I Thought I Knew My Father, Then I Met Him in Prison

Editor’s note: This week, we’re running a special Life Inside series about fathers and incarceration. Read the previous essays about next-cell neighbors and dancing in the prison gym.

I always called my father Mr. Moore. It didn’t seem strange to me at all. Everyone called him that.

Life Inside Perspectives from those who work and live in the criminal justice system. Related Stories

Mr. Moore came every day, unlike my brothers and sisters’ fathers, who never did. (My mother had many men in her life.) He showed up in the mornings before work to make sure I had money for lunch.

“Your father’s here!” my mother would say, just to me.

He worked as a security guard for as long as I can remember, and came in the evenings, too, after he got off the job, to make sure I had a hot dinner. My mother drank. By then, she was either drunk or sleeping, so Mr. Moore would buy me McDonalds.

Whether it was school uniforms, sneakers, whatever. He made sure I had it. He brought me money every single week, an envelope full of cash. I was his son, but he always told me to share the money with my brothers and sisters,