Frank is Emptiness

May 9th, 2023

Definition of empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

My son, Hans, is going to ride his Harley with some friends on Saturday. They are going to Kurten, Texas, for a blessing of the bikes. Hans told me that there will a “priest or pastor or whatever” to say a blessing over the motorcycles. It’s not a far ride from where he lives, so he will probably hook up with some guys to go further. Riding the Harley helps Hans to relax and deal with his PTSD from Iraq. It’s healthy for him to go for long trips on the Harley.

Hans told me about another ride that is going to happen on Saturday. A different group of guys are doing a sort of memorial ride for a 17-year-old biker who died after getting t-boned by a car at an intersection. Hans decided not to go to that one, partly because he’s not very good at expressing emotions. He’s always been kind of impassive and distant that way. Going to Iraq with the Army didn’t help in that with regard. Hans described himself as “callous, kind of an asshole”. I think that Hans would have been okay at that event, but he knows himself best. The ride might have conjured up some memories and feelings that he really doesn’t want to have.

Hans and I talked about it on the phone. He told me,

“It’s hard for me to get all worked up about some problems that other people have. Like with homeless people, I was homeless once, and not many people helped me.”

I replied, “Yeah, but some people did help you.”

He said, “I know, but you know what I mean. I went to hell and came back again. It was hard, but I pulled myself together.”

I told him, “You did, but some people can’t. Mental illness or whatever. Some people just can’t.”

He sighed and said, “Yeah.”

Hans and I talked some more, mostly about work. Neither of us have much tolerance for people who we perceive to be lazy and/or stupid. We have (or in my case, had) no empathy for people who couldn’t get the job done. We are very mission oriented. Hans told me about a former coworker who couldn’t do his job, and Hans told him point blank,

“You are a lazy motherfucker.”

That outburst was no doubt satisfying in a cathartic way, but probably counterproductive. Most people don’t see well-intentioned comments like that as being constructive criticism.

Ironically, many years ago, I used those same words with one of my coworkers.

Why is Hans the way he is? Partly, it’s his upbringing. Hans told me once that, after growing up with me as a father, basic training was kind of a letdown.

I also think being veterans plays a role here. The military promotes many noble virtues: loyalty, honor, courage. However, empathy does not usually make the list. Well, I guess empathy is encouraged in a highly selective way. Soldiers are expected to care for their comrades and to protect civilians. However, in a profession that is all about killing people, empathy for our enemies is not helpful.

Vets are also all about the mission. Quit your whining and get it done. We really don’t like people who can’t seem to function. We tend to hardasses that way.

I think that veterans are often callous after the leave the service, especially combat vets like my son. In the military a person experiences things that are brutal and perhaps life-threatening. It’s hard to look at problems of the civilian population without concluding that a lot of it is petty. Becoming emotionally hardened is protective device that allows a soldier to do things that are traumatic. This is not necessarily a healthy way to be once a person has returned to the outside world.

It takes a long time for a person’s emotions to soften up, if they ever do. It took me decades to be open to the feelings of others, and to my own feelings. I am different now than I was forty years ago. I had to do things like meditation to change inside. Relearning empathy is work.

Empathy comes with a cost. I have a friend from the synagogue who is a very old man. His son died recently from alcohol abuse related to his PTSD from the Soviet war in Afghanistan. I called my friend yesterday. He told me the story of his son’s life, again. Every time we meet or call each other, my friend tells me all about his son. I listen, just listen. I understand his feelings very, very well. I share his grief, and I share his suffering. When he finishes his story, and we leave each other, I cry. Every time. Listening to him hurts me intensely, but it is the only thing I can do to ease his pain.

I hope that Hans has a good ride.

Postscript: Hans changed his mind about riding as an escort to that 17-year-old biker’s funeral. He’s going with the mourners to accompany the casket to the cemetery. I’m proud of him. 

May 5th, 2023

“I’m shocked – shocked! – to find that gambling is going on in here.” – Claude Rains in the movie Casablanca

Hans called a few days ago. Hans is my oldest son. He lives down in Texas, and pumps concrete for a living. He was in the Army a decade ago. He was stationed at Fort Hood, and then his unit got deployed to Iraq. His time in Iraq was more interesting than it needed to be. He came back from there a very different person.

Hans bought himself a Harley. It’s an old school sort of bike. He got a 2007 Electra Glide that weighs damn near 800 pounds. He’s careful to keep that thing upright. He likes to ride the Harley whenever he can. It relaxes him, and that helps with his PTSD.

Hans insists on wearing a replica German WWII helmet when he rides. He painted it silver, but it is still obviously a Wehrmacht style of headgear. Hans told me that he stopped to get fuel at a gas station, and some other customer called him a white supremacist. Hans indicated to me that he was shocked -shocked! – by that comment.

