Frank is Emptiness

August 14th, 2024

A courtroom is a strange place. People do not often go there voluntarily. A courtroom, like a hospital emergency room, is a place where a person only goes when they are forced to do so. However, unlike an emergency room where people are there to help you, a courtroom may not hold anyone who has your interests at heart. A courtroom is where laws are upheld and justice is done, in theory at least. Most of the time, a courtroom is a space where bureaucrats decide the futures of people they do not know.

The Milwaukee County Courthouse was completed in 1931. It is built in a neoclassical style. Like the Roman structures it mimics, the courthouse is designed to be imposing., both inside and out. The courtrooms within are spacious. They have high ceilings and walls with dark wood paneling. The furniture inside the chambers is made from heavy wood. Sounds echo in these spaces. The power and the wealth of the State are manifest in these courtrooms. The individual citizen is made to feel insignificant. I cannot believe that is by accident. Whatever happens in these rooms is deemed to be important simply because of the surroundings.

The Safety Building is next door. It is also imposing, but in a way that is more reminiscent of the Soviet Union than of ancient Rome. The Safety Building also has courtrooms, but not like the ones in the courthouse. I escorted someone to their court appearance two days ago and I was struck by the difference. The courtroom we entered was cramped and crowded. I doubt that the area was originally intended to even be a courtroom. The room looked like it was of ad hoc design, with furnishings from Walmart. The whole place screamed low budget. Lives are changed in this space as much as they are changed in the more elegant courtrooms nearby. The defendants that enter this courtroom are facing felony raps just like the accused persons in the courthouse.

Maybe it all changed after Covid, but I noticed that the small courtroom had screens everywhere. It wasn’t like that years ago. Many of the hearings are done with Zoom. Nearly everyone I saw in the room was staring at a computer monitor. The person who came with me checked in with a sheriff’s deputy who immediately went back to playing Mah Jong on his screen after he checked off the defendant’s name on his list.

I also noticed that most of the people in the room knew each other. The lawyers and the prosecutors bantered. The judge knew everyone. The only folks who were not part of this exclusive club where the defendants whose lives were about to change radically.

Most of the interactions during the hearings were mundane. Usually, nothing of significance was decided. Perhaps an extension of time was granted. Maybe a person got a new public defender. Often, the biggest thing decided was the next court date. The judicial process grinds on for a long time. I think that the person with me had been to court six times already. Next month they will get to go again.

There was one exception to this rule. A young man who was incarcerated appeared in court via Zoom to request a reduction in his bond. Actually, his attorney made the request on his behalf. The state required that he come up with $7500 cash bond for him to get out of jail. The public defender explained to the judge that neither he nor his family had that kind of money. She asked for it to be reduced to $500. She spoke about his desire to live with his mother, and his need of stability. She threw in the fact that he was working on getting a high school diploma. She tried to convince the judge that the young man wasn’t really a threat to the community.

The prosecutor disagreed. She mentioned that the accused had been out on bond before this latest arrest. His previous arrest was for a firearm offense. His most recent arrest was also for a firearm violation. There appeared to be no learning curve. In fact, the second offense was more aggravated than the first one.

The prosecutor had also indicated that the victim of the alleged crime wanted to speak to the court via Zoom. The victim had not logged in at the agreed time, and the court had proceeded without their input.

Then the victim logged in.

Once she was on zoom, the judge allowed her to speak. Boy, did she.

“He don’t have no right to ask me to buy him no firearm! He don’t have no right to whup my ass in an alleyway when I wouldn’t! I got three kids to care for! He’s a hothead. Everybody tells him that. I don’t care what y’all do, but keep that mother fucker away from me!”

The above is a condensed version of what the victim said. Everybody just sat and listened. The accused listened. His attorney listened. The judge listened.

The judge tried to calm the woman down, but she was on a roll. She finally said to him,

“Are you going to let me continue or are you going to keep interrupting me?!”

Amazingly, the judge remained calm. He thanked the victim for her input. I suspect that is when he hit the mute button.

