Author: frankisemptiness

November 16th, 2022

Now that the elections are mercifully over (for the most part), we can turn our attention to other matters. Thanksgiving is almost here, and it is possibly the only national holiday that doesn’t inspire controversy. It’s kind of a nonsectarian, feel good, kumbaya sort of day. We get the chance to gather with friends and family. We get to sit back, overeat, and enjoy being Americans. Maybe we even take a moment to be thankful.

So, what does it mean to be an American? There are over 300 million different answers to that question, and all of them are probably right to a certain extent. I would like to think that we, as Americans, share some basic values. Honestly, I’m not sure what those are. I’m not sure that anyone knows.

For several years I helped to teach a citizenship class at Voces de la Frontera in Milwaukee. I met once a week with green card holders who wanted to become Americans. As part of their citizenship test, they had to know the answers to one hundred questions about the United States. Many of these questions concerned the U.S. Constitution. I talked to the students quite a bit about the questions. They just needed to memorize some standard answers to successfully make it through the interview with the representative from USCIS. I wanted them to do more than that. I wanted them to have at least some understanding of how our government works.

Anybody who has been in the U.S. military has taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. Of course, not many of us have actually read the Constitution in its entirety, and those who have waded through the document can’t agree on what it all means. The Constitution is our country’s secular Bible, our official operator’s manual, and like most sacred texts, it is a cause for endless argument and dispute.

I remember discussing with some students about how presidents are chosen. I asked one of them,

“Who elects the President?”

He gave the required response, “The American people elect the President.”

I asked, “What kind of government does the United States have?”

Approved answer: “The United States is a democracy.”

Then I decided to explain the Electoral College to the students. That was a hideous mistake. While describing how our elections work, I told them that it was possible for a person to lose the popular vote, but still win the presidency in the Electoral College. I looked at the students and saw blank stares and confused faces.

Uh oh.

I backtracked and said, “You’re right. The President is elected by the American people. Just go with that.”

We also talked about the Bill of Rights. They needed to know some of the basic rights of Americans. The students could tell me that Americans have freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. I asked them what these freedoms actually meant.

Dead silence.

I tried to explain freedom of religion to them. I said,

“Okay, a devout Jew is not supposed to work on Saturday, the Sabbath. What if the Jewish person’s boss insists that the man or woman comes into the office on a Saturday? Does that violate the Jewish person’s freedom of religion?”

Things got very complicated very quickly.

I tried another question, “What about a baker who won’t bake a cake for a gay wedding because they believe doing so goes against their religious beliefs? Can the baker refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple?

Once again, lots of controversy.

I asked these sorts of questions to make the students think. I wanted them to understand that Americans believe in freedom, but somehow, we can’t agree on what these freedoms are.

At the end of the classes, my students were well aware that the American way of life is riddled with contradictions. They knew that our system of government is confusing at times, and usually dysfunctional. They understood that some things in the United States are unjust. They came to the conclusion that politics in our country are at best messy.

They all decided to take the test anyway, and almost all of them are now citizens.

We can be thankful for that.

November 11th, 2022

“Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” – “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien

I get up dark and early. It is a habit that I can’t shake from all the years that I worked on third shift. I didn’t mind crawling out of bed at 4:30 AM on Tuesday. I was looking forward to seeing the total lunar eclipse. As I got dressed, I noticed that the moonbeam coming through the skylight was gradually getting dimmer. I walked out our front door and stood on the porch. I gazed at the western sky.

It was cloudy.

I thought to myself, “Really?”

The sky wasn’t completely overcast, but I couldn’t see the moon. I knew that the eclipse was happening, because the sky was so black., but I couldn’t see the darkened disk. There were a few small gaps in the cloud cover, but they weren’t nearly enough. I stood in the cold wind and waited for a break. I finally gave up and went back into the house.

Yesterday, Karin and I took our little grandson, Asher, to the Milwaukee County Zoo. We got there rather late, and we couldn’t see much before the zoo closed down for the day. We decided to take Asher to the primate house. He got to see the gorilla and the orangutan. He saw the spider monkeys and the macaques. Asher enjoyed our short visit. He was fascinated by the animals.

I was fascinated by the information concerning the future of these primate species. Almost all of them were listed as being “endangered” or “critically endangered”. There was a sign that stated that the orangutans would be extinct in the wild within ten years. That shocked and depressed me. Asher won’t even be a teenager when that happens. These animals might not exist a decade from now.

