family – Frank is Emptiness

Her First Day of School

August 12th, 2026

Our granddaughter, Maddy, started kindergarten today. Karin, Asher, and I came over to her house at 6:30 to see her to the bus stop. We were early and the sun wasn’t quite up yet. It was hot already, the temps in the upper 80’s.

Maddy was not doing well. Her mama, Gaby, was holding her and trying to comfort the girl. Maddy was crying and didn’t want to get dressed for school. Gaby gently nudged her along. Finally, Maddy was wearing in her fancy pink dress with the strawberry pattern. She had calmed down enough to walk to the bus top with her older brother. At least she wasn’t going on the school bus alone.

Starting something new is often scary. Our grandson, Asher, began his school career last fall when he went to kindergarten. He was good on the first day when my wife, his mama, and I were there with him. Things went downhill after that. Asher is a smart kid and quickly figured out that going to class was not a one-off. He suddenly realized that he had to go to that school every day. One day, I drove to school and almost had to use a crowbar to extract him from his child seat in the car. He cried constantly as I carried him to the schoolhouse. Fortunately, Miss Martha, a seasoned faculty member, came over and pulled Asher out of my arms. He quieted down as she soothed him. Then Martha smiled at me and made it clear that I should go away, like right now. After a week or two, Asher grew accustomed to going to school. I think that might have been after he noticed a cute, blonde girl in his class who stole his heart away.

I think back to when I went to West Point fifty years ago. I arrived at a place where I didn’t know anybody, didn’t understand the rules or the culture, and didn’t even understand some of the language used. The environment was utterly alien to me, and it took probably a year for me to adjust. I sympathize with a five-year-old doing something similar to that.

We walked to the bus stop as a group: Maddy’s mama, my wife, her older brother, her younger brother, Asher and me. The bus travels down a dirt road. The road was being fixed when we got there in the early morning twilight. I am not sure what the maintenance crew was doing besides shoving the dirt around. The bus showed up like a stagecoach in those old western movies. It stopped in a cloud of dust.

Maddys’ older brother got in the bus. Then Gaby held onto Maddy’s hand while she got in. The younger brother, who only clad in a pullup diaper and sandals, started to walk up the steps too. He was almost inside the school bus before his mama snagged him and pulled him out again. That is one impatient little boy.

His turn will come.

A Balloon

August 10th, 2026

How do you connect with some kids who you haven’t seen for almost two years?

When the three children are quite young (ages seven, five, and three), you really don’t connect with them. You certainly can’t establish a relationship in twelve days, especially if you are more than sixty years older than they are. You may be their grandfather, but you are really a guest, a visitor, somebody who is just passing through.

My wife and I are visiting our grandkids in Texas. We live in Wisconsin. We are usually separated from these children by over a thousand miles of geographical distance. We are also separated by experience. Even if we lived next door to these kids, we still might not have a solid bond. We live on the periphery of each other’s reality. They don’t know us and we hardly know them.

We brought our other grandson, Asher, with us to visit our Texan grandkids. Our relationship with Asher is profoundly different from the one we have with the three children from the South. We are with Asher each and every day, often all day. We know Asher, as well as any grandparent can know their grandchild. We have an extremely deep connection with Asher, and we have a very tenuous one with the other children.

Asher has been playing each day with his cousins, and they are getting along quite well. It took Asher less than a day to fit in with these other kids. That’s excellent. My wife has found it relatively easy to slip into her role as “Oma”, which is German for grandma. She plays card games with Texan kids and interacts with them in a relaxed and natural way.

I struggle with establishing a connection with kids. I don’t know what to say to them and I don’t want to push myself upon them. I mostly observe them and try to know them in that way. I would require months to really became their “grandpa”. I don’t have much time. We only have twelve days here, and half of those days are already gone.

Several days ago, their mother bought all of them balloons. All the children played with them inside of the house, seeing as it was 100 degrees outside. Then the kids’ mom and my wife had to make a trip to buy school supplies and new clothes. They took the older two Texan kids with them. I was home babysitting Asher and the three-year-old boy, Wyatt. Wyatt has never spoken to me. He keeps me at a distance. While his mama was away, he grew sad. He didn’t want to watch the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with Asher. He missed his mom. I found a balloon and started to bounce it back and forth with him. Wyatt smiled and we played together until his mama came home with the school stuff from Walmart.

