Frank is Emptiness

December 17th, 2024

A week ago, our friend, Rob, hosted a Christmas party at his home. We’ve known him for at least twenty years, and he has a get together every holiday season. My wife and I are comfortable with Rob. We know each other’s idiosyncrasies. However, we don’t know hardly any of his other party guests. Since we became Asher’s legal guardians and fulltime caregivers, Karin and I don’t get out much, and when we do, Asher is with us. It’s hard to socialize while watching over a four-year-old with unlimited energy. When we actually go to some kind of gathering, it usually feels awkward. It did last night.

I have a number of interests, but very few of them qualify as festive. So, it’s difficult for me to find appropriate topics of conversation for a Christmas party. My mind tends to settle into well-worn grooves, and even when I start by discussing relatively innocuous subjects, I wind up speaking about heavier things, like veteran’s issues. That doesn’t always play well.

The party guests made up a diverse group with the common denominator being that every one of them had some kind of connection with Germany. Rob has a deep interest in German history and culture, and the other people in his home also had that to some degree. My wife is from Germany, and I lived there for three years courtesy of the U.S. Army. The intensity of our feelings toward Deutschland have diminished over the years. We aren’t passionate about it. The German heritage is mostly background noise in lives at this point.

For a while, I sat at a table with a couple I did not know. Even now, after talking with them, I still don’t know them. They were the kind of people who are reserved and willing to absorb information from others, but don’t reveal much about themselves. By default, I talked about myself, perhaps too much. They asked me what I do, besides caring for Asher. I told them that I write for a veteran’s publication (this one), and that I tell stories (like I am doing now).

I talked a lot about our oldest son, Hans, who was deployed to Iraq with his Army unit back in 2011. I mentioned how hard it has been, even after all these years, for him to assimilate into the general population. I made the comment that Hans despises it when some random person shakes his hand and thanks him for his service. His attitude is basically, “Fuck you. You don’t know what I did, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He doesn’t mind if the greeting comes from somebody with a clue, but most people don’t have one when it comes to veterans.

The female member of the couple told me that Americans are treating veterans better now than they did during Vietnam. I disagreed. The public might not be calling the vets baby killers, but they still don’t give a damn about them. Helping a vet requires more than slapping a bumper sticker on your car that says, “Support the troops!” Giving a veteran a job would be more meaningful.

The male partner lost it at this point. He said,

“You’re telling us that everything we are doing is wrong. What if we can’t give them a job? What are we supposed to do? I’ve worked with these guys. They are angry at everybody. I don’t need that.”

Then he raised his voice and said, “It’s your trauma! You have to handle it! It’s not my problem!”

I couldn’t tell if he was directing his words at me, or at another angry bastard who exists in his memory.

Visibly upset, he asked me, “So, is there an answer?”

I was silent for a while. I replied quietly, “No. There isn’t an answer.”

Asher demanded my attention at that point. I went over to him. He was getting tired and wanted to go back home. My head swirled with thoughts, none of which I could verbalize at the time.

I remembered Dave, a guy I worked with for a long time. He was a Vietnam vet. He’d been in combat. He was a big man, often loud and obnoxious. He was easily offended. I had a short fuse. He and I butt heads frequently. It was like that for over twenty years. Then Hans got deployed to Iraq.

Overnight, our relationship changed. Every morning, when he came into work, Dave would yell to me,

“Frank, how is your boy doing?!”

We would talk about Hans. I would tell Dave what I knew. Dave would admonish me to be proud of Hans. I was proud of him. I still am.

Dave and I got along okay. We never became close friends, but we had mutual respect. Suddenly, we understood each other.

I remembered how, before Covid, I used to go to the local VA hospital once a week to hang out with the patients in the psych ward. I would listen to their stories. They would listen to mine. We understood each other and felt like comrades.

The guy at the party asked me if there was an answer. After thinking about it, I believe there is, but it’s not an easy answer. We live in a society where a person can look at a veteran and simultaneously consider that individual to be both a hero and a damn nuisance. It’s extremely difficult for a member of the general population to see a vet simply as another human being with all the struggles that everyone else has. The vet has to be able to trust a non-veteran enough to tell his or her story. That’s hard. The civilian has to be willing to put up the veteran’s anger and pain long enough to listen to the soldier. That’s hard too.

