the situation and just take this one day at a time. Nothing can change the fact that they're growing up—the time is going to pass with or without ME. Yet the fact that there is breath still in my body leaves an open future. Anything could happen. I see other prisoners in my situation (or worse) get their cases thrown out, reversed, re-tried, re-sentenced, all kinds of changes—years, even decades into a sentence. So there's always hope.
I'll never lose that.
I have some pretty awesome kids and young adults.
"See, projected through time,
For me an audience interminable."
—Walt Whitman,
Starting From Paumanok, 2.18-19
Leaves of Grass
M
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