Frank is Emptiness

May 14th, 2025

As I sit here typing on my keyboard, I am listening to the sound of drills and saws outside of our house. A crew is putting up new gutters all the way around our home. Two days ago, a different team of six men replaced our roof. It took the roofers only nine hours to complete the project, and that’s including their lunch break. I’m not an expert on roofing, but it looks to me like they did a good job. The guys working on the gutters today are, as far as I can tell, working efficiently. I don’t expect these workers to be here very long, and I anticipate that they will do quality work.

All of the people working on our home are Latinos. All the people who came here two days ago were Latinos. Only a few of them speak English. I am not being judgmental. I am merely stating a fact. From what I have seen from other construction crews is that they are almost always made up of Hispanics.

Why is that?

I suppose I could ask one of the guys working outside why they chose this particular line of work. However, I won’t do that. In the current political climate, I would never do that. I don’t know the legal status of any of these men, and the last thing I want to do is to spook them. Sadly, it is best that I don’t know their stories, and they don’t know mine. It’s a new version of “don’t ask; don’t tell”. I have met migrants who are undocumented, and they live in constant fear of being deported. Perhaps, some of the men working on our house are here illegally. If they are, I don’t want to know, and I’m sure they don’t want me to know.

My mind is full of questions. What are they getting paid? Do they get paid in cash? Do they pay taxes? Do they get any benefits? What happens if they get hurt on the job? They are doing work that apparently does not appeal to native-born white guys. Why aren’t there any white boys outside pounding nails?

I can only conclude that the men working for me today are not getting enough of a compensation that their jobs would induce a homegrown American to join their team. The Latinos putting up the gutters, along with the roofers, are doing the work that most Americans do not want to do. It’s always been like that. It was like that when my great-grandparents came to this country. The new guys do the shit work. Immigrants start at the bottom.

The difference now is that a hundred and twenty years ago, the migrants were encouraged to stay here and work at dangerous, backbreaking jobs. Now, for reasons that I will never understand, the government of the United States wants to drive out all these people that keep the economy going. So, what happens if they are forced to leave, or to go underground?

Who will do the work?

The guys are cleaning up now. I looked at the new gutters and the downspouts. One young man was picking up the old metalwork.

I came up to him said, “Gracias.”

He nodded.

Then I told him, “You all do nice work.”

He gave me a confused stare.

I thought, “Damn it, I can’t remember any fucking Spanish.”

After a mental struggle, I said to him,

“Trabajo…ummm…bueno.”

He smiled, and replied,

“Gracias.”

May 9th, 2025

I got a text yesterday from our daughter-in-law in Texas. at 12:40 PM CDT.

She wrote, “Great news! America is gonna make the Catholic Church great again!”

I momentarily felt queasy. I replied, “Seriously?”

She said, “Depending on your definition of great, but we got an American pope for the first time.”

I had a brief panic attack. I thought to myself, “Sweet Jesus, did they elect Cardinal Raymond Burke?!”

I took a deep breath and wrote to my daughter-in-law, “Who?”

Her answer: “Robert Francis Prevost.”

That name meant absolutely nothing to me. So, I replied,

“I will have to look him up.”

My daughter-in-law wrote back that she had heard that he was a progressive.

My response was, “That will piss off MAGA.”

Apparently, it did.

I, like millions of other people, did look up the biography of Leo XIV. My conclusion is that he is very Catholic, and that can mean all sorts of things.

I was born right at the end of the papacy of Pius XII. He was pope during WWII, and his legacy is, well, mixed. Since then, the Church has had leaders who have been pretty decent: John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I (who only made a cameo appearance), John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. All of these popes shepherded an unruly flock of believers, and they inspired many of them. They also infuriated a substantial minority of Catholics. They were world leaders who tried to promote peace and justice. They sometimes succeeded, like when John Paul II acted as a catalyst for change during the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Sometimes, they failed, like with the Church’s sexual abuse scandal. They tried to teach eternal truths in a world that is constantly changing, while acting as a symbol of unity for millions upon millions of coreligionists. How can any person do all of that?

