*

I became discombobulated.

That was the intention of whoever designed this bathroom.

As if to say, don’t get comfortable; change is coming. You won’t have these urinals forever.

I’ve always felt privileged to be born a man.

Why wouldn’t I?

*

From my birth in 1949, the world has been organized to meet my needs.

Whether in public bathrooms

*

Or our private bathroom, where I get to look at

*

While Rebecca gazes at

*

Of course, my gender privilege makes sense because we all know who took the first bite of the apple. As Adam said, “The Woman you gave me God made me eat the forbidden fruit.”

*

So comfortably clothed men lecture while women look at us and wonder.

*

But the world is turning — even some of its bathrooms.

*

Too fast for the entitled, too slow for the outsiders.

America’s changing bathrooms are one sign of the times. Listen to Yale Psychologist Jennifer Richeson:

My lab is in an old engineering building, and there’s exactly one women’s bathroom. No one noticed that, or at least no faculty members did. And then, slowly, Yale began adding women to the department, and they noticed it. They complained. Now there was friction. What had gone unnoticed by those with power in one era was unacceptable to those gaining power in another.

Power is always the subtext in a democracy. What’s the point of giving power to the people if you don’t, well, provide power to all the people?

What do people who have no power feel? Look closely at this painting by Helen Saunders.

*

The title is Hammock; the theme is suffering.

An invisible person has no voice and thus suffers.

My mother died at 96 in 2017. As her mind slowly ebbed in her last decade, she told this true story repeatedly. It was a well-worn groove in her brain. During WWII, she worked as the head teller in a bank, replacing a man who went to war. Her college degree led to a leadership position she held for three years. When government inspectors appeared every year, they all asked for her.

After the war, she met my dad, had three sons, and worked inside the home to raise us. My dad was an engineer and was frequently out of town. He died in 1993.

My brothers and I put her in a memory care unit a year before she died. One day as my brother Pat and I sat with her in her room, she told us another story. The previous week she had been elected leader of the residents association. As the leader, she went to the director with a list of demands. Among the demands was an open-door policy meaning residents could leave whenever they wanted.

We had never seen our mother so alive.

The bank story was true. This story was made-up but TRUTH.

When I look at the woman in the Hammock, I think of my mother. She was a good mom and spouse. But I always had the feeling she wanted more. That’s what her stories were about.

Would she have been more contented if she had been born one or two generations later?

This story began in a bathroom. I could have started it by putting you in a stadium in New Zealand where America’s Women’s National Soccer team is competing in the Women’s World Cup. After decades of struggle, American women will be paid the same as the American Men’s National Soccer team. (source)

No one ever concedes power quickly or without a demand backed by a counterforce.

As I age and become less visible in a country that honors youth, I take comfort that America has become a noisier place. There were only a few voices when I was born, and they were very loud.

Today, it’s a cacophony: jarring, discordant, and beautiful.

Like that bathroom.

I took this photo two years ago of the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool from the top step of the Lincoln Memorial. Look closely at the people.

When I turned around to face Mr. Lincoln, this scene presented itself.

And then I looked down at my feet.

I was standing on the spot Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have a Dreamspeech in 1963, with those final rousing words pointing to a distant future,

When all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

*

My friend Steve and his wife Katie adopted four South Korean children thirty-five years ago. A week ago, one of his kids, Nikki, was shopping at Walmart when a young man in the parking lot yelled, “Why don’t you go back to China.”

One ignorant guy, right? And The Confederate Flag flying prominently from the white pick-up I saw yesterday, that’s just one truck. Maybe it was the same guy.

Yesterday, I was shopping for a hat and picked up this one for 6 dollars.

It’s a muted version of the Gadsden Flag with a complicated history you can read about here. Lately, however, this symbolism has been adopted by White Supremacist groups.

Three vignettes.

Each is in the open. Out of the shadows.

Should we be worried?

Is America moving closer to or further away from King’s free at-last vision for all God’s children?

*

Four years ago, Rebecca and I visited another memorial. In the photo below, we are sitting behind the podium Adolph Hitler spoke from 1933–1938 at massive Nazi Rallies in Nuremberg, Germany. I don’t have a picture, but on that day in front of us where thousands of Seig Heil saluters once marched were a bunch of kids on skateboards.

The Nazi Rally Grounds are kept in the form of preserved decay as part of an extraordinary Documentation Museum. The Nazi vision of an “exclusionary society” now lies on the ash heap of history.

