“First Visit with Shannon”

Last night, Corinne and I packed up the baby and made the 25 minute drive down to the York Women's Correctional Facility in Niantic. They wouldn't tell us over the phone if we were on the visitor list or not, and they told Shannon that her request for that information could take up to 15 days, so we decided to just chance it. After all, she hadn't seen anyone from the "outside" since a few days after the sentencing on March 12th.

The prison was locked down. No visits on the second Tuesday of the month. The gate guard suggested we never try to visit on Tuesdays. Sigh.

So we drove from there to Uncasville, to visit Mike at Radgowski (he was moved there from Corrigan a couple weeks ago).They weren't locked down, but I'm a dope. I left my wallet in the pickup, and there are no visits without photo ID. Aaaaaargh! (Even if York hadn't been locked down, I couldn't have gone in, for the same reason.)

They didn't know we were coming, so we weren't letting them down (especially Shannon, since there was no way to see her).

Driving home, I decided that I'd bring Lauren to see Shannon first thing in the morning while Corinne was still sleeping. Lauren was ten days old the last time she held her, and now she's forty-one days.

I had to wait about twenty minutes while they found Shannon and brought her to the meeting room. Then they let me in.

When the door opened, Shannon burst into tears of joy. Everybody watched, congratulated her, told her how beautiful the baby is, and honestly paid us more attention for much of the time we were there than I expected (this includes the guards and the other inmates and visitors).

I thought that visits were limited to an hour. (I need to give up on that whole “thinking” thing, it just isn't working out for me.)

Shannon's grandmother was due to arrive at our house at 10:00 to see Lauren for the first time since the day at court. I knew I was going to return home later than that, but if the visit went from 8:45 - 9:45, I thought I'd be home by 10:30. She'd understand.

Nope. You can visit until the morning "social visit" is over. I could have left early, but that would have meant taking Lauren out of her mother's arms. That just wasn't going to happen. Of course, there's no way to make any calls, so Corinne and the grandmother just had to wait it out.

We managed to keep a conversation rolling through most of the visit. She was just so very happy to see *anyone*, and that the someone had her baby in his arms certainly didn't hurt any, that she was happy to talk about anything at all. (Not that Shannon is ever difficult to talk to. She's not.)

The ladies (Corinne and Lauren's grandmother) were a little upset at my tardiness when I called on the way home, but they both understood when I explained all of the above, and that Shannon had specifically said, "My grandmother will understand."

(In fact, she said that with the sense of, "she'd better understand." ;-)