Pope Leo XIV will surprise us. That’s what these popes do. John XXIII was elected as a caretaker pope, and he initiated Vatican II, which changed both the Catholic Church and the world at large. John Paul II was instrumental in taking apart Soviet communism. Francis placed care for our planet front and center as a moral imperative. These popes also surprised us with what they did not do. They never agreed to allow priests to marry. We still don’t have women deacons, much less women serving as priests. Reading Pope Leo’s past for hints about his future is probably a fruitless effort. Once these guys get elected, all bets are off.

There are perhaps 1.4 billion Catholics in the world. Any number that large means that the population will be diverse. I have often met Protestants, mainly Evangelicals, who are convinced that the Roman Catholic Church is this monolithic organization that demands absolute obedience from its adherents. I find that notion to be laughable. Anybody who has ever attended a parish council meeting of a Catholic church will see that it is all barely controlled chaos. Take the population of a typical parish (if there is such a thing) and make it exponentially larger, and it becomes astounding that so many people can be unified at all. The genius of the Church, when it actually does its job, is the ability to combine diversity with unity. I mean “unity”, not “uniformity”. The fact that Catholics can do anything together is a miracle.

Pope Leo in his first address to the public as pontiff emphasized unity. Good luck with that. It is a worthy goal, but one that is probably beyond the capabilities of mere humans. The Church is often a mess. There is no doubt about that. I have to remember that it is, and has always been, a work in progress. Leo will take the next step in the process.

God bless him. God bless us all.

May 3rd, 2025

I recently read a book from P.D. James, an author best known for her crime novels. The book I read was The Children of Men, which falls into the category of speculative fiction, an off shoot of sci-fi. The story is set in a world of the future where no children are born. In the novel the planet has been without a human birth for a quarter century, and our species is slowly but surely heading for extinction. Books about a dystopian future derive their power by describing a world that is much like our present one, but one that has also taken a frightening trajectory. These stories can get stale when the future becomes the now. However, The Children of Men still has an edge to it, because what it predicts is in some ways still plausible.

The novel never explains why humans all become infertile simultaneously. It doesn’t need to do that. What the author does is give a detailed and poignant description of a society that is collapsing. James writes well, and she conjures up an image of a decaying England that is both tragic and occasionally funny in a dark way. The overwhelming feeling in the book is that of hopelessness. The unspoken, but obvious, question in the story is. “Why do anything?” Most of the characters in the book are just killing time or waiting for time to kill them. Without a new generation, the future has no meaning.

Does this book matter? I think it does. It mirrors the world around me, but in a distorted way, like a funhouse mirror. Are women still giving birth to children? Yes, of course. The world’s population is still growing. However, the pace of growth on our planet is uneven and it is slowing overall. Some parts of the world, especially sub-Saharan Africa, still have explosive population growth. Other places have steep declines. Russia, China, Japan, and most of the EU are experiencing a loss of people. Even countries with modest growth, like the United States, only have more residents because immigration, not from the birth rate within the national borders.

Is it a bad thing for the world’s human population to stabilize or even decline? Maybe not. Every other species on the planet would probably benefit from fewer homo sapiens. However, humanity has never before dealt with a universal loss population. There have been great disasters in the past, like the Black Death, that decimated whole nations, but nothing quite on this scale. The current decline in the birth rate has kind of snuck up on us. It is nothing like the sudden wave of infertility that James mentions on her novel.

I think about this sort of thing for two reasons. First of all, I am objectively old. If the United States government gives me Social Security and Medicare, then I am by definition elderly, and my time on earth is clearly limited. Second, my wife and I are caring for our four-year-old grandson, Asher, whose future stretches out before him like an endless vista. The Children of Men reminds me of my mortality, and it pounds home the preciousness of every child.