He turned to the court and said, “I can’t reduce the bond to $500. I will lower it to $5000. I see that the defendant is to have no contact with the victim. I am adding that he is to have contact with her home.”

The accused was not liking this. To me, the judge was telling the defendant, “Make yourself comfortable. You aren’t going anywhere.” I think the young man got the same message.

The accused was eager to speak his peace. His attorney cut him off:

“Don’t talk!”

Sage advice.

The judge explained to the defendant that he could go to a break room via Zoom with his public defender to discuss the decision in more depth. Sometime later, the victim figured out that nobody was listening to her anymore and logged off.

If you want to learn about the American justice system, sit in a courtroom for a while.

August 9th, 2024

Forty years ago today, Karin and I got married in a civil ceremony at the Rathaus in Bad Mergentheim, West Germany. Two days later, we got married in a religious service in the Evangelisch (Lutheran) church in Karin’s home village of Edelfingen. Now is a time to reflect on what has happened during the last four decades. One question that keeps coming back to me is:

“How did we ever get this far?”

My answer is: “I don’t know.”

Karin and I briefly looked at old wedding pictures. I don’t enjoy doing that. I get an overpowering feeling of melancholy when see the photos. Part of that is due to the fact that many of the people in the pictures are dead. That happens after forty years go by. Even the people who have survived to this point are barely recognizable to me. I stare at the images of Karin and me, and I have to ask myself, “Who the hell are they?”

Karin and I have changed. That’s obvious to ourselves and to anybody else who knows us. I don’t just mean in physical appearance. That’s the least of it. Our beliefs, our values, and our attitudes have matured. In a very real sense, the two newlyweds in the pictures are strangers to me. I am not sure what I have in common with the man I was back in 1984.

The beginning of our relationship is still a mystery to me. I know how it happened, but I have never understood why. I was a career military officer. She was a pacifist. I flew helicopters. She was a seamstress. I was American, and Karin was (and still is) a German. The attraction, whatever it was, did not have a rational basis. It was intuitive. It didn’t make sense then, and it probably doesn’t now.

In her song Because the Night, Patti Smith said, “Love is an angel disguised as lust”. That angel visited us early on, but she didn’t stay for our entire marriage. Passion fades over time. There had to be other reasons for us to stay together. I asked Karin once why she married me. She replied that she fell in love with my soul. I guess I fell in love with hers too.

In a long-term relationship (it doesn’t have to be a marriage), there is the potential for each partner to experience personal growth. I think that Karin and I pushed each other to become the man or woman we were always meant to be. Sometimes, we gently nudged each other. Sometimes, we gave the other one a swift kick in the ass. Mostly, we showed each other new things. I learned to speak German by dating her. She introduced me to Waldorf education when our kids were of school age. I took her to mosques and synagogues and Buddhist temples. We had our own interests, but we opened doors for each other. We saw the world through each other’s eyes.

I guess I always knew that Karin was a fiber artist. After all, she requested a spinning wheel rather than an engagement ring before we got married. I was attracted by her creativity. I still am. She can do magic with her hands. She spins and knits and weaves and dyes, and God only knows what else. She has that wild genius that makes her endlessly inventive, but it also keeps her from finding her car keys.

We stuck together. I don’t how we did that, but we did. Our marriage was a covenant. We were committed to stand by each other even when one of us fell apart. Carl Jung once said that in a marriage each partner agrees to hold the leash to the other’s nethermost beast. Karin held the leash to mine many times.

Now, after forty years, our marriage is strong because we have a common purpose. That purpose has a name: Asher. We have to work together to raise this little grandson of ours. We still quarrel at times. We still have disagreements. But we have to work as a team for the sake of somebody else, somebody who needs both of us all the time. Maybe we have always had a common purpose, but we didn’t think to name it.

In his book, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran speaks of marriage:

“You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your ashes. Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”

Karin and I are close together, but we let those winds swirl and dance in our midst.

