A Bottle of Baja Blast and a Take 5

September 6th, 2026

Karin and I took the little boy to see his mama. She currently resides in a minimum-security prison on the northside of Milwaukee. The facility is a relatively small structure that only houses 98 inmates. It sits on a tiny piece of land on the corner of a busy intersection. There is a sturdy metal fence around the prison, but no razor wire crowning it. The Milwaukee Women’s Correctional Center (MWCC) is probably the best-looking building in the neighborhood. That part of town is a little rough.

We are trying to go to the prison every weekend. The visits help his mother to deal with her incarceration. There is no actual visitor’s area. The meeting place is in the cafeteria. We use the same tables that the inmates use for their meals. The room has two vending machines. Neither of those contains food that is even remotely healthy, and the inmates can’t use them anyway. Only visitors can use the machines to buy snacks for themselves or for the prisoners. There are a number of board games available to help pass the time.

The prison has limited visiting hours. There are three-hour blocks on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and three-hour blocks of time on Saturdays and Sundays in the early afternoon. When we were there on Saturday, I saw nine inmates with visitors. Usually, an adult was there with the child (or children) of the incarcerated woman. So, on that afternoon only 10% of the inmates had visitors, and based on my limited observations, it seems like it’s always the same people who have people come to see them. That means the vast majority of the inmates are essentially isolated from the outside world. That’s a sobering thought.

This prison has a very different vibe from the last residence of the boy’s mama. Taycheedah was a maximum-security facility, and it felt like it. The guards at Taycheedah were polite and professional, but the atmosphere was always tense. At MWCC the folks working there are friendlier and it’s more relaxed. It is still obvious to everyone who comes to visit that they are entering a prison, but it isn’t quite as scary as other places.

The boy’s mother is unhappy. She does not like it at MWCC. They make her do janitorial work five days a week. She thinks that they are stricter at MWCC than they are at another minimum-security prison where she did time. She has a roommate who talks constantly. Yeah, it sucks, but what can she do about it? Nothing. This is her home for the next 17 months. It is finally sinking in that she is not getting out of that facility until February 4th, 2028. That is a painful realization.

As I said, it is helpful to her when her five-year-old son comes to see her. They hug and laugh. I buy her a Baja Blast (a variety of Mountain Dew) and they share a couple Take 5 candy bars. A rule states that any vending machine food has to be removed from its wrapper and place on a large coffee filter before being consumed at the inmate’s table. I guess that is some security issue. I bought her son got a bottle of lemonade which he managed to partially spill in his excitement. I expected that to happen.

I am not entirely sure what benefit her son derives from the visits. Going there every weekend gives him some stability and routine. He needs that. I know that he misses his mama and this is the only way for them to physically connect. The mother does call the boy at least once every day., but that isn’t enough. For most of the visit the boy and his mom got along well. Then he needed to go to the bathroom. I took him there.

When we returned from the bathroom, he suddenly became upset. He had been playing a game with his mama when we left, and my wife and his mama had completed it in his absence. The boy had a tantrum. His mother became very anxious because she thought that she would get into trouble if he made a scene. Eventually, he calmed down. It took a while. Why did he flip out on us?

His new kindergarten teacher has experience working with children who have trauma. She lent us a book to read. It is called Building a Trauma-Informed Compassionate Classroom. One of the causes of childhood trauma listed in the book is having an incarcerated parent. Well, here we are. The boy’s mama is doing time and that’s the reality of it. The boy is trying to deal with a situation that I, as an adult, struggle to process. He is going to have difficulty regulating his moods. We are going to have to help him to feel loved and safe.

We have to work through all this.

Before Computers, Even Before Reading and Writing

September 6th, 2026

My friend lent me a book to read. It’s called The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. Davis is an anthropologist who has been around the world. The book describes various isolated indigenous cultures and what happens to many of them once they encounter Western technology and values. The stories are ugly, filled with violence and disease. There is sometimes genocide involved. Davis emphasizes what is lost when these cultures clash. The indigenous population has often accumulated centuries of wisdom that generally dies along with the tribes. A deep, intuitive connection with nature is almost always a casualty when an indigenous group succumbs to Western influence. The author mourns the disappearance of hundreds of languages, customs, and world views. I tend to agree with much of what he says in the book, but not all of it.

