Resilience

June 25th, 2025

I asked the young woman to help me find the building. We were on the northside of Milwaukee and the local area was forbidding. The street had been dug up recently and almost all of the structures bordering the road looked abandoned. Actually, it wasn’t hard for us to locate the recovery center. It was the only property that looked well-maintained. The building was like a welcoming home set among some ruins.

I parked in the lot next to the building. The young woman went into the rehab facility to take a drug screen. I waited for her to come back. If she passed the test, then she would come back, grab her bags, and start residential treatment. If she failed, well, I had no idea what we would do. I would probably have to take her back to some shitty motel until she could get into another recovery program. I didn’t even want to consider that possibility. I would just wait to see what happens.

Years ago, when I was a boy, this part of town was a bustling economic hub. All of these vacant buildings were factories. They made things for A.O. Smith and for Masterlock. Teams of workers filled these places and made money, for themselves and for their employers. These businesses were humming with activity. That was a long time ago.

Now, it’s desolate. The neighborhood has a post-apocalyptic vibe to it. I bet at night it looks very Blade Runner. The car parked next to me had a yellow club on the steering wheel. The owner had placed an open copy of the Bible on top of the dashboard. The pages of the book were water-damaged and stained. I’m not sure what would deter thieves: the Bible or the club. Maybe neither or maybe both.

We drove through the local area in order to get here. On the main drag were many shuttered businesses. Even the liquor stores and the Baptist churches couldn’t make it around here. That’s rough.

I sat in the car and waited. There were trees lining the street, at least part of it. Milwaukee may have severe poverty, but the city keeps things green. I think that makes a difference. No place is truly a wasteland if there are trees growing there.

It’s been hard for the young woman. She has struggled for so long. I have lost count of how many rehab programs she has attended over the years. It is both depressing and inspiring to me. She often relapses, but she never, ever gives up. She wants to get clean and stay clean. She is the most resilient person I have ever met, and I admire her courage.

She came back out of the building with one of the counselors. The counselor was smiling and friendly. They picked up the young woman’s belongings from the car. Then they went back inside.

I sat in the car and sighed deeply. I could relax at least a little bit. She was in the program.

She was safe.

Do the Right Thing, if There is One

June 24th, 2025

“And I divvied up my anger into 30 separate parts
Keep the bad shit in my liver, and the rest around my heart
I’m still angry at my parents, for what their parents did to them
But it’s a start” – from Growing Sideways by Noah Kahan

Sometimes people like to talk about making a fresh start. I don’t think that such a thing is possible. We are always in the middle of a story, one that has been going on for decades or millennia or even longer. When somebody comes into the physical world as an infant, he is she is not a tabula rasa. That person already carries the history of all life in their DNA. Every human arrives as a unique version of a history book. We are never at the beginning, and we are never at the end.

As Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

I have spent the last couple weeks fighting with ghosts and inadvertently wounding the living. The evil that I have done or that others did a quarter century ago has come back to the forefront, and there has been hell to pay. I am not done paying, not by a long shot.

There are three people whom I love dearly. They hate each other. I cannot help one of them without hurting the others. I found that out quite clearly a few days ago. I had to make a decision to do something that was essential for the health and wellbeing of one of the three. I knew when I made the decision that it would devastate one of the others. I also knew that more individuals, outside of those three I mentioned, would be affected negatively. It was, and still is, an impossible situation. It makes me angry.

I think about the story in Genesis when Abraham haggles with God to get Him to show mercy to the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. As God is planning to nuke those two cities, Abraham asks Hashem,

“Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?”

I have a similar question. If God wants me to do the right thing, then why put me in a position where there is no right thing?

I am at a point where I do not ask, “How can I make things better?” I ask, “How can I keep from making things even worse?”

I am blind to many things. I understand the consequences of my actions far too late. I have made people angry with me. They’re right to be angry. Maybe I am right to be angry too. At some point I will apologize and try to make amends, but not now. I’m not sorry yet, or not sorry enough.