July 29th, 2024

Yesterday

A few days ago, I took my little grandson, Asher, to the playground. As he was digging in the sandbox, burying some Hot Wheels cars and then promptly forgetting where he put them, I gazed up at the clear sky. It was Sunday, a little bit after noon. As I looked up, I saw the USAF Thunderbirds flying in formation toward Lake Michigan. The Milwaukee Air and Water Show was going on, and the pilots were on their way to thrill the crowd at the lakefront.

I had driven past the lakefront the day before. The Thunderbirds put on a show then too. The beach was packed with people. There was no parking anywhere. Everybody wanted to sit back in their lounge chairs, crack open a beer, and watch the pilots do their tricks.

Well, maybe not everybody was there. I know friends in the peace movement who view the air show with absolute disgust. They say that it is shameful to waste millions upon millions of dollars on aircraft whose sole purpose is to kill and maim human beings. The money could be used to feed, house, and educate people. I tend to agree with their opinion. We spend much more money destroying than creating. I feel certain that some of my friends were protesting the Air Force display in some lonely vigil. They usually do that.

Yet…

I remember flying. I never flew jet fighters, but I flew Army helicopters. I can recall how it felt to be a pilot. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes I had a pure, unadulterated feeling of joy. I use the word “joy” intentionally. I often truly felt joyful when I flew. I remember flying once in the clouds. It was dark and claustrophobic in the cockpit. Then we broke out through the top of them. Suddenly, there was a bright blue sky above me and the purest white below. That moment was like a religious epiphany. It was absolutely glorious.

As I watched the Thunderbirds turn together in formation high above me, I had a hint of that old feeling. I don’t know if the fighter pilots are doing the right thing. I don’t know if I did the right thing all those years ago. I do know that they feel what I felt when I was in the air. That feeling can never be taken away from them. It can’t be taken from me.

July 23rd, 2024

I went to visit our new doctor for the first time. Our previous family physician retired, and we had to get a replacement. My wife and I chose the new doctor basically at random. We figured we would give him a try, and then decide on whether or not to continue seeing him.

After speaking with his assistant and finding out that my blood pressure was through the roof, the doctor walked into the office. His age is probably fortyish. He looks professional in a rumpled sort of way. He gave me the impression of being both competent and approachable. I like that.

As is standard nowadays, he checked his computer after greeting me. Apparently, due to a hack on the system of our previous doctor, the new guy had precious little to read. He turned his screen toward me and said,

“See this? You’re a ghost.”

The screen was completely blank.

I asked him, “Sooooo, what should we talk about?”

He shrugged. “Just start.”

I told him, “Okay, here’s the deal. My wife and I are legal guardians and fulltime caregivers for our three-year-old grandson, Asher. I need to live until eighty. That’s when he becomes an adult. Fourteen years from now. I am aware that you have no control over when I die. However, let’s work on this.”

He smiled. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

Be advised that living until eighty implies more than just mere survival. I have to be functioning both mentally and physically. (I’m thinking of Joe Biden here). It does no good for me to be alive but sitting in a wheelchair stewing in my own juices. I need to be of use to our grandson.

We talked for half an hour. I told him about the medical history of my family: heart disease, Alzheimer’s, alcohol abuse, and a touch of diabetes. I explained our current situation at home: utter chaos.

He made a note, “Major emotional stressors.”

Indeed.

He decided to crank up the dosage on my blood pressure medication and have me take some blood tests. I’ll get a complete physical as soon as Medicare agrees to pay for it.

It’s good to have goals. As it stands now, Asher will need me and my wife for the foreseeable future. That may change, but I can’t see it happening. A lot of old people die because they no longer feel that they have a purpose in life. We have a purpose, and we have that in spades. There is no question regarding what Karin and I need to do with the time we have left remaining to us. It all revolves around Asher.

I am not so naive as to think the world cannot function without me. I remember a story I read about Charles de Gaulle. It was from a time after the end of WWII, when he was out of power. A staunch supporter of de Gaulle strongly encouraged him to take control of France. The man told de Gaulle,

“You must do this! You are irreplaceable!”

Charles de Gaulle replied dryly, “The cemeteries are full of irreplaceable men.”

True.

