Unicorn Land

July 19th, 2026

“Grandpa, talk for the stuffies!”

Asher, our grandson, often demands that I speak for his stuffed animals. He has dozens of them, and he will suddenly toss several stuffies at me and then expect me to invent a conversation between them. I do all the voices. He has three unicorn stuffies that he likes to put into the mix. One is white in color and called “Snowflake”. One is pink and known as “Uni”. There is unicorn/llama hybrid that simply goes by “Unicorn Llama”. These three stuffies are the guardians of Unicorn Land, which is the exotic setting for most of these episodes. Asher likes to have other stuffies visit Unicorn Land and I have to include them in the narrative.

This morning’s chapter went like this:

A new character shows up. He is a small, intensely purple elephant named “Purple”. The unicorns welcome him.

Snowflake: “Hi, welcome to Unicorn Land!”

Purple: “Hi. I’m Purple. I live here too.”

Snowflake: “Really? Since when?”

Purple: “I was born here. I’m a unicorn elephant.”

Snowflake: “Oh. That’s odd.”

Purple: “Well, you have a unicorn llama here. Why not an elephant?”

Note: There is apparently birthright citizenship in Unicorn Land.

Snowflake: “Uh, yeah. So, what do you do here?”

Purple: “I’ve been using my unicorn magic to make some improvements.”

Snowflake: “Like what?”

Purple: “I changed the colors on the flowers. I love using different colors. Now, the roses are blue, and the daisies are orange, and the goldenrod blossoms are red.”

Snowflake: “You made the goldenrod red? It’s supposed to be bright yellow. That’s why it’s called goldenrod.”

Purple: “No problem! we can call it redrod, or scarletrod, or crimsonrod!”

Snowflake: “Wait, wait, wait. You can’t just change everything. The animals who come to visit Unicorn Land expect to find things beautiful, but familiar. We welcome guests here and we want them to relax and be happy.”

Purple: “But it’s boring for the guests if it all stays the same. Hey, and you guys have a rainbow waterfall! That’s not normal!”

Snowflake: “Uh yeah, that’s true, but we are magical here, and that is part of our vibe. We try to keep Unicorn Land magical, but not too weird. You know, a few rainbows here and there, and some sparkles and moonbeams scattered around the place.”

Purple: “But I like new colors for things, especially red.”

Uni: “We like new things too, but not too much of them. Change most of the daisies back to white and the orange daisies will stick out more. Visitors will notice the orange flowers better if they are surrounded by a lot of white ones.”

Purple: “Yeah, I guess so. Does the goldenrod have to be yellow?”

Unicorn Llama: “Yes.”

Uni: “You could just brighten up some of the colors that are already in Unicorn Land. That would be magical too.”

Purple: “Aww, I never get to have any fun.”

Snowflake: “How about this? We have a valley in Unicorn Land that we haven’t enchanted yet. It’s all a dull grey. What if you color the rocks to make it look like the Grand Canyon?”

Purple: “Yes! When can I start?”

Snowflake: “Now.”

Purple: “Off I go! It’s magic time!”

There is a short pause.

“Purple: “I’m back! How do you like it!”

Unicorn Llama: “Beautiful!”

Uni: “Nice!”

Snowflake: “You rock!”

Purple: “I didn’t get to use much red. Where can I got use some red color?”

Snowflake: “Ever hear of the planet Mars?”

Haze

July 16th, 2026

The smoke from the Canadian wildfires arrived yesterday. I went outside early in the morning to put some letters in the mailbox. Everything smelled like a campfire. The trees down the street from our house looked hazy and indistinct. I figure the visibility was at best half a mile. Usually, at that time of the day, there are some people walking their dogs or just taking a stroll. There weren’t any yesterday, and there probably won’t be any today.

It’s the same deal this morning. The sky is a dull metallic grey. The sun is rising. It’s like an angry, bloodshot eye peeking through the smoke. The ground is hard and dry. All the lawns are turning from green to brown. It’s been hot and dry for a while. A good rain would probably wash the smoke particles out of the air and help the grass, but rain is not in the forecast.

