Author: frankisemptiness

June 26th, 2021

My youngest son, Stefan, took me out for lunch. He arrived at our house at 1:00 on Father’s Day. He immediately took off his sunglasses and handed them to me. He said,

“Here. You need these.”

I put them on and Stefan laughed,

“Oh, fuck yeah! Now you look like you should be flying Black Hawks again!”

That’s Stefan, the Iron Worker, in the picture behind me. I am holding our grandson, Asher, in my arms. Asher is a healthy lad. He’s almost seven months old, with the physique of a sumo wrestler.

Stefan wanted to go to the Centraal Grand Café in Bay View. It’s a restaurant that specializes in Belgian beers. I like beer, especially craft beers.

But Stefan doesn’t drink beer. This is not to say that he doesn’t drink alcohol. He does. He just can’t drink beer. He is allergic to gluten. He told me,

“Yeah, I got tested. My gut gets moderately irritated by the gluten in wheat, barley, and rye.”

That eliminates the vast majority of beers. A few gluten free ales exist. Sprecher Brewery makes a sorghum-based beer called Skakparo. Sprecher uses a West African recipe for it. That beer has a very strange flavor to it. It is at best an acquired taste. I am okay with Shakparo. Stefan would rather drink hand sanitizer.

Fortunately for Stefan, there are other beverage options available. He can have a hard cider (e.g. Angry Orchard), or a hard seltzer (e.g. White Claw). Stefan is quite fond of Old Fashioned cocktails. That surprised me a bit. My parents liked to drink Old Fashioneds. It always seemed like an old person’s drink to me. I guess I was wrong.

A brandy Old Fashioned is a quintessential Wisconsin drink. Most of the inhabitants of the known universe prefer to use whiskey in the cocktail, but not the folks in this state. We only use brandy. I have no idea why that is. I do know that a well-made Old Fashioned is an excellent mixed drink.

So, if Stefan can’t pick anything off of the extensive beer list, why go to Centraal?

Centraal has an eclectic food menu with numerous gluten free dishes. Stefan longs for a burger and fries. Most fast food places only have buns that contain gluten, so Stefan has been burger-less for quite a while. Centraal serves savory burgers on gluten free buns that actually taste good. Sometimes gluten free bakery has the flavor and texture of cardboard. Not this time. Both Stefan and I ordered burgers. They were excellent.

Stefan talked about an altercation he had recently. Apparently, some punk threatened Stefan’s girlfriend and some other young women. Stefan, along with some beefy help, confronted the young man. Stefan was frustrated with the results of the encounter. He said to me,

“That little fucker told that he was going to come over and pump four bullets in my head. What kind of shit is that? I don’t understand these young guys. I am sure that back in the day, when you were young, you guys settled stuff with your fists. Now, all these punks want to go get their gun and shoot you.”

I find it amusing that Stefan, who is all of twenty-seven years old, is complaining about “these young guys”. However, he does have a valid point. It appears that the members of the up and coming generation of men need to prove their virility by owning and using a firearm. It’s like the return of the Wild West.

Stefan continued, “I am going to get a gun for self-protection.”

“Really? what?”

“I’ll get a shotgun. Then if some fucker tries to bust into my place, I can use it after he comes through the door.”

“What about a pistol?”

“No. I don’t want to carry around a pistol. I like to go to bars. I don’t want to be carrying a gun if I’ve been drinking.”

Good idea. That shows some self-awareness and prudence.

I told Stefan about a funeral I attended. For some reason that set him off. He ranted about how fake funerals were. He commented that people go to those affairs and talk about how great the deceased was, even if he or she was a total asshole.

That’s true. It is rare that anyone ever complains about the dead person at a wake. Usually, if there is nothing good to say about the dearly departed individual, then they say exactly that: nothing. I have been to funerals where the attendees never once commented on the person lying in the box. Silence can be more of a damning condemnation than any words.

Stefan took me home. We had a good time, and I look forward to spending time with him again. I think he feels the same way.

I went back into the house, and helped Karin to care for little Asher.

June 22nd, 2021

“When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” – John 8:7

Asher is lying next to me in his swing. I just fed him, and Karin just changed him. He is a happy baby now, with a full tummy and an empty diaper. My wife and I have been caring for Asher full time for over four months. We took him to the pediatrician last week for his six moth check up. The boy is strong and healthy.

And loved.