Could something like that happen here?

*

America today has more immigrants than any country in the world. (source) Fifty million of 330 million were born in another country, with Mexico, China, and India as the top three countries of origin. Most Americans, 59% to 34%, believe immigrants strengthen our country. (source)

These are good omens — one of my intellectual Political Science mentors, E.E. Schattschneider, wrote that “Democracy begins as an act of imagination about people.” Not people as an abstraction but the “warm, breathing, feeling, hungering, loving, hating, aspiring, living being with whom we identify ourselves.”

And he continued, “The democratic concern for people is not selective…it takes a lot of indiscriminate affection for people as people to run a democracy.”

*

I was born in 1949, when America was a different country. With few exceptions, white Protestant males ran its institutions. Silenced voices hid its diversity. For many, America was easier to love.

The sixties changed all that. Laws were passed, opening America’s doors to Asians and those south of its border. Civil Rights legislation and Supreme Court decisions gave voice to African Americans. Other movements of out-groups followed.

White male monopolies slowly disintegrated. But not without a fight.

That we are still in the middle of, that drives America’s politics and explains its divisions.

Two years ago, as a white male at the Lincoln Memorial, I was in the minority. Perhaps even before I die, my race will lose its majority status across this land. In 1867, former slave Frederick Douglass gave an extraordinary speech titled “Composite Nation.” In it, he argued against a law that excluded immigrants from China. He said:

I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto, and Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here, both for his sake and ours.

I don’t want my great-grandchildren to be skateboarding on the decayed steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

We’ve got work to do.

Down the path of indiscriminate affection.

For all America’s people.

Color is integral to our stories.

DEAR BLOG READER: THIS STORY HAS BEEN COPIED FROM MEDIUM, AN ONLINE WRITING PLATFORM. THE HIGHLIGHTING IS FROM MEDIUM. Unfortunately, the links do not work.

*

A reader responded to a recent story with this comment: “I wish niceness were colorblind.” I thought about her comment and wrote a follow-up piece.

I understand the reader’s sentiment. For much of American history, people selected winners and losers based on the color of their skin. Ridding ourselves of this bias seemed a form of progress.

But upon further reflection, and prodded by another reader, I wondered whether being colorblind makes sense. This led me to this analogical tale.

*

Rebecca and I selected each kitchen item in the photo for its colors.

The white backsplash contrasts nicely with the grey-speckled granite countertop. The tiles’ teak grout augments the top’s porcelain flecks.

The framed picture’s cream road complements the backsplash. Its sage green countryside enhances the emerald flower leaves on the French butter dish.

When the butter dish opens, its bright yellow contents enrich the picture’s mustard matting and mango bicyclist shirt.

Color matters.

Color shadings are important.

*

When we look at each kitchen feature, we see its complexion.

Pigmentation is part of the value of each.

To be colorblind makes no sense.

But we don’t see only color.

Each element has stories.

Sometimes these stories are connected to their colors.

Rebecca is a bicycling devotee. She found a print of Giuliana Lazzerini’s woodcutting The Race at London’s Tate Modern Museum’s bookshop. She loved the yellows and greens. They reminded her of fall and summer colors throughout our community’s Trout Run Bike Trail.

Sometimes not.

Rebecca loves the rider’s hunched focus. It embodies her approach to this sport. For this aspect, the rider’s shirt color is irrelevant.

*

We’ve had the French Butter Dish for about a year. It’s ingenious. You tightly pack cold and softened butter sticks into the container on the right in the photo. It is placed over the left receptacle with an inch of salt water. This connection forms an airtight, oxygen-free vessel that keeps the butter fresh for about a month.

Unless you forget to replace the salt water every week. Something I did last week when Rebecca was on a weeklong biking trip.

When the butter morphed into the tinge of The Race’s matting.

*

We value each kitchen component for its colors. We see different hues as complementary, not as competitive.

But color forms only part of their identities. It sometimes connects to their identity, sometimes not. The funky French Butter thingy works regardless of its outer clothing. Its character matters most.

Each has stories worth telling and hearing.

Our butter dish works for us because of its character and color.

Identity is never just one thing.

For a dish or a human.

Caring about someone or something requires seeing all parts of them.

As the first step toward valuing and then understanding.

And overcoming shame

*

We were a month into the fall semester of 1987. It was my second year teaching at Luther College. As usual, I arrived fifteen minutes early, full of nervous energy. I wrote a couple of announcements on the chalkboard and sat in the chair by the window.

