The Highs and Lows of a Single Wednesday

Wednesday afternoon: Sugar under the carnitas

Pastor Samm and Vicar Sa7ah were already on the other side of the metal detector when I got to the women’s prison yesterday. I signed in and joined them as quickly as I could, grabbing a couple bags of sopapillas to help lighten their load.

We are allowed, just a couple times a year, to bring a special meal in to be shared with New Beginnings church council, and as is our tradition, we like to share a Mother’s Day dinner together.

So the three of us made our way through the clanking security gates and sally ports crowned with billowing razor wire, before crossing the prison yard and into the gym.

We forgot paper plates, but these women know nothing if not how to be creative with limited resources, so they separated the two halves of the clamshell to-go containers and no one seemed to mind the dusting of sugar at the bottom of their makeshift dinner plates.

Before us, a feast of street tacos: crispy birria (with consume), cilantro dusted carnitas, pulled pork, abundant elote, and so many sopapillas (now piled in a shopping bag after the repurposing of their containers).

For an hour and a half we got to feast and fellowship. It felt joyous. Liberatory. And at the same time, normal.

I worked my way around the table eager for updates from everyone. N. spoke of having her first child when she herself was just 15 years old. Another gal (a woman whose determination to heal from and still be accountable for her addiction inspires me every time I speak to her) teared up saying her own teenage son was just charged with a class A felony and will likely be inside for most of his life now. Then S. described how, now that she’s clear headed and off of meth, the conversations she is having with her own children are more honest and tender than ever. Motherhood from inside a prison is complicated, and has its own beauty to it.

Not everyone is inside here for drug charges or crimes committed while the throes of their own addictions, or as a result of fetal alcohol syndrome, or as a result of a childhood surrounded by addicted adults, but it sure feels like most are.

There was far more than just heartbreaking updates from their loved ones shared that night. We also spoke of things we were grateful for in each other, and there was some good-hearted teasing for everyone (me included), one gal got to celebrate getting paroled early than expected, and then D. somehow showed off her handstand pushups after eating tacos, which felt very risky.

God set a table before us in the presence of prison guards, and the savory goodness of the carnitas was un-dampened by the accidental sugar in the bottom of our makeshift dinner plates.

Wednesday night: A Wild God

I drove home and quickly changed before friends picked us up for dinner and a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show. Walking into the Butcher Block Café, my heart lifted when I saw a booth filled with people I love from House For All Sinners and Saints days. When our dinner came, I tried to hide the fact that, like a child, I was obsessively trying to keep my eggs and bacon away from my French toast and syrup. WHY are they served on the same plate?

The Wild God show, at moments, felt like a trance of exultation. Thousands of people, arms in the air, singing bring your spirit down. Cave, our unlikely liturgist: former heroin addict. Goth-chaos post-punk rock monster. Grieving father. A dark evangelist for joy.

So many times that night I turned to Eric and say “wow”. He responded by just gently nodding his head as if to say, “exactly”.

During a quieter song I slipped away to the women’s room. Washing my hands, I hear a familiar voice behind me.

“Stella?” (name changed) I asked.

“Girl. What the HELL?” she said as she hugged me.

She and I spent years together as sober sisters, going to meetings, swapping stories, laughing too loudly over mugs of translucent diner coffee.

When I looked in her eyes I could see she was high as a kite. In that unmistakable clattering speech pattern she tells me she left the respectable job she had studied hard for and was eventually certified in, and has instead returned to . . . sex work.

Fucking addiction.

The gift that keeps on taking.

I returned to Eric and our friends and soaked up the rest of a magnificent performance which felt like being taken to church…like being held in the telling of a magnificent story by a reliable narrator with back-up Gospel singers. It was soaring.

A ghost in giant sneakers

In 2015 Cave’s 15 year-old son Arthur fell off a cliff and died. The coroner’s report showed he’d ingested LSD. Anyone who has followed his career knows that this unspeakable tragedy stripped him down into a man who writes from the point of view “that something can happen to your life that is absolutely shattering that can also be redemptive and beautiful.”

So when I returned to my seat to the song Joy, I felt it.

I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head

I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head

I felt like someone in my family was dead

I jumped up like a rabbit and fell down to my knees

I jumped up like a rabbit and fell down to my knees

I called out all around me, said have mercy on me please

And over by the window, a voice came low and hollow

And over by the window, a voice came low and hollow

Spoke into my pain, into my yearning sorrow

Who is it, I cried, what wild ghost has come in agitation? Who is it, I cried, what wild ghost has come in agitation?

It’s half past midnight! Why disturb me so late!

And then I saw a movement around my narrow bed

And then I saw a movement around my narrow bed

A ghost in giant sneakers, laughing stars around his head

Who sat down on the narrow bed, this flaming boy

Who sat down on the narrow bed, this flaming boy

Said, we’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy

And all across the world they shout bad words, they shout angry words

And all across the world they shout out their angry words

About the end of love, yet the stars stand above the earth

Bright, triumphant metaphors of love

Bright, triumphant metaphors of love

Blinding us all who care to stand and look beyond and care to stand and look beyond above

And I jumped up like a rabbit and fell down to my knees

And I jumped up like a rabbit and fell down to my knees

I called all around me, have mercy on me please

Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy

-Nick Cave

I’m not sure what I’m trying to get at here. Maybe that I cannot manage through my own sobriety to keep the wrenching reality of addiction from infecting my life.

Or maybe that some days are an unbelievable mind-fuck of crushing sadness and liberating effervescence.

Or maybe just that pain and sorrow are always served on the same plate as joy and despite my best efforts, I cannot keep them from touching.

Whatever it is, know I am in it with you,

Love, Nadia

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