Author: frankisemptiness

March 28th, 2019

“I’m only happy when it rains….
I’m only happy when it’s complicated
And though I know you can’t appreciate it
I’m only happy when it rains
You know I love it when the news is bad
Why it feels so good to feel so sad?
I’m only happy when it rains
Pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me
I’m only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are goin’ wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I’m only happy when it rains
I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn’t accidentally tell you that
I’m only happy when it rains
You’ll get the message by the time I’m through
When I complain about me and you
I’m only happy when it rains.”

“I’m Only Happy When It Rains” from Garbage

Her left hand was completely wrapped in gauze. She burned the back of her hand on Friday. I don’t completely understand how she did that. Since then, she has had her hand bandaged up. Karin has been changing the dressing on that hand each morning. I haven’t been involved with that process. That has been between the girl and Karin.

I did get a glimpse of the girl’s hand a couple days ago. My own hand hurt just from looking at hers. It was raw and ugly. A nasty burn. There will be scars.

Scars aren’t always bad. They are proof positive that somebody is a survivor.

I drove the young woman back to her motel room yesterday morning. As usual, she played the Sphinx during most of the ride. When she is nervous, she only gives me name, rank, and serial number. She might answer my questions, but with the absolute minimum of information. I have grown adept at reading between her lines.

As we wound through the streets of Racine, I asked her, “How is the hand?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Does it hurt?’

“Not really.”

That surprised me. How could that wound not hurt?

I asked her, “Can you move it?”

She replied, “Well, with this on (she pointed to her bandage) not really. Without it, I can pick up things. I can’t close it like I can with my other hand.” She then demonstrated how she could close up her right hand.

I stopped at a light. As it changed to green, she continued to speak,

“The doctor at the emergency room told me that I wouldn’t be able to hold a beer or ride a motorcycle. Neither of those two things are going to happen any time soon.”

I glanced at her. I couldn’t tell if she was smiling or not.

I changed the subject. I told her,

“Last night I went to the VA. I visited with the guys in the psych ward.”

The girl nodded as she stared straight ahead. Years ago, she had gone with me to spend time with the vets at the hospital. She knew that I went there often.

“Well, I sat and listened to one of the vets talk all about his seizures, and about his problems with his doctors. He talked to me for almost half an hour. Then he asked me, ‘So, how long have you been here?’ I told him, ‘About an hour.’ Then the guy asked me, ‘What room are you in? Wow, you just got here! I guess that’s why you are still in normal clothes.’ I told him, ‘Man, I just helped to bring in the snacks. I am not currently a patient.’

The vet seemed embarrassed, and he said to me, ‘I just thought you were here, you know, like us. No offense…’

I told the guy, ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I am glad to talk with you.’ ”

I glanced at the girl. She still stared straight ahead, but she had the faintest trace of a smile on her face.

I laughed and said, “Yeah, I know. You’re not surprised by that at all.”

She gently shook her head in a way that said, “Oh, so typical…”

We listened to the radio. 102.1. “Sounds different.” That’s the slogan for the station.

An old song from Garbage came on: “I’m Only Happy When It Rains”.

I sighed, “Oh yeah…”

The girl told me, “That was my favorite song in kindergarten.”

“I like it too. The singer, she has a great voice. The back up band is really good too.”

The girl replied, “Yeah, they are all from Madison.”

“I thought the singer was from Scotland.”

The girl shrugged, then nodded.

We got to her motel. I helped her to bring her stuff up to her room. The room was dark, even after the young woman turned on a light. Her belongings were scattered in a haphazard way. Disorder reigned.

I told her, “I’ll see you later.”

She stared at me blankly and said, “Okay.”

“Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 25th, 2019

I should have just kept my mouth shut.

I was sitting in the Mocha Lisa Coffee Shop in Caledonia. I like to go there. It’s kind of artsy-fartsy. They have lots of crafts on display, along with other artwork. They even have paintings from my brother hanging on their walls.

I had my mug of black coffee in front of me as I sat down at a table. I had planned to write a snail mail letter. Then a soldier walked past me. I looked him over.

The guy was tall and exceedingly fit. His uniform had all the right badges, and it had been ironed recently. I think he was airborne/ranger. It was obvious to me that he was a lifer, and that he was most likely a recruiter. I was right, on both counts.