Everybody is wounded. We all bear the scars of the past, and as long as we live, the sins of the past live within us. The good that was done to us or for us lives there too. It helps if I can see the suffering of others. I may still harm them, but perhaps not as much.

Sometimes, I am tempted to despair. But that is a luxury I cannot afford. Too many people depend on me. My wife needs me. Our grandson, Asher, needs me. I have to keep going.

For them.

Comrades

June 8th, 2025

My son, Hans, called me a couple days ago. He lives down in Texas close to Madisonville, which means he doesn’t live near much of anything. Anyway, he started telling me about how he went into Brookshire Brothers to buy some groceries, and a couple old boys from the VFW were sitting at the front entrance of the store, taking donations and handing out little American flags.

Hans told me, “Dad, I wasn’t wearing anything that said ‘Army’ on it, but this old vet, probably from WWII, hands me a flag and says, ‘Thank you for your service.’ How did this old boy know I was a vet?”

I replied, “You just look like a vet. A person can tell.”

Hans went on, “The old guy asked me where I was sent. I told him, ‘Iraq’.”

(Note: Hans always pronounces “Iraq” as “Eye-rak”).

Hans continued, “The old guy nodded, and said, ‘I figured that’. “

Hans kept talking. He’s been thinking about maybe joining the American Legion someday. He said that the local post has a bar. That does not surprise me at all. I think that in a place like that a bar would be the very first thing to get set up.

Hans said, “I don’t need to talk with the other vets. I don’t really want to. It would be nice just to sit around with them, listen to music, and have a couple beers.”

That makes to total sense to me. Hans doesn’t want group therapy. He wants to be with his tribe. The point of joining a group like the American Legion or the VFW is to be with other people who “get it”. Hans, or any other vet, could mingle with the other members of the post and not need to explain their military experiences. In fact, it might be less painful for Hans if he didn’t talk about what happened to him in Iraq. He could trust that the other veterans would understand his history without him saying a word. If Hans did want to talk, he could trust that somebody at the post would be willing to listen and not judge him. He would be with his comrades.

Hans was in Iraq back in 2011. He’s had some time for the wounds to heal. He’s had some time for the trauma to fade. Maybe now is the time for him to reengage with other vets. I don’t know. I think it might help.

Reaching out to an Enemy

June 8th, 2025

The following letter from me was published in the Chicago Tribune yesterday.

“We fear what we do not know, and we hate what we fear. The recent attacks on Jews in Colorado and DC, along with the continuing slaughter of civilians in Gaza, indicate that the killers knew little or nothing about their victims, except that those people are somehow the “enemy”. It is easy to dehumanize a person if you cannot recognize him or her as being like yourself in some way. In our world the hard thing to do, the courageous thing to do, is to reach out and attempt to understand others, especially those who seem to be our enemies. However, to end the violence that is what we must do.”

Coming Full Circle

May 31st, 2025

We took our grandson, Asher, to the May Festival a couple days ago. The May Festival is an annual event put on by the Tamarack Waldorf School. It celebrates the arrival of spring, which in Wisconsin is well-worth celebrating. We live in a climate where it is not unusual for people to wear hoodies on Memorial Day or even well into June. It has only been within the last week or two that all the trees finally have their leaves. When our world suddenly turns a vibrant green it’s definitely party time.

The festival was held in a tiny park a couple blocks from the school. Tamarack is located on Brady Street on the lower east side of Milwaukee. The school really has no green space of its own, so the park is better place to celebrate the annual resurgence of the natural world. There is a small knoll in the park. That is where everyone gathered in a circle at the beginning of the festival. Karin, Asher, and I got there just as the show was about to start. We found a place in the circle. It was an eclectic group: caregivers, little kids, and a few teachers. The school has a diverse population. It even had that twenty-five years ago when our children attended the school. In a way, it felt like we were back home.

One of the teachers led the entire circle in an a cappella version of a Waldorf song. The tune was accompanied by body movements. The teacher had told all the newbies to watch what the older kindergarteners (“the tall pines”) did and just follow their lead. The song was a hymn of praise to nature and springtime. It might have been a bit overly sentimental, but it struck a chord in each person in the circle.

