This time last year, we faced the coming of the new year with nothing but dread. We knew Mike was going into custody in a few days. Life as we knew it would be over for the forseeable future. There was nothing to look forward to about 2011.

But 2011 has passed now. It felt interminably long, and yet also somehow flew by. 2011 brought new challenges that we never imagined a year ago, including our daughter being diagnosed with severe juvenile arthritis.

Through it all, one thing has been constant: our love for each other and our commitment to rebuilding our lives as a family when Mike is released in October 2013. That goal has kept us looking forward and not back.

Now as we embark on 2012, we can look forward with more optimism than a year ago. We expect to have really good news to share soon about Mike’s living situation, and hope that our daughter’s health will continue to improve as she receives treatment.

I couldn’t have survived 2011 without the support of so many people…thank you to all of you. I appreciate all of the support and am so glad to have you all with me as I move into the different challenges that 2012 will bring.

So here’s to 2012…good riddance 2011. I won’t miss you.

This post was originally supposed to be titled “six months down” but CHA kind of hit like a hurricane around here, and best intentions about things I was going to post on this site went out the window. (Case in point: the previous post of the June #6 tag that I just got around to posting…)

So anyway, it’s now been over 7 months since that awful day in January that Mike went into custody to begin serving a 40 month sentence for the DUI related to his car accident last summer. Many people have been kind enough to let me know my family is in their thoughts and prayers, and to periodically ask me how my family is doing. I appreciate that more than I can say. I thought that as the six month milestone passed it might be a good time to provide an update on how we are doing (but of course by the time I’ve gotten around to writing this anywhere but in my head, it has now been seven).

I also thought I might provide a window into this strange life for those who’ve never been touched by the legal system or the incarceration of a loved one. It’s amazing the things that you learn that you never intended to in life…

When will this be over? Mike’s release date is tentatively set for Oct. 30th, 2013 if he continues to accumulate his maximum allowable good behavior credit time. At that point he will have served 34 months of his 40 month sentence. A lot of people who’ve reached out have well meaningly tried to reassure me that someone like Mike won’t actually serve too much time but there is something that most people don’t understand about Florida law: we don’t have parole here. He can’t earn his way out by being a good inmate or proving he’s “reformed” like he could in most states. Florida is one of six (I think that number is correct) states in the country that has eliminated parole for inmates. Any inmate sentenced in Florida after 1996 has to serve 85% of their sentence. PERIOD. No early release. No parole. Nothing. So it would take a change in Florida state law for Mike to get out before that October 2013 date.

Mike is currently housed 6.5 hours away from home at a prison camp in the Florida panhandle. I drive out to visit about every 3-4 weeks, spending a 3 day weekend traveling and visiting (visitation is from 8am-2pm on Saturdays and Sundays). Bridget only goes every 2 months or so due to the not-so-autistic-kid-friendly visiting conditions. Thanks to my regular trips back and forth across most of Florida’s stretch of I-10, I’m currently the Foursquare mayor of nine rest areas and a hotel. Actually, it was ten rest areas but someone stole one from me the other day. Harumph.

Visitation is full of rules and regulations about everything from what I am allowed to bring in with me (basically nothing) to what I have to wear (I’ve seen nuns wearing less than the visitation rules require). But…I get to kiss and hug him! Just once, and the rules say we have to keep it pretty restrained….but when once at the beginning and end of each visit is all you get, you cherish it. The rest of the time we are allowed to sit on the opposite sides of the table and hold hands, or take walks together in the outside area of the VP while holding hands.

No cameras are allowed in the VP (and bringing a cell phone inside a state correctional facility is even a felony in Florida), but there is a photo service offered as part of the canteen in visiting park. We can buy photo tickets for $2/each and there is an inmate who will take pictures in front of this insanely bright wall mural and then print them with an Epson portable photo printer. We get photos taken regularly this way and then I scan them when I get home so that we can make more copies. The photo below was taken a couple of weeks ago when I visited the weekend after I got home from CHA.

The travel…the separation…being constantly under the eyes of guards who are armed with pepper spray and who hold incredible power to take away our visits or even put Mike in confinement…As stressful and as much of a hassle as this all probably sounds, I’m just used to it by now. It’s become routine. It’s just something that I do. It was stressful the first couple of times, but now I can follow most of the procedure and the rules without even thinking about it. You have to get used to it or you’d just go crazy. I’ve even made a few friends at the camp, something I could never imagine. One woman, in particular, is the fiance of a bunkmate of Mike’s. We typically have lunch together after visitation ends on Saturday on the weekends I go visit. It’s so nice to sit down and really talk with someone who is sharing the same experience and understands my world.

Visitation is not the way, of course, that I want to see my husband. But it’s what I get so I take it and make the best of it. It’s wonderful to get to spend more than 15 minutes talking to each other, and know that we don’t have someone listening possibly to every word we say (all inmate phone calls are recorded). Just laying eyes on each other and feeling his hand in mine, is beautiful.

It’s amazing what you can learn to take comfort from when you have to. I live for the day when I can have more of him, but for now, I count the days between our precious visits.

Visitation is only a few days out of the month. What is the rest of our time like? Mostly it is a boring, exhausting, grind of a routine.