The twelve students enrolled in The Legislative Process drifted in and settled with books, pens, and notebooks arrayed around the table.

I started with a mini-lecture to develop the context of that day’s subject matter and reading. Then I asked them a question about the reading assignment. This was a reticent group, even though they were all 3rd and 4th-year students. Their quietness frustrated me. After the second question, with no response, I asked, “How many of you haven’t read the assignment.” Four raised their hands.

“I’ll see you four next class. Please come with the assignment read. I expect everyone to come to class ready to discuss the reading. That’s the only way we can learn together,” I explained.

The guilty four silently gathered their belongings and filed out.

Dreams and a regret

I regretted what I had done before they left the room. In my ten years as a teacher, first in middle school and then in college classrooms, I had never kicked a kid out. I hadn’t planned to kick them out. My job was to teach, and I couldn’t do that if they were not in class. I felt I had failed them. They deserved better. I vowed never to do this again.

This event troubled me so much that for over 30 years, I have had a recurring dream of four students filing past me as they left a classroom. I had this dream a few nights ago. When I woke up this time, I remembered one of the students from this class lives in town. He works as a chiropractor, and I frequently walk by his building.

“Why not contact David?” I thought. So I found his email and reached out to him, asking if he remembered that day.

He responded.

“I remember the entire events of that day. If you’d like me to relate them to you. I would be OK to sit with a coffee and talk about them. I was fortunate enough to have done the reading!”

Reconnecting

David met me with his hand extended as I entered the coffee shop. He was dressed in black scrubs. We ordered coffee and settled into a corner table.

“Thanks for being willing to meet me,” I said. “I’ve never forgotten that day. I always felt I failed those students.”

“Actually, I liked what you did,” he said. “I thought you did the right thing. You showed us through your actions what it means to be a serious student. And that actions have consequences.”

We then spent two hours catching up. What a gift it was to talk with a former student at midlife about how his life had turned out! His daughter had just graduated from Luther. My son, also a Luther graduate, now works at the Co-op. David told me he was the first chiropractor to join one of Decorah’s regional health clinics. I said I was still teaching Life Long Learning courses.

The time flew by.

As we left, we shook hands and agreed to stay in touch.

Urgency of closure

One of the joys of being 73 is the urgency of closure. It’s easy to put things off when you are young. Less so at this point in life. My shame over kicking those students out had dogged me for decades. Holding on to it festered. My recurring dream would not let me off the hook. It was like a good friend sitting on my front porch, encouraging me to face my fear and neglect.

All along, I could have reached out to David. Once I did, he offered another way to look at this event. That balanced my harsh judgment. He reminded me to be kinder to myself. And reconnecting with David encouraged me to think of other wounds that need resolution.

What about you?

Do you have a regret that might benefit from another point of view?

If there is a conversation you have been putting off, take a chance. Reach out. Be bold. Seize the opportunity.

You won’t regret it!

A Lesson in Humility from America’s Greatest Coach

A NOTE TO THE READERS OF MY WORDPRESS BLOG. I NOW WRITE ALL MY STORIES ON MEDIUM.COM. BECAUSE IT COSTS $5 PER MONTH, I AM COPYING AND PASTING THEM TO WORDPRESS. BUT NOT EVERYTHING TRANSFERS PERFECTLY. THAT’S WHY YOU WILL OCCASIONALLY SEE SOME EXTRA MARKINGS OR HIGHLIGHTS.

THANK YOU FOR READING MY BLOG.

*

I’ve just finished a terrific book on the person many consider America’s most outstanding coach, John Wooden.

Wooden’s greatest player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, wrote Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court a few years after Wooden died at 99 in 2010.

Abdul-Jabbar, 76, has written over 50 books; Wooden wrote over 20.

Coach Wooden began his adult life as an English teacher with a love of poetry that he would routinely quote to his basketball players over his 29-year coaching career.

He also wrote poetry as, in his words, an amateur. He said about his poetry efforts,

“Good words in good order is good enough for me.“

I thought about Wooden’s words about writing yesterday when I read this beautiful quote by 

Michelle Scorziello

“When a writer conveys something universal and true, something so fundamental to being human it’s as if a little rent in the universe appears and a kindred spirit has grabbed my hand. The right words placed in the right order can unleash profound affinity. Even more impressive is when the writer’s words are direct and seemingly simple.“

Scorziello’s quote with the vital sentence boldened by me refers to why an essay by Nobel Prize winner Herman Hesse works so well. There is that phrase, again, right words in the right order.