He went over to a nearby table, and the regulars asked his about his work, and how he selected new recruits. He explained that guys with neck and/or facial tattoos were not accepted. Also, people with massive holes in their earlobes did not make the cut. I found this a bit odd. Those kind of folks might make excellent killers. In any case, the locals were doing their best to massage his ego.

That irritated me. I am by nature a contrary individual, and I find it difficult to listen to people talk shit. So, I roused myself from my chair and stood facing the Army recruiter. I asked him,

“When you recruit people, do you ever tell them about the costs involved?”

He gave me a funny look (as did everyone else). Then he asked,

“Costs? What do you mean?”

I replied, “Do you tell them what it will cost them to join up?”

He still didn’t get it.

“What are you talking about?”

I sighed. “My son went to Iraq. He killed people. He did not come back right.”

The soldier told me, “That’s dependent on the individual. Each person reacts differently.”

I said slowly, “That…is…not…really…an…answer.”

At this point two women intervened. One of them wore glasses, and she went immediately to the recruiter and said, “THANK YOU for your service! Can I buy you something? A coffee, maybe?”

He shook his head. She scurried away to get him something he didn’t want. However, she also looked at me and said, “And thank you for your son’s service!”

The other woman went up to the soldier, stroked his arm, and gazed at him with something approaching adoration. She also told him breathlessly, “Thank you for your service.”

I asked him, “So, do you explain to them what they are going to experience?”

He answered obliquely, “It’s different with every person. I don’t know what your son experienced. I’ve been in the Army for twenty years. I was in Iraq too. (and I’m all right).”

I told him, “I was in the Army too, way back during the Cold War. I flew Black Hawks.”

I don’t know if the recruiter or anyone else heard me. There was no reaction whatsoever.

The woman with the glasses returned with the recruiter’s coffee, and she gave him the biggest smile this side of heaven.

I continued to speak.  “So, do you tell them that might have to kill somebody?”

He replied, “People enlist for all sorts of reasons. We answer whatever questions they have.”

“What if they don’t even know enough to ask the questions?”

“Well, like I said, people join for all sorts of reasons. Some just want to get their education paid for. Some people come in with a certain idea in their head, and it doesn’t matter what I tell them. It goes in one ear and out the other.”

The woman with the adoring eyes said to the recruiter, “My father fought in Vietnam. He’s on full disability now.”

The recruiter perked up, and said, “Well, he’s being taken care of. People keep saying that we don’t take care of our vets.”

I chimed in, “I go to visit the vets in the psych ward at the VA hospital in Milwaukee every week. They are being cared for, but I want to know if the people who you meet know what they are getting in to.”

The adoring woman rolled her eyes and said, “Do any of us ever know what we’re getting into?”

The soldier told me, “We tell them that there might be trauma.”

The woman spoke again, “Well, we all have trauma. We make decisions and we accept the consequences.”

I butt in, “Okay. I just want to know if these people, especially high school kids, are making informed decisions.”

The recruiter looked me straight in the eye and said, “We talk to them about everything. We talk about deployments, everything.”

At that time, The person who was to meet with the recruiter arrived, and my conversation with him was over. However, somebody else wanted to bend my ear.

The woman with the adoring eyes took me aside.

She told me. “We all have free will. My father went to Vietnam. Your son went to Iraq. They both experience the consequences.”

I replied with pain, “My son sleeps with his AR-15. He can’t sleep without it.”

She nodded and replied, “My dad can’t sleep either. He can’t even go to a 4th of July parade because of the noise. He has no regrets.”

She continued, “The recruiter, he’s just doing his job. He’s chosen to serve his country.”

I asked her, “So, I can’t ask him hard questions?”

The woman replied, “Well, you can ask him hard questions, but it kind of sounded like you were attacking him.”

“Oh?”

She went on, “I felt like I needed to defend him.”

“So, is he a hero?”

She smiled sadly, “I think he’s a hero.”

She said, “We all have free will. We make choices. You did whatever it was you were doing.”

Then she walked off.

I walked back top my table and stared at my coffee cup. I was confused and hurt. I kept thinking of my son, and of the boys in the psych ward. I thought about the costs.

I left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 21st, 2019

Karin and I were just about ready to go to church yesterday. We try to go to daily Mass at St. Rita. Usually, we also participate in the morning prayer prior to the liturgy. This is our spiritual practice. Karin is much more consistent and diligent with it. I’m kind of a slacker.