Asher’s mother wanted to have a baby. She was so excited when she found out that she was pregnant with her son. Asher was born nine weeks premature. He was in NICU for a month before he was able to come home. The young woman wanted nothing more than to hold her little boy.

Then she got sick, really sick. That happened at the beginning of February. She is getting better, but she still is not able to be here for Asher. Karin and I made an open ended commitment to care for Asher 24/7. The commitment is open ended because it is not certain that the young woman can get healthy and stay healthy. It is possible that we may become Asher’s foster parents, even though we are in our sixties.

Karin and I love Asher intensely, even when we are exhausted. He is a blessing to us. He is also a lot of work. We are in an enviable position in that we have the time, health, and money to care for Asher. Many people, especially single moms, do not have our resources. They struggle mightily. Some of them may have wondered about how they would ever be able to raise their child.

Abortion is back in the news. The U.S. Catholic bishops seem determined to deny Joe Biden the Eucharist because he supports abortion rights. I understand that the bishops have to be a prophetic voice in the world, and they need to call out sin when they see it. It is part of their job. Can they do it with compassion?

Whenever I listen to Asher speak to me in words that aren’t words, I know abortion is wrong. When he smiles at me, my heart melts. I love him even when I am changing one of his shitty diapers. I can’t imagine life without him.

I know abortion is wrong, but what is right?

I’m an old white guy. Most of the Catholic bishops are old white guys. The difference between them and me is that I have experience in raising a family. They don’t. I know how it feels to worry all night about a son or daughter. They don’t. We call them “Father”, but their actual understanding of parenthood is vicarious. They aren’t fathers. They have chosen not to be.

I wonder what one of these bishops might say to a troubled young woman who is considering abortion.

Would a bishop go to the woman and say, “It will be okay. I’ll help you care for your baby. I’ll raise your son or daughter if need be.”

I’ll take these guys more seriously when one of them does that.

By the way, I’m Catholic.

June 17th, 2021

Asher woke up at 4:20 AM. That is pretty standard for him. He doesn’t cry when he wakes up. He simply starts a quiet monologue of baby talk that eventually rouses Karin and myself.

Karin will usually turn to Asher and greet him in German,

“Guten Morgen, kleiner Mann. Hast du gut geschlafen?”

Asher generally makes no reply to that question. He just keeps babbling. Six month old boys tend to do that.

Karin changed the lad’s wet diaper. I took a piss, washed my face, threw on some jeans, and then started to warm up a bottle of formula. While the bottle was heating up, I let the dogs out. After five minutes the formula was ready, and I grabbed Asher.

Karin went back to bed. It was my shift now.

Asher was ravenous. When he is hungry, he wants to eat NOW. It is unwise to get between Asher and his food. I held the boy on my lap, and watched him inhale the contents of the bottle. After a couple ounces, he slowed down a bit, but he was still totally focused on his meal. He is nearly strong enough to hold the bottle on his own. He kept a tight grip on it until he was finished.

Once Asher was done eating, I sat him up on my lap so he could burp. That took a couple minutes. His burps are impressively loud. Occasionally, they are also wet and messy.

I laid him down after he burped. He grinned up at me. Then I noticed a smell. I got my nose close to his butt. Yep, he was stinky.

“C’mon little buddy. Let’s check out your diaper.”

I laid Asher on his changing table. I carefully opened up the diaper. There was a poop explosion in there. He was covered with feces from the base of his spine to his nut sack. It had the look, smell, and consistency of hummus that has gone rancid. I held up both of his chubby legs with my right hand while cleaning his behind with numerous baby wipes.

Asher gave me this little smile of Buddha-like serenity, as if to say,

“I’m fine. Just keep cleaning up my mess.”

I am stoic about changing Asher’s diapers. I figure that some years from now, when I am in a nursing home, somebody will be cleaning up my mess. Everything comes full circle.

The rest of the morning has been a series of interruptions. That’s just life with Asher. It is pointless for me to begin any task that requires longer than five minutes to complete. For instance, it is extremely unlikely that I will be able to finish this essay before Asher cry for my assistance.

(Note: Just now, as I was writing, Asher woke up from a nap. I went to him, comforted him, and got him back to sleep.)

CPS (Child Protection Service) wants Karin and me to have smoke detectors in every bedroom. I will never get them put up. We already bought the smoke detectors. The installation is not difficult. However, I know that as soon as I attempt to start this job, Asher will demand my immediate attention. I will have to get my son Stefan to install the detectors.

