August 31, 2025: “The Pediatrician Retires,” Week-Long Obsession, “Dante Shares Nachos with Me”

Yes, I know I’ve been away for almost a week.  Of course I feel guilty for this prolonged absence—I’m Catholic.  No, I haven’t been eating chocolates and ignoring the state of the world.  (Although, I have consumed quite a few snack-size Milky Ways in the past seven days.)  And, yes, I promise that I will post daily from here on out, and, most likely by tomorrow, I will break that promise.

The fall semester began last Monday, so I find myself being pulled in many directions at once—from library events to lesson plans to revisions on my new manuscript to my ongoing war with insomnia.  Now, on this Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, I dream of not working.  

Sharon Olds writes about not working . . . 

The Pediatrician Retires

by: Sharon Olds

This is the archway where I stood, next to the

panel of frosted glass, when they told me

there was a chance it could be epilepsy, and

almost before my heart sank

I felt a new-made layer of something fold

over my will and wrap it, in an instant,

as if the body takes care of the parent

who takes care of the child.  This is the door

we came through each week while the symptoms slowly

faded.  That is the fruit-scale where she had

weighed him, and his arms had flown to the sides

in an infant Moro.  And there are the chairs

where one sits with the infectious ones,

the three-year-olds calmly struggling for air, not

listless or scared, steady workers,

pulling breath through the constricted passage,

Yes, she says, it’s the bronchial pneumonia

and asthma, the same as last month, the parent’s

heart suddenly stronger, like a muscle

the weight-lifter has worked.  There is the room

where she took his blood and he watched the vial fill, he went

greener, and greener, and fainted, and she said,

Next time don’t be brave, next time

shout!  And here is the chair where I sat and she

said If the nerve is dead, he will lose only

partial use of the hand, and it’s

the left hand—he’s right-handed, isn’t he?,

the girding, the triple binding of the heart.

This is the room where I sat, worried,

and opened the magazine, and saw

the war in Asia, a very young soldier

hanged by the neck—still a boy, almost, 

not much older than the oldest children

in the waiting room.  Suddenly its walls seemed

not quite real, as if we all

were in some large place together.

This is where I learned what I know,

the body university—

at graduation, we would cry, and throw

our ceiling-at-four-a.m. hats high in the air,

but I think that until the end of our life we are here.

It’s an interesting poem about parenting a child—all the duties and worries that come with the territory.  I remember those first months as a new father—sneaking into the nursery to make sure that our infant daughter was still breathing, placing my hand on my infant son’s chest to feel his heartbeat.  As Olds says, “until the end of our life we are here.”  It doesn’t matter whether a child is one or twenty or fifty, that child will always be the tiny bundle of gas and joy from the hospital delivery room.  My daughter lives six hours away now, is studying to be a doctor, but I still worry whether she has enough to eat.  There’s no retiring from parenthood.

For the longest time in my life, I was known as “the plumber’s son.”. My dad was a well-known member of the community.  Everybody knew him.  There’s very few houses in my hometown that he didn’t fix a toilet in.  Or cable a sewer.  Or install a water heater.  Even when he decided to retire, Dad still made service calls to friend’s houses.  I think that’s why he lived such a long life—he never slowed down.  Plus, he loved what he did.

I suppose that’s the key:  loving what you do.  I love my wife.  I love my kids.  And I love writing poetry.  (I should throw “I love God” in there, too, since I’m a church organist.)  You don’t retire from love.

My love of poetry has been my week-long obsession.  The prompt from The Daily Poet on August 28 was this:

Close your eyes and imagine a poet (living or dead).  Think about everything you know about this poet.  Imagine him or her sitting down with you on a comfortable sofa.  Now, as the poet to dictate a poem to you and write down everything s/he says.

Last Monday, I started watching a three-part PBS documentary on the life of Dante Alighieri.  It followed the great poet from birth to exile to composition of The Divine Comedy to death.  Since that time, I’ve viewed that documentary (all six hours of it) about four or five times.  And I reread Inferno and portions of Purgatorio.  I’d forgotten how much I loved Dante.

You see, I studied Dante for an entire semester.  My professor was a brilliant scholar from the Medieval Institute in Kalamazoo.  To this day, when I think of the character of Virgil in The Divine Comedy, I always picture this man’s face.  He loved teaching Dante, and he made me love reading Dante.

So, all of these elements from my life sort of coalesced into the idea of a poem in which I encounter the poet Dante.  Of course, everyone knows that Dante’s muse was his long lost love, Beatrice.  I decided to write my poem in terza rima, the form invented by Dante for his epic.  Basically, terza rima consists of three-line stanzas (tercets) with a linked rhyme scheme (aba bcb cdc ded, etc.)  Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso all end with a single line and the word “stars.”  

I tried to follow Dante’s lead.  For about four or five days, I’ve been writing and rewriting my poem, using terza rima and trying to stick the landing with the word “stars.”  I think I finally nailed it, but you will have to be the judge of that.

I’ve driven myself crazy writing this poem.  It’s all I’ve thought about for days.  And I’ve loved every minute of it, which proves my point.  (Yes, I do have a point.)  Love/passion isn’t something from which you retire.  I could no more retire from writing poetry than I could retire from being a father or husband.  It’s just who I am.

So, to end August, Saint Marty presents his little Dante-esque tidbit . . . 

Dante Shares Nachos with Me

by: Martin Achatz

He craved chips with lots of cheese,

enough cheese to sate

all the bloated bellies

in that glutton circle, while I ate

a bowl of Cheerios

sprinkled with raisins.  The great

poet, sulfur-seeped, lovesick, rose,

paced to the kitchen, fetched

bottles of beer from the fridge, crows

scratching the world outside with wretched

caws, as if they knew

the syllables of the name etched

on his savaged soul, drew

each letter with their inky

beaks on the sky’s blue

chalkboard:  B-E-A-T-R-I-C-E.

I tried to distract him,

avoid yet another melancholy

feast that ended in drunken hymn

after drunken hymn about

unquenched tongues, unkissed skin,

but his heart was stubborn, devout

in its infernal pining

that no Cheeto or hotdog with kraut

could dim.  So he sat beside me, whining

about all the scars

his crush’s spurn left shining

on his heaped plate like pepper jack stars.

August 3, 2025: “Killing My Sister’s Fish,” Regrets, “”My Dad Haunts a House Where Nobody Knows Him Now”

We all do things we regret, especially when we’re youngsters.  (Just typing the word “youngsters” makes me feel like I’m a fugitive from the cast of Cocoon.)  When you’re a kid, you don’t have common sense, and you do things that seem like a really good idea at the time.  Hence, the seemingly inevitable stories of high schoolers getting drunk and then trying to drive home with disastrous results.  

