May 10th, 2024

Karin and I had an hour to kill. We had just dropped off Asher to visit his mama. We were planning to meet two friends at a brewery/restaurant on Center Street, but we didn’t want to hang out there to wait for them. It was a fine afternoon. It was sunny and breezy, just a bit on the cool side, and perfect for taking a long walk.

We were in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee. As the name implies, the district is just west of the Milwaukee River. This urban waterway flows south through a deep wooded valley. The city is perched up high on each side of the river. The east side is the home of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and it is filled with stately homes that stretch further east to the shores of Lake Michigan. The Eastside is a place of wealth. It always has been. Riverwest is not.

Riverwest is a scruffy working-class section of town. The houses are old and large, sometimes three stories high, and they are squeezed close together on postage-stamp sized lots. Some of the houses are beautiful, and some need a lot of TLC. At one time they were all probably homes to multigenerational families, and now many of them are duplexes or even triplexes. The yards are miniscule but well-maintained. Trees line all of the residential streets and most of the thoroughfares. A close look at the buildings on a certain street gives the passerby a hint as to the religious and political views of the residents. There is a house flying a Palestinian flag. Another has a rainbow banner. Further away, a flag flaps in the wind above a front porch. It bears the image of a crown and Hebrew letters that spell “משיח”, that is “messiah” in English. A few blocks away stands the spire of St. Casimir Catholic Church, a reminder that at one time this neighborhood had a strong Polish flavor to it.

Karin wanted to stroll over to Gaenslen School. It is a public school where one of her many knitting groups goes to meet on Saturday mornings. It was a half mile walk. We took it slowly. We passed by the Woodland Pattern Bookstore, an independent bookshop that promotes local poets. We saw a number of small art studios and workshops. We noticed the Tai Chi Center on the corner of Fratney and Locust. On Center Street we walked across from the Daily Bird, a coffee shop painted an eye-piercing bright yellow that caters to people in recovery. The local economy limps along in Riverwest. There are empty storefronts next to businesses that seem to be thriving. Close to each other are two microbreweries: the Company Brewery and the Black Husky. Being that this is Milwaukee, they are never short of customers.

It took us about half an hour to get to Gaenslen. It’s very close to the river. As we headed back toward the restaurant, Karin got out of breath. That happens a lot with her. It might be from her bout with Covid years ago, or perhaps it’s just that fact that we’re getting old. She took my hand and we walked together. She wanted my support, and I was happy to hold her hand. I almost felt like a kid again, and maybe she did too. We passed a young couple, barely adults. They seemed to be happy and in love. The girl had a punk-goth look and her partner had long hair, very long for a guy. I wondered what they thought of these two old people walking along hand in hand. I wondered if we had been like them all those years ago.

We noticed little things as we retraced our steps. We found a tiny playground nestled in a small park. It was filled with things for kids to climb, along with eclectic artwork. The park had a concrete walkway with inlaid cermaic tiles. The tiles had Spanish words that I couldn’t understand. Maybe it was all poetry.

Many of the homeowners had abandoned the practice of cutting the grass in their microscopic front yards, and instead planted wildflowers and tulips Karin found numerous violets. She loves violets.

We got back to restaurant. Karin needed to rest. We sat down inside.

We will be taking Asher to see his mama tomorrow again. Maybe Karin and I will go exploring on another long walk.

May 7th, 2024

I was at the synagogue on Saturday morning. I sat in the back next to Leonid, the old man from Ukraine. Leonid grew up in Stalinist Russia, and he came to the U.S. after the Soviet Union imploded. He has a number of interesting stories about his encounters with antisemitism. I usually get to the service late because I have to care for my little grandson, Asher. Leonid loves that boy, and he always asks me how he is doing.

At the end of the service, the president of the synagogue gave a few closing comments. When she was done, Alex, another immigrant from the former USSR, spoke briefly about the student encampment at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus that is just a block away from the shul. Alex said in his heavy Slavic accent,

“These students, these pro-Palestinian protesters, they don’t talk with anyone. They have been told not to talk with other people. They have been trained, very well trained.”

That comment struck me as odd. The students are there to advance their cause. Why would they refuse to interact with curious visitors?