Really?

I find it hard to believe that his helmet would not attract attention and perhaps some negative remarks. I find it even harder to believe that this would be a surprise to my son. He takes enormous pleasure in messing with other people’s minds, and he’s good at it. I’m pretty sure that he would be deeply disappointed if nobody noticed the helmet.

Is Hans a white supremacist? I don’t think so. He has very conservative opinions, but I don’t think he’s racist. I admit that, since he fought in Iraq, his ability to relate to people who look Middle Eastern is not the best. Because of his wartime experience, he often judges some people by their appearance. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but I understand why he does that.

The guy at the gas station judged Hans by his appearance. Hans did not make a good first impression with this other customer. The man who accused Hans of being a white supremacist knew nothing about Hans except that he wore an offensive type of helmet. The man did not know that Hans is a combat vet. He didn’t know that Hans works hard at his job. He didn’t know that Hans has a wife and three small children.

Every individual is complex. I have found that it often takes years to understand another person. I have known Hans all his life, and he still surprises me. I try not to judge someone by their appearance, but sometimes I make a snap decision based on that first impression.

That almost never ends well.

May 4th, 2023

I was reading an article on the Al Jazeera news site yesterday. Al Jazeera gives daily updates on the war in Ukraine. The article that I read showed on a map how many Ukrainian refugees have fled from their homeland and where they are now. As of the end of 2022, eight million Ukrainians crossed the border into Poland. The number of refugees permitted to enter Poland is astounding, and millions more fled from Ukraine last year and went to Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary. In contrast, the United States, during fiscal year 2022, allowed just over 25 thousand refugees into our country. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

I wonder how many Ukrainians will return to their native land once the war with Russia is over. Based on what I have learned over the years, not many will choose to go back to Ukraine. There was another article in Al Jazeera which indicated that 2/3 of the Ukrainian refugees planned on remaining in their adopted country. That sounds about right.

Refugees, and immigrants in general, may hope to go back home someday, but it seldom happens. People leave their homelands for a good reason. They don’t often abandon friends, family, and familiar surroundings on a whim. People usually emigrate because they have to do so. In some cases, they literally have a gun to their heads when they depart.

I have an Afghan friend. He and his family fled from Kabul when the city fell. He made it quite clear to me that if he had stayed in Afghanistan, the Taliban would have killed him. I know a Syrian refugee family. They abandoned their farm in Syria when the civil war in that country became too dangerous for them. I know a Ukrainian Jew who fled with his family after the fall of the Soviet Union, because members of an ultranationalist militia told him it was unhealthy for them to remain in Ukraine. Many years ago, when I was stationed with the Army in West Germany, I went to a restaurant in Frankfurt that was run by Croatian refugees. They had been strongly encouraged by Tito’s partisans to find a new home. These stories are not uncommon. This sort of thing happens all the time, all over the world.

The fact is that none of the people I have mentioned have ever gone home. Some have died among strangers in a strange land. Those who are alive can’t go back. I’m sure that some of them are nostalgic for the Old Country, but it is unsafe to return.

My wife’s family on her father’s side were refugees after the end of WWII. They had been living in Silesia, which until 1945 was a German province. They fled westward with the Red Army’s artillery following closely after them. The houses they left behind were quickly occupied by Poles, who were likewise being pushed west by the Soviet forces. When the war ended, Silesia was part of Poland, and my wife’s relatives had lost their homes forever.

Refugees, and other immigrants, might think that there will be a sudden change in their fortunes, and that they will be able go back. However, time is not on their side. They have to immediately forge a new life in their new country. They have to find food, housing, and work. To survive they need to become part of a new community and new culture. They can’t just sit and wait.

My wife is an immigrant to the United States. She is still a German citizen, although she has been in this country for almost forty years. Her ties to Germany diminish with each passing year. She doesn’t feel like an American, but she is becoming a stranger to the home of her youth. Much of what she remembers no longer exists. She has changed, and so has Germany.

If the war in Ukraine suddenly ended today, millions of Ukrainian refugees would not go back. Go back to what? Go back to wanton destruction? Go back to cities and villages that are now alien to them? Go back to relationships that have been shattered? The Ukraine they love and remember is gone. It’s already too late.