A balloon helped me to connect with Wyatt, at least a little bit.

That’s a win.

Over and Over Again

August 8th, 2026

Yesterday morning, we drove to a jobsite in Texas where are oldest son, Hans, was pumping concrete. He operates a huge pump truck. It has eighteen wheels, weighs about 185K lbs., and has a 57-meter boom on it. He had been working at the site since 2:00 AM to pump a 600-yard concrete slab for a new hay barn. Karin, Asher, and I got there at 8:30, and his crew wasn’t even close to be finished with the job. Hans had asked us to come to the site to see what he does for a living. He seldom does jobs so close to home. It’s nothing for him to pump concrete as far away as Dallas, or Houston, or Port Arthur. Since yesterday’s job was only about ten miles from our hotel in Madisonville, he figured it was a rare chance to see him in action.

We did not actually go into the jobsite. If you aren’t wearing a hard hat, you shouldn’t be there. We could see Hans in the distance. He is instantly recognizable even at 100 yards away. He was walking around slowly and with a slight sag in his shoulders. He waved once at us and then went back to work. He looked tired, extremely tired. I can identify with that.

I worked as a supervisor on the dock at a trucking company. For about twenty years, I worked third (graveyard) shift. During many of those years, my wife and I had small children at home, which meant that I was always sleep deprived. Like Hans, I tried to sleep before my shift started, but that seldom worked. I was dead tired and wound tight simultaneously. I often self-medicated to function, but that was unhealthy for me and my family. Even when I was physically at home, I wasn’t really there. However, I was the sole breadwinner in the family, and we needed the money that I earned.

Hans is in a remarkably similar situation. He doesn’t even have the luxury of having a set start time for work. He gets called by dispatch a few hours before his job is set to begin. He sleeps at random times, and he sleeps poorly. He is taking care of his family financially, but there are significant downsides to his line of work. He honestly loves pumping concrete, and he is good at his job. It is the erratic schedule that is slowly killing him.

When I was working on the loading dock, I was operating in a brutal environment. The temperatures on the dock were exactly the same as the temps outside. It was hot in summer and intensely cold in winter. My job required me to function under severe time constraints. I had to think on my feet. It was also literally dangerous on the dock. I had my right leg crushed by a forklift in 2009.

Hans’ working conditions are not much different. He works in extreme heat. His work is hazardous and physically demanding. His job is stressful. He has to get his job done while following a rigorous schedule. Everything is time sensitive.

I wonder why Hans and I have followed such similar career paths. It might be just bad karma. However, I think part of the problem is that we are both veterans. We have traits that draw us to work that, quite honestly, kind of sucks.

I will make some gross generalizations here. Veterans tend to be mission oriented. We just want to get the job done. We like unambiguous instructions and goals. Give us a clear set of orders and set us loose. We are used to working in difficult environments under pressure. We expect things to go sideways and we plan accordingly. We can be part of a team, but we prefer to work alone. We have limited social skills.

So, where do we wind up? Hans and I found work with companies that needed people who could work under stress and still get the job done. I really wish that Hans had found a different path, but he didn’t. The cycle just keeps repeating.

Together at Last

August 2nd, 2026

I took the little boy to see his mama in prison this morning. It was a 90-minute drive from our house to the facility in Fond du Lac, WI. I hadn’t been there since the last time the young woman was incarcerated. That was seven or eight years ago. The prison hadn’t moved, but the way to get to it had changed. GPS was not a lot of help. I had to take a road that was torn up and clearly marked “closed to thru traffic”. A couple miles of gravel and potholes brought us to our destination. We made it to our visitation appointment in time, but I was still uneasy. When we got into the guard shack, I found out that I had good reason to be.