I was the eldest of seven boys in my family of origin. Large families were common when I was young. This is no longer true. There are many reasons for this: the higher cost of raising a child, increased access to contraception, anxiety for the future, changing gender roles, etc. Some of these reasons are good, some perhaps not so much. The fact is that, when I was a child, having kids and rising a family was the priority for most people. Now, it just one goal in life among many. Once again, I don’t know if the change is good or bad. All I know is that things are different and we, as a species, need to adapt.

For example, much of what we do is dependent on growth of some sort. Capitalism only works when there is growth. The economies of most of the world require constant growth to raise the standard of living. Humanity worships “more”. Enough is never enough. In order for capitalism to function, there has to be population growth to drive economic growth. So, what do we do when there aren’t enough producers? Or enough consumers? A number of countries are wrestling with these problems right now. How long will it take before we have to radically change our consumption of material goods and services? How long before we radically change our values to focus on things that cannot be bought and sold? Our current economic system is not sustainable.

I want to go back to the mood expressed in James’ novel. It is often a depressing book, and as I age, I identify more and more with the zeitgeist. It is hard to keep going when things are falling apart both inside and out. That is why Asher is so important. Asher can be a real pain in the ass at times, and he wears me out. But he gives me hope. Every day he shows me who he is and who he may become. He is constantly learning and growing. He needs me in order to grow, and that gives me purpose. He gives meaning to my life.

Asher is the future. On my own, I am not. I experience the future through a little boy. He makes it all worthwhile.

April 30th, 2025

I visited with two of my brothers on Saturday. All three of us are retired. As we sat around, we eventually discussed our previous lives in the work force. Each of us followed a different path, and now we have time to reflect what it was all about. What was the point? What did we accomplish, if anything?

We talked a bit about what guidance counselors told us to do while we were in high school. It’s remarkable that what they told us fifty years ago is pretty much what they tell young people now. It’s the same focus on finding a career and fitting into the system. The counselors wanted to help, and maybe they did, and maybe they do now. The narrative was about working hard and getting ahead. The term “getting ahead” was never clearly defined. I think it’s still an ambiguous concept.

I remember a few things from my first days at West Point. One event that sticks in my memory is how all 1400 of us new cadets were herded into Eisenhower Hall to hear the superintendent give a talk. He spoke briefly about how we had chosen our class motto, “Pride and Excellence”. Then he went on about the possibilities of our careers as military officers. He said at one point,

“One of you sitting here may become the General of the Army someday.”

I suspect that everybody in that auditorium had a momentary vision of future glory. The supe had dangled a shining goal in front of us. There was a second part of his statement that he never mentioned. The last part was,

“But the rest of you won’t be.”

In retrospect it feels like a classic bait and switch. Recruiters in the high schools do the similar sort of thing. They regale impressionable high school students with tales of adventure and hawk other benefits, but they don’t often discuss the costs involved in becoming a soldier. I know this because an Army recruiter came into our home many years ago to lure our youngest son into the service. This was back when things were intense in Iraq. Our son ultimately chose not to join up, even after the sergeant gave us a smooth sales pitch. The recruiter’s problem was that I kept fact checking him. My son found that to be amusing.

It’s not just the military that sells job openings like used cars. Corporate America does the same thing. Once I left the Army, I got a job as a supervisor at a trucking company. One of the selling points for the position was that there was plenty of room for promotion. That was true, but there was upward mobility within the company because middle managers were being continually culled for failure to meet absurdly high profit quotas. It was a Darwinian kind of work environment. The corporation’s unofficial motto was “We eat our young”. The company went bankrupt several years ago. Karma in action.

I went to work with second trucking firm, one that was comparatively benign. After a couple years there, I was offered the opportunity to get trained for a position as operations manager. I respectfully declined the possible promotion. I knew from experience that operations managers had to relocate, their workload increased, and they all had a target on their back. It wasn’t worth it.

I was at this company for almost twenty-eight years. I spent most of those years working third shift. As I look back, I think about how much time and energy I put into my job. Was it worth all the effort? I don’t know. I was able to take care of my family. A lot of people never get to do that. I am fortunate in that sense.