Leonid leaned over to me and said, “My friend, have you seen this encampment? Huge Palestinian flags. Signs. Everything is ‘Down with Israel!’.” He frowned and waved his hand in disgust.

I drove Leonid and his wife home after the kiddush. Leonid pointed out the encampment on the UWM grounds. He said,

“Look there! You see that? Everything is about Palestinians and against the Jews! It is all antisemitism. I think the only people there are the Palestinians and some students who are poorly educated. These Palestinians, they are not a nation. They are Arabs! They are like the other Arabs.”

I told Leonid, “When I was at West Point, I studied Arabic for four years.”

He looked at me, “You know Arabic?”

“I did. I don’t remember much anymore. I learned about the Arabs and the Israelis, the history of that conflict. There are no good guys in the story. Everybody did something.”

Leonid was silent. Then we talked about Asher.

I spent the weekend thinking. I thought about a woman at the synagogue who said that she understood how the protests were “stylish”. “Stylish” is an interesting adjective to use. It implies a sort of faddish appeal and a lack of substance. I thought the same as her. The whole movement felt like a fad.

I told my wife, Karin, that I wanted to go to the encampment to talk with the students for myself. She asked me,

“Are you planning to argue with them?”

“No”.

“Really? Maybe, subconsciously, you want to argue?”

“No.”

She knows me well. Years ago, I went to Nevada to a demonstration, and I told Karin that I had no intention of getting arrested. I did. She remembered that episode.

Yesterday, Monday, I dropped Asher off to visit with his mom. On the way home, I stopped at the UWM campus. I walked a couple blocks to the encampment. It was a busy place. Lots of young people. There were big Palestinian flags flapping in the breeze and numerous signs. One of them read:

“Anti-genocide does not equal antisemitism!”

I expect that Leonid would disagree with that statement for several reasons.

I approached the entrance and was swiftly intercepted by a woman in her thirties (I’m guessing at the age). She got between me and the students, most of whom were wearing masks. The woman was thin and wore gold wirerimmed glasses. She had the look of a librarian who was ready to ask a child why they tore the pages out of a book. She wasn’t rude or impolite, but she was all business.

“Can I help you? Do you have questions?”

I told her, “Yes, I have questions.”

She replied, “What are they?”

I had to think. “Where do I start?”

Then I told her, “Let me introduce myself. I’m Frank. I’m a member of Peace Action. I’m also a vet. I am concerned about what is going on here. I have been to protests. I was at an antiwar demonstration in Nevada seven years ago, and I got arrested there. We had an encampment across the road from Creech AFB. So, I know how this stuff works.”

She asked me, “What exactly was the protest about?”

“We were demonstrating against the use of drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

I paused and asked her, “So, why are you here?”

She asked me, “Do you mean us, or me personally?”

“You. You personally.”

She thought and said, “I support this action to oppose the genocide in Gaza. I want the killing to end. I am here to help the students and keep them safe. There have been counter protesters coming to the camp, and also others trying to disrupt our work. Police activity too.”

I thought to myself, “So, you’re their chaperon.”

I asked her, “Do the students know any Palestinians?”

“Of course.”

“Do they know any Israelis?”

She nodded, “I’m sure they do. We have had Israelis and other Jews come to visit and extend their support.”

I told her, “I read an article about students at other places protesting and getting arrested, and then complaining that they have an arrest record.”

She shrugged and said, “Somebody is always complaining.”

“I just get the feeling that some, not all, but some students are just playing at this.”

She replied, “There are always some who want it to be ‘all about me’, and we are continually trying to refocus the students on our mission.”

I explained to her, “My oldest son, Hans, fought in Iraq. That did not go well for him. He told me years afterward that he and his comrades only cared about getting everyone back home alive. It wasn’t about the oil. It wasn’t about democracy. Everything they did was based on getting their buddies home okay.”

She nodded.

I went on, “So, how much of this is about freeing Palestine, and how much of this is about the students sticking together with their friends?”

She didn’t answer immediately, so I gave her another example.

