Hold You

February 3rd, 2026

There are times when out grandson, Asher, wants me to carry him. That is usually not a problem. He’s just over five years old, and he tips the scales at just over forty pounds. The thing that I have to keep in mind is that, with each passing day, Asher is a bit bigger, and I am a bit older. At some point, perhaps soon, I won’t be able to carry him. That’s just reality.

Last night was a rough one for Asher. He sleeps with me. He has done that for years, and he dozes off with his heavy head lying on my left bicep. When he came to bed yesterday, his legs were hurting. He had been playing and kicking a lot earlier in the evening, but I don’t think that’s why his legs were bothering him. He has sudden growth spurts, and when those occur, his legs ache. Sometimes, the soreness is mild. Last night it was fierce. He quite literally had growing pains.

Asher fell asleep in my arms, but he was awake again after only an hour or so. He was crying and moving around. I got up to find him some Children’s Tylenol. My wife and I asked him to take the Tylenol for his pain, but Asher wanted no part of it. He doesn’t like to take pain meds. That might be a good trait for later in his life.

Eventually, Asher settled down and slept again. About two hours later he was up again, once more crying. My wife came to bed to comfort him. Asher laid between the two of us. The tears flowed for a while, and then he calmed down and slept.

This cycle went on for most of the night. Asher would sleep fitfully for a while, then wake up and cry because of his aching legs. Each time, I held him close as he wept. I could feel his body slowly relax and his sobs fade away. I couldn’t think of anything to do anything to ease his pain. I could only hold him so that he would endure it. He did.

The last attack came before 3:00. It wasn’t as intense as the previous bouts of pain. His body was finishing its work extending his bones and muscles. Asher eased on to my shoulder and closed his eyes. He finally slept peacefully.

I stayed awake. I stared at the skylight and thought about the words of a song:

“I can’t carry you forever, but I can hold you now” – lyrics from, Hold You Now by Vampire Weekend

Lucky

January 30th, 2026

“Are you going anywhere to this morning?”

That was a leading question. I was taking Asher up to his kindergarten classroom when Miss Martha asked me about my plans. I looked at her and replied,

“Uh, no.”

She smiled and told me, “The all-school assembly is at 8:30. I know you didn’t RSVP for it, but you are welcome to come anyway.”

I had totally forgotten about the assembly. The truth is that I had nothing going on that morning. I wasn’t going to drive all the way home. It was pointless to make the trip if I had to pick up Asher again in 4 1/2 hours. I usually like to go for long walks along Lake Michigan while Asher is in school, but it was too damn cold outside to do that. My tentative plan was to plant myself in a local cafe, write letters, start reading a book, and try to make a mug of black coffee last all morning. The prospect of staying at the school for the assembly actually sounded pretty good.

The school had hired a professional drummer to perform at the assembly. The guy was called “Lucky” Diop. The man’s actual name was Ndongo Bahoum Diop, so I can understand why he might have preferred to go by “Lucky”. He was from Ziguinchor, apparently the richest cultural city in Senegal. How and why, he came to reside in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is beyond me, but he was at the Tamarack Waldorf school for a show. It was a good one.

He performed in the school’s auditorium. It’s a modest gathering place way up on the third floor of the building. The room has tall windows on the north and south sides of the school. The hall has hardwood floors and a stage on the east end. The auditorium serves multiple purposes, so there are no fixed seats in it. Visitors and older kids got to use folding chairs. Most of the younger students sat on the floor near the stage.

Lucky really didn’t do much drumming during his hour-long presentation. Mostly, he schmoozed the crowd, and he was good at that. He could definitely read his audience. He had several students and a teacher up on stage with him to aid with the music. A couple of them drummed. One played the maracas. One banged on a cowbell. You can never have enough cowbell.

Lucky told the audience of students, teachers, and community members that he was going to play African songs that promoted love, joy, peace, and unity. That’s exactly what he did. He got a couple kids to help him sing the lyrics to the songs. The words were all in a west African language, but that really didn’t matter. The singers on stage belted out the lyrics and the crowd answered them back. Just about everybody got caught up in the rhythm and the chanting. The place rocked.

Later in the show, Lucky convinced people to participate in a dance competition. He had members of each class get up and boogie. He started with the kindergarteners and ending with the eighth graders. Then the teachers danced in front of the stage. Some of them had surprisingly good moves. The kids loved watching them go at it.