Our grandson Asher has not been to playground for days. Recently, it’s been too hot for us to go to the playground at the park. If I could get him up and dressed around sunrise, we could manage it, but that hasn’t happened. It takes Asher some time to start his day. Now, with the smoke, my wife and I don’t want him running around and exerting himself outside. He can play in our yard for a while, but he shouldn’t breathe in this crap more than necessary. He’s plays most of the day in the house. He gets bored and asks us to tell him endless stories about his stuffed animals. That wears me out. I wish we could get him outside and moving.

The haze and the heat bother me. It’s more of a psychological stress than a physical discomfort. It just feels wrong. The weather is eerie and unnatural, but I’m afraid it is part of the new normal for Wisconsin. Our son in Texas has been telling us about the nearly constant rain they are having down there. That’s weird too. In all the years he has lived in Texas, there has never been so much rain in the summer, except when hurricanes have blown through the state. He and his family are experiencing a new normal there too.

And we keep burning fossil fuels, even though we know that is the primary cause of the new normal.

Collateral Damage

July 16th, 2026

Let me begin by warning you that this entire essay is going to be one big bitch fest. If you decide at this point to click on something else, I will completely understand. Otherwise, here goes…

There is a young woman who is currently in prison. We care about her. She calls us frequently, mostly to speak with her little boy. She talks to me when she needs something, and she often needs help. Being incarcerated means that many of things that we take for granted are unavailable to her, like access to the internet. She is also unable to spend money, unless those funds have been deposited into a commissary account for her by an outside party. Name something that you do every day, and the odds are good that she can’t do it from prison.

This being the case, I spend a large amount of my time dealing with her wants and needs. Her requests are simple. She really doesn’t want much, but somehow it is often a struggle for me to take care of these things. It’s not her fault. It’s the prison system. I don’t know if it is by design, but nothing easy to do.

As an example, the young woman wanted me to set up an account with a telecommunications company so that she could share emails and video calls with us. We would be able to send her photos to her tablet. It sounded like a good thing, especially since it would help her and her son to maintain a close relationship. I followed through until I couldn’t anymore. I set up an account online and deposited $25 in it (I didn’t put in more than that because I we had never used this service before). Then I ran into an insurmountable obstacle. For some reason, I could not designate her as a contact. I don’t know why I couldn’t do that, but without her being named as a contact, we can’t communicate. I kept trying different ways to make the connection work, but I finally gave up.

The next morning, I called the vendor’s customer service, and I never got any service. I was led through a labyrinth of extension menus that never got me to a human who could help me. Actually, I talked briefly to a person once. He took my information, put me on hold, and then when he got back to me, he couldn’t hear me on the phone and hung up. I started the cycle again. Eventually, I got to the point where the recording said that I would be connected to a customer service rep. That didn’t happen. I was never connected to anybody. The recording of menu choices just started all over again. I gave up.

Admittedly, my hassle is not unique. You have probably gone through the same magical mystery tour with some business. My problem is that, although this particular experience was rather extreme, it is not at all atypical. Almost any interaction with vendors that operate with the prison system is like this episode to some degree. It is rare when a transaction goes smoothly. It doesn’t matter what service or merchandise the vendor is providing. It’s always a challenge.

Why is it like this? The vendors are those companies that have been approved by the Department of Corrections to sell to the public. The inmates can’t buy anything. The people on the outside that care about the prisoners are the actual customers. These vendors operate as near monopolies. For instance, there are three companies that can provides goods (clothes, art supplies, health and beauty supplies, etc.) to the folks incarcerated at the prison where the young woman resides. The variety of products is extremely limited. It’s like when Henry Ford was selling Model T’s: you can have the car in any color you want, as long as it’s black). It’s the same sort of thing with these vendors. You can buy from them or not buy at all. The prices are exorbitant because there is no real competition. There is no customer service because there is no incentive to serve the customers.

