"We have a wonderful program here at the prison called Mother’s Inside Loving Kids (MILK). It teaches parenting skills, but more than this, it teaches communication and life skills. The Girl Scouts also play an active role in the group with leadership training and scouting activities. Some of this training takes place in special group visits where the children and mothers engage in loosely structured activities.

On those visits, many of the women are startled to discover how their example affects their children. They don’t want their kids to make their mistakes; they want the children to break the cycles of addiction, abuse, violence, criminality. I’ve seen remarkable changes in women as they realized the impact of their actions on their children. Instead of being overwhelmed by this responsibility, they find a new pride in their role. They matter. What they do matters.

I don’t have children so I am not a member of MILK. But I am intrigued by many of the creative fun activities with which they are involved. (If I could live my life again, I would be so into the Girl Scouts). So I’m always asking for every detail, irritating members with questions about new activities and their success and generally making a nuisances of myself with “Did you read that?” “Have you tried this?” “How did that work with the older boys?” In this way, over the years, I have wormed and wiggled by way into an unofficial activity consultant position. What this means in practice is that I get to make posters and other cool stuff. Most recently I was called upon to put together the ingredients for a collage exercise.

I love making collages. Cut and paste is art for the non-artist. For the consummate wannabe. Which describes me exactly. So when the idea came up for an activity for the next MILK visit that involved collage, I was leaping from my chair with enthusiasm. “I’ll do it!” I cried. Me. Oh. Mi.

Two of us then spent six hours a day cutting out thousands of pictures (I have permanent scissor finger as proof) from magazines. Six hours a day for two weeks we cut out pictures that had to fit into a predefined categories; people destinations, electronics, camping, clothing and accessories, transportation, animals, food, furniture, words, and miscellaneous (for anything interesting looking).

I set on the floor, a stack of magazines beside me, plastic scissors in hand and began cutting. I was ecstatic; I was in heaven. On about the third or fourth day my co-cutter said she was a bit tired. I snorted at her. This was child’s play. The week ripped by in the blink of an eye. Sometime on Tuesday of the second week, my enthusiasm dimmed. The stack of magazines had not shrunk. My hand was a claw. There were bit of paper everywhere. I felt a bit crazed.

On Wednesday I started skipping pictures and only cutting words out of certain size. My co-cutter made snippy remarks about my heavy sighs. I started to develop old-fashioned piles (whatever they might be) from sitting on the concrete floor for six hours. My back was broken. My hand was numb. I was visually numb. My co-cutter and I conspired to chuck out the last box of magazines. “I’m never doing this again!” I shouted at my co-cutter who giggled about bliss turned sour.

After the visit when the kids had made their collages I was told the story of a young child, an inner city kid who longed to go camping. She had painstakingly dug through all the camping pictures to find enough sleeping bags for everyone to go on the trip with her. When I heard the story I flashed back to those incredibly annoying inch-size sleeping bag pictures. My co-cutter and I had discussed them. Pages and pages of them.

A small vertigo staggered me! How closely we had come to ruining a young person’s vision. But then I was inspired by this young girl who worked so diligently and determinedly to include everyone in her dream. And they call that child’s play." (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, June 1, 2006).

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'