Lucky ended the performance to the sound of cheers and applause. He really did bring us some love, joy, peace, and unity.

God knows we need more of that.

A Midrash

January 29th, 2026

I have a friend from our old synagogue named Jakob. He is an elderly gentleman. He is hard of hearing, but his thoughts run deep, and he is a very perceptive person. Jakob has taken a shine to my five-year-old grandson, Asher. He has in the past baked cookies for the boy. They were good. I had some of them. Recently, Jakob bought Asher a book. This is interesting because Asher doesn’t read yet, although he is quite competent at writing his name. My wife, Karin, read the book to Asher. It is a very short tale, and quite funny. Asher laughed a lot while Karin read to him, although he also found a couple parts to be rather sad.

The little book qualifies as a midrash about Noah’s ark, at least it does to me.

According to My Jewish Learning, a midrash is defined as:

“Midrash (מדרשׁ) is an interpretive act, seeking the answers to religious questions (both practical and theological) by plumbing the meaning of the words of the Torah. (In the Bible, the root d-r-sh [דרשׁ] is used to mean inquiring into any matter, including occasionally to seek out God’s word.) Midrash responds to contemporary problems and crafts new stories, making connections between new Jewish realities and the unchanging biblical text.”

The book is titled Meet at the Ark at Eight! by a German author, Ulrich Hub. The story is packed with absurdity and sprinkled with running gags and sly humor. There are very few characters in the tale. There are three rather clueless penguins whose antics somehow remind me of the Marx Brothers. There is an overweight, overworked, and overbearing white dove. Finally, there is Noah, who only makes a cameo appearance at the end of the story. As I mentioned, the book is hilarious, but it also delves into some serious questions.

There are people, especially among my Christian brethren, who are convinced that every story in the Bible holds a clear and concise moral lesson. This is of course nonsense. In the Torah the narratives are terse using a minimum of words. There is no extraneous verbiage. In fact, the person reading or listening to one of the stories will often have more questions than answers when it is over. The stories in the Hebrew scriptures tend to be a lot like life: confusing and ambiguous. They cry out for interpretation and additional details. Hence, the existence of the midrash, and of a little book about penguins on the ark.

Anybody who has read the story of Noah and actually pondered it, ends up with a kind of queasy feeling about God. The Lord does not come out looking good. Bad optics. Sure, He places the rainbow in the sky at the end of the show, but that is after He has totally trashed his creation. There is an unsettling question of justice in the Bible narrative. God decides that all of humankind, except for Noah and his kin, are irredeemably evil and worthy of destruction. Okay, God is omniscient, so He probably knows the moral standing of his creatures. But why kill almost all of the animals? What did they do wrong? Can a penguin sin? This topic comes up in the book. There are a number of odd theological questions that get broached in this modern midrash. Almost all of them make the reader smile.

I have time before Asher wakes up for school this morning. I am going to read the book again. It’s good. Asher recommends it.

Making it Work

January 24th, 2026

I visited my friend from the synagogue a couple days ago. We did what we always do: sit around, drink a beer or two, and commiserate. It is a cheap form of therapy, and it works. We try to meet for a session once a week if we can.

One of the topics in our discussion was my friend’s upcoming fortieth wedding anniversary. He was wondering out loud what to do to celebrate the occasion with his wife. Forty years together is not as big a deal as fifty, but it is still a major milestone, and it should be recognized as such. My wife, Karin, and I had our fortieth in August of 2024. I told my friend,

“Karin wanted us to get a blessing from our priest during Mass, so we did that.”

My friend thought that was absolutely hilarious. He was imagining an Orthodox rabbi he knew marrying him and his wife in a Jewish ceremony and he burst out laughing. As a note, his wife is not Jewish and has no intention of ever becoming Jewish. I can see how my example of how to commemorate a wedding would seem absurd.

However, my point in mentioning the blessing in church wasn’t really about celebrating the anniversary in a religious way. It was about celebrating the event in a communal way. Yes, Karin and I wanted the priest to pray over us, but we also wanted a public display. We wanted other people who knew us to share our joy (and surprise) at making it for forty years as a couple.

I could write a long essay on how to make a marriage (or any other type of relationship) work, but I would be talking out my ass. Honestly, I have no idea how Karin and I made it four decades. Our struggles were numerous and sometimes overwhelming. My words and actions often made it more difficult for us to stay together. Yet, somehow, here we are, still married after nearly forty-two years. It’s amazing.