It hard for me to be optimistic about Asher’s future. What kind of world am I leaving for him? What will it be like for him when climate change really kicks in? What challenges will he face? Will he curse my generation for screwing it all up?

I wish I could know that Asher and his contemporaries will be okay, but I can’t. I may not even get a glimpse of his future. I just have to have faith that somehow things will work out for him. I can help him as best I can while I am here with him. That’s all I can do. That will have to be good enough.

Early on Tuesday morning I walked back outside one more time. It was still well before sunrise. I looked to the west. It was still overcast, but the clouds were getting brighter. The eclipse was nearly done. There was a momentary break in the clouds. I could only see part of the moon. For a second, I saw a ruddy slice on the lunar surface where our earth still blocked the sun’s rays from striking it. Then it was gone.

It was just a glimpse.

November 3rd, 2022

“To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob one another without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was ‘peace’ and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist monk and author

The mid-term elections are only five days away. These are being advertised by the media, liberal and conservative, and as being of enormous importance. The news outlets would have us believe that the fate of our country hangs in the balance. The politicians say the same thing. There may be some truth in all of this handwringing, but some things won’t change, regardless of which side wins.

Our country’s attitude toward war will remain the same. Our federal government will be run by hawks. No politician, Republican or Democrat, will risk being labeled as “weak on defense”. Full and unconditional support of the military is necessary for a person be elected to office at the national level. We have been at war for so long that it is risky for a member of Congress to even question our military exploits.

Let’s look just at our country’s current involvement with the war in Ukraine. It is true that we do not have boots on the ground in Ukraine. However, it should be obvious to anybody paying attention that we are participants in a proxy war against Russia. The reasons for our backing of the Ukrainians are complicated. Is it simply that we are concerned with Ukrainian freedom? Probably not. Do we actually want to crush the military forces and the economy of Russia in order to eliminate that state as a Great Power? Possibly. Is it wise for us to give full-throated support to Ukraine when the Russians can use nuclear weapons in this fight? Who knows? We don’t really know how dangerous this situation is, but we should at least talk about it.

The progressives in the Democratic Party were pilloried for even suggesting a negotiated peace in Ukraine. On the right, people like Tucker Carlson have critically examined our involvement in this war. They have also been loudly censured. Most citizens of our country don’t mind blowing up people and property that are far away. It appears that Americans seldom find a war that they dislike, at least until it causes them some discomfort.

I was never in a war, and that was pure luck. I served as an Army officer, but I never saw any fighting. My oldest son, Hans, was not so fortunate. He was deployed in Iraq. He got shot, and he killed people over there. I guess, through his experience, I vicariously experienced war. Both he and I were changed.

I know a number of peace activists. They belong to neither of the major parties. They are passionate about ending the killing. These people want something that may never come to pass. They want the United States to give up its addiction to war and violence. They are hopeless idealists, and I was one of them. Maybe I still am, but I have grown weary of shouting into the whirlwind, and having my words blown back to me.

I don’t go to anti-war protests anymore. I seldom contact my elected officials about our military activities overseas. I don’t write letters to the editor like I did in the past. It’s not that I don’t care. Maybe I just don’t care enough anymore. I greatly admire the peace activists who keep at it year after year after year. I’m not as strong as they are, or maybe I’m not as crazy.

Or maybe I’m just part of the problem.

November 2nd, 2022

“Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane
Jane plays with Willi, Willi is happy again
Suki plays with Leo, Sacha plays with Britt
Adolf builds a bonfire; Enrico plays with it”

from “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel

Karin and I took our toddler grandson, Asher, to Kayla’s Playground, a children’s recreation site in Franklin. The park is dedicated to a little girl, Kayla Runte, who had cerebral palsy. On the play area’s website, it states that it is an “all-accessible, all-inclusive playground in Franklin to be inspiring and truly all-accessible for all children and families of any age and ability”, and it is. It really is.

When we take Asher there, he is in his natural habitat. There are usually numerous preschool children running about the playground, always under the watchful eyes of some adult. The population that uses the area is diverse. I am impressed by how many different kinds of people come to the park. Asher mingles with a variety of kids. Some look like him, and many do not.