To Scorziello, Hesse’s words “were writing gold, but I could only produce base metal.” I feel the same way about my writing. I read better writers daily, including Wooden, Abdul-Jabbar, and Scorziello.

What do I do about that fact?

When Wooden sat down to write poetry, did he sit in the shadow of Kipling, one of his favorite writers? Is that why his quote concludes with “good enough for me”?

And what about an ordinary coach thinking about her career? Does she sit in the shadow of John Wooden? Or an average NBA player with Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points looming over him? Or Jabbar, now the second fiddle in the points record book to Lebron James.

Did Shakespeare loom over Kipling’s scribblings? Who did Hesse consider his writing master?

For me, I’m in awe of this description of Ted Williams’ last home run from Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu by John Updike:

“Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.”

Good words in good order, turbocharged. I could no more write that Updike paragraph than an ordinary college coach could win Wooden’s nine national championships.

Like Michelle Scorziello, I’m confronted daily with a bittersweet fact: I read better writers than me. They offer me hints about how to put words in good order.

In the film Amadeus, a lesser composer, Antonio Salieri, is driven mad because he can’t take his eyes off the gap between his work and the efforts of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Good notes in good order was not enough for Salieri.

How do you manage the tension between the ceiling set by the writers you admire and your lesser efforts?

I occasionally try this mental trick; let’s call it the fly-on-the-wall maneuver.

I become the fly and observe myself sitting in my writing chair, tapping away at the keys on my MacBook Air. John Updike is sitting in the corner, looking out the window, writing in a notebook. Walt Whitman is sitting on his shoulder.

This image always makes me smile.

And brings me back to the task at hand.

The production of which is good enough for me.

What about you?

*

A NOTE TO THE READERS OF MY WORDPRESS BLOG. I NOW WRITE ALL MY STORIES ON THE WRITING PLATFORM MEDIUM. FOR NOW, I AM COPYING AND PASTING FROM MEDIUM TO WORDPRESS. THE HIGHLIGHTED SENTENCES ARE FROM MY MEDIUM READERS. I CAN TAKE THE COLORING OFF.

THANK YOU FOR READING MY BLOG. PAUL

Rebecca and I will spend next January in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We wanted to escape at least one month of another cold and snowy midwest USA winter. Arizona, California, and Florida did not appeal. We wanted someplace new, outside America.

This now seems natural to search beyond our country’s boundaries. But it wasn’t always this way for me. As I write this story from the comfort of our home, it still isn’t instinctive.

I’ve broken my trek toward globe-trotting comfort into six vignettes.

*

#1. I traveled outside the United States for the first time in the summer of 1987. I joined a group of teachers and their families on a two-week trip to England. On our first night in London, a few of us ate dinner at a pub close to our hotel. As we finished the meal, one couple complained that the food didn’t taste like they were used to, and the beer was warm. Even as a novice traveler, agreeing silently with them about the beer, I thought this was not a good attitude.

And I vowed to myself that I would learn to manage this tendency and develop a habit of comfort with new things. As a guest, I must do my best to learn about a region’s culture, values, history, and cuisine. I need to leave myself at home.

#2. In the summer of 1999, Richard dropped me off in Nottingham’s city center and said, “When you finish exploring, why don’t you take the bus back to our house? I was in Nottingham to direct Luther College’s year-long program in this north-central English city. Richard was the previous year’s director and would spend a few days showing me the ropes. Eleven students would follow in September. My tasks before they arrived included working with Nottingham University on each student’s academic schedule and planning four group trips around the United Kingdom.

But my first responsibility was learning how to get around this city of 300,000 so I could guide the students when they arrived. After Richard left, I recall standing on a busy corner in the Nottingham city center with a house address in one hand and a bus timetable in the other and feeling overwhelmed. One year later, the day before David, the following year’s director was to arrive, I walked from that same city center spot three miles to the director’s house without a map or bus schedule. All good things take time. Learn to live with uncertainty.

#3. Directing Luther’s Nottingham program sparked an interest in global experiences that continues today. Two years later, in August 2001, Mark faced me across the breakfast table at the Imperial Hotel in London. Mark was the director of what was then called Luther’s Study Abroad Office. Mark and I had come to London and Ireland to spend four days scouting locations for a January 2002 three-week study course with students I would lead. “What’s first on our agenda?” asked Mark. I looked at him and said, “I have no idea.” Fittingly, he gently chided me and said, “It’s your responsibility to plan these courses.”