After the song, the kids dispersed to do other activities. The school had set up a station to give each child a temporary tattoo (the logo for the school). There was also a table to get bags of popcorn. There was a place to blow soap bubbles. Most of the children gravitated to the jungle gym. That’s where Asher went.

I stood on the mound and stared at the other families at the gathering. My mind flipped between the present scene and images from a quarter century ago. There was feeling of disorientation and profound sadness. A lot can happen in a family in twenty-five years, and in our family a lot did happen. A kid went to war. A kid got divorced. A kid did time in prison. Those are just the highlights. My mind flickered between memories of our children when they were innocents and the current group of kids playing and laughing in the park where I was standing. So much was different and so much has been lost. I didn’t know what I was doing when I raised our kids. As I watched the children, I asked myself, “Do I know any better this go around?” I have no idea. Then I caught a glimpse of Asher doing exactly what a four-year-old should be doing. I got my balance back.

Karin and I struck up a conversation with a kindergarten teacher who might become Asher’s guide in the fall. We told her a bit about the old days, when this school was just starting. Karin and I were there at the very beginnings of the organization. We didn’t stay long. I couldn’t deal with the chaos and conflicting interests that accompanied the birth of the school. I was an angry and impatient bastard back then, and I was not at all helpful. We homeschooled for three years and then we came back to school after the dust settled a bit.

The teacher was fascinated by our history lesson. Karin drifted off to talk to other folks that she knew. I told the teacher more stories of the school. She seemed interested and I love an attentive audience. I told her about the time I was a chaperon for our youngest son’s class trip to New Orleans. We went there in 2008, three years after Katrina. That was an adventure, but then I am convinced that any visit to New Orleans qualifies as an adventure. The teacher I spoke with had been to “N’aalins” years ago and she fell in love with the town. So, did I. We agreed that the city has a soul, and it teems with both angels and demons.

Later, I found Karin again. She was talking with a young man who had once been a teacher at the school. I didn’t recognize him at first. His hair was thinner, and his middle was thicker. We talked for a while. He remarked that we were back in the school with Asher, and that we had “come full circle”.

That’s not quite accurate. A person never comes full circle. A person may return to a place or to an organization, but that individual comes back different and returns to something that has also changed and has changed forever. We are coming back to Tamarack, but it isn’t the same school. Oh, the school is still in the same building, and the curriculum is pretty much the same, but in some ways, it is alien to us.

I looked at the new parents at the festival and I saw strangers. They have more tattoos and piercings than my generation ever had. They have different views of what it means to be a family. They have different challenges, and they probably can’t understand our struggles. They are bringing new things to an education model that is already a century old. Their children, like our Asher, are entering a world beyond my comprehension.

At the same time, I can see, or better feel, the similarities between these young people and me. We have the same fears. We have the same hopes. We might all become friends. That is my hope and wish. My wife and I are entering the winter of our lives. The other parents are beginning their summers. All of our little ones are laughing and crying in the early springtime of their generation. We have that in common.

Transcience

May 29th, 2025

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” ― Carl Sagan

“Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.” – Heart Sutra

“All things must pass.” -George Harrison

It’s springtime. Finally. The trees have leaves, even the walnuts and locusts whose branches remain bare until almost June. There are flowers blooming, although the tulips and the daffodils are fading fast. It is a time of rapid and obvious change. The world seems to be waking up after a long, cold winter. However, it was awake and in motion even then.

Some change makes us sit up and take notice. Some of it is so slow and gradual that we can be convinced that nothing is happening at all. However, everything is transient. The only constant in this world is change.

Sometimes I feel like each day is a lot like the last one. Then, suddenly I become aware that new things are happening. Our four-year-old grandson, Asher, lives with us. Every once in a while, I look at him and it is like seeing a completely different boy. He’s somehow taller or he’s able to ride a bicycle without any help from me. These changes sneak up on me. There is a flash of consciousness, and then I know that Asher has become somebody else, somebody new. The feeling is both exciting and a bit disturbing.