“Okay, when I was in Nevada, we blocked the entrance to the air force base. The cops gave us five minutes to move out of the way. The guy next to me, Ray, who was a Vietnam vet, put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Frank, I’m glad that your here’. That was at four minutes and fifteen seconds into the protest. I had not planned on getting arrested, but I couldn’t just leave this guy. So, I got busted with him. I didn’t go to jail for the kids getting blown up by our drones. I went to jail to support Ray.”

She nodded and understood.

She told me, “These students are aware that they may be arrested. Some of the students have volunteered to get arrested if the police show up. Those people will be in front of the rest of the students. However, they all know that they are in danger of going to jail.”

“Do they understand what that all entails?’

The woman said, “They do.”

“You don’t really know what getting arrested means until it happens. They held me for only fourteen hours. You can learn a lot in fourteen hours.”

She smiled a bit.

I told her, “I think about the Israeli soldiers fighting in these urban areas. They are doing what my son did in Iraq. He kicked in doors and cleared buildings. He stabbed a guy to death. That messed him up. That is going to mess up these Israelis.”

She replied, “Yes, they will have PTSD, and so will thousands of Gazans.”

“I agree. I am not denigrating the suffering of the Gazans. It’s just that Israel will have a long-term problem. Hans and his comrades all got back home okay, but then some of them committed suicide. Hans tried to blow his brains out, and he only failed because he had a bad round in the chamber.”

She flinched. Then her face grew calm again.

She quietly said, “I’m sorry.”

I sighed, and asked her, “Why Gaza? Why do you care about this war? There are other genocides. What about the Rohingyas? What about the other killings?”

She nodded. Then she said, “The difference is that this is the first war, the first genocide, that is being livestreamed. These students are watching videos of horrific violence as these events occur. They have a visceral reaction to what they see and hear. They are participants in a sense.”

There was a brief pause, and I told her,

“I just want to know in my heart of hearts that these students don’t think all this is a game.”

She stated firmly, “They don’t think it’s a game.”

Then she said, “I have a friend who was in Iraq.”

“How’s he doing?’

She shrugged, “He’s doing.”

I mentioned to her, “I’m not a Jew, but I go to the synagogue down the street.”

The woman smiled, and said, “I knew there was one nearby.”

Then she told me,”Thanks for talking.”

“Thanks for listening.”

We shook hands and I left.

May 2nd, 2024

May 1st was a fine day for a rally. Spring was in the air. It was warm and breezy. The trees were finally starting to sprout leaves. Yards had flowers blooming. The morning sun shone brightly.

I had my grandson, Asher, along with me. We walked a couple blocks from where we had parked to the site for the May Day gathering. The rally and march were being organized by Voces de la Frontera, a local group that promotes the rights of migrants and workers. Voces is located in the Walker’s Point section of Milwaukee. Walker’s Point is an old neighborhood, going back to the mid-1800’s. It was home to my grandparents one hundred years ago, when the population there was all Slavic. Now, Walker’s Point is primarily Latino. It’s always been an immigrant community, and it probably always will be. Voces is in the right place.

Asher didn’t want to walk for very long. He held my hand for a while, then he got tired of it. Before we arrived at Voces, he wanted me to carry him. He’s only three years old, but he’s big boy, and he gets heavy after a while. I didn’t plan on staying at the rally with him for very long. I expected that he would get bored, and then we would leave and find a playground. There really wasn’t much there to entertain a little kid.

I didn’t go to the rally to get involved politically. I have done that plenty of times in the past with Voces de la Frontera. Years ago, I was a marshal for one of the May Day marches, but I don’t do that sort of thing anymore. It’s too hard to be active in the organization when I am the fulltime caregiver for Asher. Mostly, I wanted to see if there any people wandering around that I knew from the old days, when I taught the citizenship class and escorted undocumented migrants to their court appearances. I miss some of them, and it is difficult for me to maintain relationships.

When Asher and I got to the site, there was still a lot of prep work going on. The march had to be organized. The sound system had to be tested. The media was setting up their equipment. A few motorcycle cops were on hand to escort the marchers. Slowly, participants began wandering into the area, some of them with flags and banners. There was a kind of benevolent chaos, a nervous but happy sort of anticipation. Voces has hosted May Day marches for decades, and it is always still the same unruly operation. There were way too many moving parts.