As we were leaving, Karin got a phone call. It was the boyfriend of a girl that we love. I’m not exactly sure if the young man qualifies as a “boyfriend”. His status with the young woman seems to fluctuate. Their relationship is rather fluid. At a minimum, the guy is a good friend to her, a person who really does care about this girl.

The young man was in an utter panic when he called Karin. Karin put him on speaker phone so that I could hear what he had to say. He spoke quickly and emphatically.

He asked my wife, “When was the last time you had contact with her?”

Karin told him that it was during the previous morning. The girl had seemed to be upbeat and in good spirits.

The young man said, “I talked to her right after you did. She was going to take a shower, and then I was going to pick her up after work. We were going to go to dinner, and then hang out.”

He went on, “I got to her motel, and I called her. I didn’t get an answer. Then I texted her, and I didn’t get an answer with that. I knocked on her door. She didn’t answer. Finally, I went to to the manager to see if they would check on her, and they refused to do it. The management told me to call the police. I didn’t want to do that. I stayed there for forty-five minutes, and then I left.”

He continued, “I have been trying to get hold of her again this morning, but I get nothing. I’m at work now. Could you please try to contact her?”

Karin told him that we would.

I had a terrible, sinking feeling. I thought to myself, “She finally did it. We’re going to make a trip to the morgue.”

Karin asked me, “What should we do? Go there? Call the police? Should we call her?”

I replied softly, “Call her.”

Karin did that. No answer. The message went straight to voicemail.

Karin said, “I’ll text her. She never answers calls. She might respond to a text.”

The girl did respond. She told us that she was feeling a little sick. Otherwise, she was fine.

Karin told her to contact her friend, seeing as he was freaking out.

With most people, it’s not a big deal if we can’t reach them. That just happens. With this young woman it’s different. We have over a decade of experience with her health problems and intense drama. When we have been unable to contact her for any extended length of time, it has meant that something really bad was happening.

Karin and I went to church. We were grateful that it was a false alarm, but it was an alarm nonetheless. I don’t recover from these emergencies (real or otherwise) very well any more. I get an emotional hangover. It’s like tearing open a wound that has never quite healed. The most recent incident dovetailed into earlier crises, and I felt all of it again.

Karin and I sat down with some other people in the narthex for the morning prayer. I had to get up after a minute or so, and go into the sanctuary of the church. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t pray. I sat in a pew by myself, and tried to subdue feelings of fear, anger, and sadness. I didn’t how to direct those emotions. They were just there, and they were intense.

A young man named Mike came over to talk with me. Mike is a novice at the church. He is in training to become an Augustinian priest. He is a wonderful person, and he thought that it would be a good idea to wish me a happy birthday. It was my birthday, but I wasn’t feeling it. Not at all.

Mike said, “Hey, Karin tells me that today is your birthday.”

I shrugged.

He looked at me more closely, and asked, “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head and looked away from him.

At that point, Mike sensed the Sith energy that was emanating from me. He figured out that I was emotionally radioactive, and he moved away.

Karin came into the pew just before the liturgy started. She gently took my hand.

I wept. As soon as she touched me, the dam broke. It wasn’t a noisy, sobbing kind of thing. It was all silent. I just felt hot, salty tears roll down my cheeks, and I could do nothing to stop them.

After Mass, we went out for breakfast. I still couldn’t focus or listen. We had a decent meal, but I wasn’t really there. To a certain extent, Karin was eating alone.

In Zen we talk about being in the moment. We talk about how the past doesn’t really matter, because it doesn’t exist any more. It does matter. Trauma from the past comes back to join up with any new trauma. I tried to be in the here and now, and failed. It was just too hard.

Are things better? I took the girl to see her probation officer this morning, and it went okay. My anxiety was still there. It will take a while for me to lower my guard with her. Maybe I never will. Maybe I will always be scared with her.

I don’t know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 18th, 2019

I took a young woman to do some shopping at Walmart. I don’t like going to Walmart. I always get a bad feeling in that place. I don’t know why that is. It’s not a rational thing.

I asked the young woman if she wanted me to go into the store with her. She told me that I probably wouldn’t want to stroll down the aisles with the feminine hygiene products. I agreed with that. She went in by herself.

For the first time in a long time, the weather was sunny and relatively warm. I didn’t want to sit in the car, so I stood around and waited for the girl to finish her shopping. Time dragged.