I suppose an argument could be made that the inmates don’t deserve any better than what I have just described. After all, they’re convicted felons. However, there is collateral damage. The people on the outside, like me, are trying to help folks who they love, and we are the ones getting screwed. The people who are just trying to help others to survive in prison and hopefully become rehabilitated during their stay suffer along with the inmates. We didn’t commit any crimes. We didn’t endanger the public. We are just trying to show some compassion to inmates who aren’t seeing much of that. We are trying to do the right thing, and it’s a bitch. It really is.

Tour de Fleece

July 12th, 2026

Karin is spinning Cormo wool on her wheel. Cormo wool is an excellent wool to spin into yarn. I only know this because my wife told me so. The fiber apparently comes from Tasmania, and the sheep that have been bred to produce it are rather rare. Karin knows nearly everything there is to know about spinning all varieties of fiber. I know next to nothing about the subject, even after we have been married for almost 42 years. The fiber arts are Karin’s domain. She is an expert with regards to spinning, weaving, knitting, crocheting, and dyeing fiber. She is a fiber goddess with an artist’s intuition, creativity, and passion. I encourage her in her efforts or at least stay out of her way.

Karin is currently participating in the Tour de Fleece. The Tour de Fleece is an online group event for hand spinners across the world. Karin has hooked up with a number of spinners who hang out at the Fox River Fiber Shop in Big Bend, Wisconsin. The annual event is run concurrently with the Tour de Fleece (hence the name of the event). The spinners ply their trade on the same days as the cyclists are spinning their bike wheels in France. The goal for the spinners to complete a project or maybe use up their stash of fiber (nobody ever actually exhausts their stash). It is also a chance for spinners to gather and compare notes. Spinners are basically members of a rather exclusive sisterhood, although I have heard rumors that there are male spinners.

Spinning is nothing new for my wife. She was spinning fiber before I ever met her. I have a story about that.

I met Karin when I was stationed in West Germany with the U.S. Army back in the early 1980’s. We dated for several months, and then I got up the nerve to propose to her. She said yes when I asked her to marry me, and then I suggested that we go to a jeweler’s shop to buy her an engagement ring. Karin didn’t want to do that. German women, at least at that time, did not get engagement rings. I was at a loss for ideas. I thought I definitely needed to get her something and I told her so. Karin thought for a while and then she told me,

“I want a spinning wheel.”

That’s what she got. We bought an Ashford traditional wheel. She has used it for decades. Karin has found spinning to be a meditative practice (very Gandhi-like). Recently, she upgraded to a SpinOlution Echo model. It is a more complicated machine with two treadles, one for each foot. She loves it.

It’s all about circles. Bicycle wheels. Spinning wheels. Engagement rings.

Our grandson, Asher, helping his Oma with her spinning wheel in the Tour de Fleece

A Phone Call from the Dark Side of the Moon

July 11th, 2026

She called us this morning. I answered the phone and got the usual recorded spiel from the monopoly that provides telephone service to inmates at the prison. The young woman who called can usually talk with us once day for ten minutes. Before she was connected to us, a female voice explained that “this call will be monitored and may be recorded”. Then the person in the recording said cheerfully, “Thank you for using ICSolutions.” It should be noted that every phone call she makes costs money and that money comes from a source outside of the prison, that source being me. It should also be noted that I cannot call the young woman. I don’t think anyone on the outside can. She has to initiate all communication.

The first thing she did after saying “Hello” was to ask if her five-year-old son was in the room. He was. She asked him how he was. He told her that he was okay. The boy was in good spirits this morning and he was happy to converse with his mama. Sometimes when she calls, he is in a foul mood, and flat out refuses to talk with her. On those occasions, I urge him to say something, anything, to his mother. She needs to hear his voice. These brief calls are a lifeline for her, and I am not sure that her son understands that.

She also wanted to talk with me. She only does that when there are serious issues to discuss. It’s a little like in The Godfather when Michael Corleone tells his brother, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” In any case, she wanted to explain to me that it might take a while before we can visit her at the prison. We had to fill out forms in order to see her. I had to even fill out an application for her little boy. The young woman wanted me to know that it can take up to three weeks for these requests to be approved, because the DOC only has one person working parttime to process them. That did not surprise me at all. The Department of Corrections does things in its own way on its own schedule. The young woman wanted to be certain that we had filled out every space and checked every box on the forms. I told her that we had. She was very anxious and she kept asking if I was sure. It almost got to the point where I wasn’t sure, but I told her the paperwork was done right.