Deby shouted at me from across the street when we got close to Voces’ offices. She has been a fixture at the organization for as long as I can remember. That’s remarkable in that most of the people there tend to be transient. It’s like a caravansary: people come, stay a while, and then move on. I carried Asher to where Deby was, and she smiled at him.

Deby looked at Asher and said, “So, this is the little guy I hear so much about. You have a beautiful smile, Asher. You must love your grandpa.”

Asher gave her a noncommittal look and he buried his face into my shoulder.

I asked Deby how she was doing.

She replied, “Today is my last day with Voces.”

“So, what are you going to do next?”

Deby told me, “Well, I have been thinking about starting a non-profit, but I don’t know if I can handle that kind of commitment. I am sixty-four now.”

I looked at Asher. “I’m sixty-six and I’ve committed to taking care of this boy.”

She exclaimed, “Oh yeah! I know! That’s a lot to take on too!”

We chatted a bit more, and then she hugged us. Asher and I moved on.

We walked past the industrial strength sound system. Simultaneously, the men operating the amps cranked up some Mexican music at jet engine level decibels. That freaked out Asher. He does not like loud noises, and the Latino melodies qualified as being loud.

Tivo yelled out to me. He was organizing the march. He is another person who has been at Voces forever. He came up to us and gave us a bear hug. He smiled and said,

“Brother, it’s great to see you again! Is this your buddy? Hey, I got to show this guy something in the office. Don’t worry, we’ll talk before you go!”

Tivo ran off with a volunteer, and that was the last I saw of him. We didn’t talk again. I didn’t expect that we would. Tivo thrives on being busy. He is in constant motion. I don’t think I have ever had a quiet conversation with him. It doesn’t bother me. That’s just how he is.

Asher and I walked over to talk with Julie. She is a member of Peace Action and that group sometimes partners with Voces de la Frontera. Actually, there are several other concerns that work with Voces on certain issues. For instance, Planned Parenthood had reps at the rally. I’m not sure why, but they did. There was a student group from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) in attendance, and some people from labor unions. These different organizations have diverse interests and May Day is one of the few times that they team up for an event. With more groups involved, the crowd is bigger, but it is difficult to get them all to work together to present a unifying message. It’s kind of like herding cats.

Julie and Peace Action are big into the pro-Palestinian student protests. That’s their gig. Most of the folks from Peace Action and the related student participants wore keffiyeh scarves and some had Palestinian flags. Julie wanted to tell me all about the demonstrations and the encampment on the UWM campus. I told her that I struggled with my feelings about the protests.

She launched into a speech about all the good the students were doing for the cause. I told her,

“I go to an Orthodox synagogue, and the people there have a very different view on these protests.”

She didn’t miss a beat. She told me, “There really can’t be other views on genocide.”

I replied, “There are two sides to this issue.”

She shook her head. “No, we can’t have two sides to genocide.”

That wrapped up our discussion. We weren’t communicating. We were talking past each other, and that is a microcosm of the whole war in Gaza.

I looked away and saw Christine in the distance.

Christine is the leader of Voces. I don’t know her official title, but she is the spokesperson for the group. She was busy doing that when I saw her. Christine was giving a media person an interview, one of many that she would give yesterday. I don’t know Christine that well, but I know her mother. I worked with her mom at Voces for years, and we were close. Now, Christine’s mother is old, frail, and often sickly.

Asher and I met with Christine as she finished talking to somebody on the record. I immediately asked her,

“How’s your mom?”

The answer was not positive. Christine looked at Asher and said,

“You’re the guy we get all the pictures of. Do you want a water?”

Asher nodded. Christine gave him a bottle of water.

She asked me, “Is this his first march?”

I told her, “We’re not going to march. He’s tired already.”

She nodded.

We spoke together very briefly. Christine had things to do. I told her to tell her mom hello for me. Christine went out to the rally.

I picked Asher up in my arms. I looked monetarily at the crowd.

I asked Asher, “Ready to go to the playground?”

He smiled and said, “Yeah.”