Asher needs me now. He will probably need me tomorrow. He won’t always need me. I just have to try and be here for him as long as I can. At some point I will leave him, and that vacuum will be filled by somebody else. That’s okay.

July 26th, 2024

I went to the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin yesterday. It’s been months since I was last there. The temple (or gurdwara) is not far from where I live. I used to go there often to pray or meditate. Recently, I realized that I needed to do that again.

I am not a Sikh, and I’ll never be one. It really doesn’t matter. Over the years, I have found that the rituals and theologies of different religious traditions aren’t that important to me. I have been in mosques, synagogues, and a wide variety of churches. I have spent time with Buddhists and Native Americans while they chanted or prayed. Despite their obvious differences, each tradition has an innate sense of the holy, and they design their worship spaces to reflect that understanding. The Sikh temple is not any more sacred than a church. However, the Sikh temple is almost always open. Churches generally are not.

When I was a boy, it was normal for a church or a chapel to be open to anybody at all times during the day. Anybody, regardless of belief, was welcome to wander into the sanctuary and pray or meditate or just rest for a while. I suspect it was the same way with the mosques and the synagogues. I know that, years ago, I could walk into the Sikh temple whenever I liked, and nobody gave me a second look. I was and still am usually the only non-Indian in the place. However, that never mattered. Until a decade ago.

In August of 2012, a man took advantage of the Sikh hospitality and killed six of the congregants. The police eventually shot and killed the man. Since that time, the doors of the temple are locked, and a visitor has to ring the doorbell to get somebody to open up the doors of the gurdwara. However, there is almost always a person available to do that, and they are consistently friendly and welcoming. Despite the security precautions, the temple is still a good place for me to go.

In our time, fear has taken hold of us, and it is rare to find a sacred space that is not heavily defended. I go to a synagogue, and there is an armed guard at the door for every gathering of the community. A local mosque always has guards on hand. The churches are locked tight, and often there is nobody willing or able to let anybody inside. The places that we need the most to connect with the Divine are the places that are unavailable to us.

I know that God is everywhere and that I can reach out to Him/Her any time I want. However, sacred spaces exist to make it a bit easier for humans to touch God. I can’t verbally express what makes a place holy for me. I just know it when I am there. It’s not necessarily rational. It’s an intuitive thing.

When I sit on the floor in the gurdwara, I know I am in the presence of God. That’s enough.

July 12th, 2024

My wife and I took our grandson with us on a road trip last month. We went to visit family in Texas. With the exception of Illinois, we drove through states that would qualify as “red” politically. Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Iowa tend to be conservative. The GPS took us on a number of back roads through these states, and we got to see a lot of wide-open spaces. Some of these states might have liberal-leaning urban areas, but the rural landscape was definitely patriotic in a traditional way. There was no shortage of American flags waving the breeze.

The areas we traversed were beautiful but often boring. A person can only look at so many corn and wheat fields. I did much of the driving, and I was ever alert for anything that was even remotely interesting. Once in a while, something unusual caught my eye. After some time, I noticed a pattern.

Over the years, my family and I have made this journey numerous times. I notice changes. I was surprised to see a number of solar arrays. Some were huge, covering entire fields, and others were small, private affairs. When we drove down to Texas a year ago, many of these solar electrical systems did not exist. They do now, and I wondered why.

As I mentioned earlier, we traveled through red states. These places are not hotbeds for radical environmentalism. I am betting that eco-warriors are few and far between. Whoever decided to install these solar panels did not do so because of leftwing political beliefs. They did it for hard, cold economic reasons. They crunched the numbers and determined that they could make or save money by using renewable energy. Whatever solar energy systems I saw were there because of the persuasive power of the almighty dollar.

This is amazing to me. We are at a tipping point where it is now more affordable to use renewable energy than to use fossil fuels. Politics play a role in how we produce energy, but that is being superseded by the considerations of efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Years ago, I used to go to annual the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair. The fair takes place in Custer, Wisconsin in June. I didn’t go to the fair every year, and I haven’t gone for the last ten years or so. What has impressed me is how the fair has evolved over the years. Renewable energy used to the domain of visionaries and cranks. No more.