The young woman badly wants to see her little boy. She told him on the phone that she hadn’t seen him in four months. I was momentarily shocked that it has been so long, but she’s right. For her, four months is an eternity. She asked the boy if he wanted to see her. He gave her an enthusiastic “Yes”. Thank God for that. Once we get permission to visit her, whenever that happens, we will make an appointment to see her. The prison is a two-hour drive from our house. My wife and I visited that place when the woman was incarcerated there back in 2019. It will be different now with her son coming along us. We have no idea how he will react to that environment. He might freak out. We won’t know until we get there.

Ten minutes is not a long time for a phone call. The young woman asked her son, “Do you love me?”, more than once. He told her that he did. She told him repeatedly how much she loved him, how he was the best thing that ever happened in her life. He kind of laughed about that. I guess he didn’t realize that she meant it. The boy really is the best thing that has ever happened to her. He is the best thing that has happened for any of us.

As time ran out, she told him one last time, “I love you.” Then the phone went dead and the call was over. She isn’t that far away, but she can’t be with him, and he can’t be with her. She might as well be on the dark side of the moon.

In Your Face

July 4th, 2026

There is a busy street that I use frequently to get from Oak Creek to downtown Milwaukee. Traffic has increased significantly over the years, but a half-mile stretch of the street still only has two lanes. Houses are built in close proximity to the road, so there really is not a good way to widen it. The speed limit is set at 25 mph, which feels like a crawl. The local police are relentless about enforcing that speed limit, so I drive slowly and have time to observe my surroundings.

There is one house in particular that I notice every time I drive down that street. It’s an older home with large windows in the front. The owner has placed a number of signs in his window that are in old Gothic script and/or have World War Two Style German eagles on them. The house has a strong Third Reich vibe to it.

The owner also has a portrait of Adolf Hitler proudly displayed in his window. There is a nearly transparent red swastika superimposed on the Fuhrer’s picture. It’s hard for a person to be more blatant than that. It’s totally in your face.

Every time I drive past that house, I say to myself, “Really?”

The house answers, “Yes, really. Deal with it.”

I find the owner’s decor to be deeply offensive, but we live in America, and the 1st Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, even disgusting speech. Are there limits to free speech? Yes, but very few. The homeowner is not inciting violence, or at least it can’t be proven that he is. He is exercising his right to state his opinion.

I don’t know how many other people going past that house even notice the Hitler portrait. I suspect that most drivers are oblivious to that house and the image in the window. That might be the best way of dealing with the guy. Just ignore it and move on.

I don’t know. It seems like there was a time in the United States when it was considered extremely bad taste to openly display Nazi propaganda. What changed over the years? Our values? Our sense of community? Our country?

Happy 4th of July.

I Have No Idea

July 4th, 2026

We haven’t heard from her in four days. She has been a “resident” at the Community Reintegration Center (the county jail) for over three months. The young woman has been waiting to get transferred to a women’s prison called Taycheedah. She was sentenced to two years in prison at a hearing three weeks ago and has been anxiously waiting to be moved (the jail is not as nice as the prison, which is a truly depressing fact). The Department of Corrections (DOC) does not give an inmate any prior notice before a transfer. Actually, from what I have heard, the DOC seldom gives a prisoner a heads up for any changes. Why does the DOC do that? Because it can. In any case, the young woman had told us during a phone call that the DOC generally moves people from the county jail to Taycheedah on a Tuesday. The woman has been calling our house to speak with her son once a day, every day, for weeks. On Tuesday she stopped calling here.

