Keeping connected

By: Jeff Kelly LowensteinDenise Bailey-Gordon moved off of the wooden bleachers and past a volleyball net, her face exploding with joy as she approached her family.

Her blue eye shadow matching her shirt and pants, her hair prepared in an artful curl, Bailey-Gordon was enveloped by the 10 relatives fresh off a three-hour bus ride to visit her.

The family moved upstairs, where they settled around a large rectangular table in the corner of the room. While the children started drawing on a nearby chalkboard, Bailey-Gordon walked around the table, hugging each of her family members.

"He's got to get used to me," she declared, holding Jamaal, a grandson she was meeting for the first time and who was squirming in her embrace.

After a lunch of macaroni and cheese washed down by apple juice, the family went back downstairs to the gym, where some of the children shot baskets and played volleyball. Laughter collided with happy chatter and filled the air.

The setting for this late December scene was not a local gymnasium or YWCA, but the Lincoln Correctional Center in Lincoln, Ill.

The Bailey-Gordon family was one of 15 who participated in a Connections program provided by Lutheran Social Services of Illinois, a church-based social service agency. These monthly three-hour visits in which families can touch each other and eat and play together are treasured experiences for the children, a valuable source of motivation for the inmates and an incentive prison authorities can use to encourage positive behavior.

"If they don't display good behavior, they can't participate in the [program]," said Warden Carolyn Robertson, adding that the family visits give the inmates "the inspiration and willpower to stay out [of trouble]."

The program began about 20 years ago, according to Pat Davis, a program coordinator at Lutheran.

Marilyn Hammond, director of the Relatives as Parents program, a support group for caregivers, sponsored by Lutheran, explained that the visits not only enable the whole family to be together but also provide a chance for caregivers to meet and talk about shared concerns.

Mothers and children spend time together, while caregivers talk with Hammond.

The Saturday visit began early: The chartered bus was full by 7:20 a.m., 10 minutes before its departure, and several of the families had woken up hours earlier to be ready on time.

The bus wound south through rural country before approaching a water tower looming in the distance behind the prison. After getting off the bus, the families walked past a wooden sign announcing the facility's name.

Before getting to see their mothers, sisters or daughters, family members had to go through a metal detector, be patted down in the "shakedown room" and go through three cinnamon-colored doors that locked heavily behind them.

Birds chirped as the families walked across a grassy courtyard with a gray concrete picnic area ringed by two-story red-brick buildings. Barbed-wire fences enclosed the area, but the gymnasium was the site of many joyous reunions.

Many of the women said the prospect of seeing their children keeps them going. "That's what we live for," said Patricia C. Brown, who, like Bailey- Gordon, was wearing blue eye shadow. "That's what makes us go on and have hope for the future."

Davis said the program benefits children, caregivers and inmates alike. "The children definitely want to see their moms, to know that their moms haven't forgotten them," she said. "For the caregiver, it gives her an opportunity to talk to the mom and tell her what is going on in the home. The huge thing is that,when the mom comes out … if she has positive connections with her family, she is more likely to do well."

For each family who went to Lincoln, many more were not able to attend. The 15 families who visited the prison were selected out of 215 prisoner requests. And not all of the scenes were joyful.

At the table next to the Bailey-Gordon family, Bianca Alvarez had strong words for her four children about the gap between their academic intention and their performance. "You can say it all you want; until you do it, your words don't mean nothing," said Alvarez, a diminutive women with a tattoo on her right forearm. "I don't see As; I don't see Bs."

Seated across the table, her 10-year-old daughter fidgeted silently with Dr. Seuss' "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." She looked close to tears as Alvarez continued her lecture, looking like a snarling cat as she leaned forward.

The talking and fidgeting continued until one of Alvarez's sons tenderly reached an arm around his mother's shoulder. Alvarez stopped talking and started crying. The boy hugged her, and the daughter stood up, walked around the table and received a kiss from her mother.

Despite the emotional turbulence, Alvarez said later that the family visits "mean the world to me. It's the only thing that keeps me going."

Meanwhile, Annette Daniels, although glad to be receiving a visit from her sister Elsie Richardson and her 12-year-old daughter, said she was uneasy. Daniels was uncertain about how much life in Chicago had changed in the decade while she had been incarcerated for murder. "I'm anxious," said Daniels, who wore gray sweatpants. "I want to get on my feet."

Many others had feelings of anxiety that throughout the day pushed up, like bulbs in spring. Otis Gordon, who was hospitalized for six weeks in the fall, worries about his health, while his wife, Bailey-Gordon, repeatedly asked her grandchildren, "Do you remember me?"

Other mothers expressed concern about the number of visits decreasing due to increased inmate requests.

Wearing blue jeans and a Dale Earnhardt Jr. jacket, Cassandra Walker said she is concerned about losing the support of the other caregivers she has come to know while her daughter finishes out her sentence in 2012.

Above all, families worried that the children will follow their mothers into the prison system.

All too fast, 2 p.m. came.

Loren Wilson, a correctional counselor, gently but firmly told the families that the time for visiting had ended. Carlonda Ekson, a long-time inmate with a lively personality, tried to linger among the family members standing against the wall, rather than retreating to the other side of the gymnasium.

Daniels sat on the bleachers, her shoulders slumped in resignation.

None of the children cried, but their downward-gazing faces looked like they wanted to. One girl scampered back for a final hug in front of a Christmas tree. The families waved to the women, who were less than 15 yards away but seemed to recede with each successive motion through the air, which was warmer than when they entered three hours earlier.

The families walked out of the gymnasium and across the courtyard, where, in the distance, women who had not received a visit gathered outside one of the red brick dormitories. Back through the cinnamon-colored doors, back to the check-in room and back onto the bus. Each child received a stocking.

The ride back was subdued, yet underneath there was satisfaction.

"It was nice talking to my mom, just being around her [and] catching up," said Nicole Bailey,who brought her two daughters and said she felt jitters before her initial prison visit. "I wasn't nervous when I got here because I was happy to see her."

Debra Gaitors concurred, but also had a note of sadness. "It was nice," she said. "I feel bad that my daughter is in prison, and I have to leave. [But] it gets her a chance to see her baby."