April 26th, 2023

On Friday, my wife, Karin, and I took Asher to a pre-school play group. The playgroup was organized by the Tamarack Waldorf School in Milwaukee. Although it was a cold, blustery morning, the group gathered outside near the Urban Ecology Center in Riverside Park. Once the little children and their parents (or our case, their grandparents) had arrived, the woman leading the group told a fairy tale with puppets about the coming of spring. Then the group walked together to the woods nearby. The group leader encouraged the children to sing a few simple songs with her about springtime. After hearing a song only once, Asher remembered the words to it. The kids moved their bodies along to the singing. Then they went around the circle, singing “Ring Around the Rosie”. Following that, there was a craft project. The children (actually, the adults) found sticks and tied ribbons to them to make magic wands. The kids tapped their wands on the ground to wake up the spring flowers. Asher had a good time, and I think the other kids did too.

Waldorf education is excellent for little kids. It’s holistic and very much concerned with allowing children to just be children. There is a lot of emphasis on imaginative play and socialization skills. Respect for others is a priority. There is a sense of wonder and reverence for life. It’s a good way to start.

Karin and I have three grown children, and they all went to a Waldorf School, at least for a while. None of them have forgiven us for making them go there. Well, our youngest son, Stefan, who is currently a journeyman in the Ironworkers Union, has grudgingly admitted that there were some benefits to his experience at the school. He told me a few days ago that his time at the school taught him to look at things from a very different perspective than other people.

Exactly. That was the whole point.

Stefan learned quickly that schools in the United States are generally based on an industrial model, designed to produce workers, not thinkers. Waldorf education forms youngsters in such a way as to develop independent thinkers, people who do not follow the crowd. Not all Waldorf students grow up to be like Stefan, but they usually become adults who can solve problems in innovative ways. That’s a win.

Stefan also told me that he met a very diverse population of kids while at the school. The students came from a variety of cultural and economic backgrounds. Stefan often hung out with the working-class kids, basically because that’s what he was. Stefan’s best friend at the Waldorf School was a Black youth who lived with his mom in a home in Milwaukee’s inner city. That was in stark contrast to our house which, as Stefan has noted, is part of a suburban area in sight of farm fields. Stefan went to visit his buddy now and then. He told me,

“Man, we used to ride our bikes in that neighborhood at night.“

Ah, the joys of youthful innocence.

The Waldorf School prided itself on a policy of Gandhi-like nonviolence. There is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes the outside world penetrates the silks and stardust. Bad things can still happen.

When Stefan was a sixth grader, he liked to talk to his classmates about his maternal grandfather. Karin’s dad had been a soldier in World War II. He had been on the German side. Stefan was proud of his German heritage, and he was the only student in the Waldorf School whose grandpa (“opa” in German) had been in the Luftwaffe. Most of the kids probably didn’t even know what the Luftwaffe was. Anyway, he bragged about his grandpa to any who would listen to him. Some people did, and they did not like what he said.

Stefan had a classmate who was Jewish. That was not uncommon. There were several Jewish students enrolled at the school. Stefan did not get along with the boy in his class, but not any particular reason. They just did not like each other. Stefan had a quick temper, and the boy knew how to push his buttons.

There was an eighth-grade student at the school who had lost family members during World War II. He was deeply concerned about the Holocaust. At the time, my wife was helping to teach handwork to the students at the school, and she had a conversation with the eighth grader. The boy questioned Karin about her father. He asked her,

“Was your father a Nazi?”

Karin patiently explained to the eighth grader that her father had been drafted into the German military, and that he had no choice about fighting in the war. He looked at her and asked,

“So, are you a Nazi?”

The discussion didn’t end well.

Later, fate took a hand in matters, and one day three boys were in the school restroom simultaneously: Stefan, his classmate, and the eighth grader. Stefan’s classmate started taunting him, and Stefan got tired of it. He finally gave the kid a heartfelt, “Fuck you!”

Unfortunately, the eighth grader thought that he had heard Stefan say, “Stupid Jew!”

Chaos ensued.

A male teacher rushed into the rest room to break up the fight. Things were immediately smoothed over and hushed up. That sort of thing does not make good publicity for the school.

After hearing about the brawl, my first reaction was,

“They were fighting about this? Doesn’t this shit ever end?”

Apparently not. Ancient feuds resurface, and they are fought again by the descendants of people who are long dead.

I don’t know if Asher will eventually go to the same school. It might not make Asher a better person, or the world a better place, but it may be worth a try.

April 24th, 2023

“Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know.” – Tao Te Ching

I care for our toddler grandson in the early morning hours. Generally, the boy wakes up in a relatively good mood, and we get along well. For a two-year-old, Asher is quite strong verbally. He has difficulty pronouncing some words (he has trouble saying the letter “L”), but he can usually make himself understood. He asks good questions, and he speaks using whole sentences. He has a rather large vocabulary for someone his age. He knows a few words that he probably shouldn’t, but that’s my fault.