April 29th, 2024

I have a friend who has been training to become a Catholic priest. I met him several years ago when he was staying at our parish and studying as a novice. The journey to the priesthood is long and arduous. The formation process can take nearly a decade. Not many men are called to follow this path, especially in our times. It entails a lifelong commitment to the service of others, and that sort of thing is not very popular in our culture. There is a reason that there is a shortage of priests.

My friend wrote to me a few days ago. He informed me that, after eight years, he is leaving formation. He discerned, after much prayer and thought, that he is not meant to be a priest. It is not his vocation.

Wow.

I thought to myself, “Eight years? That’s a long time to be working toward a goal, and then to just let it all go.”

Then I thought some more, “Well, I was in the Army, if you count West Point, for ten years, and I left all that behind.”

My friend and I have a lot in common.

He is thirty years old. He has spent nearly a third of his life in highly structured and insular environment. It’s true that he has interacted with “civilians” at times. He has had contact with lay Catholics and his family members, but most of his adult life has been spent with priests and brothers from the Augustinian order of the Church. He has been indoctrinated into a certain way of thinking, and a certain manner of living. He is not the same young man her was when he signed up at the age of twenty-two.

I was twenty-eight when I resigned my commission. I had gone straight from high school to USMA, and from there to the regular Army for six years. I had literally no experience as a civilian. Ten years changed me into a person who was very different from most of my contemporaries.

I wrote back to my friend and told him that I understand his current situation. He is going through a change in life similar to what I did nearly forty years ago. I explained to him that he’ll be okay, but it is going to be a bitch to adapt to a strange new world. He has been subject to a specific type of discipline for a long time. It’s made him who he is now. He might never be ordained by the Church, but he will always be a priest in his interaction with others, just like I am always in some respects still a soldier.

He may leave his vocation and perhaps think sometimes that it was all a waste. I told him that it’s not. No experience is ever a waste, unless a person refuses to learn from it. He has a perspective and a wisdom that few people have. He has a gift to share in the new chapter in his life.

My friend will do well.

April 28th, 2024

I just finished reading an article about some pro-Palestinian student protesters who are lamenting the fact that their arrests at campus demonstrations might negatively affect their futures. After perusing this essay, I had to rest my forehead on the table and moan,

“You idiots.”

Okay, they’re university students, so they probably aren’t idiots in a literal sense, but they clearly did not think through the consequences of their actions. Yes, their actions will have an impact on their lives. That is guaranteed. As my son, Stefan the Ironworker, is wont to say,

“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

I am not saying that these college students are wrong in demonstrating for an end to the war in Gaza. I am not saying they are wrong to protest the injustice that the Palestinians suffer every day. To a large extent, I agree with their views.

However…

I am no stranger to demonstrations, rallies, and protests. I have in fact been arrested for civil disobedience, once and only once. That occurred at Creech AFB in Nevada in April of 2017 (you can look it up if you like). The group I was with was protesting American drone warfare in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We blocked the entrance to the air force base at the time when the shifts changed. The police made it clear to us that, if we failed to move from the entrance after five minutes, we would be arrested and jailed. For reasons that I have explained in depth in previous essays, I stayed in the street with six other protesters, and we all got busted.

Please note that I knew that I was breaking the law. I knew that I was infringing on the rights of people who just wanted to get to work. I knew that I would be arrested. I knew that I would go to jail. I knew that there would be other legal ramifications. I still stayed put, because I thought it was necessary for me to take a stand on an issue that was important to me. I needed to show solidarity with the kids getting blown up by our drones and with my fellow activists. I was ready to do the right thing and then get punished for doing so.

These college students apparently see things differently. They are worried about suspensions and arrest records. They want to do something heroic, but they don’t want their actions to cost them anything. They want to follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, but they don’t want to lose their chance on getting their Ph.D. or miss the next Taylor Swift concert. They are demanding amnesty.

It doesn’t work like that.

I personally know peace activists who have spent months or even years in jail or prison for nonviolent civil disobedience. To me, these people are heroes. They put everything on the line for their beliefs. My arrest was at most a minor thing. I got my wrist slapped. The DA in Clark County eventually dropped my charges, and sent me a letter stating in legalese,

“Don’t EVER come back here and do that shit again!”