Now, my kids have their own challenges, and their struggles are very much like mine were. They work their asses off to take care of other people. Are their jobs meaningful? Maybe. They take pride in their work. They do what they have to do.

I wonder what they will think years from now.

April 22nd, 2025

The Roman Catholic Church is unique among our planet’s religions in that it has one person running the institution. This person, the Pope, is the leader of approximately 1.4 billion coreligionists. He is both a symbol of the Church’s unity and a lightning rod. This man has enormous influence around the world while also being a servant to all. He is a mere mortal representing Christ, God incarnate. He is both priest and prophet. The role of a pope is paradoxical. It is amazing to me that anybody can do the job, or that they would even want to do it.

Now, the Church is without a pope. We are in a period of transition, and we are praying that the new shepherd will be able to lead this unruly flock.

Over the last several decades, the Church has had a pretty good luck with its leaders. Popes Francis, Benedict, John Paul II, Paul VI, and John XXIII were all good men. They had their flaws, but they were far better than some others in the Church’s long history. Even cursory reading of the Catholic Church’s past makes it clear that there have been some truly terrible popes. Yet, the Church has survived and sometimes thrived.

I had a good friend who was well-read and knew quite a bit about church history. He told me something once. I think he was quoting Lord Chesterton, but I’m not sure. In any case, my friend said,

“I am convinced that the Church is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. No institution run by such fools and knaves would have lasted two weeks, much less two millennia, without it!”

True. There will soon be another conclave, and we will find out if the Holy Spirit will show any interest. If only human beings are involved, the potential for disaster will be high.

I have met saints. I’m sure of it. Saints have certain characteristics. They are notoriously hard to get along with, partly because they don’t follow societal norms, and partly because they never do things by half measures. They tend to be humble, honest, and occasionally bat shit crazy. They may get angry when they see injustice, but they don’t hold grudges. Somehow, they are able to see Christ or Buddha or some other aspect of the Devine in other people, and they act accordingly. They love God, and they love the person who embodies God. They can love even the seemingly unlovable. They are generally anonymous, but their small acts of compassion keep humanity from self-destruction.

I think it is hard for a pope to be a saint. Power is a great temptation. How can a person be humble when over a billion people look up to them?

This brings me back to Pope Francis. Was he a saint? I don’t know. He managed to upset many people, both traditionalists and reformers. He disappointed those who hoped he would allow women to be deacons or allow priests to marry. He likewise failed to satisfy the needs of the persons wounded by the clergy sex abuse. Pope Francis infuriated the members of the Church who wanted to turn back the clock to some half-remembered golden age before Vatican II. He was controversial. To my mind, anybody who can offend people on both ends of the spectrum is probably doing something right.

Pope Francis loved. Like his namesake, he cared for the poor and marginalized. He spoke out for justice. He showed people, both Catholics and members of other traditions, what sacrificial love looks like. He did his job imperfectly, but that’s because he was only human. He was one of us, and he demonstrated that emulating Christ was possible for anyone. We can do it too.

April 18th, 2025

Asher was restless last night. He woke me up four times: at 9:00 PM, at midnight, at 3:00 AM, and at 4:00 AM. Twice, he asked me to get up and give him some warm oat milk. During the last wake up call, he climbed out of bed and barged into my wife’s bedroom to sleep a couple hours with her. The four-year-old almost always sleeps with me. He has never slept alone. He shows no interest in sleeping alone.

Asher, like most people, is complicated. He can be willful and independent, but he is also deeply attached to my wife and me. When one of us leaves home for a few hours, Asher does not say “Goodbye” to Karin or to me. He says, “Be back soon.”

Asher will start half day kindergarten in the fall. That is exciting for all of us, but I guarantee that it will also be challenging. Hopefully, Asher will make new friends quickly. He’s good at that sort of thing. He schmoozes well. As he long as he knows that one of us will pick him at the end of class, it should work out okay. He might get to the point where he doesn’t want to leave school. Once the boy is having a good time, it’s hard to drag him away from his chosen activity. Getting him to come home from the playground is usually like pulling teeth.