The first chapter in Davis’s book is the best in my opinion. He vividly describes the history of the peoples who live on the islands in the Pacific Ocean. Before the Europeans came, these tribes roamed the sea from New Zeeland to Tahiti to Hawaii to Easter Island. They did all this by dead reckoning. They had no compasses, no maps, no chronometers, no GPS. Davis talks about a journey he made with a friend of his, one of the descendants of these early mariners. He speaks eloquently of this man’s skill in guiding a sailing canoe across hundreds of miles of open water, and all without the aid of modern technology.

So, how did Pacific Islanders cross the ocean without modern equipment? The way Davis explains it is that in each community there was (and sometimes still is) a “navigator”. The person is trained from early on in life to know the secrets of sea navigation. The author mentions one such navigator being placed in a tidal pool as a small child to learn the feel of the ocean. Over time, a navigator learns skills that have been passed down through the generations. A navigator becomes familiar with the types of clouds, with the currents and swells in the sea, with the marine animals, with the winds, with time and positions of the stars as they rise above the eastern horizon every night. In the mind of the navigator a myriad of signs coalesce into a gestalt that allows the person to find his way to distant islands. The navigator is an essential member of the community. In some ways, the individual ranks higher than the chief.

The story of the navigator is amazing. Somehow, it makes me think back forty years to my experience as an aviator in the U.S. Army. Can a tribal navigator’s path be compared to mine? Maybe not, but I want to try.

A navigator in the Polynesian tradition is a unique individual. He possesses talents and skills that nobody else in his culture has. He is chosen and trained at an extremely young age. From early on in his life, he sits high in the hierarchy of the tribe.

I started flight school when I was twenty-two. In the eyes of a navigator, I would appear to be a very late bloomer. I never acquired the intense connection with flight that the navigator has with the sea. I never had the lineage of a navigator. I was just some guy with the physical and mental aptitudes necessary to pilot a helicopter. I didn’t need to come from a family of navigators. I just needed to bust my ass and then sell my soul to the Army for a few years. I never had to memorize an endless multitude of details in order to fly. I had tools that helped me. I had books and weather reports and flight instruments to aid me. I had technology.

The navigator almost always knew where he was and how to get where he needed to go. The author describes the navigator as being in trance while he did his job. I get that. There were times as a pilot, not many but enough, when I was in that mental state where I was just doing. In an emergency I would just act. I would be one with the aircraft. It’s a Zen thing. There were moments where I was in the “place before thinking”. So, in a small way, I can relate to the navigator.

Is the navigator’s way of life better than mine was? I have no idea. A navigator crosses the sea, but he never gets to fly. On the other hand, he knows and understands things that I can’t. He is special. I’m not. It might be better that I am not a chosen one. One disadvantage with traditional societies is that there is a lack of opportunity. A person gets pigeonholed early. In Western culture, even with all our faults, there is at least the possibility that an individual might choose their own way in life.

I think we should try to understand and preserve ancient wisdom. I also think we should properly use the knowledge we have in our culture and maybe integrate the old ways with the new. It would be worth a try.

Do You Love Me?

August 31st, 2026

Asher woke up a couple minutes after I did this morning. The five-year-old climbed over me on the bed to give me a hug. Then he asked,

“Do you love me?”

I told him, “I love you all the time.”

This isn’t the first time that Asher has asked that question. Lately, he has been asking more often about whether or not I love him. I guess it is a normal question to ask, but I sense an underlying uneasiness on Asher’s part. I don’t know that I can give Asher an answer that would really satisfy him. There is this hunger in his voice when asks me. He wants to know that I love him, but he also wants to know that I will be here for him.

Asher has had important people disappear from his life. Some of them are missing through no fault of their own. A few simply abandoned him. In any case, since he was an infant, Asher has experienced loss. He’s anxious that he might experience it again.