These young people need to grow up fast. Mommy and Daddy won’t save them.

April 26, 2024

I wrote the following letter to the editor. The Los Angeles Times saw fit to publish it today.

“The U.S. Supreme Court may allow municipalities to crack down on homeless encampments within their jurisdiction. This would effectively make homelessness a crime.

This attitude is nothing new. Nearly 100 years ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote:

‘For our law has in it a turn of humor or touch of fancy which Nero or Herod never happened to think of: that of actually punishing homeless people for not sleeping at home.’

We live in a culture where we idolize the rich and despise the poor. We penalize the poor not for any particular offense, but simply because they bother our consciences by their very existence.”

April 23rd, 2024

I never understood why my dad would go out for breakfast once a month with his former comrades and coworkers from the City Water Department. They were all retired, and they met at some restaurant in West Allis for reasons that were obscure to me. I didn’t ask him about it. I was busy raising my family and working long hours at my own job. I figured that when I retired, if ever, I wouldn’t get nostalgic about my previous career. I couldn’t imagine meeting up with guys that would remind of all those years of toil and trouble.

Guess what I did two days ago?

I had lunch at a local bar and grill with six men that I used to work with. One of them had taken the initiative to get us all in one place for an hour or two. I have been to a few of these soirees before. Often, it is just two or three of us that find the time and energy to meet. Seven people was quite the crowd.

I have been thinking about why we even bothered to have a burger and a beer together. Since each of us retired, our lives have taken different trajectories. Some guys travel now and take trips to Myrtle Beach or Pensacola. Some of my former coworkers help to care for their grandchildren, although perhaps not as much as I do. I am raising my grandson fulltime. Some of the men have medical issues like bad backs or damaged shoulders, injuries that are the long-term results of the work they day after day for years. Some have spouses who are hurting. One man’s wife struggles with diabetes and is waiting for a kidney transplant. The one thing we all have in common is that mortality is daily becoming more real. Time is short.

For most of these guys, retirement is their second act. They spent decades working at the same trucking company that I did. Now, that part of their lives is over. For me, retirement is more like a third act. I was an Army officer before I joined the corporate world. In any case, we are all trying to decide on what we really want to do with our remaining years. We are also trying to make sense of the years that have gone by.

We spent a lot of timing talking about the old days. I don’t say “good old days”, because they weren’t. They were just different. The company was much smaller when we started working there. Things were up close and personal. Emotions flared and people yelled. I know I did. However, we all knew something about each other’s lives outside of the workplace. The environment was often tense and stressful, but it was also deeply human. As far as I can tell, the employees at that company are now just cogs in an impersonal wheel. They are ciphers and they are totally replaceable.

What is the value of reminiscing? It isn’t nostalgia. It is more a matter of reassuring each other that these events actually happened. It is a clumsy but cooperative effort at coming to terms with what we did with what were perhaps the best years of our lives. Was it all worth it? Did it make any sense?

In a sense, all seven of us are survivors. We spoke of many people in the past tense. A lot of the folks we knew are gone, in a permanent way. Some of them died shortly after retirement. Some of them never even made it to retirement. Heart disease or alcoholism or cancer cut them down before they had a chance to look back on their lives. We are blessed in that, even with our struggles, we can still carry on. We still have the opportunity to start anew.

My father eventually stopped going to his breakfast meetings. Maybe he lost interest. Maybe some of his friends moved away. He did. Maybe some of his coworkers got too sick to join with him. Little by little, they all left. I think my dad was the last man standing. He outlived them all.

It’s odd, now that our professional work is done, we still come together. In a way, we need each now more than when we did all those years ago.

April 23rd, 2024

We had a dog named Shocky. Eight days ago, we put her down. My wife, Karin, and I had expected that we might have to do that, but the timing of the euthanasia was a surprise to us. Maybe it should not have been, but it was. We had to make a sudden decision about the dog, and we were not psychologically prepared for that. Honestly, I doubt that we were ever going to be prepared for it.

