Carole, and I visited today and we had the strangest conversation. Perhaps others won’t think it strange, but at this stage in my life, the subject of our conversation was unusual. We spoke about the day that Carole would pick me up, the last day that I would spend inside a prison.
My release date is not imminent. We don’t know how much longer I’ll serve in prison, but we do know that I’m in the last 10 percent of my time as a prisoner. Someday, I’ll wake in a prison rack, shower, and wait for Carole to show up at Taft Camp in order to drive me away from prison so we can begin our life together. We spoke about what we would do on the day I left prison.
In all the years I’ve served, I haven’t thought so much about what I would do when I was released from prison. All of my thoughts have been about preparing for the career I would lead, and it’s a different thing entirely to have reached this final 10 percent of my term and to think that soon, my wife and I will be sharing our life together.
We’re ready. We have the resources and support network in place to ensure that we can take time to explore each other. She will introduce me to the world, and it excites me to begin thinking about exploring a world that may be completely different from what I remember. I could be as many as three years away from my first day with Carole, but when I acknowledge that I’ve passed 22 years as a prisoners, three more years doesn’t seem like much at all. I’m going to begin thinking more about my life away from prison because Carole and I are as prepared as we will ever be.
Before visiting today, I edited chapter six of Earning Freedom, and I ran seven miles. The run boosted my tally to 2,566 miles over the past 289 days.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
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