I want to go back to the communal aspect of a relationship. For those who are film buffs, you might remember a scene from The Godfather where the young Michael Corleone marries his Sicilian bride in her home village. In the movie the couple has a wedding procession through the little town and are surrounded by boisterous well-wishers. I mention this because Karin and I had a similar experience on our wedding day.

We were married in a small centuries-old chapel in her hometown of Edelfingen in Germany. We walked at the front of a procession through Karin’s village from her parent’s home to the church. Friends and neighbors cheered for us. I had my pockets full of candy and pfennigs to toss to the little kids lining the Strasse. It was a communal event.

Why were the people shouting and waving? Well, Edelfingen was a sleepy little community, and our procession was a show, like having the circus come to town. On a deeper level, I really believe that the people gathered there cared about us. The unspoken message was, “What you are doing is important. It matters to us. You matter to us.”

American culture considers marriages and other intimate relationships to be private affairs that are nobody else’s business. To an extent that is true, however, to make a relationship work in the long term, outside support is needed. A couple usually cannot do it on their own. Other cultures make it clear that the health of a marriage has a powerful impact on the entire community. We have lost that sense of being part of a larger whole. In America it’s raw individualism with little thought for anybody else, and we are poorer for that.

Just Get in the Car

January 23rd, 2026

Getting Asher to school in the morning is often an ordeal. Asher is a kindergartener at a Waldorf school in Milwaukee which is about a half hour drive from our house. That’s on a good day when traffic flows. There have been a few mornings when driving in rush hour actually took us a full hour. So, my wife and I make a concerted effort to get Asher up, fed, and dressed in a timely manner. We have to get on the freeway before it is packed with slow-moving vehicles.

Asher is not necessarily uncooperative. It is more that he is easily distracted by the world around him. He is at an age where everything is interesting, and his mind flits from idea to idea like a hummingbird darts from blossom to blossom. The primary struggle is to get Asher to focus and keep him on track. The secondary goal is to do that in a way that does not require shouting. It is difficult to remain calm while a young child revels in chaos.

I can give you a classic example of what I mean. I generally wake Asher up at 6:20 AM, or at least I try to do that. Yesterday morning, Asher hugged the pillow for dear life and only grudgingly got up from the bed. I carried him to the kitchen and then he grumpily refused all of my wife’s suggestions for breakfast. Karin, Asher’s oma (Note:”oma” is the German word for grandma. Karin from Germany, therefore she is Asher’s “oma”), had made him a waffle with Santa’s face on it. He liked that, even though the Christmas season is long gone, and he reluctantly sat down to eat.

I sat next to him holding two hand puppets. I had Ellie the elephant and Froggy the frog. They need to eat with Asher if Asher is going to eat breakfast. Asher talked to the puppets while he carefully cut and consumed the waffle. Then he had to take his daily vitamins. Then he needed to drink some strawberry and banana smoothie. All of this takes time.

From the breakfast table, Asher and Oma went to the bathroom so he could brush his teeth. She also got him dressed. I let Karin do that. She is amazingly patient with the boy, and she can make getting dressed into a game. In the meantime, I got Asher’s backpack and lunch into the car. I got myself ready to go for the road trip.

Asher still needed to get on all of his winter gear: coat, knit cap, scarf, mittens, sweater, snow pants, boots. Once again, this all takes time. Karin has made Asher numerous knit caps, all of which look like animals: tiger, reindeer, frog. Asher had to carefully select which cap to wear. Everything Asher does is accompanied by a nonstop monologue. He seldom does anything quietly.

At last, the boy was dressed for the cold, and he came with me out to the garage. I had the car door open and was ready to hustle him into his child seat. Apparently, we weren’t quite ready. He told me,

“Grandpa, I got to go back inside to tell Oma something!”

He ran back into the house to give Karin instructions regarding what to do with his stuffed animals. My patience was wearing thin.

He came back out and started to explain what he had told Oma.

I said, “JUST GET IN THE CAR!”

He did, but not without protest.

I finally got on to the freeway and rapidly shifted three lanes to the left. Asher said to me from the back of the car,

“I don’t like it when you yell at me.”

I replied as a semi roared past us, “I don’t like it either.”

He responded, “Then why do you do it?”