At breakfast this morning, my wife was talking with Asher. He was chewing on a jumbo strawberry. All of a sudden, our grandson looked at Karin and said,

“Oma, someday you’re going to die.”

Karin did not have a ready reply for that comment. After a pause, she told him,

“Everybody dies some time.”

He smiled and said, “You’re going to die, and then you’ll be an angel.”

He turned to me and confidently stated,

“Grandpa, you’re going to die too, and you will be an angel. You’ll be in heaven.”

I looked at him and thought, “So, where did this come from? Does Asher understand what death mean?”

He probably doesn’t understand. I know I don’t.

Honestly, the subject of mortality is often on my mind. I don’t feel afraid of dying, but I am worried about leaving Asher behind without a caregiver. He is right about me dying at some point. I’m not sure about becoming an angel. I don’t think I’m qualified.

I told Asher, ” I am not ready to die yet. I need to be here with you for a while.”

There are some departures that don’t allow for a person to “be back soon”.

April 17th, 2025

I’ve taken to reading “speculative fiction” novels such as Station Eleven, The Children of Men, The Parable of the Sower, and Roadside Picnic. Speculative fiction is a sub-genre of sci-fi. Back in my youth, I read the classics: 1984 and Brave New World. These books generally are “what if” stories. They imagine a future for humanity that may or may not come to pass, and these stories tend to be shocking and disturbing. I find them oddly soothing, mostly because they describe fantasy dystopias as opposed to the real one that I experience every day.

I read the news on the Internet. I never watch the news. That’s far too painful. It’s hard enough for me to peruse an essay about craziness and hate. It’s impossible for me to sit and listen to somebody lie to my face, even if it is only virtually. At least, if an article gets too intense, I stop reading for a while and maybe come back to it later, or maybe not come back at all.

The novels somehow put the real world into perspective. Usually, the characters in speculative fiction are fighting for their very survival. In my little corner of the world, I don’t need to do that, although I am aware that across the globe many people do. I need only to read about Gaza or Ukraine or Sudan or other places where life is extremely difficult.

The books help me to remember what advantages I possess. I have clean water, enough food, adequate healthcare, a cozy house, a car for transportation, and a plethora of other things that I don’t even consider until I lose them. I have people who love me. I also have my struggles, and they sometimes feel overwhelming, but I am blessed in many ways.

Pondering the good things in my life makes me want to help others who are suffering. There is only so much I can do. I am only mortal, and I have to focus on the people around me who need me the most. However, I can still reach out to others in small ways. I can’t transform the world from an almost-dystopia into a paradise. I can only make it a bit more livable. That has to be enough.

April 12th, 2025

“In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers with no disruption between those layers.” – from Wikipedia

When I was at West Point, I took a course in thermo-fluid dynamics. I did not study this subject of my own free will. The class was mandatory. If you did not pass the course, you were strongly encouraged to find another career path. So, I stumbled through the semester, and now after nearly forty years, I can honestly say that I remember almost nothing from the class.

Almost nothing is not the same as nothing. I do recall the topic of turbulence. Turbulence in a fluid (be it a liquid or a gas) is evidence of a chaotic system. The movements of a chaotic system cannot be predicted. Basically, once a system becomes turbulent, that is chaotic, all bets are off. The equations don’t work anymore. You might as well use tarot cards.

When I became an Army aviator, it was impressed upon me that turbulence during flight is a bad thing. We never flew in the vicinity of thunderstorms due to air turbulence. There could updrafts, downdrafts, wind shear, and a host of other unpredictable and unpleasant events. Chaotic systems tend to be frightening.

At the present time, our national economy is turbulent. As evidenced by the recent gyrations of the stock market, it is now a chaotic system, and by definition scary as hell. There are a number of opinions on why things are wildly erratic. On-and-off tariffs don’t help the situation. Other factors also affect the economy, and all these forces make planning by corporations or consumers nearly impossible.