As Asher played on one of the slides, I looked around. Nearby was a picnic table with two Muslim women wearing hijabs and chatting while they tried to keep track of their little ones. A family that looked like they were from somewhere in East Asia watched their little girl fly past them, her straight black hair bouncing as she ran. I had noticed earlier that the family had a picture of the Buddha hanging from the rearview mirror in their van. A Latino father was helping his daughter navigate the horizontal ladder. He held her up while she swung from rung to rung, saying, “Mano sobre mano, mano sobre mano” (“Hand over hand, hand over hand”). The parents of a boy with thick dark hair and matching eyes chattered to him in an Indian language I could not understand. However, the boy understood, and that was all that mattered. A boy and his sister played on the swings. They had hair even blonder than Asher’s, almost white in color. A Black girl talked to Asher and complimented him on his dinosaur sweatshirt.

The parents, without fail, made sure that their youngsters took turns on the equipment with the other kids. If there was only one plaything available, they made sure that the kids shared. The adults did not interact much with each other. They were all too busy following their children in the swirling crowd. However, the kids played together, and they generally played nice.

As I observed the activity around me, it occurred to me that this was a glimpse of the future. This scene is Asher’s future. He will be surrounded in his life by people from various races, religions, and cultures. He will grow up in an America more diverse that it has ever been. His life will be richer and more interesting than mine has ever been…

if they all can play nice together.

October 27th, 2022

A week ago, I went to see my doctor for my annual physical. To my surprise my numbers were all good. The blood and urine tests showed me to be healthy. Blood pressure and EKG were alright. Everything was in the green.

My doctor asked me, “So, are you doing anything special to keep healthy, or is it dumb luck.?”

“Go with dumb luck.”

“Well, whatever you are doing, keep doing it.”

I told him, “I do have a health concern.”

He looked at me with curiosity. He said, “And?”

I continued, “I need to live until I’m eighty, sixteen years from now. That is when Asher, our grandson, becomes an adult. My wife and I are his legal guardians.”

My doctor kept looking at me, and replied, “Well, that puts life into a different perspective. Let’s see what we can do about that.”

After further discussion, he suggested strongly that I get the colonoscopy that is overdue. I reluctantly agreed.

Any number of people have told me that I am lucky to be caring for Asher, our toddler grandson. Our friends keep saying, “They keep you young!”

Maybe.

I suspect that caring for Asher does have some bearing on my wellbeing, besides the fact that I am always tired. I would not say that he keeps me young. I would suggest that he keeps me active and alert, which probably slows down the aging process a bit.

It is impossible to care for a toddler without maintaining constant vigilance. Asher is always into something. It usually requires less than a minute for him to be involved in an activity that is mildly destructive and possibly unsafe. So, mental acuity is essential when I am watching over him. No wool gathering allowed.

Asher, when awake, is in constant motion. He has apparently unlimited energy. When it is my shift to watch the lad, I have to be moving. He is an agent of chaos, scattering objects in his path. He goes through a room like a miniature tornado. I follow him, picking up the debris. It’s not really an aerobic kind of exercise for me, but I am definitely not sedentary. I get a workout.

Asher is doing his part to keep me healthy. He doesn’t realize that, but he is.

I just wish I didn’t feel so worn out.

October 25th, 2022

A lot of vets drink too much. I know that I have. I don’t know if there are any statistics to back me up, but I think that many people who have been in the military tend to abuse alcohol. I believe this because my personal experience and because of the experiences of other veterans I know. I used to visit patients in the psych ward of the local VA hospital, and almost all of them were there because of problems with alcohol.

If I am right, then why is it that so many vets are heavy drinkers? I think the military environment plays a big role. When I was in the Army, it was often boring, but there also moments of extreme pressure. After those episodes, alcohol proved to be an effective stress reliever. The Army isn’t the only organization with those kinds of conditions. My youngest son is a welder in the Ironworkers Union, and their work gets to be dangerous at times. Ironworkers also tend to grab hold of a bottle in order to relax.

They say that some people drink to remember, and others drink to forget. I think that veterans do a bit of both. Military personnel experience some emotions that are gloriously high and some that are unbearably low. After a servicemember gets out, he or she will want to recall those highs and bury the lows as deep as they can. Alcohol can facilitate both of those desires, at least for a while.