Another woman pulled up into the parking space next to me with her SUV. She got out of car, looked at me funny, and then walked briskly into Walmart.

I started examining a bulge in the sidewall of the passenger side steer tire. I hadn’t noticed it before. The bulge worried me. A blow out on a steer tire is generally not a good thing. Then I checked out the other tires as I circled the Focus. I was bored, and I looked at the windows, the scratches in the paint, and a crack in the front bumper. I was lost in thought when I heard a woman yell,

“Can I help you?!”

I spun around to see the lady with the SUV glaring at me, and aiming her pink camera in my direction.

“What?” I muttered.

She went on, “If you keep looking into people’s cars…”

I blew up at her, “IT’S MY OWN CAR!”

She circled around me warily, still giving me a steely-eyed stare.

“You’re looking pretty suspicious.”

It was my turn to glare. I watched her get into her vehicle. She gave me a sideways glance.

I smiled and waved.

She drove away quickly.

Somehow, that shook me up. I was still upset when the young woman came back out of the store. I took her to her motel, and then I drove home, hoping the steer tire would make it that far.

I told my son about the tire, and also about the incident with the female vigilante in the  Walmart lot. He laughed, and said,

“Well, how was your day, besides the fact that you got racially profiled?”

I also told Karin about my encounter with the SUV lady. Karin looked at me and said,

“Well, you do look like a bum. You don’t look like you should own a nice car like that.”

That was comforting.

Both my wife’s comments and Stefan’s joke made me think. I was being profiled. It obviously wasn’t racial profiling. I guess it was more of an economic profile. The funny thing is that I may have more money in the bank than the SUV lady will ever have. But I had that hobo aura, and she just assumed that I was trying to bust into my own vehicle. I don’t think she ever believed that it was my car. She just decided to make a hasty retreat.

That was a strange and thoroughly unpleasant experience. I will have to remember how it felt the next time I think somebody else is up to no good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 16th, 2019

I took a young woman to Walgreen’s early on Saturday morning. She needed sterile gauze. The girl got scalded, and had an evil burn on her left shoulder that was oozing. I went with her into the store. I am not sure if that was helpful. We looked with uncertainty at a variety of different types of gauze and tapes, and then we asked a guy wearing a white lab coat for his opinion. Nhan, the white coat guy,  told us what to buy. Apparently, we didn’t explain the situation to him adequately, because I had to go back to the Walgreen’s later to get the correct type of tape.

While we were at the store, I looked more closely at the young woman. She looked rough. She had deep, dark rings under her eyes. The girl had already had a busy week. She had a chemical burn near her right eye that was just starting to heal. She also had four staples in the back of her head. They were behind her right ear. They were from a fall that seemed inexplicable. When I looked at her, I saw red burn marks that ran across the left side of her mouth, her throat, and down to her chest. I asked her about them.

She seemed frustrated and embarrassed. She told me,

“Those are from the shower at the motel. It suddenly got super hot, and that is how I got burned.”

Okay. Sure.

Is that what really happened? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. All I know is that this woman has suffered some truly nasty injuries within a very short period of time.

A suspicious person might think that she was using drugs. I’m a suspicious person. I’m suspicious mostly because I want this young woman to survive. Is it possible that she just had a terrible run of bad luck? Yes, that is possible. Is it possible that she has been so fucked up on some chemical that she did not even realize that she was being injured? Oh yeah, that could be too.

Like I said, I don’t know. I can’t know. In this situation, not knowing scares me. It scares me a lot.

Later yesterday, I took this young woman to stay at a different motel in Kenosha, since she needed a new place to live, and our house does not qualify with her probation officer. The motel is not so bad. Her place is right next to Lake Michigan, and she has a nice room.

I left her feeling uncertain. She had all of her stuff, but was she okay? I had no idea. I still have no idea.

When the girl checked into her room, she noticed that the refrigerator had a freezer. She remarked with a smile,

“Now I can get ice cream!”

I didn’t sleep much last night.

This morning I texted her: “Are you okay?”

Hours later, I read, “I’m OK.”

I wrote back to her, “Should we buy ice cream after your meeting tomorrow?”

Hours later, she wrote back, “Sure.”

That’s a win.