When I worked in the trucking industry, my company always had an annual brunch to evaluate the performance of the business during the previous year. The presentation during the brunch also included plans for the coming year: how many people would be trained and hired, how many tractors and trailers would be purchased, how many new facilities would be built or bought, etc. These plans were based on trends that management perceived in the overall economy. Since we carried freight of all sorts, our trucking business was the national economy in microcosm. In order for our management to make these plans, they needed a certain level of stability on the market.

I wonder how they are planning for the future now.

Turbulence or chaos is the enemy of planning, whether it is for a major corporation or for a family household. I can’t plan family expenditures if I am worried about my Social Security and Medicare. I can’t plan how much money to spend if my 401K is hemorrhaging. I can’t plan purchases if Medicaid won’t fund my grandson’s health care. Likewise, businesses will stop moving forward with new projects if they have no idea what will happen tomorrow. There is a massive construction project in our local area that is apparently on hold due to the tariff confusion.

We are all waiting for things to settle down. That may never happen.

April 5th, 2025

I’ve been a fulltime caregiver for one of our grandchildren for over four years now. My wife and I have been responsible for Asher almost since he got out of the NICU. The thing that is most striking about my relationship with Asher is that I spend more time with him than I ever did with any of our own children. This is mostly due to the fact that I am retired. It is also because Asher does not currently have anyone else to care for him. In many cases grandparents serve as part time babysitters to help out the parents of the grandkids. My wife and I act in place of Asher’s actual parents. For the time being, we are raising our grandson, and we have more time to do so than we did with the previous generation. However, we have far less energy than we did thirty years ago.

My wife and I work in shifts to care for Asher. I am a morning person, so I am active with Asher early in the day. My wife is a night owl, so she takes over after lunchtime. I am in the habit of going places with Asher, usually to a playground or a library. That gives my wife a chance to catch up on her household chores or work on her fiber arts or just relax and enjoy some quiet time. Asher and I are together almost every day for three to five hours, just him and me. We play, we talk, we eat, and we argue. We bond, and we do that in a way that I have never done with a four-year-old. I am his grandpa, but also more than that, and he is more than just a grandson to me.

Yesterday, the two of us went sightseeing. We drove a few miles south to the Eco Justice Center. It’s a small farm and also a place for environmental studies. Asher always notices when we are getting close to the farm because he sees the blades of the wind turbine turning in the breeze. The farm has chicken, goats, and alpacas. Asher likes to visit the alpacas. He keeps calling them llamas. Well, he’s close to being right.

The people running the farm also have a few guinea hens. Those are fiercely territorial creatures. They apparently like to defend their turf from small children. Asher is a small child, and they confronted him. He ran from two of them, which encouraged their aggressive behavior. One of them nipped at his blue jeans. He freaked out. I told Asher,

“Don’t run. Walk slowly to our car.”

He moved away from the guinea hens at a glacial pace while keeping an eye on them. He asked me,

“Grandpa, is this slow enough?”

“Yeah. However, we need to get to the car sometime. You can go a little faster.”

We left the farm and drove a little way to the lighthouse at Wind Point. The lighthouse sits close to the shoreline of Lake Michigan north of Racine. Asher was excited about going to the beach. The water was cold, and the wind was kicking up breakers that churned the surf into a greyish brown color. Asher had on his rain boots because I knew he would play in the surf. He found a mound of tiny shells. He picked one up and put it to his ear. He told me,

“Grandpa, I can hear the ocean!”

Most of the beach was covered with brownish sand, but there was also a low-lying ledge of limestone that was filled with hollows that served as tidal pools. Asher launched small round stones into the pools. The rocks were of different colors: black or white or deep red. As he threw the stones, he kept moving further into the water.

I yelled at him, “Don’t go in too deep! I don’t want you to get water in your boots!”

“But Grandpa! I am not going too deep! Can’t you see?”

Note: Asher’s favorite word is “but”. Most responses I receive from Asher start with that word.

Later, Asher grew weary of throwing stones into the lake. He insisted on climbing the large rocks inland from the beach. He was clambering up them from the shore toward the lighthouse. That worried me. I kept imagining him slipping and doing a lip stand. I told him,

“Get off the rocks! I don’t want you to get hurt!”