To visit an inmate an outsider has to request an appointment online with ICSolutions. This is after going through a multi-week screening process to even get approved for a visit. Once the boy and I got inside the entrance, I was told fill out yet another request form and then wait for somebody to help me. We waited. From long, painful experience I have learned to just roll with whatever happens in the prison system.

A female guard came out to us and smiled. She looked at my form and then checked on her computer printout for my name. I found it for her. She frowned a bit and said, “The boy’s name isn’t on my list with yours.”

Apparently, my face said it all. My expression screamed, “Ohhhh, fuck.”

She didn’t ask me any questions. She cut me off before I could even speak.

She told me, “Don’t panic! We’ll call and see if the captain can make an exception for you. I know that ICSolutions can be very confusing. Just give me a minute after we put you through security.”

The guard screened me and the boy. We put all of our possessions, except for a credit card into a tiny locker. The guard quietly asked me about the young woman and her son, and then she told me,

“It’s wonderful that you brought him here. We learn from the mistakes of our parents.”

I’m not sure about that, but I wasn’t going to argue.

She made a phone call. The boy and I stood at the closed door leading to the visitation building. Were we going to get inside? The young woman didn’t care about seeing me that much, but she was burning to be with her little boy. Clearly, I screwed something up when I made the appointment online. My only question was about how catastrophic it would turn out to be.

The guard told me, “The captain is making an exception for you, but we are putting a warning in your file. If it happens again, we won’t be able let you through.”

I thought to myself, “Fine. I will worry about next time when next time rolls around. Just get us through this door.”

We got past the door and then through a heavy steel gate. The outer fence of the prison grounds (note: there are several fences) is electrified and it has razor wire on top. We walked across the lawn to the visitation center, where we went through another series of locked doors. In the guard shack at the entrance to the prison we had been given hand stamps that only show up under ultraviolet light. At the final hurdle we had our stamps examined and we were assigned to a table in the room. Then we waited for mama to arrive.

The whole process reminded me of when I crossed into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie back in 1983. Funny how some memories resurface.

The emotional reunion of mother and child was almost anticlimactic after the ordeal of just getting them together in the same room. We talked for a while and then I bought snacks for mother and son. That is why I had a credit card with me. Only visitors can use the vending machines. Almost every item costs about $3.50. It doesn’t matter if it is a candy bar or a bottle of soda or a little bag of cookies. It’s all expensive, and the vendors literally have a captive audience.

The young woman thanked me for bringing her boy to her. I just said,” You’re welcome.” It was something that needed to be done, and it was done out of love.

We stayed for two hours. That’s all you can get on a weekend. There is a playground outside and the boy made good use of it. The boy and his mama joked and laughed. I spoke to her about what we might do once she gets out in February of 2028. A lot can happen between now and then, but we at least shared ideas.

Leaving the prison was the exact reverse of how we came in. A person goes back through the same wormhole to get home again.

There is a mural covering a wall in the visitation center. It’s really well made and shows images of women’s faces. There are two statements on the wall.

“She overcame all that tried to destroy her” and “Real change, enduring change, comes in small steps.”

Not bad.

Anxiety

July 30th, 2026

It’s been at least four weeks now since my wife and I have put in applications to visit a young woman who is currently incarcerated. We also filed an application for the woman’s five-year-old son, who is in our care. The Department of Corrections (DOC) needs to do a background check on all potential visitors, apparently even kindergarten age children. The young woman has not seen her little boy since April, which makes it four months since they were together. The woman is understandably anxious about the situation. It is particularly upsetting for her since my wife, her son, and I plan on making a road trip to Texas three days from now in order to see our grandchildren down there. The young woman was really hoping to see her son before our departure. We were also hoping that would happen. The odds of us visiting her in prison before we head south are getting worse with each passing day.

Early this morning, the woman called us to tell us that the boy and I have been approved to schedule a visit. My wife has not yet been approved. After the mom called us, I immediately went to the ICSolutions website set up a meeting. We can’t schedule a visit directly with anyone at the prison. They outsourced that work to a third party, ICSolutions. It is impossible to make a visit any other way. I tried several times to schedule a visit sometime during the next couple days. I failed. My request was rejected because ICSolutions said that I was not approved. The website said that my approval from the DOC was still pending.