The first time I visited the fair was in the mid-90’s. It was a small, scruffy gathering of mostly hippies and serious tree huggers. I remember some guy giving a demonstration about how to build a functioning solar oven with only a large black box and plenty of aluminum foil. All the demonstrations were like that. The presenter was usually some person who lived off the grid and looked like he or she had stepped directly out of an issue of Mother Earth News. They came up with innovative ideas that actually worked but were often inefficient and definitely inconvenient.

About ten years later, I attended the fair again. It was larger and there was a more eclectic population. There was one building designated solely for solar energy exhibits. I was shocked to see people in the place wearing suits. Ah yes, now there were sales to be made and profits to be earned. There were slick, professional-looking displays. Companies from all over, including some guys from Germany, were showing their wares. Amateur hour was over.

I later purchased a system from a company that had been selling solar hot water heaters. This was back around 2005. The system is simple and efficient. I still have the solar panel on the roof of our house. The panel continues to heat up antifreeze inside of copper tubing and a small photovoltaic pump circulates the fluid into an insulated water heater in the basement. A heat exchanger transfers the warmth of the antifreeze to the water in the tank. This solar water heater works in tandem with our conventional gas water heater. As long as the sun is heating the water, the gas hot water heater never turns on. Our gas bills during the summer are almost negligible. It works.

After that, my wife and I considered installing a solar electric system. We decided against doing that because the startup costs were too high. The money we needed upfront was $20K, and we did not have that kind of cash laying around. Also, it would have been difficult to set up a solar panel array because our roof was already covered with skylights and Solo tubes.

That was then. This is now. The technology available for using solar energy was still crude in the mid-2000’s. Looking at that equipment now reminds me of Fred Flintstone. Advances in solar technology have been rapid. The gear required today to install a photovoltaic system is more efficient and cheaper than it was twenty years ago, and it is likely that trend will continue.

My observations from our road trip are anecdotal, and perhaps inaccurate. I can only tell you what I saw, and what I saw tells me that change is coming and it’s coming fast.

July 14th, 2024

On Friday afternoon, I spent over an hour talking with an old friend. I hadn’t seen him for months, and there was a lot to say and hear. We sat next to each other at a bar and tried to catch up on things. Most of the conversation dealt with personal issues. My friend, Stan, is a church deacon, so we also discussed religion. Eventually, we got around to politics, in particular immigration. Stan made this comment before addressing the subject,

“Now, I know we see this differently.”

We do see the issue differently, based on our backgrounds and experiences. We are both okay with that. I respect his opinion and he respects mine. We are able look at a political topic from different perspectives and have a civil conversation. We don’t need to argue, and we don’t need to agree. The important thing is that we learn from each other.

People like Stan are rare, exceedingly rare. Usually, when I talk with people, even close friends or family, I have to filter what I say. There are subjects that are radioactive, and only elicit expressions of raw emotion. I don’t mind conversing with individuals who are passionate about something. They often speak the truth as they see it, and I appreciate hearing honest words. However, as I get older, I find it increasingly difficult to find people who are willing to listen to me. Sadly, I am also less patient with folks who have drastically different worldview from my own.

A day after my conversation with Stan, Donald Trump was shot. As I read about it, my first thoughts were,

“Game on.”

Political discourse in our country has degenerated for so long, that this event, or something like it, was inevitable. It would have been inspiring to see our country come together after the violence and ease off the endless verbal sparring. Apparently, that is not to be. At this moment in time, we know next to nothing about the shooter or his motivations. Yet, the Internet is on fire with accusations and conspiracy theories. It probably doesn’t matter who the assassin was or why he tried to kill Trump. His body wasn’t even cold, and people were already trying to fit him into their own narrative.

Now, a red line has been crossed, and it will be crossed again. There have been threats of political violence for months. Now, it’s here. Today, the RNC starts its weeklong gathering in Milwaukee, my hometown. I fear that there will be violence. Actually, I expect it. There are no more boundaries. No more taboos.

Game on.