If Asher is constantly changing, then I am too. I occasionally notice that when I look into a mirror and see an old man staring back at me. My beard that was once almost black in color is now mostly white. Most of the hair on my head is long gone. There are lines on my face that have become increasingly deep and rough. Physically, I am not the man I was ten years ago, or even the man I was ten minutes ago. It’s all in flux. I am a shapeshifter like everybody else, like every other thing in the universe.

Am I the same person on the inside? I don’t mean in a physical sense, but more in a spiritual way. Would I even recognize the person who I was when I was in my twenties? What would I have in common with that individual?

There is a Buddhist tradition about the five Skandhas. Skandhas are different attributes of people and things that are continually shifting and evolving. The bottom line is that nothing and nobody has any permanent being. It’s all ephemeral. If that is true, then there is no “Frank” writing this article. Or if there is one, that version of “Frank” will not last.

I would like to think that at the core of each human being there is an eternal soul, that there is something that survives change and even death. If there is such a thing, I don’t think we can perceive it. It is covered up with the Skandhas, veils of illusion. God may know who I really am, but I don’t.

Perhaps, when I leave this world, I will see things as they really are. Maybe, I will even see who I really am. And maybe what I really am is something constantly in motion, a tiny dynamic force that is part of a much larger evolving whole.

That’s not so bad.

Generation Gap

May 26th, 2025

I took Asher to a playground yesterday. My grandson likes to go to a local park that has a sandbox. The sandbox is big enough that he can use his shovel and rake to make roads for his Hot Wheel cars. Occasionally, he buries them and forgets where they are hidden. I expect that some other four-year-old will play archeologist and find the cars later. Fortunately, Asher has a plethora of toy cars, so it’s not a crisis if he loses one.

Asher decided to play on the monkey bars and the swings while we were at the park. Other kids were there at the same time. Another couple my age (old) came to the playground with their young boys. I didn’t pay much attention to them. Then I heard somebody call out my name. I turned away from Asher and noticed a tall, grey-haired gentleman smiling and walking in my direction.

I did not immediately recognize the guy. He greeted me and then I knew him. He didn’t look the way I remembered him, but his voice was the same as it was years ago. He sported a different haircut. His hair was steel grey and brushed back. He wore glasses with black rims. It took me a moment to match the person standing in front of me with the man I worked with over a decade ago.

We talked for a bit as we watched over our grandkids. My friend is caring for his grandsons like I care for Asher, except that his gig was parttime. My wife and I are Asher’s guardians, so he is with us always. My former coworker is responsible for his grandchildren every other weekend. That’s still a big commitment.

My friend made some small talk, and then he mentioned his son. I had met his son once a long time ago. From what I remembered, his boy had issues with drugs. I didn’t want to ask the guy any questions about that, but he brought the subject up on his own.

The man told me this about his son, “He passed away a couple year ago, back in 2022. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was shot and killed.”

Ow.

How does a father deal with that? My dad buried two of his sons. He never got over it. One of my brothers died in a freak car accident. The other died of a heart attack. But how does it feel when a child dies due to an act of violence? How does a parent come to terms with the fact that a son or daughter has been killed by someone else?

One answer to that question is that the parent cares for the survivors, or as my friend calls them, “innocent victims”. The grandparent fills the void left by the absence of their own child by taking responsibility for the children of that son or daughter. There is a generation gap, and somebody needs make it whole.

As I think about it, I have come to realize how common this situation is. My friend and I are not the only grandparents, or older people, caring for small children. I had a friend from a Bible study group who was caring for her grandson. The boy’s parents were addicts and abandoned their son. The grandmother died relatively young from cancer, and her husband adopted the young man. I have a younger brother who is raising a little boy with his wife. The lad is the grandnephew of my brother’s wife. His biological parents are both dead. My brother and his wife adopted the little guy.