Over the next decade and a half, I would plan, lead, and execute five January study away courses to Northern Ireland, Ireland, and England, in 2002, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015. And in the spring of 2018, in my last semester before retirement, my partner Rebecca and I would direct Luther’s semester program in Malta. As part of the Malta Program, we took our 11 students on group trips to Italy, Morocco, and Croatia that were planned, organized, and led by Rebecca and me.

In the fall of 2019, Rebecca and I co-hosted a Luther College alum trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland to study Peace and Reconciliation. And in the spring of 2020 and fall of 2021, I served as a Fulbright Scholar at West University in Timișoara, Romania.

I loved classroom teaching, but living and traveling with students in another country was my career’s most challenging and rewarding experience.Somehow — Luck? Fate? — I landed at a college that valued faculty travel and delivered mentors who showed me the way. They let me fail and fail again. And helped me scratch an itch I didn’t know I had.

Being a competent global traveler has become a part of my identity.

#4. In the fall of 2021, Rebecca and I visited the family of one of my Romanian students. Alex’s mom and dad, Gabriela and Marius, and sister Cosmina lived in Reșița, about an hour from Timișoara. Over lunch, Rebecca talked about how one of her daughters had married an Israeli-Jewish American. After she told this story, Marius looked at her and said, almost apologetically, “That could never happen in Romania; America is 30 years ahead of us.”

About a week later, I told this story during a guest lecture in a colleague’s class. My colleague responded by saying her grandfather had married a Jewish Romanian. She then asked for the hands (the course was taught online) of students who knew of Jewish family members. It looked like about 20% of the class raised their hands. For the rest of the hour, the class discussed Romania’s silence. I listened and silently thanked Alex’s family for triggering this educational moment.

I reminded myself that a traveler gets to know the local people. And listens more than speaks. And respects people, government, and institutions at their current level while garnering new respect for cultural pluralism.

#5. Our guide was a Sinn Fein politician on the 2019 alum trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland that Rebecca and me organized and hosted. Michael arranged a visit to The Belfast Police Museum that honors The Police Service of Northern Ireland. As our coach pulled into the parking lot, Michael said, “I’m sure I’m the first Sinn Fein political official to enter this museum.” As we walked through the museum, I saw how tense Michael was.

Afterward, on our way to Derry, he talked to us about what it was like growing up as a Catholic in Protestant Northern Ireland. Later in the trip, we spoke with a Protestant minister about his fears of living as a part of a united and Catholic Ireland. Like Michael, as he talked, I could feel his tenseness.

The 2019 trip was my 6th group trip to this region of the world. Whenever I walk again through the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods of Belfast and Derry (Londonderry to Protestants), I am reminded of the power of tradition and history. The more travelers know of a country’s history and traditions, the more they will see and feel like I did with Michael.

#6. Two Romanian classes were moved online in the Covid spring of 2020 after two in-person sessions. This was the first time I had taught an online course. Zooming, to me, was something Mighty Mouse did. Once it became clear that COVID was sticking around, I had no choice but to adapt and learn. Travel has taught me to expect the unexpected. It will likely happen.

Two weeks before every global trip, I get anxious. This feeling will hit me as we prepare for Mexico next December. I’m sitting writing this essay on our front porch. The sights, sounds, and smells are familiar. There is a little in me of that couple with the wrong attitude I described in story #1.

But there is more to life than familiarity. There is challenge and newness. I’m comfortable with both feelings.

What about you?

*

I walked by this sign a few days ago and have been thinking about it. Later the same day, I read there were 90 million refugees worldwide. These people have been forced out of their homes often by some violence. Sixteen million are Ukrainians, half displaced inside Ukraine and half elsewhere in Europe.

What would it be like to load all you could fit in your car and leave everything else behind, wondering when or if you would ever return?

Russia’s War on Ukraine has caused massive suffering. Sixteen million individual souls have their lives disrupted. Is there anything more cruel than that?

Cruelty is the bane of the world. It is hell incarnate.

Ukraine, NATO, and America are fighting a defensive war against Russia.

To stop the cruelty.

What if, today, war is the only answer?

More cruelty to stop the cruelty.

Yet I believe Gandhi was right when he said:

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent.