I would like to tell Asher that I will always be there for him, but he knows better than that. He knows that I am old, and that old people die. He has a remarkably mature view on that subject. The best way I can reassure him is to be here now. That does not require me to do anything extraordinary. All I have to do care for him; maybe read him stories, play with him, and listen to what he needs to say. Asher wants me to be present. In order to be present, I have to sacrifice some of things I would like to do, but he feels more stable and safe when we share time together. I demonstrate my love for Asher by spending my limited time with him. Time is of greater value than money.

Asher also asks me, “How much do you love me?” I never how to verbally answer that question. Words fail in this regard. I can’t tell him how much i love him. I can only show him.

Broken Tooth

August 24th, 2026

I woke up on the floor next to the side of the bed. The room was dark and I was spitting tiny pieces of enamel out of mouth on to the carpet. I felt disoriented, but there wasn’t any pain. That made my temporary confusion worse.

I stumbled up to my feet and walked into the bathroom. I closed the door before I turned on the light to make sure that I didn’t wake up Asher. He was still asleep in our bed. I tried to focus my eyes enough to see my face in the mirror. The image was a bit blurry, but I could tell that my top right incisor was just a little shorter than its partner on the left. Fuck.

I remembered having a vivid dream. I was sleeping on the edge of the bed (Asher likes to take up most of the bed by sleeping sideways on the mattress). I must have rolled to the right and fallen off the side. My mouth hit the corner of the nightstand on my way down to the floor. I recall feeling my head jerk sharply back as my body hit the carpet. Later in the day, I noticed a deep, inch-long gouge in the wood of the nightstand. That was where my front tooth and the furniture kissed.

The incisor now has a sharp, ragged edge. It still works. I can bite things with it. It doesn’t hurt at all. It just looks nasty. I told me daughter-in-law in Texas about the current appearance of my smile. She texted me,

“How redneck of you.”

The broken tooth makes me think about mortality. Do I even want to get the tooth fixed? I have an appointment for a dental cleaning two days from now. I expect that the dentist will have some guidance for me, and probably a cost estimate. The point is that I’m old (68 and 1/2 years). I seldom smile. Is there any pressing reason for me to spend money on repair if the tooth is still functional? I long ago gave up caring about my appearance. I already look like I have a lot of mileage on me.

No more broad, toothy grins.

Feral

August 24th, 2026

While we were in Texas visiting our son’s family, Karin, Asher, and I spent nearly all of our waking hours in their double wide home. The double wide stands on an acre of wooded land, mostly live oaks and cedars. However, since it was the early part of August, the kids were indoors most of the time. The outdoor temps hovered near 100 degrees, and even for children who are Texas natives, that is a little extreme. They might play in the yard for a while early in the morning, but then they get out of the intense heat and retreat to an air-conditioned environment.

During our visit, the air conditioning on the double wide went out. That was a bad thing. Gaby, the mother of our three grandkids, promptly called a HVAC guy to come to the house. Karin and I paid for the repair. I talked with the repairman before he started his troubleshooting. He was a busy man. He had many calls to make that day. Fortunately, the problem was just a bad switch, and it was a quick and easy fix. He hit me up for $300. I told him,

“That’s a bargain.”

The sweating repair guy smiled at me and drawled, “Well, I can charge y’all more if you like.”

“No. I’m good.”

The fact is that getting the air conditioning fixed was a non-negotiable item. It had to be done. It is like what happens in winter in Wisconsin, where we live. If the furnace at our house goes out in subzero temperatures, it gets fixed. It doesn’t matter how much it costs.

Asher’s three Texan cousins are all about his age. Weston, Maddy, and Wyatt are members of a restless crew. They have energy that would be best expended outside, but that would probably risk heat exhaustion. So, they played with Asher inside the house. There was a lot of yelling and laughing and crying and general mayhem. Gaby wisely chooses her battles. She could demand that her kids play quietly and keep the house in order. But at what cost? She lets them make a mess, and at certain points in the day allows them to watch Blippi, which gives her moments of relative calm. Asher engaged well with his three cousins. It didn’t take him long to become one of the Lost Boys (and Girl).

