The Invisible Man

 A thought came to mind the other day as I was filling out the endless amount of forms and notices sent home from the school and teachers on the first few days of school.  I no longer put my husband's name, address or phone number on any of the forms.  He is still their father, but my original thoughts were that it was for contact information and since it would be impossible for anyone to contact him, what would be the point of putting that information out there.  Another form asks who the children reside with, and of course, it is just with their mother.  Taking my daughter to play for a new high level sports team, and the team rooster lists the players, moms and dads and all their contact information.  My daughters name, simply listed MOM, the line for Dad was empty.

It seems that the very nature of the system necessitates making my husband invisible in the lives of our children.  Is he considered a "non-parent" because he can not receive all those e-mail updates from the teachers about upcoming homework and tests?  He is not even listed as a person to contact in case of an emergency.  I can't even contact him easily in an emergency...and I know because I had to. 

The federal prison system is inherently designed to put a greater distance between my husband and his children.  They claim their goal is to keep families together and to create a  support system for the offender but is does just the opposite.  He is only allowed 300 phone minutes a month at 15 maximum each call.  At 15 minutes you are simply just cut off.   He spends most of those minutes on calls to home but does use some to call his parents. 

He is 500+ miles away from his family at a facility four states away.  Right now he has no access to e-mail, which for kids growing up now is a basic form of communication. Although I am told that the facility is adding the infrastructure to add e-mail.  But I am also cautious because we are not certain of the fees to use such a service, they charge so much for phone calls, one can only think that the cost will be well beyond what most can afford to use regularly. 

There is a physical distance, an emotional distance and a complete lack of his influence in their lives on a daily basis.  We see him once a year because of the costs and distance to travel.  He may have to opportunity to talk to any one of them only once a week for a few minutes.  Regular mail is slow and ineffective for young children to express everything they want to share.   The normalcy of our lives does not include him in any way.  We do many things now as a family, sometimes never even thinking that he is not part of our activities.

So you tell me, how easy will it be for him to come home and be a functioning member of society, when we are not even sure he can be a functioning member of our family.  I can only imagine that things will be very difficult to fit back into the family dynamic for all of us.  My oldest will be in college and my youngest will have started high school.  They will all be young adults and when he left they were young children.   What are the benefits to society that he be incarcerated this way?  Other than to serve as retribution for those that simply want to punish him, there is nothing else positive to be gained by this experience that could not have been taught in another way. 

Instead of just punishing him, we his family, are also being punished.  Someone needs to look my three children in the eye and tell them what they did within their young lives to suffer such a punishment.  Someone needs to tell them why their father is now "The Invisible Man"