My wife and I had hoped to hear from her during the last four days. Keep in mind that is nearly impossible for anybody on the outside to call or use the internet to contact an incarcerated individual. It is also difficult for an inmate to call out. Communication between a prisoner and the rest of the world is often limited to snail mail. Yesterday, I tried to go online to determine where the young woman was. My efforts came to naught. The website at the jail did not show her as being at that location and the Taycheedah site showed nothing at all concerning her.

I made two phone calls. The guard at the county jail confirmed to me that the woman was no longer there. He had no other information to give me. When I called Taycheedah, the officer there asked me for her DOC inmate number. I didn’t have that. He politely told me that without the number he could not find her whereabouts online. No shit. I had tried the same thing on my computer before I called the prison. If she is not currently in the DOC data base, apparently, she does not exist.

So, now what? I have no idea. Where is she? Same answer.

The odds are good that this young woman is presently in custody at Taycheedah, but I don’t know that, and that bothers me and my wife. We don’t know what her status is, and we have no idea what to tell her son, should he ask us. Mercifully, he has not thought to do that yet.

Kafka would be proud.

Happy 4th of July.

Update: the young woman called. She is at Taycheedah and I have her DOC number now. Thank God.

Saved by a Stubby Pencil

June 28th, 2026

AI is here and it’s not going anywhere. The new technology is subject of much scrutiny and controversy. People are upset about AI forcing humans out of jobs. People are up in arms about huge data centers and their massive consumption of electricity and water. There is the question of what we should do with AI. Soon, the question will be, “What do we do without it?”

Innovations have always caused disruption in society. New skills have to be learned and old ones discarded. In my life there have been rapid and unexpected changes. Nowadays, who needs to know how to do long division or how to balance a check book or how to drive a car with a manual transmission? When I was young, it was important to be proficient with those tasks. Now, who cares?

I have a Toyota Corolla with a six-speed transmission. Yes, I know it’s archaic. At this point in time, a stick shift is more of an antitheft device than anything else. When I think about it, learning to use a stick was much more than just learning how to drive a car. Driving a stick required a person to coordinate all of their limbs in one fluid motion. Using a stick shift also forced a person to pay attention to several types of sensory input simultaneously: the sound of the engine rpms, the view of the traffic surrounding the vehicle, the feel of the transmission, and maybe the smell of burning clutch. Learning to drive stick taught a person to do more than just operate a vehicle. I wish I had learned to drive stick shift before I went to flight school. The experience might have helped me to learn how to fly a helicopter more easily.

The flow of technology generally goes in only one direction. Things continually become more efficient, more interconnected, and more fragile. There are examples in history of technological expertise being lost. Those episodes are uniformly ugly. Going back to the old ways is almost always difficult, and often impossible. Let me give you an example from my work life.

Back in 1988, I started a job as a dock supervisor at a trucking company. We had computers then, but they were clumsy cumbersome machines. There was no internet worth mentioning. The devices were mainly used to crunch numbers for reports and stats. The day-to-day operation on the loading dock and with the city drivers was done with mountains of paper and landline telephones.

For instance, the dispatcher had to keep track of shipments to be picked up and the whereabouts of his drivers by telephone. The office personnel took calls from customers for pickups and wrote down the information on cards that the dispatcher posted on a board. The dispatcher had to wait for a driver to call him before he could assign him some pickups. The drivers had beepers, which really only told the driver to find a landline and call the dispatcher ASAP. The whole process was tedious and inefficient, but the work got done. I had a similar operation on the dock. I was responsible for getting hundreds of shipments loaded and delivered to scores of customers each day. I handled an absurdly large amount of paperwork, and somehow it all got done.

Fast forward to the year I retired. In 2015 we had plenty of new technology and everybody had a handheld computer. The dockworkers and the drivers scanned the codes on the shipments to load them on to trailers. The amount of paper involved was minimal. The activity on the dock and in the city could be monitored in real time. Customers sent their pickup requests to us online. The phones did not ring very often. Everything was done on a screen. It was impressive.

Then the apocalypse hit. One day all the computers companywide went down. The phone rang constantly because the customers had to call in their pickup orders. Dispatch was flooded with notes on scraps of paper. Trailers that came to us from faraway cities were like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. Every shipment inside them was a surprise to us. We did not know what freight was coming to us, and we did not know how to deliver it to our local customers. We were lost.