All of this is not necessarily logical. Nobody sits down before a binge and says, “These are the reasons I’m going to get drunk.” It doesn’t work like that. It’s a subconscious sort of thing. Even the term “remember” isn’t quite right. The vet may not be able to remember a specific event, either good or bad. They may just vaguely recall a feeling associated with that time and place. A person either wants to replicate that feeling or drive it away forever. The urge to drink is not about reason. It’s about emotions. It’s about trauma or loss that has been ignored. It’s about making peace with the past.

I can recall exhilarating, transcendent feelings from when I was a helicopter pilot. I will never fly again, and I will never have those same feelings, even if I try to recover them with alcohol for a few moments. I am still haunted by terrifying feelings, and I can’t completely push them aside with a chemical. They sometimes come to me at night, and I scream in my sleep until my wife wakes me up.

So, what to do?

There is no single solution that would help everyone. There is no miracle cure. There is no silver bullet. Each veteran has to find their own way. Every vet has to heal in his or her own way. I have found that writing helps me, as does meditation. Caring fulltime for my toddler grandson is very healing for me. What I do may be useless for another veteran. I only know what works for me.

October 20th, 2022

“We wrote a hundred letters, and you did not write an answer. This, too, is a reply.” – Zauqi (Sufi scholar)

I have a friend. Perhaps he is no longer my friend. I told him something that I am certain offended him. I thought for a long time before I said what I said.

Before I say anything else, let me make it clear that my friend is a good man. He’s outgoing and generous. He’s passionate about his work. He tries to be a good Christian.

My friend is a missionary for an Evangelical organization. He has been living in Germany for at least a decade, doing something or other. After all these years, I still don’t understand what he is trying to accomplish. Before he became a missionary, he worked in corporate management positions. The religious group he’s with now seems to operate under an American business model. They are all about telling people about Jesus. In a sense, my friend is one of the organization’s German sales reps. He likes to talk about spreading the “Word” to the population of a country “that has forgotten that they have forgotten God”. He uses a lot of Evangelical buzzwords and catch phrases which probably elicit an immediate response from his coworkers, but they mean nothing to me. He goes to seminars and conferences, and he plants churches (whatever that means). He’s marketing Christ, and I don’t really comprehend that.

I have known other missionaries, and I know what they do. The ones I have met live in the same abject poverty as the people they serve. They share the struggles and suffering of those around them. They bring Christ to their neighbors by being Jesus to them, as opposed to talking about Jesus. Maybe my friend does that too. I don’t know. He’s never indicated that is part of his mission.

My wife and I got together with him quite often before he started his missionary work. He hosted a German Bible study group at his home. The message there was that we were all brothers and sisters in Christ. The implication was, at least in my mind, that we cared about each other in a deep and personal manner.

My friend returns to the United States every autumn. He spends a month or so in the local area. He has made a habit of meeting with us once during his visit. He is a gregarious man, with a busy social calendar. He tries to squeeze us in between his other appointments. Our meetings are brief, maybe an hour or so in duration. As the years have passed, these contacts have felt more and more perfunctory. He acts like he wants to be with us, but his mind is often elsewhere.

For a long time, I wrote snail mail letters to him while he was overseas. I sent him emails. He seldom wrote back to me. If he did, he almost never asked us how we were. He would tell me about some adventure he had, but I didn’t get the impression that he was concerned about us. During this last year, I think I got at most one or two emails from him.

As usual, my friend contacted us after he got to the U.S. He asked if we wanted to meet for coffee and catch up on things. I was underwhelmed by the idea. so was my wife. She made the comment, “He only cares about his mission.”

That’s true. On the flip side, we only care about our mission.

Our mission is to care for Asher, our toddler grandson. We are his legal guardians, and he is our responsibility until he reaches adulthood. There is nothing else in our lives except for that little boy. If we meet with somebody, Asher is always with us, and we will talk endlessly about him. Karin and I have other interests, but they are all subordinate to our connection with Asher. When we get together with my friend, he likes to talk about his grandchildren, who he sees for a couple weeks once a year. I guess he figures that his relationship with his grandkids is on par with what we experience. It’s not. That is comparing apples to oranges. Our roles are exponentially more intense than his is. He doesn’t see it that way.

My friend tries to connect with us by talking about all things German. That worked twenty years ago. My wife is from Germany, and I lived there for three years, courtesy of the Army. Back when we were part of the Bible study group, the participants were almost all German speakers. Germany was important to us then, but as the years went by, the relationship to “die Heimat” grew more and more tenuous. Our friend is still deeply concerned with Germany, obviously, but my wife and I don’t really care anymore. We have other things on our minds.