July 7th, 2024

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” – Bob Dylan

We are getting a new roof installed on our house. We had not planned on doing that, but it’s going to happen anyway. It’s a small incident that, at least to me, indicates the direction of the future. I’ll try to explain.

Back on May 7th, we had a nasty thunderstorm roll through the area. We have always had thunderstorms in Wisconsin. They are nothing new. This storm was early for the season, and it was fierce. We had hail, which is also nothing new, but this storm produced hail that I had never seen before. We are used to small hailstones that might be as big as marbles. During the storm in May, we got large chunks of ice that looked like the ice cubes that come out of a machine. They were sharp and angular. For the first time ever, we had some damage. High winds slammed the hail against the west side of our house, and it tore up a couple window screens. After the weather cleared, I looked to see if the skylights were broken. They were intact, and I saw no other obvious problems. I got the screens fixed and thought no more of it.

Later, a young man from a roofing company came through the neighborhood. He was a storm chaser, looking for repair work to do. I let him do an inspection of the house for hail damage. He climbed up on to the roof. I hadn’t been up there. I don’t go on the roof anymore. That’s a bad life choice for an old guy like me. As I expected, he said that he found damage and encouraged me to file a claim with my insurance. I was leery of doing that, but I called the insurance company anyway. They told me that they would send out an adjuster to do their own inspection. I did not anticipate that the adjuster would find anything to fix.

I was wrong. I got a surprise call a week or so later and the person handling my claim told me that the company was paying $22K for needed repairs to the roof and gutters. I was dumbfounded by that. Really? Home insurance companies don’t hand out money like candy. They only make payouts when they have to do so. The fact is that, if I am getting money for a new roof, then probably most of the people in my neighborhood are getting something like that too. There are a lot of payouts being made.

I remember when I made the initial call to my insurance, I spoke with a young man who sounded world weary. He was helpful and polite, but obviously tired. I asked him if he was busy. He sighed and told me that he had been processing an endless list of damage claims from throughout the Midwest and the Great Plains. Extreme weather events were taking a serious toll.

All this makes me think of places like Florida, where for many people it is becoming next to impossible to get homeowner’s insurance. This seems to be the wave of the future. There are many climate change deniers, but insurance companies aren’t part of that population. Insurance companies crunch the numbers and coldly look at the statistics. They are about making money. It’s the free market in action. These corporations don’t think that climate change and the resulting extreme weather are fairy tales. They see these things as being very real.

It would be easy to dismiss my experience as an isolated incident. It’s not. A vast number of little things are adding up. For instance, I live near Milwaukee, and this part of the world just had its mildest winter ever recorded. I have lived here most of my life, and I know how cold the winters can be. This last winter season was slushy and rainy. I used the snowblower exactly once. That is extraordinary.

The climate changes are obvious to me. The only question is how is do we deal with them.

July 2nd, 2024

Hans called me yesterday from his home in rural Texas. He doesn’t call that often, but when he does, it’s about something he really wants to get off his chest. Usually, he wants to discuss the latest idiocy at his workplace, but not this time. This time, my oldest son had something else to tell me. He started right into it.

“Dad, I did a Good Samaritan thing on the way home today.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I was driving along that feeder road by I-45. You know which one I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I saw a car stopped on the side of the road. There was this old guy trying to change a tire, and he was struggling with one of the lug nuts. He had all his weight on the lug wrench trying to loosen it, and it wasn’t budging. That old boy was covered with sweat.”

“Is it hot down there?”

“There’s a heat advisory.”

“How long is that supposed to last? Until September?”

Hans sighed, “No, it will be done by seven this evening. We’re in the triple digits.”

He went on, “Well, a bunch of people passed this car. Well, I did too, but I found a place to turn around. I told the old man that I would go back home and get my tools. Then I drove back to the house. It’s not far from there. You know where we live.”

“Yeah.”

“I found my impact drill and made sure the battery was charged. Then I drove back to the car. We broke that nut loose and got the flat tire off. Then we put the spare on. The old guy was trying to tighten the nuts by hand. I told him, ‘Hell, I got the impact drill right here. Let me do it.’ He did.