After that, I made several phone calls. I called the people at the prison for help. They told me to check with ICSolutions because in the DOC’s system I had been approved two days ago. I called ICSolutions twice, and they assured me that in their system I was not approved. They did say that my information would be updated tomorrow, and I should show as being approved after that. I will believe it when I see it.

In the meantime, I had four more phone calls from the incarcerated mother. In each call she became more and more agitated. Her anxiety was through the roof. During the fourth call, she tearfully exclaimed,

“I’ll never get to see him!”

I quietly told her, “You will get to see him. The people at ICSolutions said that I can go online tomorrow and I will be able to set up an appointment for a visit. If there are still open visitation slots available during the next three days, I will take one and we will come up to see you. We will drive two hours to the prison, and we can be with you for two hours.”

Now, we wait.

To be fair, the people at the prison and the folks at ICSolutions were polite and sympathetic. They really did try to help me. However, because the computers at the DOC and those at ICSolutions are not on speaking terms, they could do nothing for me. The people working within the system are all decent. The bureaucracy is nothing short of demonic.

Tomorrow morning, I will login to my account at ICSolutions and maybe, just maybe, I will be able to set up a visit.

I am not confident about that.

July 31st, 2026

Update: I finally got an appointment to visit the young woman. It is at 9:30 AM on August 2nd. She will get to see her little boy, at last.

Don Timmerman

July 26th, 2026

Don Timmerman died of cancer on July 19th. He spent almost all of his adult life advocating for peace and justice. I am tempted to say that he was “fighting” for those causes, but I’m not sure if that word is appropriate to describe a man who was an absolute pacifist. Based on his understanding of the Gospels, especially the Beatitudes, Don rejected all wars, and by extension all aspects of the military. He was an elder and leader at the Casa Maria Catholic Worker House in Milwaukee, WI. He posted a monthly newsletter, Casa Cry, in which he consistently railed against the U.S. military/industrial complex and the violence and suffering it produces. He used his jeremiads to stir the consciences of those people who bothered to peruse his essays, and he encouraged them to protest against the evils of war. Unfortunately, I suspect that most if not all his readers already agreed with most of his views. He was preaching to the choir.

I did not know Don well. I can’t remember how I met him. Nor can I remember the last time I spoke to him. Up until the time that my wife and I became guardians and fulltime caregivers for our little grandson, Asher, I was often involved in protests of one sort or another. I would see him at these demonstrations. It was his calling to bear witness. In that sense, Don was a prophet, like those in the Hebrew scriptures. If he saw injustice, he had to say something, or at least silently show his opposition to it. He had to be there.

It seems odd that I ever met him at all. Our paths in life were radically different. Don trained to be missionary priest in Tanzania. He was at one time a translator for Mother Teresa. He became deeply involved with the Catholic Worker movement. He repeatedly participated in antiwar protests and was often arrested for civil disobedience. He was passionate about living as a disciple of Christ.

I, on the other hand, graduated from West Point and I spent six years as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. I served in a helicopter unit in West Germany during the early 1980’s. My oldest son, Hans, enlisted in the Army in 2009. He went to war in Iraq. He came back damaged.

Don frequently demonstrated against ROTC at Marquette University in Milwaukee. I went there with him once. It was a lonely vigil. I think he was often all alone when he protested, but he felt that it was duty to be there. Don believed that it was wrong for a Catholic school to support ROTC. The administration at Marquette disagreed with him. I stood with him holding a sign to protest the training of military officers at Marquette. At one point, a young, fresh-faced ROTC cadet walked past us nervously. He glanced at me and hurried away. When I looked at the cadet, I saw me, an earlier version of myself. That shook me. I understood why this young man was wearing a uniform and doing what he was doing. I firmly believe that Don did not understand. He saw it all in terms of right and wrong, black and white. ROTC was wrong. Period.