Sharon Olds writes about a bad decision she made as a young girl . . . 

Killing My Sister’s Fish

by: Sharon Olds

I picked up the bottle with its gladiator shoulders—

inside its shirred grayish plastic

the ammonia, more muscular than water, pungent—

I poured one dollop, gleaming genie,

into the bowl with my sister’s goldfish

just because they were alive, and she liked them.

It was in the basement, near the zinc-lined sinks

and the ironing board, next to the boiler,

beside the door to the cellar from which

I could get into the crawl space

under the corner of the house, and lie

on the dirt on my back, as if passed out.

I may have been on my way there

when I saw the bowl, and the ammonia curled

for a moment in the air like a spirit.  Then I crawled up

under the floor-joists, into the tangent

where the soiled curved up, and I lay there,

at the ends of the earth, as if without

regret, as if something set in motion

long before I had been conceived

had been accomplished.

I try not to dwell on regrets.  In fact, unlike Olds, I can’t think of much from my younger days that I look back on with shame.  (There are a few things, but I’m not going to go full-blown therapy session with this post.)  But I didn’t kill any fish intentionally.  (Notice the word “intentionally.”  I have had my fair share of accidental fish murders.)

Today, I’ve been thinking a lot about my daughter and son.  Tomorrow, my daughter has her first day of medical school.  This September, my son starts his senior year of high school.  Both of those facts make me feel a little outmoded, as if I’m an old iPhone and everyone wants the newest model.  

I’ve made tons of mistakes as a parent.  Any person who has raised a child (and is being completely honest) will admit to fucking up.  A lot.  It goes with the territory.  In case you haven’t noticed, children don’t come with user manuals or warranties.  You get one shot.  If you’re successful, your child will still talk to you as an adult.  If you’re a failure, your child will be talking to a licensed therapist as an adult.

On the whole, though, regrets are useless.  All they do is make you feel bad about something that you can’t change.  Yes, I’ve made mistakes with my kids.  I own those fuckups and have learned from them.  The sad thing is, just when I think I’m getting the hang of this father gig, my kids are growing up, and my wife and I will be empty nesters soon.

I’ve had arguments with my kids.  Yelled at them.  Cussed them out.  Guilted them.  I regret each of those moments.  But I’ve also cheered my kids on, comforted and celebrated them.  In the end, the celebrations outnumber the degradations.  That’s what matters.  More happiness than sadness.  More joy than sorrow.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about regrets today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Close your eyes and imagine yourself holding five things in your hand:  a person, a building, a weapon, and two other items of your choosing.  Write a poem that incorporates all five items.  For extra credit, use one item three times throughout the poem.

My Dad Haunts a House

     Where Nobody Knows Him Now

by: Martin Achatz

Dad used to plant tomatoes every spring,

lined the sidewalk to the front door

with them so that, come August,

visitors were greeted by orange and red

fireworks as they knocked or rang the bell.

There are no tomatoes at the old house

now, the new family who lives there

more interested in remodeling, tearing

out, installing, while Dad’s ghost watches

dandelions overtake the lawn and shakes

his spectral head.  He wishes he still had

his cane, the one he almost used on my skull

near the end of his life, him frustrated, 

diminished by the vacation his body was taking.

At night, Dad hovers over the boulder

at the bottom of the driveway, waving 

his candle flame arms in the dark, as if

he’s some kind of lighthouse guiding

cars safely home, that place where

everyone knows you and says

your name like an amen at the end

of a prayer.

March 17, 2025: "The Couple," Saint Patrick’s Day, "Reek Sunday on Croagh Patrick"

Yes, it is Saint Patrick’s Day.  No, I didn’t drink green beer or eat corned beef and cabbage, and I completely forgot to wear any green clothing.  (I was saved by the fact that my winter coat is green, and there was a splash of green in my socks.). 

These days, I’m just completely distracted by social media posts and news reports about the latest Agent Orange idiocy.  Just this afternoon, I saw a car pulled over to the side of U.S. 41 driving home.  Behind that car was a State Police cruiser, and behind the State Police cruiser were two vehicles marked “Border Control.” Yes, even the Upper Peninsula of Michigan isn’t immune to the three-ring circus of the Oval Office.  

Mostly, I’m worried about the future of my kids.  I was speaking to my daughter the other day, and she said how terrified of the government she is.  The world they’re going to inherit is going to be vastly different from the world I inherited from my parents.

Sharon Olds writes about the relationship between her son and daughter . . .

The Couple

by:  Sharon Olds

On the way for the country, they fall asleep

in the back seat, those enemies,

rulers of separate countries, sister and

brother.  Her big hard head

lolls near his narrow oval skull

until they are crown to crown, brown

hair mingling like velvet.  Mouths

open, the rosebud and her cupid’s bow,

they dream against each other, her calm

almond eyes and his round blue eyes

closed, quivering like a trout.  Their toes

touching opposite doors, their hands in

loose fists, their heads together in

on consciousness, they look like a small

royal bride and groom, the bride still a

head taller, married as children

in the Middle Ages, for purposes of state,

fighting all day, and finding their only

union in sleep, in the dark solitary

power of the dream—the dream of ruling the world.

All siblings have their differences.  I had three brothers and five sisters growing up.  Three of those siblings have died in the past ten years.  My two remaining brothers are Trumpers.  My sisters align more with my cultural and political standpoints.  Not completely, but close enough.  I love my siblings, but I don’t get along with all of them. 

My son adores his sister, and the feeling is mutual.  Sure, they have their disagreements.  There have been blowups between them, but those storms don’t last very long.  Then they’re back gaming together online at night.  My son can be quite . . . passionate and mercurial with his emotions.  My daughter, on the other hand, takes after me—always thinking things through, trying to see an issue from all sides.

I know that my daughter and son love each other.  Long after I’m gone, when I’m just a forgotten book in the library, they will be close friends.  I’m sure of that.  From the beginning, my son has cherished his sister’s attention.  My daughter waited eight years for her brother, and she has adored him since the day she first held him as an infant.

So, no matter what happens in the United States—whether the constitutional democracy is preserved or an Orange dictatorship prevails, my kids will have each other’s backs.  That gives me comfort as this country edges closer and closer to a Margaret Atwood dystopia.  My daughter and son are going to be alright.

Maybe we can just pray to Saint Patrick, asking him to drive the snakes out of the White House and Congress.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem in celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, write a poem about Ireland or something Irish.  It can be Delaney's Bar or the Book of Kells, Guinness beer or a Celtic cross.  If you're Irish yourself, explore your own heritage.  But even if you're not Irish, make sure to include images of Ireland and Irish culture.  You can start the poem with the line, The last time I was in Ireland or I've never been to Ireland, but . . .