There are any number of reasons why a kid’s parents might be absent. Some reasons are dramatic, some not. Sometimes the absence is temporary, sometimes it’s permanent. Regardless, the child needs someone to provide love and protection. That may mean that an elder has to raise another generation.

It’s Not Going to be Okay

May 24th, 2025

When I was growing up, we had a family tradition of ignoring problems. The more obvious the problems were, the more effort we put into pretending they weren’t there. It wasn’t at all logical, but that’s what we did. Apparently, the idea was that if we were willfully blind to an issue, it did not exist.

I am certain that my experiences as a young person were not unique. Denying reality is a common human response to scary or uncomfortable facts. I have a book from Cornelius Ryan called The Last Battle which describes the final struggle of the Nazis to defend Berlin from the Soviets in the spring of 1945. One of the most disturbing parts of this historical account is the description of the mindset of the German leaders stuck inside of Hitler’s bunker. Even in April of 1945, they believed that they were going to win the war. Even with Russian artillery blasting Berlin into rubble, they were convinced that it was all going to be okay.

It wasn’t.

This brings me to the subject of climate change.

Despite the current efforts of the federal government to pretend that climate change does not exist, or that it isn’t really that big of a deal, the evidence is overwhelming that climate change does exist, and it really is a huge issue. The problem is that, in many cases, the effects of climate change are causing havoc somewhere else. I live in Wisconsin, which is kind of a climate sweet spot. We haven’t had massive wildfires. We don’t get hurricanes. Our winters have grown milder, which actually seems like a positive thing for those of us who dwell in the frozen north country. Our summers are hotter, but not painfully so. The attitude of the locals is often, “Yeah, climate change is a real problem, but not here.”

That attitude is changing, at least mine is.

A year ago, on May 7th, we had intense thunderstorms roll through with large hailstones. We’ve had hail before, but it was pebble size, and it didn’t do any real damage. The hail that fell a year ago was big and oddly shaped. The hailstones were not round. They were like ice cubes, rough and angular. They caused damage. A contractor came to see me almost immediately after the hailstorm. I called my insurance, and an appraiser came to our house and told us that our roof and gutters needed to be replaced. The insurance paid us $22K to get the work done. I was a bit shocked. We have lived in this house for thirty-four years, and I had never even filed a homeowners claim prior to that hailstorm.

Because of a variety of delays, including the need to remove a monstrous glass panel from top of the house (it warms the contents of our solar water heater), the actual replacement of the roof and gutters did not occur until two weeks ago. Within three days of the replacement, we had another nasty hailstorm. The hailstones were golf ball sized. As far as I can see, the new roof is intact. The skylights are undamaged. The gutters look alright. I think we got lucky.

The next morning my wife asked me to look at our Toyota Corolla which had been sitting in the driveaway during the storm. The hood and roof of the car were full of dings and divots. It’s an old car, so I don’t care too much about those. However, my wife called my attention to the crack in the windshield. The glass must have taken a direct hit. There is a crack on the passenger side that is a perfect circle about three inches in diameter. That’s a problem.

My insurance will send a guy over here right after Memorial Day. I need a new windshield.

Are these hailstorms freak coincidences? Or is this the wave of the future?

I’m betting that we will see more wicked storms blow through our part of the world.

It’s not going to be okay.

Looking Back

May 21st, 2025

I went to visit a friend of mine. It was a couple days ago. I go to spend time with him every week or so. We sit around, share a beer, and commiserate. I met him a long time ago at the synagogue. He’s older than I am by about sixteen years. We’re both writers. We are both retired, at least in the sense that we aren’t earning a wage anymore. We keep busy. Being retired and being idle are too very different things.

My friend lives only a block away from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) campus. I have to drive by the school grounds to get to his home. This means that I see numerous students walking around the area. Traffic tends to be heavy near the campus, so there are frequently cars in front of me that are waiting for a light to change or a pedestrian to cross the street. I have time to observe the latest generous of adults…and think.

I was a student almost fifty years ago. I look at these young people and I ask myself, “Was I like that?” The answer is, “I don’t know.” I really don’t.