Does our friend care about us? I don’t think so. I told him that in an email. I also told him that we could find the time to meet with him, but we don’t want to. I said that there was nothing to talk about. That may not actually be true. Perhaps, the truth is that there is too much to talk about. We can’t reconnect over a cup of coffee. To really get to know each other again, we would need at least a day to discuss things and get to the serious topics. When we meet with my friend, we never get past the froth and the fluff.

Do I care about my friend anymore? Maybe. If I didn’t care at all, I wouldn’t be writing this essay.

A person could easily say to me at this point, “That was dick move! Why say that stuff to him?”

Good question. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe I just should have ignored him. Maybe I should have made up some bullshit excuse that sounded plausible. Instead, I told him the truth as I saw it.

Years ago, I worked with a guy named Scott. We talked a lot and got to know each other well. He retired shortly after I did. I wanted to stay in communication with him. I sent him an email, and he replied by saying that he was busy with family issues, and he was going to ignore me. He did. I never heard from him again.

That bothered me a lot. However, I knew that he had stuff going on that was serious, and he probably needed to focus entirely on those problems. After a while, I grew to appreciate his candor. At least, he told me what he was doing and why. Too often, people have cut me loose without giving any reason. That hurts more than having somebody give it to me straight.

I gave it straight to my friend. He sent me a response. I never read it. I just deleted it. We’re done.

As Zauqi said, “That, too, is a reply.”

October 19th, 2022

Our son, Stefan, came over to our house yesterday evening. He brought a gift with him for his little nephew, Asher. It’s not winter in Wisconsin yet, but Stefan was thinking ahead, and he had a cold weather jacket with him for Asher to wear when the snow falls and the wind blows out of the north.

Stefan bought Asher a lined, insulated coat from Carhartt. Carhartt mostly makes cold weather gear for adults who spend their winter months outdoors. Carhartt clothing is top of the line. All the guys that ever worked for me on the loading dock wore Carhartt coats and coveralls during the months of mind numbing cold. I didn’t realize that Carhartt made clothes for toddlers, but Stefan found a jacket for Asher. The coat was expensive. It cost $70. An adult work jacket sometimes costs double that amount.

Karin thanked Stefan for being so generous. He said,

“I’m making money. I can afford to get Asher something good.”

He has been buying Asher good stuff. He got the boy some good shoes for the cold weather. They are toddler-sized versions of Stefan’s work boots.

Stefan looked exhausted when he came into the house. He had on a sweatshirt, jeans, and his work boots. He sat down on a bench and rested. He had been out at the construction site all day in the wind and the cold, doing his Ironworker thing. I remember how it was when I worked my entire shift in the cold. That wears a person out. When you finish the job, all you want to do is eat something warm, take a hot shower, and sleep like a dead man.

I asked Stefan how it was at work. He has been doing a welding gig at the power plant on the shore of Lake Michigan. I could tell by his face that he had been windburned. He showed me an image on his phone. He had a video of the whitecapped waves on the lake crashing into the rocks on the shore, throwing up geysers of spray.

We talked for a bit. Asher was wound up. He was throwing his toys, even after we told him not to do that. Stefan watched the boy, and then he got up and seized Asher in his hands. He tossed the little guy in the air and caught him again. That got Asher’s attention.

Stefan smiled at his nephew, and said, “Hey punk, what you gonna do now?”

Asher briefly squirmed in Stefan’s arms and then gave up the fight. Asher is a strong lad, and he’s smart. He knows when to back off. He also knows that Stefan loves him.

Stefan set Asher back on the floor, and the boy ran to Karin, his “oma”.

Stefan got up to leave. He grinned and said, “Asher was a little surprised when he went up in the air. I get edgy too when I’m up high on the lift and it bounces a little. He’s okay. No damage done.”

I told Stefan, “He’s a boy. He’ll get banged up now and then.”

Stefan looked at Asher and noticed a bit a road rash.

“Yeah, I see he’s got an early start on scrapes and bruises. He’ll be fine.”

I replied, “If a boy grows up without getting a scar or two, he ain’t doing it right.”

Stefan smiled, “I got a few of those.”

That he does.