Reek Sunday on Croagh Patrick

by: Martin Achatz

Thousands climb to the summit

every July, some barefoot to atone

for that one-night stand in college

and the abortion after, or the cheeseburger

eaten on Good Friday when Christ

hung on the cross like a graduation

picture.  Even Saint Patrick fasted

forty days at the top, tortured by

a murder of demonic birds, a female

serpent named Corra offering him

colcannon, barmbrack, soda bread

salty as tears.  My friend scaled

Croagh Patrick in her sandals,

her feet already hard as diamonds, 

not seeking forgiveness or penance,

but simply to breathe the holy air,

touch with her toes the hungry stones.

This was before she got sick and needed

a miracle, when her life seemed

endless as the summer solstice.

She sat, read Seamus Heaney poems

to the grasses and winds, felt

displaced in time, Corra coiled

around Patrick's naked body, testing

his faith with her forked tongue,

both of them robed in sunlight.

My friend brought me a rock

from that sacred place, on its surface

a smudge of mineral, maybe hematite

or copper, in the shape of a figure

(Adam?  Bigfoot?  Patrick?) strolling

like a prayer toward God's distant eardrum.

March 11, 2025: "Bread," Letting Go, "Before and Before"

I spent this afternoon participating in a writing workshop led by one of my best friends.  (I almost typed "best writing friends," but we've known each other for over thirty years, which makes our friendship a little more than acquaintances getting together at a coffee shop once a month to scribble in notebooks.)  He knows me and my struggles pretty intimately.

One of the topics my friend and I always wrestle with is staying fresh in our writing.  Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro once said, “My subject matter doesn't vary so much from book to book. Just the surface does. The settings, etc. I tend to write the same book over and over, or at least, I take the same subject I took last time out and refine it, or do a slightly different take on it.”  

So, yes, all writers have subjects they obsess over.  It's the nature of the beast.  I've written so many poems about my daughter and son that I can't count them all.  (Sharon Olds writes about her kids a lot, so I'm in good company.)  Even when I set out to write about something else, my offspring will sneak into the poem as if they were playing hide-and-seek with the words.

Sharon Olds writes about her daughter making some . . . 

Bread

by: Sharon Olds

When my daughter makes bread, a cloud of flour
hangs in the air like pollen. She sifts and
sifts again, the salt and sugar
close as the grain of her skin. She heats the
water to body temperature
with the sausage lard, fragrant as her scalp
the day before hair-wash, and works them together on a
floured board. Her broad palms
bend the paste toward her and the heel of her hand
presses it away, until the dough
begins to snap, glossy and elastic as the 

torso bending over it,
this ten-year-old girl, random specks of yeast
in her flesh beginning to heat,
her volume doubling every month now, but still
raw and hard. She slaps the dough and it 

crackles under her palm, sleek and
ferocious and still leashed, like her body, no
breasts rising like bubbles of air toward the 

surface of the loaf. She greases the pan, she is
shaped, glazed, and at any moment goes
into the oven, to turn to that porous
warm substance, and then under the
knife to be sliced for the having, the tasting, and the
giving of life.

Olds wrote this when her daughter was still young, full of bubbles of yeast, rising in the pan.  So many of my poems over the last 24 years have been about this process of watching my kids grow older and away from me.  That's what parenting is all about--nurturing, loving, teaching, holding your breath, and letting go.

As many of my faithful disciples know, over the last ten years, I've lost a lot of loved ones--family and friends.  I carry the weight of those losses every day.  I'm not saying I'm in a constant state of mourning, but that grief floats to the surface a lot, especially in my writing.  Tonight, I wasn't planning on writing about the empty nest of my heart again, but here I am.

I think I'm a person who falls in love a lot.  I fall in love with poems, books, movies, music, friends, food, trees, birds, weather.  I'm not talking the casual "oh, I love Lucky Charms" kind of love.  I'm talking strong, visceral attachments.  Because of this habit of love, I frequently find myself experiencing nostalgia for past, better times.  

At the end of this coming summer, my daughter will be moving downstate for medical school.  In a year, my son will be a high school graduate (he's already talking about getting an apartment with a friend).  And I'm thinking about how much I miss reading to my daughter at bedtime and watching bad Bigfoot movies with my son.

They are becoming strong, independent people.  That means I did something right as a parent.  However, that doesn't make the letting go any easier.  I'm going to have to redefine who I am soon.  That's part of letting go:  figuring who you are again and again and again.  It's déjà vu.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about the déjà vu of writing a poem, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a déjà vu experience.  To strengthen that "I've been here before" feeling and allow your reader to experience it with you, repeat words and images from the first stanza in the stanzas that follow.  If you don't know how to begin, start with I walked into a room I had alread walked into before . . . and see where it takes you.

Before and Before

by: Martin Achatz

after Robert Hayden

I have written this poem before and before,

first on the night her final breath

sat in my eardrum like a trapped

moth, battering its wings against

the corners of my skull and brain.

I have written this poem before and before,

next on the eve of her funeral

when I wandered through strawberry

fields, following God's glowing soles

in the eyelid of dusk.

I have written this poem before and before,

on the night I saw her constellation

in the heavens, bright as Orion

in January, each star freckling

the darkness with her face.

I have written this poem on her birth

and death days, sitting in my car

near her grave, when my son became

a teenager and my daughter graduated

from high school then college, before

and before and before and before,

and now I write this poem before

I go to sleep, because a dog

is barking and barking outside, reminding

me of grief's austere and dogged hunger.

February 20, 2025: "Son," Travel, "Hanauma Bay, May 1996"

Another long day of librarying, teaching, writing.  Pretty exhausted tonight.  Tomorrow, I take a little road trip with a poet friend to do a poetry reading at a library about 130 or so miles away.  Getting my Bigfoot on.  

Sharon Olds comes home after a night out . . . 

Son

by: Sharon Olds

Coming home from the women-only bar, 

I go into my son's room. 

He sleeps—fine, freckled face 

thrown back, the scarlet lining of his mouth 

shadowy and fragrant, his small teeth 

glowing dull and milky in the dark, 

opal eyelids quivering 

like insect wings, his hands closed 

in the middle of the night. 

                                             Let there be enough 

room for this life: the head, lips, 

throat, wrists, hips, penis, 

knees, feet. Let no part go 

unpraised. Into any new world we enter, let us 

take this man.

I've done exactly what Olds does in this poem--come home after a long day and check on my kids before going to bed.  It's a parent thing.  I just couldn't relax when I was a young father until I knew both my son and daughter were still breathing.  Then, I just sort of stood there, marveling at how I was a part of making this beautiful creature in front of me.