The times when I was demonstrating with Don were educational for me. They also made me feel uneasy. It should be noted that my wife and I did absolutely everything we could to keep Hans out the wars. We used advice from the Quakers to show him as a conscientious objector in the system when he had to sign up for the Selective Service. The irony was that Hans enlisted anyway, and for all the same reasons that I had when I joined up fifty years ago. Hans and I were, and in a way still are, part of the system that Don so intensely opposed. We’re vets and he never was.

Back on May 1st of this year, I posted an essay on my blog, “It’s Still about Iran”. Read it if you want. Don did, and he sent a remarkably long response to what I wrote. I attempted in my article to describe what a disaster the current war against Iran is. I did not write the essay solely for pacifist readers. Actually, this article was also posted on a veteran’s website, The Havok Journal. I did not use moral arguments against the war. Don had always used moral persuasion, with limited success. I tried mostly to explain why the war was so stupid. Thomas Merton once said that a man would rather be considered clever than good. I tried to appeal to a person’s intellect more than to their conscience.

Don sent me a variation of his usual diatribe against war. He apparently assumed that I support war in general, and that I only opposed to this current fiasco. In his response, his last words to me were:

“You have chosen the state over Christ.”—Don Timmerman and Casa Maria C.W. community

That stung.

The fact that is that I agree with almost all that he said. One thing I learned from my time with Don was that people seldom listen to moral exhortations. Prophets are usually ignored, or worse. Maybe I have chosen the State over Christ. Or maybe I see more nuances than Don did. I don’t know about that. All I know is that my son and I have suffered from the effects of war. I think I hate war as much as Don did, and I may have more reason to do so.

I wrote back to Don, and I asked him not to judge me.

He replied, “Of course.”

Don was a good man. I admire his courage and his dedication. He lived his faith.

I just wish we had known each other better. I wish we had understood each other better.

Haze

July 16th, 2026

The smoke from the Canadian wildfires arrived yesterday. I went outside early in the morning to put some letters in the mailbox. Everything smelled like a campfire. The trees down the street from our house looked hazy and indistinct. I figure the visibility was at best half a mile. Usually, at that time of the day, there are some people walking their dogs or just taking a stroll. There weren’t any yesterday, and there probably won’t be any today.

It’s the same deal this morning. The sky is a dull metallic grey. The sun is rising. It’s like an angry, bloodshot eye peeking through the smoke. The ground is hard and dry. All the lawns are turning from green to brown. It’s been hot and dry for a while. A good rain would probably wash the smoke particles out of the air and help the grass, but rain is not in the forecast.

Our grandson Asher has not been to playground for days. Recently, it’s been too hot for us to go to the playground at the park. If I could get him up and dressed around sunrise, we could manage it, but that hasn’t happened. It takes Asher some time to start his day. Now, with the smoke, my wife and I don’t want him running around and exerting himself outside. He can play in our yard for a while, but he shouldn’t breathe in this crap more than necessary. He’s plays most of the day in the house. He gets bored and asks us to tell him endless stories about his stuffed animals. That wears me out. I wish we could get him outside and moving.

The haze and the heat bother me. It’s more of a psychological stress than a physical discomfort. It just feels wrong. The weather is eerie and unnatural, but I’m afraid it is part of the new normal for Wisconsin. Our son in Texas has been telling us about the nearly constant rain they are having down there. That’s weird too. In all the years he has lived in Texas, there has never been so much rain in the summer, except when hurricanes have blown through the state. He and his family are experiencing a new normal there too.

And we keep burning fossil fuels, even though we know that is the primary cause of the new normal.

A Phone Call from the Dark Side of the Moon

July 11th, 2026

She called us this morning. I answered the phone and got the usual recorded spiel from the monopoly that provides telephone service to inmates at the prison. The young woman who called can usually talk with us once day for ten minutes. Before she was connected to us, a female voice explained that “this call will be monitored and may be recorded”. Then the person in the recording said cheerfully, “Thank you for using ICSolutions.” It should be noted that every phone call she makes costs money and that money comes from a source outside of the prison, that source being me. It should also be noted that I cannot call the young woman. I don’t think anyone on the outside can. She has to initiate all communication.

