My childhood was spent seeking out boundaries and finding the most exhilarating ways to cross them. As a kid from the Flats, my dad didn't have the money to buy me a fancy bike or an expensive basketball hoop, so it was my job to come up with my own forms of entertainment. So my friends Dave and Sean followed - Dave like an over-excited puppy and Sean unable to keep from checking over his shoulder - as I made trouble, jumping into subway tracks and attempting to steal cars. Even after Dave, Sean and I went our separate ways, I found a crew to help me find the thrill I sought after. For a while, that was enough to satisfy me, the rush. Then, all of a sudden, it wasn't.
I remember the day very clearly. It was a day when everything simultaneous clicked into and fell out of place. I stood in my kitchen two years after I was thrown in Deer Island and two months after my sweet Marita died. My daughter Katie looked up at me with the innocent eyes of a five-year-old but with the expectation and skepticism of one more mature. It hit me then that the girl before me was trusting me, however reluctantly, to take care of her. There was no way she could survive if I went back to prison. In that moment, I decided to devote my life not to thrills and adrenaline rushes, but to my daughter. I pushed aside my old life, got a job, cleaned up my act, became the father I needed to be. From then on, Katie was the companion I meant to keep, and I would do anything not to jeopardize that. Anything for Katie.
Jimmy Marcus
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