 

 

 

 

 

March 14th, 2019

“I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there”

from “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode

I had no idea what this guy looked like. All I knew was that I had to pick him up at Voces de la Frontera at 7:00 AM to take him to his court appearance. He apparently had my cell number, because he called me when I was maybe a quarter mile away from the Voces office.

Generally, I don’t like to answer the phone while I am driving. I recognized his number, so I picked up.

“Hi, is this Frank?”, he asked haltingly in a thick Spanish accent.

“Yeah.”

“I am at Voces.”

“Okay, I’m just turning on to National Avenue. I’m a couple blocks away.”

He hung up.

Nice.

It was not the best possible morning to pick up a stranger at Voces. Voces had planned a major political action that morning at the state capital in Madison. There was a public hearing scheduled at the capital about giving driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, and Voces wanted supporters of that idea to go there. They had buses waiting on the street in front of their office to take folks from Milwaukee to Madison. There were all sorts of people milling around, and I had no idea which person in that throng was going to be my passenger.

I found a place to park, and then I shoved my way through the crowd into the office, and I called out the guy’s name. No response.

Then a woman who was working there, who seemed rather stressed, looked at me and said,

“Oh, him. He was just in here. He is probably waiting outside.”

I followed her out the door. She pointed him out to me.

The man was a bit younger than me. He was thin and edgy. He had the kind of a haircut that my Army son would call “high and tight”. It was very short on the sides and back, but a bit longer on top. The man clutched a briefcase, and he wore what had to be his best clothes. I greeted him, we shook hands, and then we walked to my car.

I had been told that he did not speak English. I found this to be true. He had a minimal understanding of English. Mostly, he spoke Spanish to me with a smattering of random English words, spoken with a strong Spanish accent. I have been studying Spanish, with limited success. To my surprise, I understood enough of the language for us to have an intelligent conversation, at least most of the time. That made me very happy. He liked that too.

He seemed very tense. His hands were always restless. I asked him,

“¿Cómo estás hoy?” (“How are you today?”)

He looked at me nervously, and said,

“Estoy preocupado. Estoy preocupado por la corte.” (“I am worried. I am worried about the court.”)

I would be too.

We had to drive north to another county, mostly cow country, for his court date. That gave us time to struggle with the language. I mentioned to him that my wife was from Germany. That got him wound up. He has two nieces living in Germany. He wanted to show me pictures of them on his phone while I drove on the freeway. I indicated that wasn’t a good idea. It was getting very foggy as we drove north, and I had to watch for the right exit.

We got to the court house early. That’s okay. It is better to arrive to a court appearance early, rather than late. We sat in the car until the court house opened at 8:00 AM. He had time to show me his photos of his nieces. We had time to have a long and interesting discussion about racism in Europe and America. I learned a few things.

Once we could enter the court house, the man totally depended on me to find the right court room, and to guide him through the process.  He was a very intelligent person. It was just the language that confused him. I understand that sort of thing. I had the same sort of experience in Germany many years ago.

We entered the court room. We sat down on a bench. He immediately made the sign of the cross. I did the exact same thing after he did it. Then he asked me if we should ask somebody about an interpreter. I told him that we should talk to the lady who was acting as the court clerk. The man was concerned that we would do this together. I assured him that we would.

I spoke with the clerk. She was friendly but disinterested, and then she talked about the need for an interpreter with her co-worker in the court room. This other person, who seemed to be very busy on his computer, explained that my friend would have to return in April, which is when they would have a Spanish-speaking interpreter available. This is not unusual. That court only has an interpreter available once a month. That’s it. If you don’t speak English, you have to appear there on one specific day in any given month.

My companion got some paperwork that he barely understood. I worked with him, so that he knew for certain when his next court date would be. As we left the court house, he became animated, and kept talking about going some place for breakfast.

“Vamos a desayunar. Yo estoy pagando!”

(“We are going for breakfast. I am paying!”)

So, we went. His GPS guided us to an IHOP near Miller Park.

My friend ordered a combination  breakfast. I got the country-fried steak. We prayed before we ate. He drowned his pancakes with strawberry syrup. I worked through my eggs and some mystery meat.

We talked while we ate. I told the man about my oldest son, Hans, and his time as a soldier fighting in Iraq. He told me that he understood, and that he would pray for my family.

I took him back to Voces. He shook my hand as he got out of my car.

I am grateful to him.