“I don’t know.”

Asher was silent, but I could tell that he did not think I gave him a good answer.

The cars moved along well until just after the Mitchell interchange. Then all I saw was a sea of brake lights. We slowed to a crawl.

Asher asked me, “Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

He said, “I need you to be okay.”

“Okay! I’m okay!” I said this as some bastard cut me off without signaling.

Traffic started moving again. I cruised past the twin spires on St Stanislaus Church on my left. As we approached the high-rise bridge, Asher told me,

“Grandpa, I like you.”

“Good”.

Then he continued, “But I like Oma better. Is that okay?”

I smiled and replied, “Yeah”, and then tried to slide over three lanes to the right to get to the McKinley Street exit.

We were on the last leg of the journey. I turned on to Brady Street. The school was only a couple blocks away.

Asher said, “Grandpa, I love you so much.”

I made a left turn on to Franklin Place and miraculously found a parking space across from Tamarack Waldorf School.

I parked, sighed, and told him, “I love you too.”


Wars that Come Back Home

January 20th, 2026

“Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence caused such silence
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it’s not me, it’s not my family
In your head, in your head, they are fighting
With their tanks and their bombs, and their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head, they are crying

In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie
What’s in your head? In your head?” -from Zombie by the Cranberries

I got a call a couple hours ago. It was from a young man who is very dear to me. He lives in Texas with his wife and young children. I have known him for many years. He served in the Army. Fifteen years ago, he was deployed in Iraq. That experience changed him forever.

The young guy did most of the talking. He wanted to tell me about his work pumping concrete at construction sites. He lives in the country. A lot of his jobs are in the Bryan/College Station area. He told me that six out of eight of his company’s recent jobs were cancelled because ICE agents were grabbing people that looked illegal to them. He had mentioned to me previously that almost all of the concrete finishers on the jobsites were Latinos. During the last few days very few of them have been showing up for work, so the young man has not been able to work either. In general, he likes to work with the Latinos. They bust their ass on the job. In the past, they have been friendly and shared their food with him.

He went off on a tangent for a moment, and said, “Well, if things get bad pumping concrete, I might just join up with ICE. I don’t know what else I would be able to do.”

I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, don’t do that.” I didn’t reply out loud to his comment. I could imagine the conversation going down a deep rabbit hole.

At one point, the young man asked me,

“What do think of that woman who got killed in Minnesota?”

I replied, “I got some thoughts. It’s not a good idea to surprise a guy carrying a loaded gun.”

The young man said, “She was coming at him at high speed.”

I got pissed off, “No, she wasn’t!”

He answered me, “Yeah, well, I would have done the same thing he did.”

I responded, “I know you would. If somebody started coming at you, you would be right back in Iraq.”

I felt scared and hurt, nearly shaking. The young guy was speaking the stone-cold truth. If he had been in that situation, he would have pumped four rounds into the woman too. I know that in my heart. He would have been at war again.

I had actually been thinking about the killing of Renee Good before the young man called me. I have been wondering if the ICE agent was a combat vet. I have been wondering if he had PTSD like the young man I know. Did the shooter just react? Was the decision to shoot automatic? Was he suddenly back in a very scary place far, far away from Minneapolis? Did he bring the war back home like my young man?

I don’t know. I can’t know.

The young man knew I was upset. He told me, “Well, I took a different path. I’m not an ICE agent.”

I replied, “I’m glad.”

Civil Disobedience

January 16th, 2026

Have you ever been to a protest demonstration? Have you ever been arrested at a demonstration? Did you ever go to jail for civil disobedience?

Some of you reading this article can answer yes to all of those questions. Well, so can I. However, I cannot say that I was ever teargassed or knocked to the ground by a law enforcement officer. I am sure that some folks reading my words have been exposed to that kind of violence at demonstrations. My experience with civil disobedience is limited to one specific event. In the scheme of things, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it changed my life.

I participated in a week-long protest at Creech AFB in Nevada in the spring of 2017. Our group of protesters were demonstrating against drone warfare, and Creech AFB personnel were involved in that type of operation. One morning, a smaller subset of our team decided to engage in civil disobedience. All of us planned to block the entrance of the Air Force base during the change of shifts. Most of us were going to vacate the road after five minutes (the police made it clear that anybody still impeding traffic after that time would be arrested). A few of the protesters intended to remain the street and get busted. I had no desire to be part of that select population.