Yesterday he did not communicate well. He was feeling under the weather with a head cold, and he was justifiably irritable. It was hard for me to know what he wanted. I asked him,

“Do you want some milk? (I usually have a warm bottle ready for him when he gets up in the morning).

Asher frowned and shook his head.

We went to the refrigerator. Asher opened it and gazed inside. I asked him,

“How about some blackberries?”

He scowled and said, “No.”

“You want an orange?”

“NO.”

“You like grapes. You want some grapes?”

“NO!”

“An apple?”

“NO! NO! NO!”

“Well, what do you want?”

At that moment, he had a total melt down. Normally, I would have told him, “Use your words.”, but we were well beyond that point. Tears were rolling down his face, and he was crying uncontrollably. Eventually, I just put a small bunch of grapes on a plate for him and left them on a chair where he could reach them. When he calmed down, he found the grapes and started munching on them.

Somebody could say that he is just a little boy, and as he gets older, he will be able to express himself clearly. Maybe. I know a lot of adults who can’t always use their words effectively. I am one of them.

As a writer, I am accustomed to using words all the time. Some people think that I use them well. Maybe I do. I am acutely aware of the power of words, and also of their limitations. Words are often clumsy and inadequate. Sometimes, when I want to say something that is very important to me, the words come out as gibberish. Even if I say exactly what I intended, the listener or reader might not understand. Some things simply cannot be expressed verbally.

Monday I was at a funeral. An old man was burying his only son. As the father watched his son’s coffin being slowly lowered into the ground, he convulsively sobbed. His wordless expression of grief was only momentary, but it was eloquent. The man had no need to tell any of the other mourners that he loved his boy. We all could feel and hear the intense emotion in his voice.

Words are not only insufficient during bad times. Words are also a bit lame at joyous moments. When my oldest son, Hans, came home from his deployment in Iraq, I hugged him. What could I have said that would have more meaningful? What words would have been more welcoming?

There are numerous ways to for people to reveal their feelings. Music is one of them. Who is not stirred by the opening notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony? One of my favorite albums is called “Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar”, all instrumental pieces from Frank Zappa. At Zen practice we chant prayers and sutras in Korean. I don’t know any Korean. I don’t need to know the words. Somehow, I still get the message. It’s the same when I listen to the kirtan chanting at the Sikh Temple. The meaning is in the music.

There are other ways to communicate: painting, sculpture, weaving, and dance. Mystics from various religious traditions have used these techniques to express their visions and ecstasies. They simply can’t explain their experiences in words.

Asher can communicate with me most of the time. If he can’t, it’s not his fault.

Words are not enough.

April 20th, 2023

As I grow older, I go to more funerals. That’s just how things work out. Each funeral is a reminder that I have a place in the batting order, and eventually it will be my turn. Someday, somebody will probably attend my wake. Or maybe they won’t. I’m not sure it matters.

I have noticed that every funeral is a bit different from all the others. Some of it has to do with the religious tradition of the participants. Some of it has to do with culture and race. Some of it has to do with the relationships that existed between the deceased individual and the survivors. Some differences are due to hidden things, personal histories that are obscure and perhaps unknowable. This means that comparing funerals is much like comparing apples and oranges. It cannot be done objectively.

I am still going to try to do that.

I have been to funerals that were deeply moving and heartfelt. During those services people were often sad, but also emotionally authentic. The mourners were grieving, but they still wanted to be there. They really wanted or needed to say that final farewell. I have also been to funeral services which were perfunctory, just efforts to grudgingly perform an unpleasant duty. For whatever reason, the attendees were there reluctantly, as if they were fulfilling a requirement, and wanted to fulfil it as quickly as possible. I hated those funerals.

On Monday my wife and I attended a funeral for the son of my friend from the synagogue. A Jewish funeral is also called a “levaya”, which in Hebrew means to “accompany” or “escort”. At a Jewish funeral the mourners are there to escort the deceased on his or her journey to the next life. Once the coffin has been placed in the ground, the mourners are then supposed to escort the surviving family members through their journey of grief.

At the cemetery there is a tradition where each mourner, starting with the family members, is offered the opportunity to shovel three scoops of earth on top of the casket once it has been lowered into the ground. The first scoop of earth is placed on the back side of the shovel, symbolizing the fact that the mourner performs this duty (mitzvah) with great reluctance. The next two shovelfuls are scooped up in the normal way. This custom is strikingly visceral. In American culture, we tend to sanitize and sugarcoat death. Not at this funeral. The finality of death becomes profound when the mourner sees and hears the dirt hitting the top of the pine box. It is suddenly real.