Mike works as an orderly – basically a janitor – in the medical department of the facility. Inmates who do this job are very carefully selected due to the fact that he works around civilian staff members and a lot of contraband. He works 6 days a week except when I visit. He says he can clean just about anything with bleach now. Yes, I have warned him that I expect him to utilize his new skills when he returns home. At least one of us will know how to clean then. (haha)

Other than work, Mike’s days are spent in the mind-numbing routine that makes up daily prison life. Even what would seem to be the simplest tasks – mailing a letter, or getting a (required) haircut – takes at the very least pre-planning, or at the most days of effort. He spends a lot of time sitting silently on his bunk for 45 minutes or so at a time while a count is taken of every inmate in the camp a half dozen or so times a day. Any limited free time he gets is spent reading and writing letters on his bunk, or chatting with other residents in his dorm of 70 guys. At 43, he’s old enough to be some of the guys’ father and some of the younger ones tend to seek him out for advice due to his maturity, straight up reputation, and stable family life.

Between the physical labor and the horrible food, Mike has lost about 75 pounds since January. He’s the skinniest I’ve seen him in the 21 years I’ve known him. He looks great and the weight loss has been good for his health, but this is not the way that we wanted to have it happen, of course.

For both of us, this experience has meant learning a whole new system, culture and language. Dealing with the DOC is a lot like the military in that sense. There’s an entire vocabulary that comes with a prison, much of it military-inspired (words like chow hall, officer, canteen, camp). There’s also a whole litany of regulations and programs to learn about if you want to get the most possible out of the system – or just avoid running afoul of it. It’s amazing, however, how fast it all becomes second nature when you are learning it through immersion.

For Bridget and I at home, life has settled into a routine as well. Bridget turned 8 in May and will be entering 3rd grade this fall in her school’s autism program. We’ve managed just the two of us better than I ever could have expected. We live a pretty quiet life, sticking to home most of the time, and have our own little routine that works for us. I work mostly from my home office, and spend my spare time scrapbooking in my kitchen scrap space. Bridget is kept busy with school and regularly spends time at her grandparents’ houses. Due to her autism she attends a special summer school program so her summer vacation has actually been pretty short – not enough time for either her or mommy to go stir crazy from her being at home too much, which is good. She’s handled all of this way better than we ever could have hoped. She obviously misses her Daddy tons, but she carries herself with a confidence and maturity in the past few months I wouldn’t have thought possible a year ago. She is basically a happy, well-adjusted little girl who is growing up fast.

Bridget has made some important developmental progress the past few weeks during her brief summer vacation. I was able to get her to start eating peanut butter sandwiches (if they are cut into bite-sized pieces). This is the first “real” food item she has ever eaten. Up until now all she has eaten is bite-sized crackers and cheerios, and Gerber 2nd and 3rd food baby food items. The big obstacle has been that she is incredibly orally defensive and refused to chew anything that is wet. It appears that with some creative work we’re starting to get past that now, so hopefully she will make some real dietary progress in the next few months now building on this first big step.

A lot of our day is devoted in one way or another to communicating with Mike. We write letters daily – even Bridget scrawls out adorable little notebook sheets of a few sentences to him – and talk on the phone daily as well. Unfortunately, unlike most other states, Florida does not allow prison inmates to call cell phones (and all phone numbers they call have to be on a pre-approved list) so being able to talk to Mike means sticking to home during the hours that the phones are on in his dorm (5-9pm weekdays and 9am-9pm on the weekends). And when I have to be away from home, such as for a CHA trip, or on the Fridays that I have to drive up to visit him the next day – I don’t get to talk to him at all. Our calls are limited to 15 minutes long before the system will automatically cut us off which seems very short, but you learn to cram as much as you can into the time and save the rest for a letter. You also learn to have no expectation of privacy in your communication, since all phone calls are recorded and also he is standing in a lobby that is a very busy area of the dorm. Letters are no better for privacy…all incoming and outgoing mail from the facility is scanned before being delivered to the inmate or given to the USPS. You learn to save any really private conversation for during a visit (and to have a new definition of what really needs “private”.)

Our 8th month is close to half over now. Bridget starts a new school year in another week, and in two weeks I’ll be taking her to see Mike for the first time since Father’s Day. We just take life one day at a time and slowly, the time is ticking by.

If only it would go by as fast as my little girl seems to be growing up…

Some things will never make sense to a 7 year old, especially one with autism.

Tonight at bedtime we had a talk. She’d been seeming sad and so I asked if she was missing her Daddy. It didn’t take long to determine, even with her limited communication skills, that the answer was most definitely yes.

CHA is coming up fast and I realized that I need to start preparing her for the fact that Mommy will be going away, but coming back again. Not like Daddy (or so it seems to her in her limited conception of time). She’s good with calendars. Fascinated with dates. I got out her 2011 photo calendar that Daddy had made for her before he left that hangs by her computer.

“Bridget, what day is today?” She points. “Do you see this day here?” I pointed to the 27th when I have to leave for Los Angeles. She grabbed my finger and moved it to the 18th. “NO THIS DAY.” “No I want to talk about this day sweetheart.” “NO THIS DAY.” We had to go back and forth a couple of times before my exhausted brain realized she was negotiating with me when Daddy was coming home.

My heart broke in that moment for her.

Because I can love and cherish her and take perfect care of her by myself, but nothing can replace her Daddy in her world. They share an amazing bond, starting from the first few months of her life when he insisted on getting up with her for middle of the night feedings because he had a long work day and he said he cherished the extra quiet time with her because his evenings were so short. Now they share a love of everything to do with technology and he has taught her how to play iPhone games like Angry Birds and Paper Pilot (and then pretends to get annoyed when she beats him). She is, above all else, Daddy’s Girl.

Two nights earlier in the week, she spoke to him on the phone (well, such as she does – it’s not really a conversation) and her face light up like a Christmas tree. I hope she gets a chance to do that again before he disappears into 30 day phone list approval limbo at any moment.

I wish I could give her a date for her calendar when we can visit Daddy but even that is impossibly far in the future for her as it could likely be April or later before he can have visitors at a permanent facility.

I have a feeling this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.