Every time I hear John Mayer’s song “Daughters,” I get a gut-wrenching feeling. I have twin daughters out there in the world, and by coming to prison, I let them down.
One daughter, the oldest, wrote to me seven years ago. As Daddy’s girl, she wrote the first time to tell me this: “Hey Dad, I miss you so much. I don’t really have much to say, but I wanted to write you a letter anyways. I wish there was an easier way to talk to you, but I guess this is better than nothing.”
Nothing. That is what I felt like when I first read it. That is what I feel each time I read it. My daughter wrote to me once more, and then, never again. I still have the letters. After all these years, I still have the letters.
Some say words have power. I would agree. I’ve read Shakespeare, Chaucer and the Bible. But somehow, I love the words by my daughter the most. For me at least, my coming to prison was too-heavy of a burden for my family and friends to maintain contact. While the words they don’t communicate are silent, the language is clear: we don’t care. There is an old Arabic proverb which says, “To learn another language is to gain another soul.” My daughter, so young back then, conveyed the language of love.
In her letter, my daughter relayed all the musical instruments she was trying to master. She was always so talented. could not understand her talent, but I knew enough to support it. Being away during her formative years, I know I let her down. That feeling for an old soldier is like losing a piece of me; I lost my soul.
As I approach my time to leave prison, I am compiling the 20 songs that I wrote. Some are holy, some are silly, and all are basic. If the proverb that, “to learn another language is to gain another soul,” is true, through learning music I will get mine back. This time, my soul will be infused with the inspiration of my daughter, daddy’s girl. She is my muse in music.
Jayden Grace Minatani — “I love you, too!”
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.