A Million Miles Away

September 14th, 2026

His pickup truck was parked in the driveway across the street from our house. The young man goes to that place occasionally because the parents of his girlfriend/fiancée live there. He never comes here. He hasn’t set foot in our house for fifteen months. I don’t see him coming here again any time soon.

We had a bitter dispute last summer. At the end of it, he cut all ties with me. He made every effort to cut me out of his life. I tried to apologize to him in a letter and explain to him that I am open to renewing our relationship. He hasn’t responded. He won’t.

I saw his truck when I went to the street to pick up our mail. I was tempted to walk over to him and ask how he was. I didn’t. I am not brave enough to face his rage again. His last words to me were in a text. He said, “Burn in hell!”. That’s sounded rather final.

I admire the young man. I admire his strength and his courage and his generosity and his intelligence. But he is an angry young man. I was an angry young man, but now I’m old and, most of the time, not so angry. He has good reasons to be irate with me. I get that. He has trauma and he blocks people in order to block his pain. I have done that too. It’s not a good long-term strategy. A person who shuns others often ends up pretty damn lonely.

I’m not mad at him. I’m just sad. I think he made the right decision to cut ties with me. He has his own issues, and he needs to work them out on his own. I can’t help him. In fact, I am sure that I would be an obstacle to him. I want him to heal and be at peace. I want him to have a good life, and if that can only happen in my absence, then so be it.

When I got the mail, the young man was turned away from me. I only saw his back. He was just across the street, but he might as well have been a million miles away.

I’m Just Trying to Send a Book

September 13, 2026

I’ve written before on this blog about the various obstacles that the Department of Corrections puts in the way of people who are attempting to help loved ones who are currently incarcerated. The rules of the prison system seem almost Kafkaesque at times. I assume the directives have some reasonable basis, but often I’m not sure about that. Let me give you recent example of what I mean.

A young woman who is important to me wants me to send her a book. This woman is doing time at the Milwaukee Women’s Correctional Center. The facility is minimum-security, so it is a bit more laid back than her previous residence. However, it is still a prison, and it has its own peculiar set of regulations. One might think that sending a book to an inmate would be a relatively simple affair.

It is not.

Several months ago, I tried to send three books to friend of mine who is in prison. I bought them through Barnes and Noble. The DOC refused to give the man the books. It was not clear to me why they wouldn’t let him have them, but I decided not to try sending books anymore. Then, just recently, the young woman I know asked that I send her a copy of A Dog’s Promise by Cameron W. Bruce. I’ve never read it, but it is apparently an uplifting story of a dog. The young woman alerted me to the fact that the book has to be accompanied by a receipt. With that in mind, I tried to order the book for her.

I started by using Barnes and Noble again. That was a frustrating experience. That bookseller has changed its website in such a way that it is nearly impossible to speak with a human. I needed to find out how to get receipt delivered with the book, and I could get no answer.

I looked up the name of the publisher of the book. I called up that company, and I actually got a person to answer the phone. I explained my dilemma to customer service rep. In response, I got a long,

“Hmmmmmmmm…”.

I waited a moment and said, “I didn’t mean to stump you. I’m just trying to send a book.”

The man replies, “Oh, it’s not that. We send books to prisons frequently. It’s just that I have never heard about a requirement for a receipt. We seldom send out paper receipts anymore. The problem is that the sales department, the people who would make out a receipt, and the shipping department are in different locations.”

“So, what do I do?”

“Let me do some research on the actual rules. Give me the woman’s physical location and give me some contact information for you, so I can get back to you when I know something.”

I found his words encouraging. The next morning, he emailed me and said that he had looked at the DOC’s regulations, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of them. That is a common experience for people trying to send anything to inmates. The rules said almost nothing about shipping books. There are in fact rules for books, but they don’t seem to be available online. He asked me to call somebody at the prison. I did.

I talked to the sergeant at the prison who is in charge of property. Her job largely consists of making sure that no contraband is smuggled into the facility. I understand that concern. I have heard stories of people sneaking drugs and other things into prisons in surprisingly creative ways. The sergeant gave me a clear list of what has to happen for a book to get inside. They are as follows:

I cannot buy a book and ship it to the young woman.

The book has to be brand new. 

It can be hard cover or paperback (no leather covers. no spiral binding). 

The inmate’s full name and her DOC inmate number have to be on address label of the package. 

The book has to come directly from a legitimate publisher, and the sergeant will check to see if the company is a real thing. 

The book HAS TO come with a RECEIPT showing the name of the publisher, the price of the book, and the title of the book.

I told the customer service rep all about this list. He replied,

“Let’s see what we can do.”

As of this moment, I don’t know if I can purchase the book and get it to the young woman. The rep has informed me that right now the shipping department is crazy busy with textbook shipments going out. It might take a while. However, this guy at the publishing house seems to have accepted this order as a personal challenge. I informed him that if he can get the book to the inmate, I will buy all books through him. He will be my go-to guy.

Does it have to be like this? Maybe not, but it is, and I have to deal with it.

From First Gear Straight to Fifth

September 9th, 2026

My son, Hans, called me. Hans is an Iraqi War vet (2011 deployment). He likes to talk to me about his work (he pumps concrete for a living down in Texas). When we chat on the phone, the conversation always drifts toward military topics. Both Hans and I are veterans, and we have a mutual understanding of how the Army works. We share some common experiences.

Hans was lamenting how he sometimes loses his temper at home. Hans attributed his fits of anger to his time in the Army. He described it to me this way:

“Dad, I watched this video with a psychiatrist talking about how we get trained in the Army. This stuff isn’t just about guys with PTSD. Anybody who has spent a minute in the military is taught to deal with a problem right away. Now, some civilian, he might gradually react to different levels of stress. He might go from first gear to second to third to fourth and then to fifth gear. We go right from first to fifth! You and I are trained to deal with bad shit. We don’t know how to handle small stuff anymore.”

There is some truth to that. If you have been a soldier, then you are taught to have a “sense of urgency”. You deal with problems as if they were matters of life and death, because sometimes they really are. I remember when I was in flight school learning how to operate a helicopter. I got drilled over and over again about how to deal with emergencies in flight. What do you do if the engine quits? How to you handle a tail rotor failure? What if a hydraulic line breaks? When these things happen, there isn’t time to ponder your options. You do something and you do it right fucking now.

Hans noted that in a crisis situation we tend to act quickly, and somehow, we usually do it calmly. I can remember, back in 2009, when I got run over by a forklift at work. The 8000 lbs. lift crushed my right foot and ankle. I screamed “fuck” when I got rolled, but after that I felt no emotions at all. I was aware that my leg was trashed, but I just stayed put and waited for the EMPs to come and throw me into the back of an ambulance. I can think of other traumatic situations where I just did whatever needed to be done, without really thinking or feeling. Afterward, I was a mess, but not during the crisis. It was almost like I was more of an observer than an active participant when things went sideways.

It’s the smaller issues that trigger us. I used to freak out when our kids would spill a glass of milk at dinner time. For years, I was a rage-aholic. I would go off the deep end over petty incidents. I could deal with the stuff that needed me in fifth gear, but I continually overreacted to the little things.

I told Hans that it gets better as you get older. It’s not that I am any more patient than I was years ago. It’s just that I no longer have the stamina to be constantly outraged by life. I still lose my temper, but I don’t have the energy to maintain that emotional state for more than a couple minutes. Often, after I blow up about some piddly thing, I feel sick and exhausted, sometimes for up to an hour.

I have found that mediation helps with the anger. It allows me to slow down while I deal with stress. I still can’t always shift through the gears in the correct order. But I can do better than I used to do.

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.