My friend is old, very old. His son was only a year younger than I am. My friend and his family are all refugees from the old Soviet Union. His son was an officer in the Soviet Army and was deployed to Afghanistan, back when the Russians thought it was a good idea to invade that country. The son was badly wounded in Afghanistan and came back to his family with PTSD and a severe problem with alcohol. After forty years, the booze finally killed him. My friend and his wife never gave up on their son. Through four decades, they tried help him in any way they could. My friend always talked about his boy whenever we met. His son was in the old man’s mind and heart every waking moment.

During the funeral, the old man maintained his composure as best he could. Both he and his wife were remarkably stoic as the rabbi and their daughter talked about the son that they had lost. When the son’s coffin was lowered into the earth, the father broke down and wept. His love for his lost child was written on his face for all to see. Later, my friend joined the rabbi in reciting the mourner’s kaddish. That had to be a struggle for him, but he needed to do it for his son.

The funeral at the Jewish cemetery was intense. The grief of the parents was palpable. My wife and I had brought our little grandson, Asher, along with us. At the very end of the service, my friend smiled and played a bit with Asher. He loves the boy. He tried to get Asher to give him a high five, which Asher did. That was a brief moment of joy amid all the pain. Despite the sadness of the burial, there was love, real love.

The funeral on Monday reminded me of a funeral from long ago. I had a younger brother who died of alcohol related problems. My brother had not been in a war, but he had suffered his fair share of trauma. Like my friend’s son, my brother’s last years were a long, slow, downward spiral. It was excruciating to watch my brother die bit by bit. Eventually, I kept away from him, because I was scared and didn’t know what to do anymore.

My brother’s funeral was difficult. My father handled the arrangements, just like my friend took care the funeral for his son. My friend buried his son with love and affection. As far as I could tell, my dad buried my brother with utter indifference. He was emotionally cold and distant. He did what was needed to be done and no more.

The priest who presided over the funeral service knew next to nothing about my brother. He asked the assembled mourners if they wanted to say something. Only my wife and I spoke up. Everyone else was silent. I believe there was a variety of emotions swirling around at the funeral: sorrow, anger, guilt, apathy. People were impatient for it to end. I didn’t sense much love. Maybe love was there, but deeply buried by other feelings.

I remember that, sometime after my brother’s funeral, my father handed me a tiny urn with some of my brother’s ashes in it. As he gave it to me, he shrugged and said,

“Well, that’s over with.” Then he immediately started talking about some yard work he needed to do at home.

My father and my brother did not get along, to put it mildly. When my brother got really sick, my dad wrote him off. As far as my father was concerned, this son of his no longer existed. We never even talked about him at family gatherings. Maybe the only way my father could deal with my brother’s physical and mental collapse was to ignore him, and when his son was dead, he could completely forget him. I don’t know. I will never know.

Some funerals provide closure and a feeling of hope.

Some don’t.

April 17th, 2023

Taking Asher to church with us is always interesting. He’s a toddler, almost 29 months old. Asher is smart, curious, and unpredictable. Karin and I try to prepare for any eventuality when we take our grandson to Mass, but it is impossible to foresee everything. Sometimes, Asher quiet and cuddly, but that doesn’t happen very often. Usually, he is vocal and extremely mobile during the liturgy. He certainly was yesterday.

We always pack a diaper bag when we go to church with Asher. We bring diapers, wipes, and extra set of clothes, toys, books, and food. Asher tends to get hungry during Mass. We generally have a warm bottle of oat milk, a plastic container of blueberries, a couple Cerebelly bars (energy bars for little people), and a package of Cheerios for him to snack on. Asher often devours everything that we have packed for him. It can get messy. Blueberries roll under the pew, and Cheerios fall on to the floor and scatter. It is all worth the effort because Asher keeps happy, and so do we.

Asher is slowly getting the hang of church. When we walk into the sanctuary, he goes up to the baptismal font to dip his little hand into the holy water. He knows how to bless himself with the water by making the sign of the cross, sorta. By the time he is done with that initial ritual, his face and head are soaking wet. Fortunately, he dries out quickly.

Asher likes the people in the choir, and they adore him. Actually, most everyone in the church likes Asher. He is the de facto mascot of the parish. He is often the star of the show. He was yesterday.

Asher was relatively quiet until the Gospel reading. That’s when he decided that he wanted to move about. There was a time when Karin and I tried to keep him in the pew. That was counterproductive. If we tried to keep him immobile, he would squirm and cry and raise all sorts of hell. We gave up on that. He is now a free-range parishioner, wandering the church during the Mass, exploring the little alcoves and shrines. Nobody seems to be bothered by this. They either ignore him (hard to do), or they smile at the lad. He smiles back and waves to them.