A few of us had been working this shift for years (or decades) and based on our collective experience, we knew where to load a shipment without a computer or even without any paperwork. So, we routed every inbound shipment by just looking at the name and address of the delivery customer. We told the forklift drivers what to put into which trailer. We had them make up delivery paperwork by copying packing lists. We gave the ersatz delivery receipts to the drivers for the customers to sign. Because of our institutional memory, we got almost all of the shipments delivered that day. We remembered how we had done the work before the computers had taken over. That made all the difference.

That was ten years ago. I doubt that there is that kind of collective memory at my old workplace now. I am almost certain that if there was a total computer failure there, everything would come to a screeching halt. That’s the problem when a new technology takes over. There is no turning back.

Ten years ago, we were saved by a copy machine and a stubby pencil.

What happens when AI is running the show?

When the Planets Align

June 25th, 2026

Years ago, when I was still working third shift at a trucking company, there was an unusual astronomical occurrence. Three planets (Venus, Mars, and Jupiter) lined up in the predawn sky. I remember taking a break from my work to go outside the building to gaze into the eastern sky and look at the light show. Venus was low near the horizon, a ruddy Mars was slightly higher, and Jupiter was shining just above the other two planets. I thought about what a rare and beautiful event is was. I had never seen anything like that before and might never see anything like again.

I am reminded of the alignment of the planets now because I now find that meeting with a friend has become a rare and beautiful event. It seems like it is getting increasingly difficult for me to get together with other people. Perhaps I am engaging in selective memory, but I recall back in my twenties being able to call somebody on the spur of the moment and then hanging out with that person. Sometimes my friends were busy with work or other commitments, but it was not unusual to hook up with somebody at a moment’s notice. People were more available then. I’m not sure why.

Part of my problem probably stems from the fact that I don’t fit neatly into any particular social group. I have been retired for a decade, but I seldom participate in senior activities. That is because my wife and I are busy raising Asher, our five-year-old grandson, and we don’t generally have time for the things that most old people do. Our schedules are not usually in synch with our contemporaries. On the flip side of that, I don’t necessarily fit in with the young parents of Asher’s classmates at the Waldorf school. I am, like these younger caregivers, focused on raising a child, but the members of their generation are also preoccupied with their careers, domestic relationships, and future plans. My schedule seldom matches with theirs. The planets don’t align.

There are other factors involved. I blame the Internet to some degree. We are able to connect electronically and instantaneously with people all over the globe, yet we are losing the ability to actually talk to another person face to face. Humans are social animals, but social media has paradoxically made us less so. It is far easier to doom scroll than it is to set up a time and date for having coffee with someone, and then actually getting up and going someplace to meet the person. We tend to avoid physical interaction with others. It is more convenient to sit around the house and stare at a screen, which of course is exactly what I am doing now. My wife and Asher are doing something similar in the living room while I am writing this sentence.

I have been trying to set up play dates for Asher with his kindergarten compadres. I have found this to be a frustrating process. Many of his classmates are almost constantly in some kind of summer camp. I understand why that is. Almost all of the parents are working fulltime to pay the bills, and they are not available to watch over their kids. My wife and I are unique in the fact that we are home with Asher. Once again, scheduling becomes difficult. Asher has managed to have a couple play dates since the school year ended, but they have been for only short periods of time. These meetings have often felt rushed, with the adults acutely aware that they need to be somewhere immediately after the play date ends. It is good for Asher to meet with his friends, and it is good for me to get to know the other parents better. However, it is sad that these gatherings seldom feel relaxed. That bothers me.

You might ask, “Why doesn’t Asher just play with the other kids in the neighborhood?” That’s a good question. The answer is that there aren’t any children his age on our street. That is not to say that the area is completely devoid of children, but there are not many of them. It is not like it was a generation ago when our kids could go a couple doors down the block and hang out with their buddies. There simply are not very many kids. Period. It also appears that whatever children are in the neighborhood spend much of their time indoors. The curse of the computer age. Why play outside when you can binge on video games for hours on end?