Jesus bought me breakfast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 12th, 2019

It’s been quite a while since I last visited the psych ward at the local VA hospital. Honestly, I have missed going there. The psych ward cannot be described as a happy place, but it is an honest place. I don’t think that there is any place more authentic than a psych ward, unless maybe a jail. Patients who are staying in a psych ward are stripped clean of all deceit and pretense. In the midst of madness and suffering, they have abandoned their masks, and they are exactly who they are. This is both comforting and somehow terrifying. Most people (including myself) spend their entire lives pretending to somebody else, but the veterans in the psych ward do not pretend. They are done with that.

There is a ritual to be performed whenever we (myself and some folks from the American Legion) come to visit the veterans in the ward. We bring in food and drinks for them (usually too much of each), and we set up the snacks on a couple tables in the break room. The patients sense that there is free food, and they drift into the room. Last night we served them pizza, grapes, popcorn, cookies: all the stuff that the VA would never feed them. When the first wave of vets is done grazing, some of us sit with them and talk. Some people play cards. We do what we can to be friendly.

I sat a table with a young man named John. He looked exhausted. John was thin to the point of emaciation. His dark hair hung limply over his forehead. He had a thin mustache and his eyes were half closed. His hands were deeply veined, and limp. He seemed oblivious to his surroundings.

Jim came over to sit with us. Jim is a retired cop. He runs a soup kitchen, and he has been going to the VA with me for a couple years now. He asked me,

“So, how is the girl doing?”

“Not good.”

I proceeded to tell Jim about the young woman’s relapse and all it the consequences stemming from that. It was an ugly story.

Jim asked me, “Do you know what her triggers are (for a relapse)?”

“No.”

A quiet voice next to me said, “I know my triggers. I don’t talk to my wife about them. She’s a strong woman. She’s a good person. I guess that’s why I married her.”

It was John talking.

I stopped talking with Jim and I concentrated on John. I told him,

“You’re a very lucky man.”

He looked at me from under his hooded eyes and said,

“I know. I do this to remember that”, as he twisted the wedding band on his finger.

I asked him, “What branch were you?”

“Army.”

“Me too.”

He looked at me blankly and said, “I was in 2004 to 2008.”

Then he asked me haltingly, “Are you okay? You sound like you’re hurting.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. First of all, it amazed me that this man, who obviously was in pain, wanted to know if I was okay. He was concerned about me, even though he was going through all sorts of hell. Second, I had been trying not to feel. When he asked me about it, I suddenly felt the hurt. All of it.

I told him slowly, “I hurt all the time. I’m scared. I wake up every day wondering if this kid is still alive. Every day.”

He nodded slightly. “Yeah.”

Jim looked at the time, and we had to get going. I stood up. So did John.

I grasped his hand and said, “Thanks for listening to me.”

He said weakly, “I’m sorry. My mind was on three different things at once. I tried to listen, but…”

“It’s okay. I appreciate what you did. Thanks for listening.”

“I guess I got to stay here a little longer…”, and his voice trailed off.

I told John, “Stay until you get healthy, man .”

He nodded, “Yeah.”

Who was serving? Who was being served?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 13th, 2019

I took her to an interview yesterday. She needed to talk to somebody from a state agency about help finding a job. The girl looked rough. The area around her right eye was very red and very swollen.

I asked her about it.

“So, your were using a facial mask and this happened? Was it an allergic reaction?”

She replied, “The people at the ER said that it’s a chemical burn, and there is possibly an allergic reaction too. They told me to use Neosporin and ice.”

“What exactly does Neosporin do?”

“It’s antibiotic. It prevents infection.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“Yeah, but it makes the skin look like it’s wet and oozing.”

“That’s not so good.”

Then she said, “The people at the meeting will think that I have an abusive boyfriend.

I paused and told her, “That would not be an unreasonable conclusion.”

She laughed, “I’ll explain to them that my face doesn’t usually look like this.”

She went on, “I just hope there isn’t any scarring. There is stuff I can use if there is scarring.”

I thought for a moment, then I said, “You know, without the swelling that would look like a really cool tattoo.”

She laughed. “That’s great. That’s what I need: a felony rap and a facial tattoo. That will get me a job.”

I smiled. “Yeah, I guess not.”

She went to her meeting. I hung around at a McDonald’s. After that, we drove to Walmart, so she could buy some ice. She came out of the store with several bags. Apparently, she needed other things too. She handed me one of the bags.