As it turned, I became part of that small group of malcontents. I stayed with them in the road and was arrested along with the other six people. Did I allow myself to be incarcerated because of a deep commitment to our cause? Hmmm, no, not really. I had been standing next to an older veteran, Ray, and he had put his hand on my shoulder and told me how glad he was that I was standing with him. The stone-cold truth is that I remained with him out of friendship and solidarity. As somebody told me later, I made a “game time decision”. My choice to get arrested was not terribly rational, however it was right. I have no regrets. Oddly enough, of the seven people arrested, five of us were vets. That probably doesn’t really matter, but I found it interesting.

The Clark County cops held us for about fourteen hours and then released us. That was the first time in my life that I had ever been arrested, and it made an impression. The police were professional about the intake process. It was a relatively painless experience, but it was still scary, at least it was for me. I learned a lot rather quickly. It reminded me a lot of my basic training in the Army. The one rule was “shut up and do as you’re told”. I have experience with that sort of thing, so it wasn’t too hard for me to adapt to the jail environment.

The reason that I am writing about a this is because of the current violence and chaos in Minnesota. My experience is vastly different to what is happening there, but I still have some thoughts.

When I got busted, both the protesters and the law enforcement officials made efforts to maintain a nonviolent interaction. The police made it crystal clear to us what they wanted us to do and what the consequences would be if we chose not to follow their instructions. For our part, we did not verbally abuse or harass the cops. This sort of protest had occurred at Creech AFB repeatedly in the past, so almost everyone knew the rules of the game. That was a very good thing. It is unwise to surprise a guy carrying a loaded Glock. When people get scared, they do stupid things.

I believe that a person in the United States has the right (or perhaps an obligation) to break a law that goes against their conscience. I also believe that when a person does disobey that law, they should be ready to accept the consequences of their actions. Nothing is for free. Valor has a price tag. A person should stand up for what is right, but they have to understand the potential costs involved with their decisions.

The goal is not to be a martyr. History is full of the names of people who died for their beliefs: Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now there is Renee Good.

How do we work for justice without getting people killed?

Is It Morning Yet?

January 12th, 2025

Asher stirred. He had been sleeping restlessly. We had gone to bed early since the following day was school for him. Asher still had his head resting on my bicep. My little grandson uses my left arm as a pillow when he first goes to sleep. He had been lying on it for hours when he started moving around and woke me from a dream.

He rolled closer to me. Then he said,

“I love you so much.”

I whispered, “I love you too.”

He asked me, “Is it morning yet?”

I looked up at clock. The illuminated numbers said, “11:56.”

I replied, “No.”

Then he told me, “You got to tell me when it’s morning.”

“Okay,”

Asher relaxed next to me and dozed off. I listened to his soft and slow breathing. I couldn’t fall back asleep. I gazed up at the skylight. It was clear and cold outside. I could see the bright light of Jupiter and two stars from the constellation of Gemini shining through the window. It was glorious, but so distant.

My mind was churning with thoughts of current events: war, violence in our nation’s streets, and the frightening and seemingly insane comments from our government officials. Asher was calm and in a deep sleep. He was snuggling next to me for protection from a threatening world. How did he know it was threatening? Maybe he tapped into my anxiety. Asher is very good at sensing the emotional wellbeing of others. Apparently, my physical presence was enough to comfort him.

How do I protect Asher in a world gone mad? How does anyone do that? How do I give a five-year-old shelter? How do I keep him safe? I don’t know. I can only try.

It is a scary world, but oh so beautiful. It’s always been this way. I need to show Asher how to revere and enjoy the awesome splendor of it all. I need to teach him how to be courageous and fight the darkness that is also there.

Morning is almost here. I need to tell Asher that.

An Honest Answer

January 8th, 2026

““We live in a world in which, you can talk about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” -Stephen Miller

There is almost nothing I like about Stephen Miller. However, the above quote sadly rings true. There is much handwringing about the collapse of the rule-based international order. There are those who contend that President Trump is demolishing it. Maybe. It’s far more likely that the order has been on the verge of collapse for decades, and he is just giving it one last nudge.