Russia’s war, Ukraine’s response, and today’s cruelties played forward.

Alas, the world will not bow to ONE ANSWER.

*

“I can’t help but wonder how things might have turned out had you not been white. I wish kindness were colorblind.”

This quote was from a reader responding to a story I wrote a week ago titled “A Breakdown on Highway 63 and the Kindness of Strangers.” You can find the story here.

I’m a 73-year old white male.

This is my response to the reader’s comment.

*

A new condominium complex squats two blocks from our Decorah, Iowa home. On a warm winter weekend in 2020, Rebecca and I wandered down and slow-walked through one partially finished unit. The wood framing was in place, and the house wrap had been put over the external walls. We walked through the doorless entrance to see the floor plan.

We liked the little porch on the west side, chatted about what the kitchen would look like when finished, and were astonished at the asking price for such a small place. Once or twice one of us said we shouldn’t be trespassing.

But we never worried that what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man, who was simultaneously walking through a construction site in Brunswick, Georgia, might happen to us. That three white men would catch a call to the police dispatcher and come looking for us with a loaded shotgun.

The three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery were convicted of a hate crime, with evidence including the use of racist language in text and social media communications. The jury agreed these men went after Arbery “because of his race and color.”

We had other concerns, but not that one.

*

A few days ago, on Decorah’s Trout Run Bike Trail, I was almost run over on a switchback by a rider on a bright red E-bike. E-bikers go faster, so they have to pay close attention to trail etiquette. When Rebecca and I stopped to rest at the top of the hill, we talked about flagging this guy down if we saw him again and asking him to follow the rules stated on the signs.

We never worried that what happened, also in 2020, to Christian Cooper in New York’s Central Park might happen to us. The Decorah e-biker might respond to our request as Amy Cooper (no relation) responded to Mr. Cooper’s request to follow park rules by calling 911, saying, “An African-American man is threatening my life.”

We had other concerns, but not that one.

*

Late one Saturday night in the fall of 1969, a group of college friends loaded a couple of six-packs of Grain Belt in a car, drove to an isolated county road, and parked. We were 20, and Iowa’s drinking age was 21. Barrie, Denny, Mike, Ed, Jerry, and I were tucked in my big-finned 1960 Chevrolet Impala.

On Friday night, the five of us had seen the film Night of the Living Dead at the Drive-in, so we were on edge about Zombies. A thick car mat covered a rusted-out hole on the passenger side floor to keep the exhaust from seeping in. We cracked the windows.

We’d done this before, and someone always joked about the police to relieve the tension. Our luck, however, ran out as a flashing red light brought my eyes to the rearview mirror. Mike yelled that he’d heard the police couldn’t charge us with possession if we threw the beer out of the car. So that’s what we did.

With that foolishness out of the way, the two officers, one on each side of the car, politely asked us to stand outside, where they patiently wrote down our names and addresses. And then asked us to pick up the scattered cans and put them in a sack that they placed in the patrol car trunk.

Death by zombies, asphyxiation, or our parents were all on our minds.

But not by the police.

Who killed George Floyd the same day Christian Cooper met Amy Cooper two months after Ahmaud Arbery was murdered walking around a construction site while Black.

*

I worried about many things when my car broke down. Why did the car overheat? Was the engine permanently damaged? Could I get a tow truck to take my car and me forty miles to my hometown? How long would I have to wait?

If this had happened to you, you might have had other worries. If you were black or brown or a woman, that might add another layer of anxiety. Or layers.

In the summer of 1972, five years after that Grain Belt fiasco, I drove my first new car, a yellow Toyota Corolla, to Washington, D.C. I was feeling my oats, by myself, on vacation. Early in the morning, I had left my parent’s house in Davenport, Iowa, not knowing whether I would take Interstate 80 west to the Rockies or east to the Lincoln Memorial.

I got to D.C. late the second night. I had the address and phone number for Motel 6 but no Navigator or city map. I drove around for about an hour, just gawking at the sites, with the Capital Dome as my loadstar. I started worrying when the Dome moved from being on my right to my left.

I needed to stop and ask for directions.

But I saw only black people.

I had other concerns. Now, I had this one.

Of course, my worry did not bear fruit.

I stopped at a gas station and, 15 minutes later, pulled into my motel.

I had the same experience in the same area thrice during my stay.

*

Two weeks ago, I was treated kindly on an Iowa highway.

How would I have been treated if I was black or brown or a woman?