“Take this home with you”.

There were three small bags of frozen vegetables in the sack.

She told me, ” I bought these before I found the ice machine. I have ice in this other bag. I don’t need the veggies.”

“Okay”.

I took her back to her motel room.

This morning I texted her, “Do you need more ice?”

Response: “I probably will later.”

I told her that I would bring some to her.

I bought the ice, and drove to her motel. She came to the door. Her right eye was nearly swollen shut. The skin around it was dyed in colors not usually found in nature.

I thought she might want get out of her room for a while. I asked her, “Do you want to get something to eat?”

Her hands shook as she took the bag of ice from me. “No, I’m really tired. I just want to lie down.”

“Okay.”

I said goodbye to her. She closed the door to her room. I got into my car.

My hands shook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 11th, 2019

Last week my wife and I decided to watch a movie on Netflix. We searched randomly through the titles, and I saw that they had “Black Hawk Down”. Karin and I had never watched the film before, so we picked that one.

I used to fly Black Hawks, back when I was in the Army. When I first got out of flight school in 1981, I flew Hueys. Those were Vietnam War vintage. A year later, Sikorsky started fielding Black Hawks in West Germany. I transitioned from Hueys to Black Hawks, and I flew them until I left the Army in August of 1986.

Black Hawks were fun. A pilot could do all sorts of things with that aircraft. We typically cruised at treetop level at a speed of 140 knots (161 mph). We could put the helicopter into a 90 degree bank (basically flip it on to its side while making a turn), and we wouldn’t lose any altitude. We could carry a total of eleven soldiers as passengers in the back of the aircraft. Each Black Hawk had a hook on the bottom to haul loads up to 7000 pounds. It was a sweet machine.

It could also be unforgiving. Aviation is not for the timid or the careless. I remember spending hours practicing emergency procedures while flying the helicopter. A pilot has to be ready to react almost instantly to any crisis. There was no room for error. In a helicopter, if you have a problem, you can’t just pull over to the curb. It is not a good thing to run out of altitude, airspeed, and ideas all at the same time.

I served in the Army during peace time. I was just lucky. I never had anybody try to shoot me down. However, I did have a couple instances when I was scared shitless while flying. Those special moments stay with a person forever. So, I could feel my body tense up when I watched the two Black Hawks get shot down in the film. All I could think was, “Oh man…”, and shake my head.

I was thinking about the movie today, and I was thinking about Hans. The movie was mostly about the soldiers on the ground, and they reminded me of my son. Hans was in Iraq in 2011. The movie takes place in Mogadishu, Somalia. Even so, I figured that location probably closely resembled the places where Hans fought.

I texted him, “Did you ever watch Blackhawk Down? What did you think of it?”

Eventually he replied, “Yeah and it was alright the hole deal was messed up though.”

I wrote back to him, “Was the movie realistic?”

His answer: “It was.”

Later on he wrote to me, “Why u ask about the movie?”

I replied, “I watched it with Mom. I kept thinking of you and I felt sad.”

He texted back, “another good but sad movie is lone survivor very realistic.”

I wrote back, ” Okay. By the way, I miss you.”

His response: “Miss u to.”

He called me a little after that.

I answered the phone, “Hey, what’s up?”

“Oh, not much”, he said in his Texas drawl.

Hans then proceeded to bitch about work. I listened. He has a number of legitimate complaints. His pump truck broke down on the way to a concrete pour, and the customer and the salesman were upset about that. Hans vented for a while. It’s good for him. Then his mind wandered back to the subject of the movie.

I told Hans, “That was ugly when the Black Hawk got its tail rotor shot off. The pilot just drilled that thing into the dirt. We always trained what to do if we lost a tail rotor. It’s not too bad if you are at cruising speed, say 140 knots or so. Then the airflow around the helicopter will straighten it out. But if you are at a hover, you’re fucked. The rotor spins one direction, and the rest of the helicopter wants to spin the opposite way.

In the movie, they tell the Black Hawk pilot that he has smoke coming from around the tail rotor, and that was not good news at all. Then, when the pilot says, ‘I got some vibration in the pedals’, I knew that was bad. Really bad. He needed to get out of there. Like right now.”

