The Best Christmas Gift

I’ve been seeing chatter on both Facebook and some of the blogs I follow about the Best Christmas Gifts given or received this year.  My 'best' actually encompasses both the give and receive categories, but first a little back story is in order.

In February I decided to start a creative writing workshop for incarcerated women at the county jail, so I spent some time on the Internet researching model programs.  Surprisingly, I found very little. Outside of the PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Program, I found one program in Western Massachusetts for incarcerated women that uses Pat Schneider’s AWA method, one originally developed for use in her writing workshops with low income women but later adapted for use with other marginalized populations.

Armed with some basic ideas, I drew additional inspiration from my own experience teaching diverse adult populations over many years and wrote a proposal to the jail administration.  After 9 months of negotiations, personnel changes and personal setbacks that delayed its start, we ran the first workshop on October 2^nd.  5 women attended.  The next week, the facility was in lock down.  The week after that, no one showed for the workshop.  

The following week, a few women returned from the initial meeting, others had lost interest, and still others had been released.  Since the workshop ‘pilot’ was open only to the “worker” classification of inmates—those usually incarcerated for shorter durations—we limped along in fits and starts for the first couple of months.  Weekly I heard from those attending the workshop that there were many women who wanted to come but weren't eligible as non-workers.

After some diplomatic negotiations with the Captain, the workshop was opened to all of the women in the facility, but with limited participation of 6 per workshop.  In the weeks since, we have been running at capacity with reports from those in attendance of having to fight for their spot.  They tell me it’s a get set, get ready, and go! to line up for admittance and that if they’re not fast, they don’t get in.

With a more consistent group, we’ve been able to build off of each preceding workshop.  We started with a look at words and some of the popular devices used in poetry—alliteration, repetition, rhyming patterns, concrete vs. abstract imagery, onomatopoeia, clichés, and fresh ways to use language—and looked at poems that effectively use these devices.  

Then we wrote.  We began with Haiku practice.  For those that didn’t want to write poetic line, they could write stream-of-consciousness or whatever they liked either on a topic of their choosing or from prompts that I provided.  (I’ve had one gal the past two weeks who has been writing in a tone and style that is a cross between medieval literature and a Harlequin Romance).

In the past month, I’ve started bringing their writing home and typing it up for them so they can see their words in print.  I give them back two versions—one just as they’ve written it and the second with light penciled comments, suggestions and encouragement for further development, if they so choose.  I’ve brought them Rumi, Carroll, Frost and Levertov, Oliver and cummings and Snyder, and then when they asked for Shakespeare, nursery rhymes, Psalms & Proverbs, and more Beat Poets, I brought those, too.

This past Saturday, on Christmas Day, I brought them all of the above and one more gift:  enclosed in red and green envelopes a slip of paper with the address of the PEN American Center where they can send for a free handbook for writers in prison.  I also brought them poems by the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place winners in PEN’s Annual Prison Writing Contest, proof that voices of writers inside are heard and published. 

Not all will continue writing when they leave the county jail, but for some of the women in the workshop who already know they are headed for prison sentences, writing may be a comfort during the months and years ahead.  

One thing is certain. Our workshop was the greatest gift I gave and received this Christmas. It seemed so for them as well.

Do Not Seek, And You Shall Find

Last week I went shopping for an Ugly Christmas Sweater for a party to which we’d been invited.  It was the third store in as many days and still no Christmas sweaters, ugly or otherwise.  Although not particularly enthusiastic, I had made the attempt and now with strike three affirmed that I could move on guilt-free.  Since I was already in the store I decided to look around.  Known mostly for its ‘dress for less’ clothing, this store also has a row of aisles at its opposite end lined with everything from picture frames and house wares to furniture and gift items at reasonable prices.  Not really in a Christmas-shopping mood, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular.  Just wandering.

As I was browsing, I came across some decorative photo albums and thought of my eleven year old niece.  Having recently seen her newly painted blue bedroom, I picked up the blue and green album with a retro 60s Mandela design, thinking she might like to put pictures in it of friends both old and new (having recently moved to rural Northern California from the San Francisco Bay Area). Then I looked behind me and discovered a lone jewelry-box size treasure chest among a collection of lacquered decorative boxes, perfect for the-hand-me-down jewelry I’d let her pick out the week before.  Jewelry that came with a promise to wrap it up for Christmas along with one or two new gifts and an expressed regret that my husband and I weren’t able to do more for her this year.  

The small wooden chest, a two-tone light green and cream color with pink flowers, carried a Parisian boutique stamp and showed manufactured wear in all the right places to give it that antique look.  Lined in brown velvet with two brass handles at each end and a matching lock on front, it was like finding a gem amidst the non-descript, mass produced uniformity perched on the store shelf.  I added it to my cart and went to the next aisle over, where I found a glass picture frame rimmed with flowers of delicately etched stems and pink crystal heads, a perfect home for a recent picture of the two of us; then, in the clothing bin at the front of the store, I found fluffy black and peach slipper socks waiting to keep her feet warm on these cold winter nights; and finally, in the accessories bin next to that, a jeweled handbag holder (shaped as a mini-purse) to hold her first purse, received on her birthday in September.  

Across the aisle a display of porcelain kitchen accessories caught my eye.  At Thanksgiving when my husband asked where our gravy boat was and I replied that we didn’t have one he mentioned that he’d like one.  Sure enough, one gravy boat remained awaiting my arrival.  And at a steal of a deal.  I put it in the cart and wandered back over to the house wares aisle where an attractive set of black and cream dish towels with a rooster motif and red and tan borders caught my eye.  I thought of my sister and brother-in-law who had mentioned getting chickens now that they are living in the country.  In the cart it went, along with some matching pot-holders, on my way to the check out.

Suddenly, I felt the Christmas spirit, which had been largely absent.  I didn’t need to pursue it to find it, only to be receptive to it finding me. And instead of an Ugly Christmas Sweater, I received the beauty of the season.