To most people in church, Asher is just a little boy fooling around. To me, he is a prophet busy saving souls.

Yesterday, after the priest finished his homily (sermon), Asher tried to go up to the altar. The altar is on a slightly raised dais. There are two steps leading up to the platform, and Asher started climbing them. I went to gather up the boy, but Father Michael beckoned Asher to come up to him. Asher climbed the steps and walked swiftly over to the priest. Father Michael was sitting in his chair. Asher checked out the bucket of holy water next to the seat. Nothing spilled.

Father Michael stood up and held Asher in his arms. Everyone else stood up to recite the Creed. We all did that in unison, Asher staring at the assembled worshipers. Father Michael kept holding Asher as the lector read the petitions. Then he set him down.

Asher was all over the platform during the rest of the Mass. Father Michael and the acolytes did their work and managed to avoid running over the kid. I stood nearby in case I needed to swoop in and grab the boy. There was no need for me to do that. Everybody was okay.

Near the end of Mass, Father Michael took Asher into his arms again. He laughed and said,

“Asher, I might have opened Pandora’s box here. It’s okay. Uncles do that. I’m the uncle.”

Then the priest and his young padawan gave the blessing.

After Mass, Jessica, the choir director, asked Asher, “Are you going to be a priest when you grow up?”

Asher said, “Yeah.” Then he climbed the steps of the dais and ran over to Father Michael’s chair. Asher sat in it and smiled.

April 2nd, 2023

My son, Hans, bought himself another Harley last week. He already has one, but the engine needs work, and that bike has been a static display resting on an oil stain in his driveway for years now. Anyway, he went out and found an old Electra Glide Classic. I think he said it was a 2007. It’s a heavy bike. Hans told me that it weighs 800 lbs. without any baggage. The engine is just shy of 1600 cc., and it apparently has a lot of torque.

Why did he buy it? Well, there are a number of reasons for getting it; some good, some not so much. His wife was apparently all for him buying the Harley. She thinks that riding helps to keep him sane. I think that’s true. After Hans came back from Iraq, he used to ride a Harley all the time, just to clear his head. He would crank it up, let the bike choose the route, and go until he arrived somewhere unexpected. I guess the motorcycle was fast enough to outrun his PTSD. Hans told me that riding the Harley calmed him down as he became one with the bike. It sounds to me like a Zen kind of thing.

I went to the synagogue yesterday. It was the last Shabbat before Passover. after the service was done, I gave a ride home to a friend of mine from the shul. The guy is an old man, pushing ninety. He has a son just a bit younger than I am. When I was deployed in West Germany back in 1983, his son was fighting in Afghanistan with the Soviet Army. My time in Germany was relatively uneventful. The other soldier’s deployment in Afghanistan was not.

I thought things were bad when Hans got hurt in Iraq. I don’t know what all happened there, but I know he got shot at least once. Hans’ experiences don’t at all compare with what happened to my friend’s son. His vehicle got blown up by an IED. He was the sole survivor from the explosion. Now, forty years later, he is still a mess. His father tells me about it every time we are together.

My friend is a Ukrainian Jew. He came from Kyiv. He is convinced that I am Jewish. I tried to explain to him that I’m not, but he simply can’t accept that idea. Back in the Old Country, he never met a Christian who wasn’t a Jew-hater, so If I am his friend and I go to the synagogue with him, I have to be a Jew. The old man takes his tradition with the utmost seriousness. He plans on celebrating Pesach (Passover) with his daughter. He asked me,

“My friend, will you celebrate Pesach with your family, or does your Catholic wife only celebrate Easter?”

I answered, “We won’t be celebrating Pesach together.”

He smiled a bit, and said, “I think you and your wife, you made an agreement. I think I know it. Your sons were raised Catholic, and your daughter, she is Jewish. After all, your grandson, her little boy, Asher, he has a Jewish name. Am I right?”

I dodged the question. I said, “My wife and I worked it out.”

He nodded and said, “Okay, you worked it out.”

He asked me, “Your son the soldier, Hans, is he okay? And his family?”

I told him, “Hans is alright.”

Then he started talking to me about his boy.

“My friend, it is hard. My son, he never stops drinking. In his dreams, his comrades who died in the attack, they come to him. They speak to him. My son, he wants to be with his soldiers, but they are all dead. My daughter, she knows what he spends his money on. She tells me that he buys a bottle of alcohol each day. Every day! He is going to die. My wife and I have lived with this for forty years already.”

I had been thinking about Pesach. My wife and I have been to seders. We know the story. Passover is about freedom from slavery. My friend’s son is a slave to his memories and to his addiction. My friend keeps waiting for his boy to be liberated from all of that. If God could free the Israelites from Pharaoh, then God can rescue his son from his disease.