I can’t think of another way.

Just before we left the party, I went over to the guy whom I had upset. I told him, “I apologize for offending you.”

He made no response.

December 15th, 2024

Last night was rough. Our four-year-old grandson, Asher, wasn’t feeling well after drinking some warm oat milk. He was tired and his tummy hurt. I laid down next to him in bed and held him. He was close to falling asleep. Then he sat up and burped, but it was much more than just a burp.

Asher threw up on everything: on the bed, on the carpet, on himself, and on me. Within seconds the room was covered in vomit, and Asher was screaming his lungs out. There was a pungent odor of stomach acid and General Tso chicken. It was like a scene from “The Exorcist”.

My wife, Karin, quickly rushed in to help with the cleanup. She pulled our freaked-out preschooler into the bathroom and peeled his slimy clothing off his body. The boy sobbed loudly as she did that. I had the water running in the tub already. I stripped all the bed linen off and dumped it into the washer, along with Asher’s clothes. I had been wearing a pair of ratty jeans. I took my wallet and keys out of the pockets and just threw pants in the trash. I scrubbed the carpet next to bed and tried remove all the debris. After Karin got Asher into clean pajamas, she put on a new bed liner and fitted sheet. Asher calmed down.

Asher and I laid down again. He said that he felt okay. Then suddenly he didn’t feel okay. He vomited in the bed again. Karin and I repeated the cleaning cycle. This time we covered the bed with bath towels before we put Asher down to sleep. That was a good move because the boy still had a little more in him. The third puke fest was easily managed. I just had to replace one of the towels.

The third time was a charm. Asher curled up in my arms. As Asher relaxed, I thought about the evening’s chaos. Actually, what I thought about was how Karin and I would have managed all this if we were living in Gaza or Ukraine or Sudan. If Asher had become violently sick in place where there was no clean water available, how would we have washed him up? What if he had no clothes other than the ones he soiled? What if he needed a doctor? What if there was no place for him to rest, and no time for me to comfort him? I found that caring for a sick little boy was utterly exhausting. Could I have helped him if I was already worn out?

The fact is that Karin and I have all the resources we need to be Asher’s fulltime caregivers. Even when things are difficult, we can manage. Other people, probably millions of other people, cannot. I tried to imagine how it would feel to watch Asher suffer and have no way to ease that suffering. It hurt to even think about that.

Sometimes, like last night, caring for Asher feels overwhelming. I ask myself what I can do for some other caregiver somewhere else who has it worse. I don’t know. Pray for them? Give money to a charity? Probably the best thing I do is to love Asher as much as I can. My primary duty is to that child. God needs me to raise him. That might be all I can really do.

Before Asher finally dozed off last night, he said to me,

“Grandpa, I hear the rain.”

“Yeah, the drops are hitting the skylight. It’s good we are in here where it’s dry.”

Asher replied, “Yeah”.

Then he held me close and fell asleep.

December 5th, 2024

The following letter was written by me and published by the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, on December 1st, 2024.

Dear Editor: Donald Trump plans to start mass deportations of illegal immigrants as soon as humanly possible.

I considered writing about the humanitarian issues associated with this project, but then nobody would read this letter. Instead, I will concentrate on the economic problems that come with expelling an estimated 11 million people from the United States. People seldom care about morality, but they always care about their money.

I worked as a volunteer at Voces de la Frontera in Milwaukee for several years helping immigrants, some here legally, some not. The people I met were consistently hardworking. There are those who say that immigrants take away jobs from U.S. citizens. This assertion is manifestly false.

Immigrants take the jobs that Americans don’t want. Deporting undocumented immigrants from the U.S. will disrupt the operations of industries that depend on them (e.g., hospitality, agriculture, construction). Employers, if they can even find native-born Americans to do the jobs, will have to pay them higher wages to do the same work.

When the mass deportations begin, expect supply chain problems and higher prices in the stores. These expulsions are guaranteed to increase inflation. If you don’t care about human suffering, then think about your pocketbook.