I took Asher outside earlier this morning. We sat on the porch together, and he looked with wonder at his world. I looked with him. I think I began to see things through his young eyes. Life is fascinating. He teaching me to remember that.

He’s up again. Gotta go.

June 12th, 2021

“If you have been brutally broken, but still have the courage to be gentle to other living beings, then you’re a badass with the heart of an angel.”
― Keanu Reeves

I was outside of the house a few minutes ago, cleaning up tiny shards of glass from the ground in the space just below the window sill of a rear bedroom. The slivers of glass have been lying there since the end of January. They were pieces from a storm window that somebody smashed in order to get away from the police. The story behind the breaking of the window is rather long and ugly, and it will not be told here.

It’s June now, and it seems like I took a long time to clean up the broken glass. There are some things that I tend to avoid. Anything that brings back bad memories is radioactive to me. It takes a while for me to revisit places that freak me out, even if they are on my own property.

It feels like I spend a great deal of time picking up pieces, some of them physical and some of them emotional. Most of the pieces are from broken relationships. The pandemic shattered many of my connections with other people, a few of them permanently. Being the full time caregiver for little Asher has also made it difficult to maintain links with friends and family. The baby boy keeps Karin and myself rather busy.

Over the last fifteen months or so, my life has changed radically. So has Karin’s. Actually, everybody’s lives have changed radically. Nobody has been exempt. I somehow had hoped that, once the COVID coma ended, I would be able to start my life again where I had left off. That turns out to be a fantasy. There is no going back. There is no way to un-ring that bell.

The Buddhists have a good handle on this kind of situation. They put a huge emphasis on the transient nature of all things. They say that nothing is permanent. Everything comes and goes. Their advice is not to attach to anything at all; enjoy the experience and then let it go.

This is easier said than done. Friends have died during the last year, and I never got to say goodbye to them. Jim was in hospice for COPD. The best I could do was to write him snail mail letters. Cancer killed Andrea. Over the last year all we were able to do was exchange emails. It’s hard to let go when there is no closure.

I don’t want to sound too negative. Many things have changed, but not necessarily in a bad way. Having a six month old boy in our lives has been a blessing. It’s true that I can’t travel now, and that I can’t meet people like I used to do. However, it’s a joy and a wonder to watch Asher learn something new every single day. To hold him in my arms while he sleeps is a gift beyond compare. Life isn’t better or worse, just different.

My life before COVID/Asher is gone. That is just a fact. I may be able to reconnect with some people some of the time. Some of them will have changed in unexpected ways. Some of them I will only remember.

I’ll try to pick up the pieces.

June 8th, 2021

“My lover’s got humor
She’s the giggle at a funeral”

from the song “Take Me to Church” by Hozier

I did not know Joachim very well. However, I know his widow, Freya. I actually only met “Joe” one time. He and Freya came to our house years ago for a small party. I talked to him for a bit about the city of Berlin. Joe grew up in Berlin during the war years. I went there one time with a friend. It was back in 1982, when the wall still divided the city.

I know Freya from my time volunteering at Voces de la Frontera in Milwaukee. Freya ran the citizenship course, and I was one of her teachers. Freya is originally from Mexico, and she is an expert with the rules for becoming a U.S. citizen. Freya was constantly busy with new students, but she usually found a few minutes to talk with me. Over the years we got to be close friends, and there was nothing that I couldn’t tell her. There are very few people in this world that I trust more than Freya.

Karin and I had initially planned to go together to Joe’s funeral on Sunday afternoon. However, it was hot and humid, and the service was being held at the South Shore Pavilion near the lakefront. The pavilion lacks air conditioning. It would have necessary for Karin and I to take little Asher along with us to the visitation, and that didn’t seem like a good idea. Sitting through a vigil in a stuffy room with a hot and sweaty six month old boy just sounded like a recipe for disaster. So, I went to the service alone.

The vigil was to start at 1:30 PM. I got there a few minutes early and schmoozed for a while. I saw Freya sitting in the front row of seats, so I went up to talk to her.

Freya is a tiny woman. She was sitting in her chair next to her daughter, Christine. Freya was bent over. I knelt down in order to speak with her. She immediately placed her right hand on my shoulder and cried out,

“Frank! It is too much! I can’t do this!”

Her grief went right through my body. It cut like a dagger. I mumbled something back to her. I think I said that we love her. I tried not to say, “It’s okay”, because it wasn’t okay. Not at all.

