Tag: book-review

An Abundance of Holidays

November 5th, 2025

I recently finished reading “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James MacBride. It’s a fascinating novel set in a small Pennsylvania town in 1936. The major theme seems to be about the difficulties that minorities have with becoming integral parts of American society. The book focuses on the struggles of Jews and Blacks. This is a story that resonates in our present age. We have always been a country that tries to balance unity and diversity, often with unsatisfactory results.

The book makes me think about the city in which I have lived since 1988. I reside in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a community that is semirural, but getting less rural every day. When my family first moved here, the population was overwhelmingly white, mostly people of German or Polish descent. Now it’s very different. The demographics have radically changed.

I take my grandson, Asher, to the Oak Creek Library quite often. We go to the children’s section. He plays with the toys there and sometimes I read a book to him. The library has a prominent display of holiday books for kids. There are several shelves filled with stories about different holidays that come up during the course of the year. In total, there are probably over one hundred available for children or their parents to read.

The library has had a display like this for as long as I can remember, but as the years have gone by, the types of books have changed. Years ago, the holiday books only referred to traditional festivals, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween. Now, there are books about Passover and Hannukah, Ramadan and Eid, the Lunar New Year, Diwali, and Juneteenth /day. The number of holidays that are included on the shelves has exploded.

It would be tempting to think that perhaps some cabal of woke librarians decided to include all of these more exotic holidays among the books displayed. I suspect that is not the case. The reason for that is that as each one of these holidays approaches on the calendar, the section of the shelves that houses the books for that event empties out. This implies that people are checking out the books on that particular holiday and reading them. There is a market for these stories among the local population. This further implies that the city is a place of diversity.

I can see that reality whenever I take Asher to the library or to a local playground. He plays with children from all sorts of ethnic and racial backgrounds. A city and a country that is culturally diverse is Asher’s present situation and it is his future.

The United States government is currently fighting against diversity in its myriad forms. That is like swimming against the tide. Diversity is here to stay. We need to accept that fact, and work toward a new form of unity.

Give Me Your Arm

July 29th, 2025

Our young grandson, Asher, is a restless sleeper. He’s only four-and-a-half years old, but he has already seen more than his fair share of trauma. He sleeps in my bed. I don’t necessarily want him with me, but he can’t go to sleep unless I hold him. When he is tired, Asher crawls into the bed and nestles in the crux of my left arm. It takes him only moments to doze off once he is comfortable there. He doesn’t want me to cuddle with him. He just wants to be held in my arm.

Lately, Asher has been waking up in the middle of the night. He likes to sleep crosswise in the bed, which means I have little or no room. Last night, around 3:00 AM, he woke up and looked at me. He said,

“Grandpa, give me your arm.”

I did.

He touched my arm and found his sweet spot on my bicep. Asher fluffed it up like a pillow. Then he rested his head on my arm. He grasped my arm with both hands and held on tight. Slowly, gradually, he relaxed. After a few minutes, he calmed down and his breathing grew quiet. Then he was asleep, still holding onto my arm.

I waited half an hour, and then I carefully wrested my arm from under his round head. Asher slept on. I got up to take a piss.

This morning, I took Asher to the playground early. We stayed there until it got too hot for him to play anymore. Then he wanted to go to the library.

We drove to the library. Asher drank a smoothie in the back seat. When we got close, Asher told me,

“I can see the library! We are almost there!”

I replied, “I know.”

“Grandpa, we are there. We can park the car.”

“Yeah.”

After I parked, Asher got out of his child seat and climbed out of the car.

He said, “Give me your arm.”

I said, “I have to lock the car.”

I did. Then we walked toward the entrance of the library.

Asher grasped my right hand. I squeezed his little hand in mine.

He told me, “I’m only holding on to your pinkie.”

I told him, “That’s good enough.”

Monkey Bars and Morning Glories

July 11th, 2025

We tend to observe certain milestones in life: births, graduations, and weddings. Maybe, we might also commemorate baptisms or bar mitzvahs, if we are at all religious. But we tend to ignore the small events which by themselves seem inconsequential, but in fact are critical in a cumulative sort of way. These mundane achievements are seldom celebrated or even recognized. We don’t usually pay attention to them, and they get lost in the flow of time.

I have a four-year-old grandson named Asher. My wife and I are his legal guardians and fulltime caregivers. We are with him all day, every day. Sometimes, we don’t notice the changes in him. We ofttimes don’t become aware of how much he has grown until we see that his clothes are too small for him. Because Asher is with us all the time, we can’t always perceive his development. He seems like the same little boy until he shocks us with something new and unexpected.

When we suddenly wake up to the realization that Asher is different, we ask questions like, “When did you grow so tall?” or “Where did you learn that?”. It feels strange to get blindsided by his rapid development, but it happens all the time. We wake up in the morning and there is a new kid in the house.

Three days ago, I took Asher to a local playground called Kayla’s Place. There are many types of equipment at the playground for children of various ages to use and enjoy. Asher likes to swing on the “monkey bars”, which are actually a sort of horizontal ladder. I have always needed to lift him up in order for him to grab on to the metal bars. I had to continue to hold him each time so that he could swing from one bar to another.

Our last visit to the park was different. He stood underneath the lowest set of bars and made a little jump. For the first time ever, Asher was able to grasp two bars and hang from them for almost a minute. He isn’t strong enough yet to swing from one bar to the next, but he was able to get up there on his own. That’s a big deal. I congratulated him, and yesterday I mentioned to his therapist what he did. Asher was excited and told her,

“I got on the monkey bars, and I did it ALL BY MYSELF!”

A few weeks ago, Asher and my wife put up a sort of tepee in the yard to grow morning glories. Karin found some old stalks from the elderberry bushes and tied them together with string. She made a scaffolding for the vines to climb. Early yesterday morning, she saw the first flower blooming on a vine. It was near the ground. She alerted Asher that there was something new outside.

Asher put on his Crocs and rushed out of the patio door still wearing his pajamas. I followed him out. He stared at the morning glory blossom in awe. He told me,

“Grandpa, the flower looks like it’s glowing!”

It did look like it was emitting a light of its own. The rays of the sun were striking to flower in such a way that it was luminous. The flower was a deep violet on the edges and that color faded to white near the stem.

Asher smiled as he gazed at the blossom. For a moment he was in love with nature, and that was also a beautiful thing.

Monkey bars and morning glories. Those are simple things, but they are also important.

I need to pay attention.