December 3rd, 2024

I sat next to her at the dealership. I had been in almost the same position exactly one year prior, when I bought the young woman a Honda Accord. Unfortunately, she no longer owned the Accord. Two weeks ago, she had totaled the car in an accident. I don’t know all the details of the accident, and they don’t really matter that much. She wasn’t cited or arrested. However, she instantly became carless and in need of transportation. For purely selfish reasons, I agreed to go to the car dealership and help her to buy another ride. I was not willing to be her chauffeur, even for a short period of time. I told her that I had no intention of paying for the whole purchase. She had money from her insurance company, but it would not quite pay for a car, even a beater. I offered to cover what her claim settlement would not pay.

I despise car dealerships, passionately. I could try to describe this particular one, but they are all pretty much the same. The sales team is always composed of people working on commission, and they are either utterly bored or feverishly trying to convince a customer to buy a vehicle. I don’t envy those individuals. I could never do that kind of work. I would rather clean bathrooms. At least then I would still have my self-respect.

She had looked up a car online that she wanted. It was a 2012 Ford Focus. As expected, it was no longer there by the time we showed up. The sales rep looked on his computer for other cars in her price range, which was a rather low range.

He told her, “I have a 2009 Buick Lucerne for around $5K. It has 160,000 miles on it. There was only one owner, so it looks pretty clean.”

I looked at her. “You want to see it?”

She nodded to me with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

I glanced around the showroom. I noticed something odd.

I asked the sales rep, “”You have a gong here?’

He looked back over his shoulder at the large brass gong hanging in the room, with a mallet sitting next to it. “Yeah, we do.”

“So, do you hit the gong when you make a sale?”

He smiled and said, “The customer bangs the gong.”

I suspected we were not going to bang the gong.

The dealer went out to the lot to look for the car. That took quite a while. I have never understood how car dealerships can lose track of their vehicles. I worked for almost three decades at a trucking company and we always knew where every piece of equipment was. We made yard checks several times a day to keep track of the trucks and trailers. Years ago, I worked very briefly at a car dealership, and nobody there knew where their vehicles were. I remember walking around the lot for over an hour only to learn that the car I needed to find was offsite at a vendor for detailing. This place was very similar to my former employer’s.

At last, the salesperson pulled up in a black Buick. I let the young woman make the test drive on her own. She has frequently commented that I don’t know much about cars, so there was no reason for me to ride along. She came back looking unimpressed.

I asked her, “How was it?”

She replied, “The steering seemed…kind of loose.”

The salesman smiled and said, “It’s a Buick. It’s a soft, smooth ride. It’s like driving a sofa.”

Yeah, it is. As the young woman pointed out to me, it’s an old man’s car. It’s the kind of sedan that a guy would drive slowly to his colonoscopy appointment. Not really the type of vehicle for a woman who wants quick response and sharp handling.

I asked the salesperson about a warranty. There was none. The State of Wisconsin required the dealer to complete a list of safety checks, but that was it. As my dad used to say, the Buick had a “black top” warranty. Once the customer drives off the dealership’s black top and into the street, the warranty is null and void.

We closed the deal. The guy came back from his boss with the numbers. It came up to $6500. I stared at the paperwork, and I considered trying to bring the price down a bit. Then I thought,

“What for? Maybe I can haggle and get the price down a couple hundred bucks, but then this guy would probably have to look me straight in the eye and lie to me. I would have to listen to that. There’s not enough money to make that kind of abuse worthwhile.”

I wrote a check. Some guy from finance gathered us up and sat us down in his office. Papers were signed. Money changed hands. The young woman had a car, and I had smaller sum in my bank account.

The salesperson thanked us profusely. We shook hands. The young woman drove off in her car. I left in mine.

The gong was silent.

December 1st, 2024

Our grandson, Asher, will be four years old tomorrow. At times, he seems much older than that. He often acts like the preschooler that he is, but sometimes he surprises me. Years ago, when our youngest son, Stefan, was as old as Asher, the pastoral associate at our church described him as having “an old soul”. Stefan had a maturity and confidence (sometimes cockiness) that was unusual for a boy his age. Asher is like his uncle in that respect. They both are wise beyond their years.