Freya looked at me, and without any pause, asked me,

“How is you family?”

That was classic Freya. No matter how much pain she was experiencing, she wanted to know how I was doing.

I told her,

“Karin is home with Asher. The girl is doing well in rehab. We are caring for our grandson.”

Freya gave me a thumbs up.

I left Freya and sat down. The service started at 1:30, or thereabouts. A pastor who I don’t know gave the opening prayer. He was a young man with a hip and trendy look. The minister resembled Jesus, except for the fact he wore eyeglasses.

I was surprised that this minister was there at all. From what Freya had told me, Joe was an atheist. That fact was obliquely referred to later on during the service when a friend of the family said that Joe trusted science instead of superstition. Oh well, one man’s superstition is another man’s faith. A funeral is primarily for the living, not for the dead. In any case, pastor was there and Joe didn’t complain.

Joe’s granddaughter, Livia, read a statement on behalf of the family. Livia consistently referred to Joe as “Opa”, the German word for “Grandpa”. As Livia spoke, Joe’s German heritage came through quite clearly. It was a major part of who he was. It’s the same way with my wife, Karin. Karin insists on being “Oma” with our grandkids. Her mom in Germany were always “Oma”, so Karin is too. I don’t go by “Opa” with little Asher. I am “Grumpa”. A “grumpa” is like a “grampa”, just grumpier.

There was a mariachi band that played during the service. They did a nice job. Laurie sang “Amazing Grace”, and later Shana sang “If I Had a Hammer” and “Un rayo de sol”. Shana had the crowd singing along with her. She’s really good at that sort of thing.

At one point, the pastor had an open mike for reflections by members of the public. That’s always a risky move. There’s no way of telling what a person might say once they are standing at the microphone.

As expected, everyone who spoke about Joe said good things. He was loved and respected. He was a kind and honorable man.

I learned a lot about Joe as I listened to people reminisce about him. I had never known that he was a professor at UWM (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). I was impressed that he taught thermodynamics. I had to take that course when I was a student at West Point. Thermodynamics is a bitch. It’s pretty much black magic as far as I am concerned. The fact that Joe could actually teach it amazes me.

Livia mentioned that Joe seldom talked about growing up in Berlin. That makes total sense to me. Joe was fourteen years old when WWII ended. He spent his childhood in a city that had been reduced to a pile of smoldering rubble by Allied bombers during the war. People usually don’t speak about traumatic events unless it is necessary. My father-in-law, Max, didn’t talk much about serving with the Wehrmacht on the Russian front either.

The pastor kept asking people to come up to the mike. Most were hesitant to do so. As I was sitting in my chair, I remembered an incident with Freya that concerned Joe. So, I walked up to the microphone.

I told those assembled,

“I only met Joe once, when he and Freya came to our house back in 2017. Joe and my wife hit it off well. They are both from Germany.

I know Freya much better. I worked with her for a long time at Voces with the citizenship class. She and I would always find time to talk about our families.

One time, as we were talking, I complained about some trouble that I was having with my wife, Karin. Freya just looked at me and said,

‘It’s your own fault. You married a German.'”

Truer words were never spoken.

God bless you, Joe. He believes in you even if you didn’t believe in Him.

June 3rd, 2021

I hate Zoom meetings. Actually, I hate most meetings, but I find Zoom sessions particularly frustrating. There is something about Zoom that makes problem resolution more difficult. That’s how it feels to me.

Karin and I attended a “team meeting” yesterday. The “team” consisted of the people who are going to collectively decide a young woman’s fate. The young woman is currently participating in a drug treatment program, and doing quite well in it. She only has three weeks left before she graduates. The question is what happens to her after that.

Somehow, the young woman got the idea from somebody that she would be able to return to our home to be with her son. She seemed absolutely convinced of this. When the woman called on the phone, she would tell her baby boy,

“Pretty soon Mama will be home with you, and we’ll be together all the time.”

Apparently, “pretty soon” is not quite as soon as she expected it to be.

As the meeting unfolded, it became obvious that there is no plan for the woman’s immediate future. I would like to say that surprised me, but it doesn’t. There are still too many variables involved, and too many players. The team includes people from the rehab facility (therapists, counselors, etc.), the case manager from Child Protective Service (CPS), and the young woman’s probation officer, who was unable to attend the meeting. All these folks have work together to find housing for the woman, provide continuing treatment, organize visits with her son, and God only knows what else. To a certain extent, each participant is waiting for the others to make the first move. Each person’s action is somehow based on the action of somebody else.