Speaking of my son, I can hear him upstairs, playing online games, and screaming obscenities at his friends:  "You motherfucker!!" and "Fuck you!!" and "Asshole!!"  I'd like to be shocked and claim I don't know where he learned such language, but I have a pretty good idea where he picked it up.  (The phrase I utter at least 20 or so times a day is "You have got to be fucking kidding me!")

Kids really have a way of putting life into perspective.  Before my daughter and son showed up, I was pretty self-centered.  My wife and I went to movies, ate a restaurants, hung out with friends, stayed out late, came home slightly drunk.  We had a dog, but no houseplants.  We could do whatever we wanted, when we wanted, with whomever we wanted.

Now I am much older, with a 24-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son, mortgage, car payments, and a really cute puppy.  In short, I'm not completely in charge of my life anymore, but I'm okay with that.  My kids are amazing, funny, and smart.  I like to believe I had a small part in bringing these two bright souls into the universe.  If that's what I'm remembered for when I eventually leave this world, I'd count that as a win.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about that honeymoon time before kids, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Use the following line from Natasha Trethewey's "Theories of Time and Space" to begin a poem that provides directions to a specific geographic place:  Everywhere you go will be somewhere / you've never been.  Aim to engage all five of your reader's senses as you lead him or her to Crater Lake, Munich, Tasmania, Italy, the Grand Canyon, etc.

Hanauma Bay,

May 1996

by: Martin Achatz

Everywhere you go will be somewhere

you've never been.

     -- Natasha Trethewey, "Theories of Time and Space"

I dreamed of your body next to mine

in the night

before we even had a bedroom

or bed.

In polar dark, I explored each

isthmus and cove

of you until I no longer

needed maps

or directions, the gentle coax

to turn left

then right, right again, right

and right and Jesus

right again!  Now, after almost 30

years of traveling

through the atlas of your muscles, limbs,

rivers, canyons,

I return to that far green

place where

coral and surf kissed

your skin

with salt, me rolling onto

you, pressing my

lips to yours lips, letting waves

rush over us

like Burt and Deborah in

From Here

to Eternity, chasing your

parrot fish

with my tongue, tasting the ocean

between your legs,

getting lost over and over and over,

only wanting

to take you somewhere you've never

been before.

December 12: Pious Speculation and Sentiment, Phone Call, COVID-Positive

Merton learns something about Catholicism from a Hindu monk . . .

There is no doubt in my mind that plenty of our missionaries are saints: and that they are capable of becoming greater saints too. And that is all that is needed. And, after all, St. Francis Xavier converted hundreds of thousands of Hindus in the sixteenth century and established Christian societies in Asia strong enough to survive for several centuries without any material support from outside the Catholic world. 

Bramachari was not telling me anything I did not know about the Church of England, or about the other Protestant sects he had come in contact with. But I was interested to hear his opinion of the Catholics. They, of course, had not invited him to preach in their pulpits: but he had gone into a few Catholic churches out of curiosity. He told me that these were the only ones in which he really felt that people were praying. 

It was only there that religion seemed to have achieved any degree of vitality, among us, as far as he could see. It was only to Catholics that the love of God seemed to be a matter of real concern, something that struck deep in their natures, not merely pious speculation and sentiment. 

However, when he described his visit to a big Benedictine monastery in the Mid-West he began to grin again. He said they had showed him a lot of workshops and machinery and printing presses and taken him over the whole “plant” as if they were very wrapped up in all their buildings and enterprises. He got the impression that they were more absorbed in printing and writing and teaching than they were in praying. 

Bramachari was not the kind of man to be impressed with such statements as: “There’s a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of stained glass in this church ... the organ has got six banks of keys and it contains drums, bells, and a mechanical nightingale ... and the retable is a genuine bas-relief by a real live Italian artist.” 

The people he had the least respect for were all the borderline cases, the strange, eccentric sects, the Christian Scientists, the Oxford Group and all the rest of them. That was, in a sense, very comforting. Not that I was worried about them: but it confirmed me in my respect for him. 

He did not generally put his words in the form of advice: but the one counsel he did give me is something that I will not easily forget: “There are many beautiful mystical books written by the Christians. You should read St. Augustine’s Confessions, and The Imitation of Christ." 

Of course I had heard of both of them: but he was speaking as if he took it for granted that most people in America had no idea that such books ever existed. He seemed to feel as if he were in possession of a truth that would come to most Americans as news—as if there was something in their own cultural heritage that they had long since forgotten: and he could remind them of it. He repeated what he had said, not without a certain earnestness: 

“Yes, you must read those books.” 

It was not often that he spoke with this kind of emphasis. 

Now that I look back on those days, it seems to me very probable that one of the reasons why God had brought him all the way from India, was that he might say just that. 

After all, it is rather ironical that I had turned, spontaneously to the east, in reading about mysticism, as if there were little or nothing in the Christian tradition. I remember that I ploughed through those heavy tomes of Father Wieger’s with the feeling that all this represented the highest development of religion on earth. The reason may have been that I came away from Huxley’s Ends and Means with the prejudice that Christianity was a less pure religion, because it was more “immersed in matter”—that is, because it did not scorn to use a Sacramental liturgy that relied on the appeal of created things to the senses in order to raise the souls of men to higher things. 

So now I was told that I ought to turn to the Christian tradition, to St. Augustine—and told by a Hindu monk! 

Still, perhaps if he had never given me that piece of advice, I would have ended up in the Fathers of the Church and Scholasticism after all: because a fortunate discovery in the course of my work on my MA thesis put me fairly and definitely on that track at last. 

That discovery was one book that untied all the knots in the problem which I had set myself to solve by my thesis. It was Jacques Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism. 

Bramachari (and Merton) are not impressed by money or stained glass or pipe organs with five registers.  Notre Dame's Rose Window wouldn't have caused either of them to pause.  But an old woman, sitting in the back pew, head bent, praying, begging for forgiveness or asking for healing, she would have made them both fall to their knees.

Shortly after I woke today, I received a phone call from the hospital.  This past Tuesday, my son slept in until almost noon.  He never sleeps in.  When he woke up, I took his temperature.  It was 100.7°.  He went back to bed for most of the day.  The next day, he still had a temperature, but he was feeling a little better.  By Thursday, he was feeling fine, but I had already made an appointment for him to have a COVID test.  He had the test.  Last night, my daughter came down from her bedroom and told me that she had been feeling achy and tired for two days.  "You probably just have the same cold your brother had," I said to her.  "You'll be better soon.  He's alright now."

"Hello," the nurse on the phone said this morning, "can I speak to the guardian of--?"  She said my son's name.  

"I'm his father," I said.  I sort of already knew what was coming.  It had only been two days since my son's test.  It was the weekend.  It was only 9 a.m.  