He seemed awful grateful to me. He and his wife. I told them, ‘This is what Texans are supposed to do.’ You know, help each other out. I was just doing the Christian Texan thing.

The lady in the car, she said that if someone comes to help, it is almost always somebody in a big ol’ pickup truck.”

Note: Hans drives a big ol’ pickup truck.

Hans paused and said, “Dad, I’m not bragging. I just wanted to let you know that you raised me right.”

Maybe I did.

July 4th, 2024

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.” – Helen Keller

I hold Asher a lot. So does my wife. Karin and I are Asher’s grandparents and legal guardians. The boy is three and a half years old. Most of the time, Asher is active, curious, talkative, imaginative, and all the other things that a little boy should be. He can be frightfully independent. Asher is usually confident to the point of cockiness.

And then, sometimes he’s not.

He can suddenly be scared or sad or tired, and he then will confront me and demand,

“Hold me.”

I almost always do. Someone has to do that. Asher has had more than his fair share of trauma in his young life. He was born nine weeks early during the height of Covid. He spent his first four weeks in a hospital NICU. Asher’s father abandoned him shortly after his birth. Asher’s mother has been going in and out of his life repeatedly due to recurring health issues. It’s been a rough start.

Asher has two pillars of stability in his life: Karin and me. That’s it. There is nobody else at this point. We’re old, and these two pillars are crumbling a bit. However, he depends on us for his safety and security. It’s hard on the boy, and it us sometimes a struggle for my wife and me. We try to provide him with some sense of order, and some type of routine. That is difficult. Other factors tend to bring an element of chaos into our lives, and we all have to deal with that.

Admittedly, Asher has it much better than many other children in the world. I need only to think of the little kids in Sudan, Ukraine, or Gaza. We have all the basic necessities in our home, and more besides. Asher does not suffer from material deprivation. He does not need to fear for his own life or the lives of those he loves. Yet, in some ways, he still suffers.

Asher is very concerned about things being done a certain way. To feel safe, he needs to have many small things remain the same. Asher needs to eat out of his lion bowl. He needs to cut his waffle with a specific knife and fork. He only wants to wash his hands in the bathroom sink. There are myriad tiny details that make up his life, and they are all important to him.

Our youngest son got divorced this week. It was a shock to everyone, especially to him. His wife’s announcement that she wanted to leave him had all the subtlety of a lightning bolt. Things suddenly changed for our son, and for everyone who knows him. As Stefan said, “There is collateral damage.” He has had to move back into our home, albeit temporarily. All this has upended our homelife, and Asher has noticed. Why is his uncle living here? Why does Asher need to sleep in a different bedroom? The boy has all sorts of questions with no good answers.

Several days ago, Asher had a meltdown. I don’t know what caused it. I don’t know if there was any particular trigger. All I know is that things got crazy very quickly. Asher started crying and screaming and would not, or could not, stop. I picked him up. He continued to cry. His piercing voice stabbed at my right eardrum. Karin tried to hold him. Asher wouldn’t let her. She tried all the usual bribes: a YouTube video about Paw Patrol, ice cream, a new toy. Nothing stooped the shrieking. I tried to put him down. He cried out,

“NO! Don’t put me down! Hold me!”

I did, for over half an hour. The boy clung to me for dear life. He would not let me sit. I stood in the kitchen while he wailed.

Eventually, the emotional storm passed. Asher wore himself out. His cries grew weaker, and he ever so slowly relaxed in my arms. He permitted me to sit down in a chair. I cradled him in my arms. The tension in his body ebbed away. His breathing became more regular. He fell asleep.

We took Asher to our pediatrician two days ago. He found nothing physically wrong with the boy. He gave us a referral to a counselor for children. We will follow up on that. I don’t know if it will help.

Asher is experiencing the struggles of life at a tender age. I can’t fix that. I can’t heal all that needs to be healed. I can’t keep Asher safe forever.

There is a song from Vampire Weekend called “Hold You Now”. The final verse says,

“I can’t carry you forever, but I can hold you now.”

I can hold him now.