One person who is deeply involved in this process, but who is not part of the team, is the judge from Children’s Court. The judge will decide if and when the young woman lives with her little boy again. Everything that the team members do has to eventually convince the judge that she should reunite the mother with her son. The young woman’s completion of the rehab program is necessary for the reunification, but it is apparently not sufficient for it to occur.

What role do Karin and I play? Well, first and foremost, we care for the six month old boy in our home. Second, we provide logistical and emotional support for the mom. Whenever the team comes up with a plan for the young woman, we will help to put that plan into effect. That’s what we said to the other people at the Zoom meeting: “Just tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.”

There are many possibilities for the young woman’s future. The only option that is not on the table is for her to be immediately reunited with her son in our house. That was only scenario that she wanted.

In the meantime, Karin and I are providing more visits with the mom and her little guy. We will be going to the rehab facility three times a week from now on. In a sense, nothing much changes for Karin and me. We keep caring for the baby, and we keep helping his mom. Our lives revolve around a rather chubby little man.

Asher is lying in his swing near me. He’s smiling in his sleep. Sweet dreams.

He is loved.

May 31st, 2021

“Jesus said unto him, ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’ ” – Luke 9:60

The email said, “We missed you last night at the funeral…”

I wasn’t sure how to take that. Our friend could have meant to say,

“We had really hoped to see you there”,

or it could have meant,

“Where the fuck were you?”

That’s the problem with emails: you don’t have any of the usual verbal and visual clues.

I feel a bit bad about not being at the church for the service. Andrea was our friend for over twenty years. She had a difficult life in many ways. She struggled with cancer during the past few years. The disease took her away several days ago. The death was sudden, but not entirely unexpected.

Andrea spent her last years caring for her grandson. She did that fulltime. Our current family situation is very similar to Andrea’s. Karin and I know how hard she worked to raise a small child, and we understand how much she loved the boy.

Timing is everything. Andrea’s death came at a moment when our lives were in turmoil. Andrea passed away on May 20th, and her funeral was on the evening of the 27th. Karin had just received her second COVID shot on the 25th. She was sick and exhausted on the day of the funeral. We still needed to take Asher to see his mother that day, and we had a mandatory Zoom appearance with Children’s Court immediately following the visit to Asher’s mom. I took Asher to the treatment center by myself that day. Karin wasn’t up for it.

We both chose to stay home after the Zoom court hearing. I couldn’t go and leave Karin with Asher, as tired and feverish as she was. The six month old baby was our priority.

I believe that we have a duty to honor those who have gone before us. People are not trash that we can simply throw away. There needs to be some sort of ritual or ceremony to remember the lives of those who have left this world. There has to be some kind of send off, some way of saying farewell to the departed. Perhaps funerals do no good for the dead, but they can help the living to heal.

Having said that, a funeral does not take priority over the everything else. Asher only arrived in this world six months ago. He’s a healthy and generally happy boy, but he needs our constant help and attention. Andrea is now part of our past. Asher our present, and our future. He has to be our focus.

Sometimes the dead have to bury their dead.

May 24th, 2021

“The one mistake you made was in your head
How do you sleep?
Ah how do you sleep at night?” – from How Do You Sleep? by John Lennon

My sister-in-law, Shawn, texted me last night from College Station, Texas. She seldom calls, but she often texts. Some of her messages are are about the book she’s writing. Sometimes she writes to me about the latest adventures of her young biracial granddaughter. Most of her texts are about things that are rather mundane.

Last night was different.

It went like this…

Shawn: “A young Black man was shot in the chest several times in front of my apartment.”

Me: “By the cops? Were you at home?”

Shawn: “Yes, and I saw the whole thing. I called to him to comply.”

Shawn: “When he was on the ground, I said, ‘Do what they say. Show your hands. I am praying for you’.”

Shawn: “I held his girlfriend in my arms.”

Note: the woman was actually the young Black man’s wife.

Me: “How are you now?”

No reply to my question.

Shawn: “He was conscious for a while but I don’t know if he made it.”

Later during the night…

Shawn: “He died.”

I didn’t sleep well. I’m sure that Shawn didn’t. I’m sure the man’s widow didn’t.

I wonder how the cop slept?