I thought about my friend’s forty-year-long wait for salvation. The Exodus story begins with the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt, but the saga continues after that. Pesach celebrates that glorious initial experience of freedom. What follows is forty years of wandering in the desert until the Hebrews arrive in the Promised Land. None of the Israelites who remembered Egypt lived to see Eretz Israel. They never made it.

My friend desperately wants to see his son healed. He keeps waiting to enter his version of the Promised Land. My friend might not get there. His son might not get well. He may die before his father does. There is no guarantee. Moses stood on Mount Nebo and gazed longingly on a land he would never enter. The leader of the Exodus was not allowed to go to the Promised Land. He died first.

Hans has his Harley. Maybe he can ride it to his Promised Land, a place where he is at peace, even if that place is only in his mind and heart.

How can my friend’s son find his Promised Land? Is it here? Is it in a bottle? Or is it somewhere in the next life, where he can be with old comrades again?

When my friend finished talking, he grasped my hand tightly. We had arrived at his home. He asked me,

“Your grandson, Asher, you love him very much? He is in your heart, the very bottom of your heart?”

“Yes”.

The old man smiled and got out of my car. He waved and said,

“Kiss Asher for me!”

A final note: My friend’s son died on 04/03/2023, two days before Passover. I hope that, after so much suffering, he found freedom.

April 5th, 2023

Computers are wonderful things. I’m using one to write this article, so they must be. As computer technology becomes more and more commonplace, our dependence on it grows accordingly. I can remember, when I was at West Point back in the late 1970’s, how the school’s computer (yes, I am using the singular here), was an electricity-devouring behemoth that took up an entire floor of Washington Hall. The smart phone in your hand has exponentially more power and speed than that monstrous anachronism had. The computer at USMA was only used for science or engineering projects, so if it went down, that kind of sucked, but only for the students who were struggling to design a howitzer. For the vast majority of people, it didn’t matter. Now, if our computers go down, it matters, and it matters to everybody.

About twenty-five years ago, I was a supervisor at a trucking company. I used a computer to organize incoming shipments, and to set up delivery routes. The system I used was internal to the corporation. I had a green screen monitor. We did not have Windows at work. I don’t think we had access to the Internet at all back then. I planned my operation with a technology that was slow, clumsy, and often unreliable. However, at that time, this software was hot shit. It let me know what freight was coming to me from faraway places. It also told me when the shipments would arrive at my facility. It allowed me to devise efficient ways to deliver the shipments with the labor I had available to me. It was a crude method of doing things, but it is far better than trying to plan everything with a stubby pencil and a Ouija board.

As I mentioned, the internal computer system was not always accessible. That being the case, we backed up everything we did with a paper trail. That was cumbersome and redundant, but sadly necessary. I am convinced that our use of paper decimated entire forests. We made copies of everything imaginable.

For instance, when a driver in another city, say Chicago, picked up a pallet of freight from a customer, he or she would have the shipper fill out a bill of lading, a shipping order. Once the pallet was at the Chicago facility, a copy was made of the billing of lading, a “Copy of Shipping Order” or “COSO”. The driver who brought the shipment on his trailer from Chicago to my dock in Milwaukee would bring a bundle of COSO’s with him, one COSO for each shipment on his trailer. Normally, I could print delivery receipts from the information on the COSO’s (the information having already been entered into the computer system), and I really didn’t need these copies that came with the freight.

But sometimes I did.

One night, all those years ago, the corporation’s computer system failed, utterly and completely. This was bad, very bad. Suddenly, every supervisor and manager at every facility was blind. That night, I had no idea when a shipment would arrive, or who was bringing it, or even if it was coming to my facility at all. I wasn’t just clueless about one shipment. I knew nothing about at least four hundred of them. I couldn’t organize anything at all until each trailer showed up and I could examine the COSO’s. It made for a long night, and a brutal morning.

I got it done, but it was ugly, oh so ugly. I couldn’t plan ahead, so I had my dockworkers do “shotgun loading”. If a shipment arrived that was going to a customer in a certain part of town, I had the forklift driver put it into a trailer with other shipments going to other customers in that same general area (kinda sorta). There were no effective delivery routes that day. Each delivery driver was going to put on a lot of extra miles. I had a lot of angry questions directed at me. I was kind of busy with the endless chaos, so I was not a good listener.

The discussions usually went like this:

Unhappy driver: “Hey, Frank, what is this skid doing on my trailer? This customer isn’t on my normal route.”

Me: “It’s not a normal day. Get rid of it.”

