I am in prison for murder. This is about as significant of an event as I can think of. I want to write about my relationship with my niece, Jaxon, which pertains greatly to that event. As for the event itself, I am not going to write about the actual crime that was committed, rather the ongoing development of a healthy relationship, despite being incarcerated.
Jaxon Rose Hairston is 11 years old. She will be 12 next month, in February. I am starting off with her age because I was arrested on December 1st, 2009, a few months before Jaxon was born. I have only one sibling, a younger sister named Jesslyn, and my niece is her only child. My only niece only knows her only uncle as an inmate and prisoner.
I spent almost two years in county jail fighting my case before coming to prison. I remember one time during my trial, I was handcuffed and being escorted to the courtroom by two officers. In front of me, I saw my niece’s face looking backward, her chin resting on my sister’s shoulder, while she carried her to the courtroom ahead of me. But Jaxon wasn’t looking at me. The look on her face was blank; she did not recognize me at all. That was a heart-breaking moment for me. In all reality, she wasn’t supposed to recognize me. She was just a baby, not even two years old yet. How could she recognize someone who had never even held her? But I was at a very low and vulnerable place emotionally. There was something about my little niece, this new life that somehow carried, or represented, a hope for me in the form of a beautiful baby girl that I wanted to recognize me.
My niece meant a lot to me, even though I didn’t know her and was absent from her daily life. After I was sentenced, I was sent to a prison called Clallam Bay Corrections Center near Forks, WA. The prison was about four hours from my family in Seattle. I would get pictures of Jaxon and see her grow and mature from afar. I felt like I knew her but wondered if she even remembered me. I received my answer the first time she came to visit me with her mom. She knew me. She had a love for me similar to the love I have for her. This was incredible to me, and I didn’t quite understand it. Gradually, it began to make sense. It was my family’s doing. My sister, parents and grandparents all played a role in keeping my memory alive in their homes, making me still feel like part of the family to our newest member, even though I was far away and locked up in prison. I doubt that this was even done intentionally; however, it has been such a priceless and amazing gift they have given me.
When I see my niece now, she always runs up to me and gives me a hug. When she visits me, we play games like chess and Uno, and she tells me about her friends at school. There are vending machines and microwaves, a large selection of games, puzzles, and crayons for the visiting children to draw with. There is a TV and some kind of video game console in the room, though we never play. Another area has foam building blocks, like oversized Lego, where my niece likes to build skyscrapers and do cartwheels. Jaxon is quite athletic and very smart.
At about five or six years of age, she came to visit me with my mother and sister. The visiting room is large with tables spread out all over the room. Four chairs to a table and all prisoners are facing forward toward the guards that watch us. I don’t know who exactly they are there to protect, but they couldn’t do anything to save me from what happened next. Out of nowhere, she asked me “Are you in prison?” I was most definitely unprepared for this question. The visiting room was instantly as small as my prison cell. Suddenly, I was internally bum rushed by my own questions. Should I tell her what I’m in prison for? Do I tell her how long my sentence is? Will she look at me differently? Will she look at me negatively now? My face flushed red, and it was all very overwhelming. I stuttered and finally mumbled out some version of my answer. “Yes, I am in prison Jaxon.” To my relief, her follow-up question wasn’t anything that had fearfully crossed my mind. She next asked me, very excitedly, “Do you sleep on a bunk bed?” A wave of relief passed over me as she provided me an easy transition into this difficult conversation. It turned out to be very light-hearted and I was grateful for that. But this conversation made me realize that Jaxon is very capable of filling in the blanks and figuring things out on her own. Like I said earlier, she’s a smart girl.
I feel incredibly lucky to have the relationship that I have with my niece, to be a part of her life. So many people in my situation as an incarcerated man do not get to know their children or the children in their lives as they grow up for many different reasons. It is easy to become a burden or a memory to your loved ones. It takes great effort to maintain a healthy relationship with those that are incarcerated.
In my first paragraph, I said that I was going to write about the ongoing event of developing a healthy relationship with my niece, despite being locked up. But what I am really saying is that I have been lucky to have a family that cares enough to help facilitate this relationship between my niece and me. The old saying that “It takes a village to raise a child” is something that comes to mind. I don’t live in that village anymore. I live in a different village, that’s more like the jungle. However, in most places, villages are made up of tribes. Thanks to the love of my family, I’m still part of the tribe.
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