The nurse informed me that my son was COVID-positive.  She asked if any other family member was symptomatic.  I told her about my daughter.  We worked out the time frame for quarantining and isolating for everyone.  I thanked her for her help, and she said, "Best of luck."  I hung up the phone.

I sat there for a few minutes, a little stunned.  I know that the virus is spreading like Christmas fruitcakes, but I honestly didn't think it was going to cross our threshold.  I've been so careful since the start of the pandemic.  I was wrong.

My son is blaming himself, started crying when I told him that he was positive.  He kept saying, "I'm sorry.  I'm sorry."  I did the best I could to comfort him and make him realize that it wasn't his fault.  

"Buddy," I said, "it's okay.  You're going to be okay.  Everyone's going to be okay."  

I spent the rest of the morning, into the afternoon, making phone calls and sending texts.  I was supposed to play the pipe organ/keyboard at two different churches this weekend.  I have four library events coming up this week.  I have to finish writing my Christmas essay, address my Christmas cards, and finish my Christmas shopping.  Not to mention planning library events for next month.  

Now, I am supposed to isolate until January 2.  That will mean the loss of quite a bit of money, at a time of year when things are already getting tight.  The checks from the university will stop.  Now, no church cleaning or organ playing.  

Yet, all of that seemed stripped of its urgency and importance after that phone call.  Sort of like the way I feel on Christmas Eve.  After all of the wind up and preparations, the best part of the entire holiday isn't the presents or cookies or decorations or parties.  It's that moment, sitting on the couch in the glow of the Christmas tree lights.  After a candlelight church service that ends with the singing of "Silent Night."  Everything just falls away, and what's left is a holy kind of silence.  

What remains for me tonight, after all the urgency and worry of that early morning phone call, is this:  wellbeing and love.  The wellbeing of my kids and wife.  The love of my friends and family.  It's that simple.  I don't need fractured stained glass light or a forty-voice choir backed up by pipe organ.  Just health and love.

My sister-in-law (who's been like my little sister for over 30 years) brought us dinner and groceries.  Close friends have sent me text messages and emails, expressing love, concern, and support.  My boss at the library offered to drop off anything we needed.  I have felt upheld these last twelve hours.  Reminded of God's all-encompassing intimacy.  

My son and daughter and wife are going to be alright.  I'm going to be alright.  We're going to be surrounded by answered prayer every minute of every day.  

As Merton says in the above passage, that is the vitality and nature of true faith.  It's not about pious speculation and sentiment.  It boils down to surrender.  Trust. 

And for that miracle, Saint Marty gives thanks.

October 22: Vile Taste, Worked from Home, Expectations

 Merton returns home and goes to the movies . . .

May came, and all the trees on Long Island were green, and when the train from the city got past Bayside and started across the meadows to Douglaston, you could see the pale, soft haze of summer beginning to hang over the bay, and count the boats that had been set afloat again after the winter, and were riding jauntily at their moorings off the end of the little dock. And now in the lengthening evenings the dining-room was still light with the rays of the sun when Pop came home for dinner, slamming the front door and whooping at the dog and smacking the surface of the hall table with the evening paper to let everybody know that he had arrived. 

Soon John Paul was home from his school in Pennsylvania, and my exams were over, and we had nothing to do but go swimming and hang around the house playing hot records. And in the evening we would wander off to some appalling movie where we nearly died of boredom. We did not have a car, and my uncle would not let us touch the family Buick. It would not have done me any good anyway, because I never learned to drive. So most of the time, we would get a ride to Great Neck and then walk back the two or three miles along the wide road when the show was over. 

Why did we ever go to all those movies? That is another mystery. But I think John Paul and I and our various friends must have seen all the movies that were produced, without exception, from 1934 to 1937. And most of them were simply awful. What is more, they got worse from week to week and from month to month, and day after day we hated them more. My ears are ringing with the false, gay music that used to announce the Fox movietone and the Paramount newsreels with the turning camera that slowly veered its aim right at your face. My mind still echoes with the tones of Pete Smith and Fitzpatrick of the Travel-talks saying, “And now farewell to beautiful New South Wales.” 

And yet I confess a secret loyalty to the memory of my great heroes: Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Harpo Marx, and many others whose names I have forgotten. But their pictures were rare, and for the rest, we found ourselves perversely admiring the villains and detesting the heroes. The truth is that the villains were almost always the better actors. We were delighted with everything they did. We were almost always in danger of being thrown out of the theater for our uproarious laughter at scenes that were supposed to be most affecting, tender, and appealing to the finer elements in the human soul—the tears of Jackie Cooper, the brave smile of Alice Faye behind the bars of a jail. 

The movies soon turned into a kind of hell for me and my brother and indeed for all my closest friends. We could not keep away from them. We were hypnotized by those yellow flickering lights and the big posters of Don Ameche. Yet as soon as we got inside, the suffering of having to sit and look at such colossal stupidities became so acute that we sometimes actually felt physically sick. In the end, it got so that I could hardly sit through a show. It was like lighting cigarettes and taking a few puffs and throwing them away, appalled by the vile taste in one’s mouth. 

In 1935 and 1936, without my realizing it, life was slowly, once more, becoming almost intolerable. 

In the fall of 1936, John Paul went to Cornell, and I went back to Columbia, full of all kinds of collegiate enthusiasms, so that in a moment of madness I even gave my name for the Varsity light-weight crew. After a couple of days on the Harlem River and then on the Hudson, when we tried to row to Yonkers and back in what seemed to me to be a small hurricane, I decided that I did not wish to die so young, and after that carefully avoided the Boat-House all the rest of the time I was in college.

Once again, young Merton falls into a pattern in his life that proves to be empty and unsatisfying.  Merton the memoirist is slowly building his case that his existence was meaningless before he discovered his religious vocation.  All the normal distractions of daily life--school, home, movies, and such--just leave a vile taste in his mouth, like smoking cigarettes when you've never smoked before.

Today has been a day that I'm glad is behind me.  I worked from home, making phone calls and typing up proposals and sending e-mails.  Dreaming up new programming ideas for the library.  And I taught a class at the college in between the e-mails and dreaming.  That part of my day was wonderful.

The difficult part of the day was my son, who was in a rare state of adolescent defiance that included sneaking out of the house when he was supposed to be going to a doctor's appointment, butting me in the face with his head, and screaming that I was a "fucking shitty father."  I was no saint in this confrontation.  It felt like I was under attack, so I tried to hold my ground, remain calm.  I failed.  I found myself yelling back at him, physically restraining him a couple of times when he charged me.  In short, by the time it was all over, I pretty much felt like a fucking shitty father.