Very Unhappy Driver: “I don’t even know where this place is.”

Me: “Buy a map.”

Pissed Off Driver: “Did you see how those idiots loaded my trailer? I will be going back and forth all day! It will take me forever to deliver all this freight.”

Me: “Then you better get started.”

The driver took his paperwork and walked away. As he passed a coworker, he glanced back at me and snarled, “No point in talking with that guy! All you get is smart answers and dumb looks!”

It went on like that for hours.

The drivers had to deliver their shipments suing the COSO’s. I couldn’t print them any official delivery receipts, so I had to make copies of the copies. They needed two copies for each customer to sign upon receiving their shipment. The customer kept one copy and the driver returned home with the other copy. When I wasn’t arguing with a surly employee, I was standing at the Xerox machine making a seemingly endless number of copies. It incredibly tedious, but it had to get done.

Our customers were also seriously inconvenienced by the system failure. We tried to deliver almost all of our shipments overnight. The customers expected us to do that, and they wanted to see their shipments the day after they ordered them. They wanted their stuff, and they wanted it right fucking now. At a minimum, they wanted to know where their goods were and when we could deliver them. Nobody in the office knew any more than our loyal customers, the people paying top dollar for our prompt service. I told the clerks to tell the customers that they would probably see their freight by noon. We almost delivered everything by that time anyway, so it wasn’t a lie. Most customers grudgingly accepted that, but not all of them.

As I was feverishly making copies, one of the clerks came to me and said,

“Frank, this customer was told that he would get his shipment early this morning. He hasn’t seen it yet. Do you know where it is?”

Without looking up from the copier, I replied, “No.”

She exclaimed, “I haven’t even told you who the customer is. Could you have somebody look for it?”

“No! I have four hundred shipments and I don’t know where any of them are at this moment. I don’t even know where to start looking for the freight.”

“Well, what should I tell him?”

Still not looking up, I told her, “I don’t know.”

She kept going, “Frank, that is not acceptable to the customer. We have to do better than that.”

I snapped, “Goddammit!”

I slammed my right hand on the top of the copier. The glass shattered from the impact and there were shards all over the floor. I stared dumbly at my right palm. It was beet red, but I wasn’t bleeding. I glanced around and noticed that I was all alone. The office was completely empty.

There was another Xerox machine in the office. I picked up my papers and walked over to it in silence. I made more copies.

I had no more questions that day.

April 3rd, 2023

My wife, Karin, and I want to drive from our home in Wisconsin down to Texas to visit our three grandchildren there. Unfortunately, we can’t make the journey at this time. We don’t know when we will be able to go. There are a number of reasons why we can’t make the trip, and all of them somehow involve the fact that we are the primary caregivers for our toddler grandson, Asher. As guardians of Asher, nearly all of our time and energy is spent watching over the boy. Travel outside of the immediate vicinity of our home is difficult. Long trips are impossible. We don’t mind being at home with Asher, but we miss being with Weston, Maddy, and Wyatt. I have never even met Wyatt, and I have only seen Maddy once in my life. This grieves me.

I have to put things into perspective. Our situation is unlikely to be permanent. Circumstances will change, and we may be able to go to Texas someday. In a couple years, our grandkids from the South will be able to come up to Wisconsin and visit with us for the summer. In the meantime, we can exchange videos and photos. We are not total strangers to each other.

I know other people who are separated from their loved ones, and their struggles are far more challenging than mine. I have a friend who is an Afghan refugee. He and his wife and their baby boy fled Kabul just before it fell in August of 2021. Luckily, they were accepted into a country that has proven to be a safe haven for them. My friend worries about the family members he left behind in Afghanistan. He wonders how to get them to safety. He wonders when he will see them again. The answer to the last question is “probably never”. They can’t come to him. He cannot not go back to Afghanistan. Unless the Taliban suddenly disappear, he won’t see these relatives again. That is a hard reality to face.

I also know a family of Syrian refugees. My friends from Syria have been living in the United States for about seven years. Before coming to America, they lived for a while in southern Turkey, in the area that suffered so much during the recent earthquakes. These refugees still having family members residing in that part of Turkey. They have been in contact with their relatives and have sent them whatever help they could. My friends would dearly love to hug and console the people that were injured and lost their homes, but they can’t go to Turkey to be with them. That is another hard reality.

There are people all over the world who are separated from the people they love the most. Millions of Ukrainians are refugees, and they might never see the folks that they left behind in their war-torn homeland. There are displaced Rohingyas, Yemenis, Hondurans, and countless others who probably told family members, “We’ll see you again”, knowing that they won’t. Sometimes a goodbye is temporary, sometimes it’s forever.

That’s a hard reality.