Asher can be a handful. He needs things to be a certain a way, and he freaks out when they aren’t. It might be how I set the table for a meal. It might be how I slice him some cheese. It might be how I move his toys out of my way. Asher has had four years of chaos and instability in his life. I think that he gets upset about minor changes because he needs some kind of control over his environment in order to feel safe. Still, it can be infuriating to me when nothing I do for him seems to be right. I rapidly run out of patience with the boy. When I do so, he has a meltdown, and only calms down after he tells me with tears in his eyes,

“Grandpa, pick me up!”

I do, and he slowly relaxes in my arms. I start to relax too. I’m old, and it takes my body quite a while to let go of negative energy. The last time I held him after we had a confrontation, he looked at me and asked,

“Grandpa, are you okay?”

I thought for a while, shook my head, and replied, “I don’t know.”

Then he asked, “Are okay a little bit?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I’m okay a little bit.”

I held him some more. He rested his head on my right shoulder. Then he said,

“Grandpa, I like you.”

“I like you too.”

Asher told me, “I like you as much as I love you.”

That stumped me. I never had a little boy say that to me. I’m not sure I ever had anyone say that to me. I didn’t say anything. I just held him a bit tighter.

Asher is wise for a four-year-old.

November 29th, 2024

A few weeks ago, my wife, our grandson, and I were visiting family in Texas. We spent the vast majority of our time hanging around with our three Texan grandkids and their mom. While little Asher played with his cousins and Karin knit, I talked with our daughter-in-law, Gabby. She was always busy with washing clothes and chasing after her toddlers. At some point in the day, she started cooking supper. One day she decided to make corn bread and pinto beans. She told me that it was one of her favorite meals from her childhood.

That made me think. Why did she eat corn bread and beans as a child? The short answer to that question was that corn bread and pinto beans were cheap, and her parents had an extremely tight budget. Gabby also said that they ate a lot of Hamburger Helper. I assume that they could afford hamburger that required help. She mentioned that she and her siblings ate a lot of ramen noodles, cereal, and grilled cheese sandwiches.

I asked Gabby if she ate fried bologna when she was young. Her answer was “yes” to that. I also ate fried bologna as a child. Her answer made me remember other foods that I ate when I was kid. Most of them I don’t eat any more, but I still recall what they were. I have a good idea why my family ate what they ate. It wasn’t necessarily because they liked the food.

I am convinced that in many instances a person’s choice of diet is dictated by money, or lack of it. It was like that in my family of origin, and it was like that in my parents’ families. They had to make the weekly paycheck stretch, and they looked for bargains. What showed up on the kitchen table was often the result of making difficult economic choices.

For instance, corn bread is cheap to make. My mom didn’t make cornbread, but she made polenta, which is a boiled cornmeal dish that she served in the form of a loaf. Polenta is an Italian food, but we weren’t Italian. Our people were originally from Slovenia, which is a tiny Slavic country right next to Italy. So, in our house we ate foods that were from Slovenia, or from the neighboring ethnic groups (Germans, Hungarians, Italians and people from the Balkans). With rare exceptions, these dishes were meals that peasants would eat.

I had six younger brothers, so whatever my parents cooked needed to plentiful. Stews and soups fit that criterion. We had goulash. We always had pea soup right after Easter. In the spring, my mom would put in the pot whatever scraps were left over from the Easter ham, along with the bone, and let the soup simmer until every particle of protein was dissolved in the soup. We ate sarma, which consists of ground meat of some sort mixed with rice and wrapped in sour cabbage leaves. We ate sausages and potatoes and sauerkraut. Regardless of what was served, there were rarely if ever any leftovers.

My dad’s family took the strict budget diets to the next level. They used to eat “paprika speck”. “Speck” is the German word for bacon. Paprika speck was lard, plain and simple. It had microscopic pieces of bacon embedded in the fat. They ate it like butter. They spread it on bread and sprinkled a spice, like paprika or pepper, on it. That was lunch for them. Lard was also used for any kind of frying. There were no cooking sprays. My mom had three big containers in her kitchen. One was for flour, one for sugar, one for coffee, and one for lard.