May 20th, 2021

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” – Elie Wiesel 

My dad was an anti-Semite. He wasn’t goose-stepping, Kristallnacht kind of guy, but he definitely had some animus toward the Jews. He had no problem referring to them as “Kikes”. His attitude was passive. I’m not sure that it was hatred as much as it was a kind of desultory antagonism toward the Jewish people. He could some up his feelings with a wave of his hand and the sentence,

“You know what those people are like.”

In his old age, he would explain his views with a story from his childhood. He would wind himself up and say,

“Yeah, Ma had a cousin who married a Jew. They came over to the house one time when I was a kid. The guy’s name was Silverman. He was a talker. Typical Jew. He promised to bring me a football the next time they came to visit. Hell, I’m still waiting for that football.”

Make sense? No? It doesn’t make sense to me either.

How did my dad get to that point? Why did he use a minor event from his youth to justify hostility toward an entire group of people? Why would he even remember that incident after seventy years? Did he learn to hate Jews from his parents? Was bigotry something he drank along with his mother’s milk?

I will never know what happened because all the witnesses are dead.

My father knew that I went to a synagogue on a regular basis. He never said anything about it. It wasn’t worth arguing about. It was easier just to ignore the fact. Just talk about something else.

Once again, I don’t think my father actually hated the Jews. That would have required passion. Hatred is an inversion of love. We often hate most those whom we loved the most. Ask anybody who has been through a divorce. In order love or to hate I have to care about the person. The person I hate has to mean something to me. I can only really hate someone who is important to me in a twisted way.

My dad had a sort of casual indifference. He had that attitude that Elie Wiesel warned against. Dante wrote that the innermost circle of hell is a very cold place. I think that is accurate.

I’m often like my dad. I don’t hate the Jews, but I have found other people to despise. Heredity is a terrible thing sometimes. It is a constant struggle for me to look beyond my prejudices and see people for who they really are. It’s so much easier just to dismiss them and pretend they don’t even exist.

When I am at my worst, I can look into another person’s eyes and feel nothing.

That scares me.

May 17th, 2021

“The only truly dead are those who have been forgotten.” – Jewish proverb

“Today you own the pieces of land but tomorrow a land will own you.” – Muslim saying

My father was an expert at holding grudges. He could hang on to them for decades. When asked to justify being this way, he would say,

“I can forgive, but I can’t forget.”

That statement was utter nonsense. In reality he could do neither. His idea of forgiving was to nurture resentments in some dark, dank corner of his soul until they were ready to bear bitter fruit. As I watch the the violence and chaos erupting in the Middle East, I think of my dad. He would have fit right in.

I went to Israel and Palestine once. It was back in December of 1983. I was only there for a few days, and it is hard to remember the details of that visit after all these years. The trip made a deep impression on me. Now I can only recall general feelings from the experience.

The place gave me an overpowering sense of the past. It is literally impossible to go anywhere in Israel/Palestine without tripping over some reminder of the land’s long history. It seems like everything is an artifact. Some towns there have existed for centuries. Jericho, for instance, has been continually inhabited for millennia. The Holy Land encourages, almost demands, remembrance.

As an American, that feeling of antiquity was alien to me. I live in a the United States of Amnesia. We can barely remember what we had for breakfast, much less what happened generations ago. We struggle to know what life was like before COVID. The Palestinians remember the Crusaders invading their country. We can barely recall Barack Obama, and the Israelis remember defending Masada from the Roman legions. Americans live in the moment, and we react to each new event without pausing to reflect on it. Israelis and Palestinians take the long view, for better or worse.

The flames currently burning in that tiny country were not kindled during the last two weeks. They have been smoldering for a long, long time. Some would say that the problem goes back to the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the West Bank of the Jordan. Some would say it goes back to the founding of Israel, and the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. Maybe it goes back to the arrival of the Zionist settlers in Palestine during the British mandate. Maybe the issue goes all the way back to the time of Moses and Joshua.

Americans sometimes wonder why the Israelis and the Palestinians can’t work out a compromise about Jerusalem. They can’t because the issue is not about the here and now. It’s about their respective histories. For both the Israelis and the Palestinians, the city of Jerusalem is an integral part of their identities. The last words spoken at Passover are, “Next year in Jerusalem!” The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque are in Jerusalem. For both parties the city is essential.

It’s this way with most of the struggles between the Israelis and the Palestinians. What happened before dictates what is happening now.

They can’t go forward because they can’t let go of the past.

They can’t forgive and they can’t forget.