The first thing she did after saying “Hello” was to ask if her five-year-old son was in the room. He was. She asked him how he was. He told her that he was okay. The boy was in good spirits this morning and he was happy to converse with his mama. Sometimes when she calls, he is in a foul mood, and flat out refuses to talk with her. On those occasions, I urge him to say something, anything, to his mother. She needs to hear his voice. These brief calls are a lifeline for her, and I am not sure that her son understands that.

She also wanted to talk with me. She only does that when there are serious issues to discuss. It’s a little like in The Godfather when Michael Corleone tells his brother, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” In any case, she wanted to explain to me that it might take a while before we can visit her at the prison. We had to fill out forms in order to see her. I had to even fill out an application for her little boy. The young woman wanted me to know that it can take up to three weeks for these requests to be approved, because the DOC only has one person working parttime to process them. That did not surprise me at all. The Department of Corrections does things in its own way on its own schedule. The young woman wanted to be certain that we had filled out every space and checked every box on the forms. I told her that we had. She was very anxious and she kept asking if I was sure. It almost got to the point where I wasn’t sure, but I told her the paperwork was done right.

The young woman badly wants to see her little boy. She told him on the phone that she hadn’t seen him in four months. I was momentarily shocked that it has been so long, but she’s right. For her, four months is an eternity. She asked the boy if he wanted to see her. He gave her an enthusiastic “Yes”. Thank God for that. Once we get permission to visit her, whenever that happens, we will make an appointment to see her. The prison is a two-hour drive from our house. My wife and I visited that place when the woman was incarcerated there back in 2019. It will be different now with her son coming along us. We have no idea how he will react to that environment. He might freak out. We won’t know until we get there.

Ten minutes is not a long time for a phone call. The young woman asked her son, “Do you love me?”, more than once. He told her that he did. She told him repeatedly how much she loved him, how he was the best thing that ever happened in her life. He kind of laughed about that. I guess he didn’t realize that she meant it. The boy really is the best thing that has ever happened to her. He is the best thing that has happened for any of us.

As time ran out, she told him one last time, “I love you.” Then the phone went dead and the call was over. She isn’t that far away, but she can’t be with him, and he can’t be with her. She might as well be on the dark side of the moon.

Never Seem to Find the Time

June 13th, 2026

“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter, and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun”

From the song, Time, by Pink Floyd

I first listened to the song from Pink Floyd when I was twenty-three years old, and I was a student in the U.S. Army flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama. I was busy learning how to fly Hueys, and for me the training was often stressful. Yet, there was also a lot of dead time. Southeastern Alabama did not have a lot going for it at the time. Unless I chose to drive a couple hours to a beach on the Florida’s gulf coast, I was stuck in the local area watching the kudzu grow.

So, the first two verses of the song rang true. It often happened that I concluded “there is time to kill today” and yes, I did “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way”. I did that sort of thing a lot while I was in the Army. Being a soldier meant have long stretches of tedium interrupted by short bursts of intense activity. I was told once that a day wasted is not necessarily a wasted day. I probably goofed off more than I should have. On the other hand, if I had stayed busy all the time, I probably would never have met my wife, Karin, when I was stationed in Germany. The really crucial events in life sometimes occur in the gaps between the activities that the world tells you are important.

“And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say”

Now, these two verses resonate with me.

I have a friend who is in his nineties. He’s alert and in generally good health. He still has ambitions to do things, but he mourns the fact that he no longer has the time or energy to accomplish his objectives. His goals are simple. He just wants to work in his garden. He might like to go to the synagogue again. He wants to bake cookies. These are all ordinary tasks that now seem out of reach.

I am younger than my friend, yet sometimes I feel the same way. I feel tired quite often. I leave many things undone, or half-done. I used to do volunteer work with vets and with migrants. Now I don’t. I start a project only to drop my tools (physical or mental) to deal with an unexpected problem. It is depressing at times.