They also ate cheap cuts of meat: hearts, livers, kidneys. They had a garden and ate whatever was in season. In early summer, they had big lettuce salads with oil and vinegar for a dressing. Later in the season, they ate whole tomatoes like they were apples. My grandparents and my mom did a lot of canning. They bought fruits and vegetables when they were plentiful and cheap, and then they preserved them for the winter. My dad made sauerkraut in the basement. It smelled like an animal had crawled into the house and died in a corner.

My family had a root cellar to store potatoes, onion, and apples. My dad hung chains of sausages from the ceiling in the cellar so that they would dry out. Our family was not the only one to do that. I had a friend whose family was from Sicily. His folks would hang up pepperoni and salami to dry and harden. My friend joked that you could tell if a salami was hard enough by testing it. If you could drive a nail into a wooden board with it, it was ready. When sausages were rock hard, a person could slice them paper thin and then put them on a piece of bread. That’s how you made them last.

Would I eat these foods now? Some I would. Like pinto beans and corn bread are for Gabby, there are some childhood foods that I remember fondly. I like to eat fresh tomatoes. I like pea soup with ham in it. Food links a person to their history. Maybe that is the important thing.

November 27th, 2024

Our three-year-old grandson, Asher, is sitting at the kitchen table, watching YouTube videos about monster trucks and eating a slice of raisin bread. He seems to be in a good mood. He’s looking healthy today. Two days ago, he wasn’t.

Two days ago, we took the little boy to his pediatrician. Asher was hurting. He had been having bouts of diarrhea and abdominal pain for ten days, and nothing seemed to make him better. Over the course of the ten days, my wife and I had taken to boy to the ER three times. The first time we went there because we had no idea what was causing the ailment. The doctor told us during that visit that he probably had a wicked stomach virus, and it would have to run its course. Three days later, we were at the ER again because Asher had blood in his diaper. The doctor at that time told us that his repetitive explosions of poop had caused an abrasion on his rectum, and that it would heal quickly once the diarrhea stopped. They told us to buy some Ibuprofen for the pain, and we did that. Two days later, we were at the ER one more time. This time we were at our wits end. I had been up all night with Asher because he had an endless series of tiny bowel movements. I changed his diaper probably twenty times. The third ER physician also assumed that Asher had a virus and told us to get a medicine to slow the flow of diarrhea down. We did that too.

Nothing helped. Asher was in pain every time he excreted. I was exhausted from getting up at night with him repeatedly. The whole experience was getting scary. As Asher’s fulltime caregiver, I was worried. Worry was gradually turning to panic as he cried every time he had to go.

Two days after the last ER visit, we saw his doctor. Asher was in a bad way. He cried and screamed during the entire time. His doctor is on the staff of the local children’s hospital, so he wasn’t bothered by that. He examined Asher and asked us about his symptoms. Then he immediately ordered an x-ray of the boy’s abdomen. He told us,

“I think I know what this is, but I have to be sure.”

Asher had his x-ray made, and the doctor showed it to us. He asked us,

“Do you see the dark areas?”

“Yes.” (There were many dark areas.)

“Those are places where the bowels are full of stool. He has an obstacle made of hard stool in his rectum that is blocking everything but the liquid feces. It seems like he has diarrhea, but he doesn’t really. Actually, he has constipation. There is name for this, encopresis.”

The doctor prescribed an industrial strength laxative for Asher. It was like what I took when I had my colonoscopy. He also prescribed Ex lax to get things moving. We started giving Asher the meds that afternoon. That night, after he went to bed, the dam broke. I spent almost all of the night changing Asher’s diapers. It was literally a shitshow. We will keep giving the meds for the next several days to ensure that he gets his bowels cleaned out. He seems emptier already.

He’s been sleeping quite a bit since he started on this protocol. It literally takes a lot out of him. He crawled into bed with me to take a nap this morning and I held him close. He won’t sleep unless he rests his head on the bicep of my left arm. He got comfortable and slowly closed his eyes. His left hand reached for my right. He didn’t want to hold my hand. He just wanted to touch it. Then he fell asleep.

We were both at peace.

