The blog post was written in March 2020 during a state-wide lockdown with residents being advised to remain in their homes except for necessary trips to the store or work due to a global pandemic.

Last week, I was home, not going out at all. The virus catastrophe was too difficult to deal with.  Suddenly, I thought of jail.  Out of the blue.  Why?  I have no idea.

I always wondered what it might be like to be in jail.  In jail, in a cell with bars, where everyone could see me all the time, and see what I was doing.  There would be no privacy.

Many years ago I saw what it’s like.  My ex-husband was a psychologist and when he first got started, he had a fellowship in many of the institutions in New York State.  I visited two, Elmira Penitentiary and Letchworth Village.

Elmira Penitentiary was a jail, a real jail.  Once when I was visiting Charly in the town of Elmira, the prison had an open session for people to visit the jail.  We were about twenty people in a pack, the way you might visit a museum in Paris or New York or Italy.

But this was no Paris.  It was late afternoon, about five, still light out, and the men were all in their cells.  I could read about it, mourn the idea, but never really felt what it meant until I saw men, maybe even boys, in their cells.  Some were sitting and staring at us.  What were we doing there, peering at them?  I felt this throb in my heart, I didn’t know.  One boy remains in my head forever.  He was thin, about seventeen, wearing underwear with no sleeves, smoking, and bent over staring at us.  I always wondered what he was there for and how long would he stay, what did he think of us.  And how would he manage? How many years would he be in that cell with bars where everyone could see you?

I only knew one person in my life who had been in jail.  Felix was a publisher and a communist.  I once asked him how he became a communist. “From my mother’s milk,” he answered.  He spent eighteen months in a federal penitentiary when Roosevelt made a deal to get communist Jews out of the Teamsters Union.  He never would talk about it.  But he became a prosperous publisher, married twice, and had three children, all of whom were totally messed up.

Letchworth Village is another story.  It no longer exists.  Children with all kinds of mental and physical disabilities were institutionalized there, sometimes for life. There is no need to describe what I saw, but it is enough to say, that in my lifetime, it was a nightmare and disgrace, it was written up in all the New York newspapers, and was demolished.  What happened to the children? I do not know and cannot even imagine.

My son, Stephen once spent a year working in an institution for the retarded in Boston.  His feelings for the children he took care of were in his voice, the movement of his face, sometimes even tears, as he talked about the work.

“What was so interesting and meaningful for me,” he once said, “is that some of these children could not and would never speak, but they always found ways to communicate.”

I know there are all kinds of jails. Domestic abuse is a prison, a prison with no visual bars, but bars just the same. Sometimes money or the lack of it is a jail. Where can you go and what can you do with just enough money and no hope for anything changing?  There are jails all over, some with bars, some with mental bars that are just not visible.

For many years my marriage was great, Charly was building a career, and we had three children who were all healthy and wonderful.  What happens when a marriage, once so sweet and gratifying, becomes a prison?  Why? What happened?  Visual bars are not there, but boundaries become clear and, for a while, impenetrable.   Is there a sentence to marriage, how long is it for you and will you ever get out?  I did not initiate the divorce,  and it was very painful for me.  Time and pain pass, and finally, you grow and learn and move away from that particular prison into the power of freedom.  Then, I was free to acquire a doctorate and forge a career.  The bars, visible or not, were eliminated.

I began this essay with the restraints of the Covid-19 virus.  And it is still there and maybe for a very long time.  I have been alone in my apartment for fourteen days.  I am getting accustomed to the restrictions. They seem reasonable.  My telephone is my salvation.  I speak to people all over the world.  The world crisis propels me to want to know how everyone is doing, my friend Deborah in Maryland, Elizabeth in California, Celina and Carol Lisa, in Israel and Don in New Jersey.  My age tells me I am one of the most vulnerable age groups, and I must seclude myself.  Can one live in a barred environment and still be free?  For how long?

Sometimes I feel imprisoned by time, by life’s limits, imprisoned by my own decisions.  Now, we are all experiencing a national virus.  I am worried about the world, will we survive?  I am anxious about my family, all secured in their respective homes.  But three are in New York, the highest number of cases in the world.  And Michael, my grandson, is alone in Philadelphia where the organization he worked for just shut down.  What will he do in an apartment in Philadelphia with no work and no family?

I know I am free, free to break down the bars. I may not leave my home right now, but there are other bars that can be removed.  Life offers choices.  Can I move myself to the world of freedom even in this secluded space for an unknown time?  Will I do it?   Who knows?  How?