So, as I sit here typing this post, I have a vile taste lingering in my mouth from today, plus a little bit of a fat lip from my son's skull smashing into my face.  I am ready for this day to be over, but I know, in the morning, I face a new fresh hell with my son again.

Everyone has a breaking point, I suppose.  I think I reached mine this afternoon.  I was angry and tired, frustrated beyond the point of speech.  Instead of stepping away, taking some deep breaths, I charged into the valley with sword drawn.  I didn't recognize who I was.

After my son stormed out of the house, I spent the next hour or so crying.

I don't expect life to be perfect or easy.  That's a fantasy.  I don't expect my son to do what I tell him to do all the time.  That's also unrealistic.  He just turned twelve, and he's trying to figure out who he is.  If I place expectations on my son, I set myself up for failure.  Day after day after day.  My expectations are not my son's.

So, I stand before you tonight a little broken and bruised, not wanting to face morning's light.  Perhaps, after a night of sleep, I will find my center again.  Become a better person.

Another expectation.  Saint Marty will never learn.

March 1, 2, 3: Onion in the Garnishing, Good Husband and Father, Goodness

Merton writes a little bit about friends and weddings and food . . .

Our friend the teamster Pierrot was a huge, powerful man, but he did not play on the football team.  He was too lazy and too dignified, although he would have been a decorative addition to the outfit.  There were three or four others like him, big men with huge black moustaches and bristling eyebrows, as wild as the traditional representations of Gog and Magog.  One of them used to play whole games wearing a grey, peaked street-cap.  I suppose if we had ever played on a really hot day he would have come out on the field with a straw hat on.  Anyway, this element of the team would have made a fine subject for Douanier-Rousseau, and Pierrot would have fitted admirably.  Only his sport was sitting at the table of a cafe imbibing cognac.  Sometimes, too, he made excursions to Toulouse, and once, while we were standing on the bridge, he gave me a bloodcurdling description of a fight he had had with an Arab, with a knife, in the big city.

It was Pierrot who took us to a wedding feast at a farm up by Caylus.  I went to several of these feasts, during the time when I was at St. Antonin, and I never saw anything so Gargantuan:  and yet it was never wild or disordered.  The peasants and the foresters and the others who were there certainly ate and drank tremendously:  but they never lost their dignity as human beings.  They sang and danced and played tricks on one another, and the language was often fairly coarse, but in a manner which was more or less according to custom, and on the whole the atmosphere was good and healthy, and all this pleasure was sanctified by a Sacramental occasion.  

On this occasion Pierrot put on his good black suit and his clean cap and hitched up a gig, and we drove to Caylus.  It was the farm of his uncle or cousin.  The place was crowded with carts and carriages , and the feast was a more or less communal affair.  Everybody had provided something towards it, and Father brought a bottle of strong, black Greek wine which nearly pulverized the host.  

There were too many guests to be contained in the big dining room and kitchen of the farm, with its blood-sausage and strings of onions hanging from the beams.  One of the barns had been cleaned out and tables had been set up in there, and about one o-clock in the afternoon everybody sat down and began to eat.  After the soups, the women began to bring in the main courses from the kitchen:  and there were plates and plates of every kind of meat.  Rabbit, veal, mutton, lamb, beef, stews and steaks, and fowl, fried, boiled, braised, roasted, sauteed, fricasseed, dished this way and that way, with wine sauces and all other kinds of sauces, with practically nothing else to go with it except an occasional piece of potato or carrot or onion in the garnishing.  

My favorite phrase in this whole passage is ". . . all this pleasure was sanctified by a Sacramental occasion."  Yes, there's coarse language and lots of alcohol, people playing tricks on each other, and enough food to choke an army.  Even with all of this excess and indulging, there is still something holy about the festivities,  Two people, pledging to be there for each other, in sickness and health, richer and poorer, in good times and in bad, for better or worse.

I have always tried to be a good husband and father.  Worked hard to provide for my family, holding two and three and four jobs at a time.  I try to be present at all my kids' big occasions--concerts and sporting events and plays and musicals and recitals.  Plan special occasions with my wife--plays and movies and dinners.  I'm not perfect by any means.  I have made tons and tons of mistakes.

Yet, I have done my best, in the face of a lot of struggles.  I have a beautiful, smart daughter who wants to be a doctor.  I have a son who makes me laugh all the time and is smarter than he realizes (all A's and B's on his last report card, and the kid doesn't even try).  And I have a wife whom I love very deeply.  All of those things make me pretty darn lucky.

I can describe myself in a lot of ways.  If a person asks me, "What do you do?"--I may answer that I'm a poet or teacher or professor or church organist or medical office worker.  Each one of those titles describes a certain part of who I am.  But the two most important jobs I have, or will ever have, are father and spouse.  My family is the reason I do all those other things.

Maybe I'm old fashioned.  I believe in love at first sight, because I've experienced it.  I believe that fatherhood is more than biology--it's about sacrifice and commitment.  Putting the needs of my family above everything else.  That's who I am.

Goodness is hard work.  In fact, it can be fatal.   Think Mother Teresa working with the poor in Calcutta.  Oscar Romero assassinated for preaching peace and human dignity.  That doesn't mean that goodness isn't worth it.  It means that goodness comes at a cost, no matter what.  Whether you're a saint or father, poet or martyr.

Saint Marty will always choose goodness, for better or worse.

May 25: Control Consoles, Han Solo, Hyperspace

Zaphod and company are trying to avoid being blasted out of the Galaxy by missiles launched from the planet of Magrathea . . .

Several large desk panels slid open and banks of control consoles sprang up out of them, showering the crew with bits of expanded polystyrene packaging and balls of rolled-up cellophane:  these controls had never been used before.

Zaphod stared at them wildly.

"Okay, Ford," he said, "full retro thrust and ten degrees starboard.  Or something . . ."

"Good luck, guys," chirped the computer, "impact minus thirty seconds . . ."

Ford leaped to the controls--only a few of them made any immediate sense to him so he pulled those.  The ship shook and screamed as its guidance rocket jets tried to push it every which way simultaneously.  He released half of them and the ship spun round in a tight arc and headed back the way it had come, straight toward the oncoming missiles.

Air cushions ballooned out of the walls in an instant as everyone was thrown against them.  For a few seconds the inertial forces held them flattened and squirming for breath, unable to move.  Zaphod struggled and pushed in manic desperation and finally managed a savage kick at a small lever that formed part of the guidance system.

The lever snapped off.  The ship twisted sharply and rocketed upward.  The crew hurled violently back across the cabin.  Ford's copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy smashed into another section of the control console with the combined result that the Guide started to explain to anyone who cared to listen about the best ways of smuggling Antarean parakeet glands out of Antares (an Antarean parakeet gland stuck on a small stick is a revolting but much-sought-after cocktail delicacy and very large sums of money are often paid for them by very rich idiots who want to impress other very rich idiots), and the ship suddenly dropped out of the sky like a stone.