Shocky was a border collie. Our daughter got her when she was a puppy. The tiny dog had hair sticking out in all directions. She looked like she had stuck her paw into a light socket, hence the name “Shocky”. Our daughter cared for her pet for a while, but for most of the last decade, my wife and I have looked after the dog. Still, our daughter has always considered Shocky to be her “baby”. There has been a strong emotional bond between the two of them.

Shocky was very lively in her youth. She loved to run around the yard, even though we had no sheep for her to chase. I would take her long walks, and sometimes we went together for several miles. I remember going with her on a snowy winter night all the way to the railroad tracks. We saw a Union Pacific freight roll toward us through the darkness. Shocky got scared by the air horn. We moved back a bit and watched the train roar past us, kicking up a storm of white powder in its wake. Shocky was ready to go home after that.

Recently, the dog turned thirteen. Shocky moved more slowly than before. She slept more often. She started to have more trips to the vet. Shocky had three bad teeth removed. She had to take anti-inflammatory meds for a while. She got a cyst on her right eyelid that caused irritation. She was getting old.

About three weeks ago, Shocky stopped eating. She still drank water, but she had no interest in food, any kind of food. She used to inhale liverwurst if I offered it to her. That’s how I got her to take her medication. But suddenly she had no appetite. The dog only excreted something slimy and orange yellow in color. That was clearly not healthy.

My grandson, Asher, and I took Shocky to the vet fifteen days ago. The doctor examined Shocky, and took a blood sample. She wanted us to bring her a stool sample from Shocky, but that was kind of difficult since the dog wasn’t eating. The vet told us that she was concerned that maybe Shocky had a liver problem.

Two days later, the vet called me with the results of the blood test. Shocky’s liver was healthy, but she was not producing enough red blood cells. The doctor did not have enough information to know why that was the case, but she prescribed Shocky four different medications to at least get the dog eating again. We couldn’t administer the medications in pill form, so we got liquids that we needed to give to the dog with a syringe in her mouth.

Karin had to help me to give Shocky her medicine. It was definitely a two-person job. The meds seemed to have no effect. Shocky still refused to eat. She was listless. She only moved when she wanted to be near a human in the house. Then she would slowly get up and go to the room where I was or where Karin or Asher were present. She would drink a little water and later go pee. Otherwise, she laid on the floor and slept.

Karin and I did not tell our daughter about Shocky’s illness. We did not know how bad things were, and we did not know if her pet would recover. Our daughter was in a position where she was not able to help her dog or even to visit with her. Until my wife and I knew something concrete about Shocky’s condition, our comments would only cause our daughter undue anxiety. That was our thinking anyway.

Eight days ago, the vet called to get an update. I told her that Shocky was not responding to the treatment and that she was still not eating. The vet was livid about that. She told me,

“You should have taken her to an ER for more tests or called us to set up euthanasia. Shocky is suffering! We can’t just let her starve!”

Fair enough. We didn’t know when we were supposed to start panicking, so we had just been continuing with the meds. Now, the vet was adamant that we make a decision about Shocky, and make that decision right fucking now.

I understood the doctor’s viewpoint and I appreciated her intense concern for our dog. Unfortunately, our daughter had not been involved in the process and she needed to know what was happening. I didn’t want to call her after the fact and say,

“By the way, we killed your dog.”

No, that wasn’t going to fly. I needed to contact her in a hurry. Our daughter was in a place where it was almost impossible to get hold of her quickly. I had to leave messages, and finally she called me. She was clearly and understandably upset. I explained to her that we had to put Shocky down, and we had to do it that afternoon. She accepted my reasoning, but then what other choice did she have? She couldn’t be there with Shocky when she died, but at least she was aware of what was in store.

Karin, Asher, and I went to the vet’s office at 4:15 on April 15th to put Shocky down. Actually, we went into a side room that was furnished in a homey manner. It was like a funeral parlor for pets. Shocky was lying on a blanket on the floor. She was mildly sedated. The vet talked with us for a while to explain the procedure. She was empathetic and compassionate. She gave Shocky another sedative, and then she injected the dog with a chemical that stopped her heart. Karin and Asher stroked Shocky’s back as the vet did her work.