Miller’s quote specifically concerns Trump’s recent attack on Venezuela. That was not the first time that a great power has used force against a smaller country, nor will it be the last. Just since WWII, both the United States and Russia/Soviet Union have had their way with a number of weaker nations. On Russia’s scorecard we have the attack on Hungary in 1956, the assault on Czechoslovakia in 1968, the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and of course the current slaughter in Ukraine. As for America, we have the attack on Grenada in 1983, the intervention in Panama in 1989, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000’s. This list does not even count the U.S. covert operations to overthrow governments in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973. I’m sure that I am forgetting some of the acts of aggression, but you get the idea.

Both I and my eldest son served in the U.S. military. I was an Army aviator in West Germany during the 1980’s in the Cold War. The reason for me being there was to keep the Red hordes from invading western Europe. I guess that was at least somewhat true. Many years after I served in Germany, long after the Berlin Wall fell, I met a couple people who had served in the Soviet Army. Oddly enough, their perspective was radically different from my own. They thought they were protecting Mother Russia from the Yankee imperialists. Maybe we were both right.

After I was deployed to Germany, I spent my remaining time in the Army stationed at Fort Ord with the 7th Infantry Division. Our mission was to be a rapid deployment force if things went bad in Central America. We were training to go to Honduras as a staging point for an invasion of Nicaragua. This was back when Reagan really wanted to get rid of the Sandinistas. Fortunately, we never went to Honduras, but that was the plan.

My oldest son was deployed to Iraq in 2011. He was not as lucky as I was. He killed people and he got wounded over there. He told me once that when he was in Iraq his goal, and those of his comrades, had nothing to do with democracy or oil. They just wanted to get out of there alive, and they did.

Over the years, the United States and other countries have tried to justify their acts of aggression. We have always been claiming to be defending America and/or democracy. It was both shocking and refreshing when Trump said that we were going after Venezuela’s oil. That at least was an honest answer.

When it comes right down to it, the real reason why the United States or Russia or anyone else invades another country is:

“Because we can.”

Flying and Letting Go

January 4th, 2026

I sometimes dream about flying. I guess a lot of people do that. I have heard that it is a common type of dream. It might be a different situation in my case in that there was a time when I actually did fly. I was an U.S. Army aviator back in the day. For five years I flew helicopters, initially Hueys (think of the movie Apocalypse Now) and later Black Hawks (the film Black Hawk Down comes to mind). I was never in combat, but I flew. It was often fun, and occasionally terrifying. I stopped being a pilot back in August of 1986. That was a long time ago, but apparently that role is still part of my life, or at least of my history.

My flying dreams are usually frustrating. I never actually get to fly. I am always preparing for a flight, sometimes on the verge of takeoff, but I never quite get into the air. Apparently, the problem is that the current version of myself is trying to be who I was forty years ago. In my dream I have a long beard, which I do now, but obviously did not have as an Army officer. In the dream I am not in uniform but should be. In the dream, somebody is giving me orders that I have no intention of following. It just never works out. I stay on the ground.

People ask me, “Do you miss flying?” the answer is: “Of course.” However, I know in my mind and my heart that flying is no longer part of life. That part of my story is done. It was wonderful while it lasted, but it’s over now, and I have many other things to do. I have other responsibilities. I am no longer a pilot. I can’t return to that identity. Even in my dreams, I know that I can’t go back.

I had a conversation yesterday, via Zoom, with a woman who is the guiding teacher for the Zen sangha to which I belong. She asked me questions about my life and I babbled on for a while. Then she spoke briefly about detachment and letting go. Zen is all about that. Zen is about being in the moment and not hanging on to things that are either lost in the past or hidden in the future. All there that exists is the present. The past is dead and the future a mystery.

The teacher gave me a subject on which to meditate. I am not very good at letting go of things, especially relationships. It is hard for me to stay in the moment, although our young grandson, Asher, does his best to keep me in the here and now. Caring fulltime for the little guy does not allow me much time to wallow in the past. That is a very good thing. In that respect, Asher is an excellent spiritual guide, and one who loves me, as I love him.

I write about Asher frequently. At this point, my life revolves around the boy. I have a friend, who reads my blog, and he once asked me what I will do when Asher is no longer in my life. The guiding teacher from the Zen sangha also touched on that. Will I be able to let go of Asher when he no longer needs my full attention? I don’t know. I will not know the answer to that question until the moment when he slips away from me (or I from him).

It is clear that someday Asher and I will separate. That is inevitable. That will hurt. The only question is how I will accept it.

He will be always in my dreams.