You know, sometimes I get reminders that much of life is completely out of my control, despite all that I do to avoid problems and disasters.  I frequently feel as though I'm trying to steer a spaceship that's warping and twisting frantically as I push buttons and levers.  To quote Han Solo:  "Travelling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy!  Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"

Yes, I'm mixing my science fiction universe metaphors here, but you get what I mean.  Even with precise calculations, you could still end up heading directly into the path of nuclear warheads or through a blazing star.  Control is an illusion.  It's something that makes you feel safe and calm, allows you to sleep at night.  Make no mistake, though.  There's very little in life that you can control.

As a parent, I've tried to control and minimize the nuclear warheads in my children's lives.  Shield them from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  (Yes, I am now throwing in a Shakespeare metaphor, too.  Get over yourself.)  That's the job of being a parent.  Protection.  Yet, life has a way of getting around all the barriers.  I can't be on the school playground with my son when kids start teasing him.  I can't be sitting next to my daughter in a classroom to provide Yoda advice to her.

I try to arm my children with skills to deal with life's detours.  I think that's another parenting job.  My daughter has witnessed the struggles my wife and I have gone through over the years.  She's seen us work through a lot of problems.  So has my son.  My hope is that they have learned how to cope with difficulties in healthy ways.  My son is still learning.  My daughter, on the cusp of high school graduation, is about ready to make the jump to hyperspace with all her careful calculations in place.

One of the things I'm struggling with is the idea that my little girl will soon have to deal with big, real-life adult problems without my help.  She's got a good head on her shoulders.  Knows how to deal with difficult people and situations gracefully and compassionately.  I think I had a little part in teaching her that.  However, my parent-side is freaking out a little.  I still want to make decisions for her.  Still want to use my father deflector shield for her.  But that time is quickly coming to a close.

Instead, I have to step away from the controls of her Millennium Falcon.  Let her sit down in the pilot's seat.  She's Han Solo now.  I'm Chewbacca, sort of co-piloting, but mostly just sitting beside her, grunting, growling, and watching the stars fly past.  In my hairy mind, I'm wondering on what planet she's eventually going to land.

I hope it's a place that's green and warm and full of wonder, inhabited by aliens who treat her with kindness and love.  That's what she deserves, and so much more.

Saint Marty leaves the last words of this post to Yoda:  "To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose.  Give off light, or darkness, Padawan.  Be a candle, or the night."

May 25: Middle Schooler, Son, "On My Son's Future"

You know, I've been focusing a lot on my daughter's impending graduation these last few weeks, while my son is also reaching a milestone in his education.  Next year, he will no longer be in elementary school.  He will be a middle schooler.  Sixth grade.  Things are about to get a little realer for him, as well.

My son has struggled a lot in school.  Every teacher he's had has said to us, "You know he's really smart," or some version of that.  He IS really smart.  He's also really stubborn and impulsive, which has gotten him into quite a bit of trouble over the years.  We've spent a lot of time talking to the principal and guidance counselors.

Now, I worry how he is going to do in his new school environment.  I worried with my daughter, too, when she moved to middle school.  However, those worries were not quite as severe.  My son is an individual, with very clear ideas of what he likes and dislikes.  He's sarcastic sometimes.  Likes pointing out absurdities and inconsistencies and perceived injustices.  He's funny as hell and gets bored easily.  

In short, he's me when I was going into middle school.

So, just as much as I worry over my daughter as she moves on to college, I worry about my son, as well.  Hope that he adjusts well.  Finds something that he's passionate about--art, music, geography, science, math, sports.  Anything.

Saint Marty just wants his kids to be happy and successful in life.  All the time.

On My Son's Future

by:  Martin Achatz

I meet with his future
Teachers today, a man, a woman,
To decide how we will
Mold him into something
Acceptable, a straight “A”
Football player valedictorian
Who will speak without
Sibilance or stutter,
Will eat brussel sprouts
Without glottal gag
Or plosive retch,
Will recite the alphabet,
Count to one hundred,
Name the bones of the hand
Before kindergarten,
Memorize Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address for kicks,
Recite it on the playground
As he lobs the ball
Over the fence, takes
His victory lap around
The bases as the other
Boys glare with envy,
The girls admire
His easy, confident
Gait that will carry
Him through high school,
Into college on scholarship,
Medical school on fellowship,
Johns Hopkins, onto missionary
Work where he’ll discover
The cure for some
As yet unknown disease
Decimating sub-Saharan
Africa, for which he’ll
Win the Nobel Prize
For Medicine, thank me
In his acceptance speech
For the choices I make
Today, for asking
Whether he will get
A nap in the afternoon
Next year.

January 13: Nostalgia, Tracy K. Smith, "The Good Life"

Nostalgia is a strange thing.  It makes a person happy and sad at the same time.  This morning, I was watching my son sleeping next to my wife.  He always crawls into bed with her after I get up to get ready for work.  He looked really small next to her, like he was still two or three years old.

And that made me think of my daughter when she was four or five.  How she would get off the bus from preschool and climb onto the couch with me.  We would watch "Frosty the Snowman," and she would fall asleep on my chest.  She was like a little furnace, and I would stay there, sweating, replaying Frosty's trip to the North Pole over and over, until she woke up.

I didn't know it then, but that really was the good life.  My beautiful little girl, sleeping in my arms, completely trusting me to keep her safe. 

Saint Marty misses those times.

The Good Life

by:  Tracy K. Smith

When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One of two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.

January 17: Orval Lund, "wrist-wrestling father," Amazement

I'm not amazed by a lot of thing, and I probably should be.  My five-year-old son spends most of his day in a constant state of amazement.  He's amazed when he gets up in the morning and finds out he has to go to kindergarten again.  He's amazed when he opens his lunch box at school and finds a Hershey's chocolate Santa he didn't know was there.  He's amazed when he gets off the school bus and sees my wife waiting there for him.

I wish I were amazed like that.  All the time.  Each moment an exercise in appreciation of the world and life.

Orval Lund wrote a poem about amazement that I love.  I found it in the anthology Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor.

Saint Marty is amazed by this poem.

wrist-wrestling father

For my father

On the maple wood we placed our elbows
and gripped hands, the object to bend
the other's arm to the kitchen table.
We flexed our arms and waited for the sign.

I once shot a wild goose.
I once stood not twenty feet from a buck deer unnoticed.
I've seen a woods full of pink lady slippers.
I once caught a 19-inch trout on a tiny fly.
I've seen the Pacific.  I've seen the Atlantic.
I've watched whales in each.