Hans told me, “Yeah, the movie was realistic. I felt for the guys on the ground. I did stuff just like that. Remember in the movie those guys were stuck in that building on the corner, and they couldn’t get to the crash site?”

“Yeah, I remember that part.”

Hans went on, “I was in places like that. Just waiting and hoping that the support shows up. There were a couple times when I thought it was all over. We were out manned and out gunned. I thought it was the end.”

“Yeah.”

Then Hans said, “I learned to love the sound of a Warthog (A-10 jet), or an Apache helicopter. That was the sound of a good day.”

“Warthogs make kind of a mess on the ground.”

“Yeah, but they also let me know that I had some fire power up above.”

“True.”

Then Hans told me, “Other realistic movies are ‘Lone Survivor’ and ‘American Sniper’. ‘American Sniper is about Chris Kyle, a Texan.”

“Yeah, I remember reading about when he got killed.”

Hans said, “Yeah, he was helping a guy with PTSD. They were at the shooting range and the guy killed Kyle.”

“When I first read abut it, I thought it was crazy that Kyle went shooting with a guy who had PTSD. Then when you came home from Iraq, and we went shooting at that range in Caledonia, it all made sense to me.”

Hans replied, “You remember how focused I was?”

“Oh yeah. You were relaxed and totally focused. It was just you, the weapon, and target.”

“It was like that over there too. When things went south, and it was just me and the people shooting at me, time slowed down. I mean the bullets kept my attention, but it was like time just slowed down.”

“I believe that.”

“Well, I’ll let you go. Love you, Dad.”

“Love you too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 7th, 2019

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” – that is what is said to a person when they receive ashes on their forehead

” In the Jewish tradition, repentance is called teshuvah (תשובה), a Hebrew word translated as “returning.” One of the Hebrew words for sin is chet, which in Hebrew means “to go astray.” Thus the idea of repentance in Jewish thought is a return to the path of righteousness.” – from “My Jewish Learning”

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. It is a profoundly Catholic sort of day. It’s a day to fast and to abstain from meat. It’s a day to walk around with ashes on your forehead. Mostly, it’s day to change.

Our church had three services yesterday. I read to the congregation from the Scriptures at the noon prayer service. I proclaimed a short passage from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. One portion of the reading made a deep impression on me. It was:

“For he says:

‘In an acceptable time, I heard you,
and on the day of salvation, I helped you.’

Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.”

The word “now” is very important to me. For some reason, Christians get stuck in the past or in the future. We are either gazing back at the events of two thousand years ago, or we are looking forward to the Second Coming. Ash Wednesday forces us to be right here, right now. This day forces us to examine our lives, and that is always uncomfortable. This day encourages us to repent, to change, and to do it right now.

I don’t want to change. That’s a problem.

The Jews also have a day of repentance: Yom Kippur. I have found that the Jewish notion of sin is different than that of some Christians. As mentioned in the quotation cited at the beginning of this essay, one of the Hebrew words for sin, “chet”, simply means “to go astray”. I have heard that another Jewish definition of sin is “to miss the mark”, as in archery. The implication is that the sinner is not utterly depraved, but lost and confused. That matches my life experience. I have seldom, if ever, met bad people. I have met many who are completely clueless, and I count myself in that group. I am convinced that people seldom commit destructive acts out of malice or hate. People usually hurt others because they just don’t know what the hell they are doing. They (and I) miss the mark.

These Jewish terms do not have that connotation of inherent perversity that is often found when Christians of the Cotton Mather sort talk about sin. Calvinists, and some Catholics, are convinced that we are all pond scum, and utterly unworthy of God’s grace. They think of repentance as a way to avoid God’s righteous anger. There is this notion that we can somehow beat the rap. Sometimes, when I talk to other Christians about the troubles we encounter, they shake their heads sadly, sigh, and say, “Well, it’s a fallen world.” This roughly translates to: “We’re all fucked.” That is not exactly the “Good News” that the Gospel is supposed to be.

Ash Wednesday is not a time for people to beat themselves up. It is a time for people to get their act together, at least a little bit.

Later during the service, I was one of the people, along with our priest, who distributed ashes. I had never done that before. I stood in front of a line of people, as I was holding a small bowl of ashes. Each person came up to me and patiently allowed me to smear black stuff on their faces.

I used my thumb to trace the sign of the cross on each forehead. As I did so, I said to each individual,

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

I cried.

I don’t know why.