November 13th, 2024

Caring for a sick kid is always stressful. It is especially hard to do if the small child is in pain and sobbing uncontrollably. That was the case with Asher, our little grandson, early on Sunday morning. He had been struggling with bouts of diarrhea since Friday. His condition seemed to be getting worse. The volume and intensity of his cries were growing stronger. My wife and I needed to do something.

That something was to take him to the local urgent care. We didn’t really want to go to the emergency room because we were not convinced that he had a true emergency. However, we couldn’t wait for the following morning to take the boy to his pediatrician. The situation did in fact seem to be urgent.

There are actually a couple different urgent care facilities not too far from our home. We took him to the one affiliated with the office of our primary care physician. We have had good experiences with his office, and we hoped that this urgent care would give us the same level of service.

I held Asher in my arms as I approached the lady at the front desk to check in. She was rather chipper for being there early on a Sunday. I handed her Asher’s insurance card and then she asked me about my relationship to Asher.

“I’m his grandfather and his legal guardian.”

She replied, “Do you have a copy of the court paper showing that you are his guardian?”

“What?”

She said, “We need to have proof that you are actually his guardian in order to treat him. You need to have that with you.”

After a short pause, I asked her, “How would I know this?”

She smiled and said, “Oh, you wouldn’t know it. That’s why I’m telling you now. It’s to protect the child. Hasn’t anyone ever asked you this before?”

“No, nobody has. I don’t have the anything on me. What exactly what do I need?”

She replied breezily, “Oh, it’s a paper from the court with a stamp on it. We will just scan it and then he will be in our data base. If you want, you can run home and get it and then come back.”

That dumbfounded me. Here I was with a sick little boy, and they won’t touch the boy unless I can show my legal status. How bad does something need to be to qualify as urgent? I knew I have the paperwork at home, but I had no idea exactly where it was. Going on a treasure hunt was not going to work.

Apparently, I stood there for too long lost in thought because she said to me,

“Or you could go down the corridor to the ER.”

I consulted with my wife. The boy was miserable. We were tired. This woman was useless to us. We walked to the emergency room.

That was quick and easy. We were in and out of the ER in 45 minutes or so. The doctor was good with kids, and he had no trouble examining Asher. He determined that Asher had a nasty stomach virus. There wasn’t much that we could do but make Asher comfortable and let the virus run its course. We were relieved that it wasn’t anything worse than that.

After we got home again, I dug around for the magic paper from the court. I found it, and I put it aside for the next time.

November 21st, 2024

When driving to visit our son, Hans, the GPS usually takes us through the forests and pastures of eastern Texas. We travel around big towns and through the small ones. and going by the back roads is actually faster than trying to get to Hans’ home by freeway. However, we often need to slow down along the way. The advantage to reducing speed is that it gives the traveler the opportunity to observe his or her surroundings. I try to do that.

I’ve noticed than that in the small Texan towns, regardless of size, there seems to be at least half a dozen churches, usually a mixture of Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal. Near Huntsville I saw a congregation called “Branded for Christ”. That looked interesting, but rather weird. It sounded like a cowboy cult. In any case, the spiritual soil of eastern Texas is supersaturated with Calvinism. It permeates everything. The region is definitely part of the Bible Belt.

Also, I’ve noticed a plethora of billboards with Christian themes along the highways. We have those up north too, but not in such profusion. It makes me wonder what the purpose of these are and who the audience is. It baffles me.

It appears to be a hard sell form of evangelization, but I can’t figure out who the sponsors of the billboards are trying to reach. I don’t think they are trying to reach people who have never heard of Jesus. I doubt that anyone living in the area falls into that category. Even if by chance, a religiously ignorant person traveled through the region, they would most likely just be puzzled by the messages on the signs.

A popular message on the billboards is “Jesus is the Answer!”. My immediate response to that is “What was the question?” Another classic line is “Jesus Saves!” I mentioned that sentence to a friend of mine at the synagogue. He smiled and quipped,

“Jesus saves. Moses invests.”

There is the possibility that the billboards are there to call back the backsliders. I guess then the question is how far have they backslid? To make sense of the signs, a person to have some understanding and appreciation the Christian tradition. However, if the individual has totally jettisoned that belief system, then the billboards are ineffective. If a person thinks that the Bible is just a book like any other book, it was all a waste of money and effort to use that message to reach them.