The doctor checked Shocky for a pulse. There was none. Then the vet gently bent forward and kissed Shocky’s forehead.

That’s when I cried.

Grief is a funny thing. When a person dies, the survivors often have mixed feelings: sorrow, guilt, maybe resentment. There is usually unfinished business that accompanies the sense of loss. When a pet dies, the grief can be profound, but it also feels pure. A pet can give people unconditional love and affection. I know that a dog can do that. I’m not sure about goldfish or snakes. I know that’s what Shocky gave to us.

April 18th, 2024

It’s starting to get light. The eastern sky has hints of pink and orange at the horizon. The naked trees stand in black contrast to the dawn. A few of the tree limbs have buds on them. The maples are beginning to get leaves. The walnuts and the locusts are still bare. The world is still partially in shadow. The sun will come soon.

I’ve been up since 3:00 AM. I feel like I did when I worked third shift years ago. I’m tired but wound up. I am tempted to lie down and try to sleep some more, but that is pointless. I’m going to be active the rest of the day, a day that really hasn’t even started yet.

Asher, our three-year-old grandson, lives with me and my wife. He sleeps with me at night. He’s restless, constantly moving as he dreams. He often wakes up during the night. He sits up in bed and demands that I carry him to the kitchen and give him a warm bottle of oat milk. I do that. Then I hold him in my arms as I sit in a chair by the table in the dark kitchen. Eventually, he dozes off, and we both go back to bed.

We went through this process around midnight. I woke up three hours later feeling something warm and wet. It was Asher, and everything near him. He had peed through or around his diaper, soaking his pajama pants, the bed sheet, the mattress pad, and the bed cover. Asher was unhappy. So was I.

I stripped the wet stuff off the bed, and then gave Asher a fresh diaper and new pajamas. Then I fed him again. Then I held him. Then I put him down and laid next to him in bed until he slept. I am now in the second phase of the program. I’m washing the soiled bedding and keeping an eye on the boy. I made coffee. That is one thing I did for me. Writing this essay is the second thing.

It is amazing to me that, at the age of sixty-six, I am still preforming the child rearing tasks that I did thirty years ago, along with some other chores that I probably didn’t do back in those days.

I never thought I would be a new parent again.

April 16th, 2024

When I put my grandson, Asher, to bed last night, all I could think about was the fact that Iran was attacking Israel. That scared me, and it still does, because the show is not over. I’m not so much frightened for myself as I am for my grandkids, in particular the little boy who we are raising at home. I’m old. I am in the seventh inning stretch of my life, so Armageddon doesn’t bother me that much. However, Asher, and my other three grandkids are just starting their lives.

What kind of future will they have, if any?

I like to read history. It’s a nasty habit, probably worse than smoking crack, but I am interested in learning about the blunders of previous generations. Human nature has not changed much over the centuries, and it is depressingly predictable. Our ancestors fought innumerable wars, and they never learned that these bloody affairs generally don’t end well. The outcomes seldom match the initial expectations of the adversaries. Just glance at World Wars I and II for evidence of that.

It would be nice to believe that the United States has a handle on the current events in the Middle East. We don’t, and I don’t think it matters who is in the White House trying to run things. Our best friend in the region is Israel, and they do whatever they want whenever they want knowing full well that we won’t interfere. That makes Israel simultaneously both our ally and a rogue state. Our other allies in the neighborhood are also kind of iffy.

We might like to think that Iran and its surrogates in the Mideast are all in lock step. I doubt that. I have read that Tehran was a bit surprised with Hamas’ action on October 7th of last year. Iran has allies, but these organizations also have their own agendas. The ayatollahs don’t own these people.

I don’t foresee Israel and Iran deciding to play nice. For decades, both nations have characterized the other as being an existential threat. Iran’s drone and missile attack of a couple days ago won’t be the last round in the fight. The potential for this struggle to suck in other parties, like the United States, is very high.

I am not so scared about Israel and Iran going at it. I am terrified by the prospect of a variety of forces getting involved, each with its own goals. This game has way too many players, and not enough rules.

I hold my grandson and I pray that this all ends with the world left in one piece.

That is also iffy.