October 17th, 2022

This last week has been a struggle. Tuesday evening was an ugly scene, and we have spent the following days cleaning up the resulting mess. A traumatic event doesn’t just end. It is radioactive with a half-life like that of plutonium. It takes time for nerve endings to stop quivering, and there is edgy alertness that just won’t go away. It would be nice to be able to flee from all the emotional fallout, but that can’t happen. Life goes on, and problems still need to be solved.

I told a number of people about what happened at our house that night. Several responded to me and offered their sympathy and prayers. I am grateful to each and every person who contacted us. There really wasn’t much that they could do for us in any practical sense, but they at least indicated that they cared. Some of our friends understand our troubles quite well, and their words were very meaningful and heartfelt.

Words can be helpful. They can be healing. However, words can only do so much.

On Saturday, Karin and I were busy with many things. We still felt troubled in spirit. I had just come home from shopping, and Karin was trying to put our little grandson, Asher, down for nap. It was warm outside, and I had left the front door open. I had to let the dog out, or maybe let her back in. I can’t remember anymore. My thoughts were everywhere and nowhere. In any case, when I went to the door, I found something unexpected.

It was a bag full of food. There was a loaf of rye bread, a package of sliced ham, a bottle of whole grain mustard, and a glass jar filled with sliced red onions in vinegar. There was also a picture book for Asher that told the story of a construction worker.

The bag looked like this:

I looked at it, and I knew immediately that it was from Chris, one of our Buddhist friends in the Zen sangha. The circle is a Zen symbol, and the words on the bag are classic Zen:

“Only this, this!”

Zen is about being in the moment and focusing what is happening right here and right now. The fact is that there really is “only this, this!” The craziness and chaos of previous days don’t matter. The fears for the future don’t matter. The words and the gift cut through the confusion in my mind and brought me back to the present moment. It was (and is) a good place to be.

Chris never rang the doorbell. She didn’t want to bother us. She did what she needed to do and did it without words.

It was silent gift.

October 12th, 2022

When the paramedics come to our house, they always arrive with an ambulance and a fire truck. I guess it’s just their standard practice. They showed up at around 9:00 PM. The police had already been in our home for almost half an hour. The fire truck was parked in front of the yard, its red lights flashing in the darkness.

Asher stared through the window at the fire truck. I was holding him in my arms. I told him softly,

“Look at the red lights. Can you see them? I’m sure that everyone else in the neighborhood can.”

Asher had been sleeping, but not anymore. Chaos is not restful.

I had been talking with one of the police officers about Asher’s mom. She was the reason for his visit. It was strange. A couple hours earlier, things had been fine. The young woman had bathed and dressed Asher for bed. She was going to put him to sleep for the night. I had a bottle warmed up for him.

Then she started drinking. How long did it take for everything to unravel? Five minutes? Thirty minutes? Things got scary. Very scary.

I texted Karin to come home from her guild meeting after the young woman got drunk. Karin just wanted her to sleep it off, while we cared for Asher. That didn’t happen. It never happens like that. These episodes never end quietly. They also reach a feverish pitch of craziness, and then I call 9-1-1.

The young woman agreed with a cop to go to the hospital. She left with only her bathrobe, her phone and charger, and a head exploding with alcohol. Asher watched her walk out the door. Then he cried.

Asher is not quite two years old, but he understood. At some level, Asher knew that bad things were happening, and he cried. Karin told him,

“It’s okay. Mama is sick. She’s going to the hospital.”

That was all true, but it didn’t make Asher feel any better. It didn’t make anyone feel any better.

The boy cried. He cried, and he cried, and he cried.

We eventually put him into his stroller to take a walk. It was dark and wet outside. The wind blew drizzle on us. The houses in the cul-de-sac were ablaze with Halloween decorations. Asher enjoyed looking at them. Somehow, the scene was appropriate in a macabre way. After all, we were living in a horror movie, for real. Asher slowly settled down. We cried again when we got home.

Karin and I both laid down with him in bed. He swung like a pendulum between us. He cuddled with Karin, and then with me. Then he hugged Karin again. Then he held on to me. He wanted warmth and safety, and we provided what we could, but we didn’t feel safe either. It’s hard to give what you don’t have.

Asher gradually grew quiet. His breathing became calm and regular. His small fingers unclutched and released their grip on my hand. The boy slept.

He and Karin are still asleep. I woke up from the lightning in the sky and the sound of the distant thunder.

It’s not over yet. There is still a storm coming.