Or younger?

A reader wishes for kindness to be colorblind.

Often it is given freely as it was to me by three whites in Northeast Iowa and three blacks in Washington, D.C.

Most Iowans would respond to a human in need on an Iowa highway with kindness in 2023, regardless of race.

BUT

In America, my race has shielded me from what James Baldwin called “the millions of details 24 hours of every day which spell out that some lives matter more than others.”*

That’s a burden I have not had to carry — a worry I did not take into my daily life.

It’s a kind of innocence.

That can be another form of blindness.

_____________________________________________________________________________

*From Nicholas Buccola’s The Fire is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William Buckly Jr., and the Debate over Race in America.

*

Although it was invented in the early 20th century, the American gas-powered lawn mower became popular after WWII.

I was born in 1949, so we’ve grown up together.

When I was 10, we started playing together every Thursday during the summer. Mom and Dad thought two brothers were not enough.

We’ve been close ever since.

The guy who owns the local hardware store a block from our house tells me he sells more battery-operated than petrol-fueled mowers.

On the sidewalk in front of his store, he displays only the electric cutters in their trendy green outfits. One step away from the ash heap sits the only fossil fuel machine toward the back of an attached shed.

Out of sight.

I’m not so different from my dated mower.

“Is the grass thicker this year?” I thought just before I took this photo. I was huffing and puffing more than I recall having to do last year.

Still in sight but fading away.

Palm 90:10 says:

The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty…they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Soon, I will be gone.

Just like my lawnmower brother.

It’s the way of the world.

*

I remember watching with friends late at night on July 20, 1969, the touchdown of the Apollo Lunar Lander Eagle.

The journey from the Earth to the moon’s orbit took the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins three days. After another day orbiting the moon, Armstrong and Aldrin guided the Eagle to the Sea of Tranquility. It took 6 hours and 39 minutes.

Lunar Landers began their journeys from a long distance. They arrived infrequently. Between 1969 and 1972, there were six lunar landings. When they did, it was with a flourish.

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Yesterday was back on the college campus where I taught for 33 years. It’s final exam week. Students were out and about, talking on their phones. From experience, I know many were talking to a parent.

Helicopter parenting, I thought.

A helicopter is always close by.

Hovering.

Lunar Landers are different

Perched above the Saturn V rocket, the Eagle was 238,900 miles from the moon.

When I arrived, it did not hover–and soon departed–rarely returning.

*

My parents were more like Lunar Landers than helicopters. I was raised in the fifties and sixties. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who watched over her three sons from afar.

Without a hint of hovering. Except on yard work Thursdays during the summer.

My father was an engineer whose company, Bendix, helped design the landing gear for the Eagle. My dad, pictured on the left below, worked on the Saturn V fuel systems.

He spent a lot of time in Houston during the 1960s.

On a typical summer day, Would say goodbye to my mom in the morning, mount my bike with baseball mitt hooked over the handlebar, and spend the day playing in a local park with friends. She knew where I was going but I don’t remember her ever asking what I did. Or me telling her.

I asked Barrie, a friend my age, about his childhood parental experiences. He described one experience.

I would leave our west-end home by 5:30 a.m. to serve morning mass at the Kahl Home. My mother was undoubtedly aware of my early morning trek…but it was not until later reminiscing she learned I would often hop on a slow-moving freight train to quicken the trip.

Sometimes, I wanted my mom to hover. There was the day I started a fight with another paperboy who picked his papers up at the same corner. I’m still trying to remember why. I took the first swing, he was tougher than I thought, and I went home with a cut lip. “Paul, you’re just going to have to learn how to handle your own problems,” said my mom when I complained about getting beat-up.

Around the same time, my dad sent me the same message, strangely, in almost identical words. My 6th- grade teacher and I did not get along. Exasperated one day, she pushed me into the cloakroom against a coat hook. I went home with a Band-Aid on my forehead.

This time, the Eagle landed. That evening my non-Catholic, agnostic, and Apollo Space Program father went to talk with Sister Robert Cecil.

Returning an hour or so later, my dad said to me:

Paul, throughout your life, you will meet people you must learn to deal with. Sister Robert Cecile is one of them.

*

There are many routes to successful parenting–helping mold children into adults who take responsibility for their lives.

Adults who no longer need a Lunar Lander or helicopter.

My mom and dad discovered one of those paths.

That’s one tiny benefit to humankind and one giant leap for me.