I am reading a semi-autobiographical novel by Michael Chabon. It’s called Moonglow. It is about a young man listening to the stories of his dying grandfather. In one section of the book, the elderly man laments,

“I’m disappointed in myself. In my life. All my life, everything I tried. I only got halfway there. You try to take advantage of the time you have. That’s what they tell you to do. But when you’re old, you look back and see all that you did, with all that time, is waste it. All you have is a story of things you never started or couldn’t finish. Things you fought with all your heart to build that didn’t last or fought with all your heart to get rid of and they’re all still around. I’m ashamed of myself.”

I can completely understand the old man’s regrets. Sometimes, late at night, when only I am awake, I have the same dark feelings. But the grandfather’s words in the novel are only partially true. I have failed in many respects, but success is not necessarily the meaning of life. As a Tibetan Buddhist, Chogyam Trungpa once said, “The path is to goal”. A person has to take risks and play the fool sometimes in order to truly live. A person has to give a damn about others. That’s what matters.

I cannot indulge in mourning the past. I don’t have time for that. I still have work to do. I have Asher, my five-year-old grandson, to raise. I have a wife who needs me. I have other people who depend on me to some extent.

Hang on a minute. I hear Asher calling me.

“Grandpa! Come here!”

“What do you need?”

“Grandpa, come read to me.”

I will end here. I have important things to do.

Merry Month of May

May 31st, 2026

Friday was the May festival at Tamarack Waldorf School. It was a good day for it, sunny and warm. In the past, seeing as we live in Wisconsin, there have been May celebrations at the school when the weather has been rainy, windy, and cold. That sort of thing makes the gatherings less than festive. However, Friday was perfect for getting the kids outside. We all met at Pulaski Park, which is a tiny green space next to Wolski’s Tavern. In Milwaukee, it seems like nearly everything is close to a tavern. It’s a cultural thing, neither good nor bad. It just is.

The Waldorf school makes great efforts to connect class activities with the natural cycle of the seasons. The May festival is the annual observance of spring. The kindergarten students had their assembly in the morning, so that was when Asher was there with his classmates. At the beginning of the festival, everybody, including children, parents, and faculty, gathered in a large circle around a low hill in the park. The children and some of the adults wore colorful headbands, many with flowers. A small maypole stood at the apex of the knoll. One of the kindergarten teachers led everyone in reciting a long verse in praise of spring. The spoken portion of the verse was accompanied by movements to encourage all participants to get their whole bodies involved. The teacher talked about the warmth of the sun, the gentleness of the rain, the beauty of the flowers, and the new life exploding all around us. It was a moving ritual, and it harks back to times when humans were much closer to the earth and its rhythms. There was a vaguely pagan feel to it, but that’s okay. We have forgotten much of what our ancestors knew intuitively, and we have to relearn these things.

After the verse, the kids ran wild. Some went to the playground. Some threw rings around the top of the maypole. Some drew on the ground with chalk. Some blew bubbles. Some ate popcorn. Asher found a jump rope, and for the first time ever, he actually jumped over the rope successfully.

My wife and I mingled with the other caregivers. I have been trying to network with parents from Asher’s class. We want to organize play dates so that Asher and his classmates can keep in contact during the summer break. That is important for Asher, and it also good for us as Asher’s legal guardians and de facto parents. We need a sense of community. The other caregivers are from a generation that is much younger than my wife and me, but we all have the same mission. We are all trying to raise the next cycle of children in a world that is not often friendly or forgiving.

I talked with a father about the future of the little ones in our midst. I told him what I hoped for Asher.

“Asher has a gentle soul. I want him to keep it.”

Just that achieving that much is huge challenge.

My wife and I talked briefly with a young mother. She has three kids in the school. We explained to the woman about Asher and our struggles to care for the boy. Raising Asher is an all-consuming task for us. She listened to us patiently. Then she said,

“He will grow up to be a good human being.”

Asher is only one child in a world with billions of them. There are so many kids on this earth who are suffering. Karin and I can’t save them all. It is all we can do to care of just one of them.

Asher is in the springtime of his life. Now is the time for him to grow and flourish. This is the time for him to become who he is destined to be. If Asher grows up a be a good man in a broken world, that will be enough. Maybe more than enough.