I am by nature an introvert. That is one reason I write. It requires real effort for me to reach out to others. For me, arranging a meeting with friends is work, but it is necessary work. These planets won’t align on their own.

Fathers and their Children

June 21st, 2026

“And I divvied up my anger into 30 separate parts
Keep the bad – in my liver and the rest around my heart
I’m still angry at my parents for what their parents did to them
But it’s a start”

lyrics from Growing Sideways by Noah Kahan

It’s Father’s Day again. This particular holiday carries a lot of baggage. It always seems to remind me of TV shows like Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons where the father is always firm but fair, strong yet compassionate. I’m not sure that I have ever met a guy like that. I’ve only met good but flawed men. Most of them try to be decent fathers but frequently fail in some way.

I know guys who describe their fathers as if they were philosopher kings. Their stories of their dads depict these men as being consistently wise and noble. Perhaps such men exist, but I don’t know where they are, except in the selective memories of their adult children.

On this particular Father’s Day, none of our three children came to visit me. One lives over a thousand miles away in Texas with his family. One of them is currently unavailable due to a court decision. One of them has made it clear that he never wants to see me again. This situation is depressing, but probably not all that rare. Relationships between fathers and their kids tend to be fraught. None of this is new.

The Bible, in particular the Hebrew scriptures, has numerous examples of fathers struggling with their offspring. Adam had issues with his two boys, Cain and Abel. Adam had no clue how to raise children, and his sons didn’t know how to play nice. Abraham certainly had a tense relationship with Isaac, especially after he tried to kill his son. If Abraham had tried that in our day and age, the police and CPS would have been involved immediately. Isaac had to deal with Jacob and Esau. Those two were trying hard to replicate Cain and Abel’s death match. Jacob had twelve boys and he decided to favor Joseph over all of his siblings. Once again, there was almost a fratricide. David and Absolom come later in the narrative. David wept too late for his dead child. It just goes on and on and on.

Are there any lessons from these grim tales? Well, fathers are mere mortals. We sometimes forget that, especially on Father’s Day.

Karin, Asher, and I went to Mass this morning. Asher was restless in church, which is not at all unusual. He’s our grandson, and he’s a five-year-old. Asher needed to go to the bathroom just as the priest was starting his homily (sermon). That was excellent timing on Asher’s part. Unfortunately, the pastor was still preaching when we returned to the pew.

Asher seemed tired. So, he sat on my lap in the pew, and he rested his head in the hollow of my right shoulder. The priest was talking about how Jesus told his disciples to not to fear, and then he went into a story about how when he was a child, he and his siblings always felt safe when their daddy was at home. The implication was, since God is the ultimate Daddy, then when we are close to God, there is nothing to fear.

This line of thinking makes sense to people whose father was a man who provided a safe and secure home environment. What about people who grew up with a father who could go from a smile to an outburst of rage in the blink of an eye? What about growing up with a dad who was paranoid and always distrustful? What about living with a man who was in some way utterly terrifying at times? For the people in the pews, like me, who experienced that kind of upbringing, imagining God as a father is not a good idea.

I passed on the damage to our kids. I did some things to them that my father did to me, and I drank too much. I tried to do the right things, but I fell short. Noah Kahan had it right. My kids are still angry with me for what my parents did to me. Trauma is the gift that just keeps giving.

Asher sat on my lap and dozed during the rest of the Mass. I held him and rubbed his back sometimes. At the end of the service, the priest asked all the fathers to stand up for a blessing. I didn’t. I thought to myself,

“Just shut up. I’m busy.”

I didn’t want the blessing. It doesn’t sit well with me when a man who has never raised a child decides to tell some other guys what great role models they are. Also, I didn’t feel like I deserved a blessing. I just want to do my job. I love Asher, and even after so many years, I still don’t really know how care for a little kid. Every day is a new adventure. Every day he is a new boy, in some way a stranger to me.

Maybe I can do right by Asher. That’s all I really want to do.