It’s hard for me to remember things that happened half a century ago. Hell, it’s hard for me to remember things that happened five minutes ago. I can recall very few specific incidents from my youth. However, I can conjure up feelings that I had in the past. Now, that I have managed to get through the wormhole and I have survived several decades of chaos, I feel mostly a sense of relief. For better or worse, most of the big decisions in life have been made. Carl Jung wrote that the first half of life is the story, and the last half is the commentary. You are reading the commentary.

My youngest son, who is several years older than the college students, is not shy about telling me that I don’t understand the challenges of his generation. I’m sure that he’s right. He has struggles that I never had to deal with. The economy today is very different than it was when I was his age. The odds of him enjoying the financial security that I currently have are low. Many people his age will never be able to afford a home or even be able to pay off student loans. My son is doing well in his chosen profession, but the ground keeps shifting under his feet. He can’t make long term plans.

His generation’s views on relationships and sexuality seem exotic to me. Among his contemporaries, marriage is an anachronism, and relationships often seem to be transactional and transitory. Gender identity is now a multiple-choice question. When I was in my twenties, I knew only one openly gay person. Now, I know gay couples who are happily married. The ground has shifted under me too.

I don’t like social media, but I am still on the computer a lot (like right now). The students at UWM and other universities live and breathe technology. They have always had the Internet. They have always had Facebook. They have seldom written a note by hand, and they have probably never licked a stamp.

I am not saying that the new social environment is good or bad. It is probably a bit of both. All I know is that it is alien to me, but natural to these younger folks.

So, back to the question: “Was I like that?”

In some ways, definitely not. I managed to earn a bachelor’s degree, but that was at West Point. I was not a “college” student. I went four years to a school that only had only superficial characteristics of a university. USMA was like going to an Ivy League college and doing time simultaneously. Even when I was an undergraduate, I did not fit in with my civilian compadres. I was an outlier when I was young, and in many ways I still am.

So, did I have any similarities with the young people I see at UWM? Human nature does not change much, if at all. When I was their age, I was energetic, curious, idealistic, and naive. I was painfully awkward with members of the opposite sex. I was cocky and terrified at the same time. I am certain that the students who pass me by on the campus feel some of same things.

The students I see are trying to figure it out. They are trying to understand the meaning of their lives. They are trying to make sense of their world.

So am I.

Part of a Team

May 18th, 2025

I met with a friend, Danny, a few days ago. We worked together for decades, and now we are both retired. We had a couple beers and talked. As usual, we discussed how other former coworkers were doing. During the conversation, I found out that one of our colleagues is constantly busy helping his partner. The guy’s wife has diabetes, and her blood sugar level fluctuates, causing her to have difficulty concentrating on what she is doing. This means the woman can’t drive, which means that our old buddy from work has to be her chauffeur. Danny and I also have a friend whose wife has kidney failure. She requires dialysis treatment a couple times a week. I know another coworker whose wife had a stroke last year. This friend of mine is his spouse’s fulltime caregiver.

The fact that so many people our age are either ill or caring for somebody who is partially incapacitated makes me think. My wife, Karin, and I are both healthy…for now. Part of the aging process is that a person will eventually become ill and/or disabled. That’s guaranteed. It is likely that Karin or I will need to care fulltime for each other at some point. That doesn’t really bother me too much. What makes me think is the question of what happens to our grandson, Asher.

Karin and I care for Asher 24/7/365. The boy is four years old and will start kindergarten in the fall. Currently, he needs our help almost constantly. That will change as he gets older, but right now he depends on us. Watching over Asher is a job that requires two people. We have to work as a team. If something happens to Karin or to me, then what becomes of the little boy? I cannot be the caregiver for both my wife and our grandson. Karin cannot care fulltime for me and for Asher. Something will have to give.

Our youngest son has committed to caring for Asher if something happens to my wife or me. That eases my mind somewhat. I try not to worry about that future. The present moment is enough to keep me busy, sometimes more than enough. We can try to plan ahead, but I have to focus on today.

Today is all that there really is.