I am thinking that the billboards are mainly to encourage the true believers to stay the course. The signs exist to convert the converted.

November 20th, 2024

A long journey with a small child is by its very nature a challenge. A road trip with a sick little boy increases the difficulty of that trek exponentially. This we learned as Karin and I drove home to Wisconsin from Texas. Our almost-four-year-old grandson, Asher, caught a virus somewhere, and he had been struggling with a head cold and a cough. Now, as we were on the last legs of the trip, he also had bouts of diarrhea. This created problems.

Asher is generally a wonderful boy, but he can be moody and particular about how certain things are done. When he does not feel well, his mood grows worse, and likewise his behavior. It’s this way with adults too, but somehow the tantrums seem more intense coming from a preschooler.

Karin and I had divided the journey home into four bite-sized pieces. Madisonville, Texas to Tulsa, Oklahoma on the first day. Then, Tulsa to Lawrence, Kansas on the second. It should be noted that Lawrence is the home of the Yarn Barn, a pilgrimage site for knitters and weavers. My wife falls into both of those categories. On the third day, we went from Lawrence to Coralville, Iowa. The final day was to be the sprint home. That was the plan anyway.

The night before the last segment of the trip, Asher slept poorly. He rolled around and moaned. His tummy hurt. None of these things were good omens. He refused to eat anything when had breakfast at the hotel. Also, not a good sign. He just wasn’t feeling well.

After breakfast, we emptied out our hotel room and dragged a cart full of bags down to the foyer. I walked to the parking lot to grab the SUV. I drove the RAV4 near the hotel entrance and saw Asher sobbing uncontrollably. Awesome. Now what is going on?

Asher stared at me with tears streaming down his cheeks. He cried,

“I wanted to go with you to the parking lot!”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“But I wanted to! You have to take the car back to the parking lot!”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Yes, you ARE!”

There was a standoff. Karin, the only rational person in our group, suggested we load up the car. I tried to lower my blood pressure. Eventually, after we had all our stuff wedged into the RAV, I told Asher,

“If you get in and be good, I’ll drive back to the parking lot.”

He sniffled, and said, “Okay, but first you got wipe my tears.”

I wiped his tears. He prefers that I use the sleeve of my hoodie to do that. Then we all got into the car, and I slowly drove back to the exact same parking spot I had previously vacated. I asked him,

“We’re here. Is this okay? Can we go now?”

He said softly, “It’s okay, Grandpa.”

I wanted to put some miles behind us, but that was not to be. As we crossed the Mississippi, Asher loudly proclaimed that his tummy hurt. As fate would have it, sitting on a bluff on the riverside was the first rest stop in Illinois. I took the turn off and stopped at the welcome center.

We got out of the car, and Asher informed us, “I pooped.” No surprise there. I took him into the bathroom and dutifully changed his diaper. There wasn’t much in there besides his butt. We went back outside. A few minutes later, the boy told us, “I pooped again.” This time he wanted my wife to change him. So, she took him into her bathroom and did the same that thing that I had done. Just a smidgeon of feces, but it was enough to require a change.

We all went together to the playground a couple hundred feet away from the welcome center. He played for a while and then told us,

“I can’t go down the slide.”

“Why?”

“I pooped.”

I muttered darkly. Once again, he wanted Oma to change his diaper. She asked him if she could do it at the playground. She pointed out that there was a cushiony pad on the surface of the playground. Asher agreed to change outdoors. The was poop, but not a lot.

Asher played some more. I was eager to move on. He announced, “I pooped again.”

Oh well, fourth time is a charm. When Karin opened up the diaper, it was apparent that a shit grenade had exploded in it. She started to clean him up and said,

“We are running out of wipes.”

“That’s no good.”

Seeing as she has a great deal of experience with this sort of thing, she used a clean portion of the contaminated diaper to wipe his ass. She managed to get him sanitary again with what wipes she had available. He felt better.

He played a for another couple minutes. We bundled Asher into the car. He watched monster truck videos and ate an energy bar. After several miles, he dozed off.

I floored the accelerator.