One day, I was sitting in their living room near the youngest boy, Wyatt. Wyatt is three years old, and he is generally a quiet lad. I did not interact much with him. He was shy, and as my wife said, “When he smiles, he does it with his whole body”. At home, both in the house and outside of it, Wyatt was usually only clad in a pull-up diaper and maybe oversized cowboy boots. On that particular day, Wyatt had multicolor streaks of washable marker all over his body, like a mischievous kind of warpaint. He made me think of the boys in the book, Lord of the Flies, although he’s much younger and more peaceful.

I mentioned to Gaby, “Wyatt looks kind of feral.”

She agreed with that. Being feral is not necessarily a bad thing. Innocence and wildness coexist in children. The two attributes complement each other. I’ve come to accept that both are essential qualities and should be seen as blessings. That’s just who they are.

He’s Grown so Much

August 22nd, 2026

“He’s grown so much.”

The young woman made that comment after she looked at her little boy. Her five-year-old son smiled back at her. It was his second visit to see his mom at the prison. The prior visit to the prison was over three weeks ago. The visit to see her in jail before that was four months ago. The young woman calls her son every day, but she seldom gets to physically interact with him. She is incarcerated at a facility that is a 90-minute drive from our home. That drive is not something we can do every day, or even every week.

The young woman may get transferred to a minimum-security prison soon. There is a facility like that much closer to our home. She might end up there. That would make visits easier. Even so, she still won’t have daily contact with her boy. That just isn’t possible. She won’t get to eat dinner with him. She won’t get to take him to school. She won’t get to tuck him into bed. She won’t get to do the innumerable little things that mothers do with their children every single day. She is going to miss so much of his childhood.

A caregiver who is with a child day in and day out doesn’t often notice the subtle changes in the boy or girl. The child develops almost imperceptibly. Suddenly, one day the caregiver looks closely at the child and realizes that they are staring at a stranger, somebody new. They are surprised by how the kid has grown. This older version of the child snuck up on them.

A person like the young woman notices the changes immediately because for her they are stark, because she has not been there for all of the little things. There are huge gaps in her experience with her son. Every visit is jarring in away because she hasn’t been able to witness his entire growth process.

The real punishment involved with doing time is not what a person endures inside prison. The punishment is what that person misses on the outside.

Buying Crappy Souvenirs

August 22nd, 2026

Traveling on a long road trip with a restless five-year-old is an endurance test. Our grandson, Asher, is a good kid and we love him dearly, but he can be relentless when he wants something, and he often wants something. On our journey from Wisconsin to Texas and back, Karin and I had to make frequent stops to fuel up the car, take bathroom breaks, and give bribes to Asher. It was nearly impossible to leave a truck stop without buying him some kind of crappy souvenir. In a way it didn’t matter what he got, as long as he got something. We could have shown resolve and refused to purchase anything, but that would have made for a much more stressful ride. So, Karin and I took the path of least resistance and bought Asher some badly made consumer items every day on the trip. Here’s some of what he got:

At a Love’s in Illinois, Karin bought him this ball that looked like the head of Skye, a Cockapoo character from Paw Patrol. The object was truly hideous. It was just this smiling head without a body attached to it. It’s like Skye had been sent to the guillotine. How does a kid even play with that? Does he play catch with it? “Here, Grandpa, throw me Skye’s head!” Asher wanted me to pretend the head/ball was talking. That freaked me out. It was way too macabre.

We stayed for twelve days in Madisonville, Texas, in a Best Western across the street from a Buc-ee’s gas station. To those who are unaware, a Buc-ee’s is a monstrous filling station with dozens of pumps and a store the size of a strip mall. They have everything there, including a BBQ brisket sandwich that is to die for. They have toys and activity packages that kids can take in the car on a trip. The items aren’t really that bad, but all of them somehow advertise for Buc-ee’s. We bought several things for Asher. Some he liked, some not. There was a small coloring book that worked with a pen that you filled with water. Asher liked drawing with the water pen and seeing the colors that were embedded in the paper become visible.