He kept climbing over the boulders. As he navigated the rocks, he replied,

“I can do this! See! I am on the other side now! I didn’t get hurt! I am on the main island now!”

The “main island”? The “mainland”? Whatever. He was on a level grassy area inland from the rocks. He asked me, “Grandpa, what is this place?”

“Asher, this is a golf course.”

The answer meant nothing to him. We got back into the car and drove to his favorite playground.

The day was getting warmer, and the playground was packed with youngsters. I prefer to visit the playground when it is not so busy. The more kids there are, the higher the energy level. As the population increases, the volume goes up. The children move faster and confusion reigns. Often, caregivers at the playground have their eyes glued to their smart phones. When the place swarms with children, everyone’s radar is focused on their young charges. It’s easy to lose a kid in the crowd.

Asher was running around like all his contemporaries. I kept moving with him. I got tired. Being hyper-vigilant is exhausting. Finally, I told him it was time to go home. He balked at this idea. After much haggling, he got into his car seat.

On the way home I rolled through a yellow light. Asher noticed. He told me in all seriousness,

“Grandpa, a yellow light means that you should slow down and stop.”

I said, “Thanks, Asher. I’ll do that next time.”

He fell asleep after that.

April 5th, 2025

A friend of mine is in jail. The odds are good that he will go to prison. Keeping in contact with him is difficult. There are certain times when he can call me, but I can’t call him. He probably has no access to the Internet, so emails, texts, and social media are out of the question. That only leaves the slow and archaic practice of writing snail mail letters to each other. That’s what we do, and that’s probably what we will have to do for the foreseeable future.

I like to write letters. I am aware that many people do not. I have children who aren’t sure how to use a postage stamp. However, the ability to communicate with pen and paper still comes in handy at times. Over the years, I have written letters to numerous people who were not able to interact with others except through the postal service. Some of these individuals were in nursing homes, some were deployed overseas with the military, and some were incarcerated. In a world where many, if not most people, can reach out to another person anywhere at any time, there is a population that for variety of reasons is isolated from the rest of humanity, and they depend on actual, physical letters.

My father spent his last years in a nursing home. He lived about three hours away from me, so my visits were infrequent. He wasn’t much interested in talking on the phone, and honestly neither was I. I don’t think he ever learned how to use a computer. So, I wrote letters to him, every week. I just told him about how things were in our family. Writing helped me to organize my thoughts and express them clearly. He never wrote back. Not once.

One time, during a visit with him, my dad made a point of telling me how much he appreciated those letters. Even though he did not write back (he hated to write), he was always pleased to receive mail from me. Those letters were our connection, albeit tenuous and one-sided. It’s all we had.

Several years ago, I wrote letters to a young man from our neighborhood who had joined the Marines. I wrote to him while he was in basic training at the base in San Diego. He wrote back. We corresponded until he was out of boot camp. Then he lost interest in my letters. I understand that. He was busy having adventures. However, my letters might have helped him to make it through basic training. They let him know that somebody on the outside cared about him. I know that during my first year at West Point, letters from friends and family kept me going. Those letters were like gold.

I have often written to people in jail or prison. I guess I hang out with a bad crowd. Anyway, I have written to people who were incarcerated to serious crimes, and I have written to people who did time for civil disobedience. The folks who were in jail or prison for CD broke the law as a matter of conscience. They committed a crime because of their religious and/or political beliefs. They were usually antiwar activists. Hell, I went to jail for civil disobedience. I was in for only a day, but I got some small understanding of how it feels to be on the inside. It’s a lonely place.

One incarcerated person told me that other inmates were envious of her because she received a lot of mail, while other prisoners did not. I can see that. When a person is isolated from society, they can easily feel forgotten, and sometimes they are right about that. Some people in prison or nursing homes never get letters. It is like they no longer exist. If a person feels that alone, it can destroy them. Humans need companionship. They need to be needed.

So, I write letters.