We stopped in an obscure convenience store/gas station in Tyler, Texas. Asher demanded a prize in that place. He selected a toy that is difficult to adequately describe. It had a clear plastic handle on the bottom that was filled with tiny pieces of candy. Attached above the handle was a blue plastic dolphin with what appeared to be a propeller sticking out of its mouth. On the side of the dolphin was a yellow hand crank. When Asher turned the crank, the propeller lit up and spun rapidly. It looked like a glowing disc. That was actually kind of cool. Unfortunately, when he cranked on the handle like an organ grinder, the toy spewed out some horrible circus music like a demonic calliope. He began playing with it in the car, and after less than a minute, both Karin and I demanded that he stop. It was a toy from hell.

At another Love’s we reluctantly purchased a stuffed animal for Asher. It was a large, pale blue, morbidly obese seal. Asher fell in love with his new stuffie. He insisted that I do “stuffie talk” and speak for the seal. The seal is now known as “Big Blue”. I had to make up a special voice for Big Blue. Now, Big Blue has his own background story. He lives at the North Pole and hangs out with Santa’s reindeer when he isn’t swimming and fishing. Asher takes Big Blue to bed every night. I have to admit that the seal is rather huggable.

The seal was worth the money.

Once Upon a Time

August 15th, 2026

I was sitting on the back porch of Hans’ double wide, soaking up the Texas heat and listening to Hans talk about his time in Iraq. Hans had a Lime-A-Rita in one hand and a Pall Mall in the other. As his wont, my son started telling a tale about his deployment. It went like this:

Once upon a time, a group of British soldiers were attached to Hans’ unit. The reasons for this are obscure. However, Hans became friendly with the Brits, possibly because they always had a sufficient supply of alcohol. In any case, there was an officer among the Brits who was a sniper. He used a Bartlett 50 Cal rifle in his work. He took a liking to Hans and insisted on having Hans accompany him on a couple missions. Hans is a gun enthusiast, and at that time he was an excellent shot.

On one outing, the lieutenant set up his 50 Cal and told Hans,

“See that camel? Shoot it.”

Hans protested, “Why? It’s somebody’s camel.”

The officer blandly told Hans, “Just shoot the camel”.

Hans did. He damn near vaporized the animal.

On another excursion, Hans was supposed to be the lieutenant’s radio man. The Brit told Hans to let him handle the radio. He had a different task for my son.

Once again, the sniper set up his rifle. He asked Hans to look through the scope. He told him, “Adjust the magnification to 3x.”

Then he asked Hans, “Do you see that black dot on the horizon?”

Hans did, and the Brit told him, “Adjust it to 8x.”

Then he asked Hans, “Do you see the SUV?”

Hans did. The sniper told him, “Shoot it. Aim for the hood.”

Hans fired. The round hit the driver’s door and the car exploded.

The lieutenant called back to the FOB to tell them they were coming back.

At the base, Hans got chewed out for letting the sniper make the calls. Hans replied, “He’s a lieutenant! I’m a PFC!”

I was lying awake last night thinking about Hans’ story. His tales often disturb me. I sometimes wonder if things really occurred the way he said. If his narrative was a work of fiction, any editor worth his salt would reject it out of hand. Hans’ stories are rife with plot holes, inconsistencies, and numerous loose ends. Oddly enough, it’s those very things that make me believe Hans, because many events in my life are just as messy and confusing. A good novel or short story has internal consistency. Real life usually does not.

Another reason that I find Hans’ narrative plausible is that he is never the hero in his stories. He doesn’t come across like a whiskey warrior. He describes himself mostly as an unlucky mensch who has found himself in a situation involving intense heat. sand, and seemingly endless stupidity.

His stories often leave a bad taste in my mouth. My reaction is typically, “That is fucked up”. When Hans tells me about his life in Iraq, the episodes are always, at best, morally ambiguous. There nothing uplifting, or even logical about his experiences, but apparently these things happened.

I am grateful that Hans talk to me about Iraq. It seems to help him. He needs to tell somebody about what happened there. It might as well be me.

Hans came back damaged. I don’t say that he came home, because I don’t think he really ever did. Part of him is still in Iraq, and that part will never come home.

Her First Day of School

August 12th, 2026

Our granddaughter, Maddy, started kindergarten today. Karin, Asher, and I came over to her house at 6:30 to see her to the bus stop. We were early and the sun wasn’t quite up yet. It was hot already, the temps in the upper 80’s.

Maddy was not doing well. Her mama, Gaby, was holding her and trying to comfort the girl. Maddy was crying and didn’t want to get dressed for school. Gaby gently nudged her along. Finally, Maddy was wearing in her fancy pink dress with the strawberry pattern. She had calmed down enough to walk to the bus top with her older brother. At least she wasn’t going on the school bus alone.

Starting something new is often scary. Our grandson, Asher, began his school career last fall when he went to kindergarten. He was good on the first day when my wife, his mama, and I were there with him. Things went downhill after that. Asher is a smart kid and quickly figured out that going to class was not a one-off. He suddenly realized that he had to go to that school every day. One day, I drove to school and almost had to use a crowbar to extract him from his child seat in the car. He cried constantly as I carried him to the schoolhouse. Fortunately, Miss Martha, a seasoned faculty member, came over and pulled Asher out of my arms. He quieted down as she soothed him. Then Martha smiled at me and made it clear that I should go away, like right now. After a week or two, Asher grew accustomed to going to school. I think that might have been after he noticed a cute, blonde girl in his class who stole his heart away.

I think back to when I went to West Point fifty years ago. I arrived at a place where I didn’t know anybody, didn’t understand the rules or the culture, and didn’t even understand some of the language used. The environment was utterly alien to me, and it took probably a year for me to adjust. I sympathize with a five-year-old doing something similar to that.

We walked to the bus stop as a group: Maddy’s mama, my wife, her older brother, her younger brother, Asher and me. The bus travels down a dirt road. The road was being fixed when we got there in the early morning twilight. I am not sure what the maintenance crew was doing besides shoving the dirt around. The bus showed up like a stagecoach in those old western movies. It stopped in a cloud of dust.

Maddys’ older brother got in the bus. Then Gaby held onto Maddy’s hand while she got in. The younger brother, who only clad in a pullup diaper and sandals, started to walk up the steps too. He was almost inside the school bus before his mama snagged him and pulled him out again. That is one impatient little boy.

His turn will come.

What’s the Deal with your Dad?

August 12th 2026

My son, Hans, sometimes tells me stories of his youth without any warning. He did that today. He is a combat vet from the most recent Iraq War (deployed there in 2011). I’m a veteran too, but I am Cold War vintage. Anyway, out of the blue, he started telling me about how he enlisted in the Army back in 2009.

Hans said that his recruiter wanted him to meet and have dinner with their “liaison”. Hans did not realize until later that the liaison was in the FBI and Hans was meeting with him for a background check. Apparently, every 19 Kilo (armor crewmember for Abrams tanks) needs a secret clearance. Hans figured out that the session was going to be an interview when the FBI guy opened up a folder.

Hans asked him, “Do you mind if I get a beer?”

The interviewer said, “Go ahead.”

Hans asked him, “Are you buying?”

The FBI guy said that he would.

So, Hans was drinking beer while answering questions. Apparently, he answered them all to the satisfaction of his interrogator. There came one last question from the man with the folder:

“This isn’t really a red flag, but what’s the deal with your dad?”

Hans wasn’t expecting that one. He explained to the FBI official that he didn’t know what the deal was. He also made it clear to his questioner that he was not his dad.

The guy closed up his folder and said, “It’s okay. I just have to ask these questions.”

It should be noted at this point that I got involved in the antiwar movement just prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. I did that partly to keep Hans from going to war, which he did anyway. I stayed active in the movement even after Hans enlisted and got deployed. I am still connected with antiwar groups, although it’s now in a more peripheral way.

Hans has told me repeatedly over the years, “Dad, you’re on a list.”

I guess I matter enough that enough that the government has a file on me.