I once heard Lenny Bruce tell jokes.
I've seen Sandy Koufax pitch a baseball.
I've heard Paul Desmond play the saxophone.
I've been to London to see the Queen.
I've had dinner with a Nobel Prize poet.

I wrote a poem once with every word but one just right.
I've fathered two fine sons
and loved the same woman for twenty-five years.

But I've never been more amazed
than when I snapped my father's arm down to the table.

Look up every once in a while and be amazed

January 2: Fern Loved Wilbur, Kids, Sacrifice

Fern loved Wilbur more than anything.  She loved to stroke him, to feed him, to put him to bed.  Every morning, as soon as she got up, she warmed his milk, tied his bib on, and held the bottle for him.  Every afternoon, when the school bus stopped in front of her house, she jumped out and ran to the kitchen to fix another bottle for him.  She fed him again at suppertime, and again just before going to bed...

The one thing I remembered about Charlotte's Web before I started rereading it yesterday is that it's about unconditional love.  Fern loves Wilbur.  In the first chapter of the book Fern saves him from being euthanized by her father.  Wilbur, the runt of the litter, won't survive without Fern's ministrations.  He's weak and can't compete with his siblings for food and warmth.  Fern has to nurse Wilbur to health and strength.

E. B. White's book has a great deal to say about the nature of friendship and love.  Above all, love is about sacrifice.  In Charlotte's case, it's about ultimate sacrifice.  Charlotte devotes her entire life to her best friend, Wilbur.  In a lot of ways, it's very Christian in its narrative arc.  Birth.  Life.  Sacrifice.  Death.  Rebirth.

I understand the kind of devotion Fern and Charlotte exhibit.  For most people, having kids is a game changer.  Sacrifice is a daily exercise for mothers and fathers.  I don't get up at 4 a.m. every day and work 12 or 13 hours because I enjoy sleep deprivation and exhaustion.  I do it because I need to support my family.  I do it because it's my duty.  I do it because of love.

This morning, my son climbed into bed with me at around 8 a.m.  I thought he was going to start talking until I threw off the covers and got up.  Instead, he burrowed under the quilt, kissed me on the lips, and promptly fell back asleep.  For two full hours, I held his little hand and listened to his deep breaths.  I swear I could hear the blood rushing in his veins.  It was the best part of my day.

Sometimes, being a father is hard.  Punishments.  Doctor's offices.  School guidance counselors.  Head lice.  Sometimes, being a father is easy.  Holding your child while he sleeps.  Feeling your heart unfolding like some rare tropical flower, petal upon petal.

And that's a piece of Saint Marty's mind and soul.

Head lice, anyone?

September 9: Son, Hypoglycemia, Magic 8-Ball

My son's teacher told us late last week that, about mid-morning, our son starts behaving differently.  He won't follow directions, starts being disruptive, and complains that he's hungry.  His teacher is worried that he's not mature enough for kindergarten.

My reaction when my wife told me this was, "Well, did she give him anything to eat?"

Having been an insulin-dependent diabetic since I was thirteen, I'm very aware of how food, or the lack of it, can affect a person's behavior.  I'm a pretty easy-going guy, but, when I'm in the throes of a low blood sugar reaction, I develop facial tics and a kind of obstinacy that rivals Dick Cheney at a Greenpeace meeting.  I simply don't want to listen to directions of any kind, even if they're along he lines of "no, you can't put that puppy in the microwave."  Blood sugar does that to you.

I'm not saying my son is diabetic or hypoglycemic.  I'm saying that, if a kid's behavior drastically changes and he complains that he's hungry, there might be a direct link between those two things.  It makes sense.  And it's worth investigating.

I'm also not saying I want my son to be diabetic or hypoglycemic.  But there's a small part of me that's thinking, "You know, that problem can be solved with a fruit juice box and a stick of cheese."  The other alternative, that my son is struggling to adjust to his new school/teacher/classmates, will be a much harder fix, involving perhaps special arrangements and rules in the classroom for my son.  Behavior modification techniques.  I'd rather go with apple juice and cheese.

I want my son to do well in school.  Be popular.  Listen to his teacher.  Fit in.  At his first parent-teacher conference, I want his teacher to gush, "He's the best kindergarten student I've had in all my years of teaching."  At the moment, I think we may be headed toward, "We don't like to have him near the scissors."

Which brings me to my questions for Magic 8-Ball Monday:

Is my son diabetic/hypoglycemic?

And Holden's answer is:

...I really am.  That's why I'm so damn skinny.  I was supposed to be on this diet where you eat a lot of starches and crap, to gain weight and all, but I didn't ever do it...

Well, Saint Marty couldn't ask for a clearer answer than that:  "I really am."  Now, he'll wait and see if the doctor agrees.

This is Saint Marty with a low blood sugar.  Really.

Septmeber 4: Some Difficulty, School Worry, Son

"If I'm not mistaken,I believe you also had some difficulty at the Whooton School and at Elkton Hills."  He didn't say it just sarcastic, but sort of nasty, too.

Holden's teacher, old Spencer, is reminding him of the string of schools he's flunked out of.  Pencey Prep is simply the latest in a long line of academic failures.  The problem is that Holden simply doesn't care.  He's got other things on his mind.  His brother's death.  His dysfunctional family.  His love, Jane.  His sister, Phoebe.


My wife got a phone call from my son's kindergarten teacher this afternoon.  She told my wife she's "at a loss" with my son.  He's not listening, not behaving, not following directions.  Mind you, it's only the second day she's had my son in class, and she's already at a loss.  She's not sure if my son has the "maturity" for kindergarten.

He's been going to school for two years already.  He was a leader in class last year.  My son's former teacher told us he was "more than ready" for kindergarten this year.

I have been a teacher for over 20 years at the university level.  I've had my share of difficult students.  I  can't think of a single time in my entire teaching career that I've written off a student on the second day of class.  In fact, I go out of my way to insure that my students succeed.  That's what good teachers are supposed to do, preschool through grad school.

I'm trying not to be defensive.  I'm trying to give my son's teacher the benefit of the doubt.  I'm not doing a good job at either.  I told my wife that I'm going to give this situation about a week.  If we get another phone call like the one we received this afternoon, I'm going to make some phone calls myself.

If you can't tell, I'm a little worried about this situation.  I allowed my daughter to go through a year of elementary school with a teacher who was difficult, to put it nicely.  That was a mistake.  I will not make the same mistake again.

Saint Marty has his son's back.

At a loss

June 18: Playgrounds

I'm going to a playground with my wife and kids after work.  At first, I was simply going to hang around town until 7 p.m., when I had a meeting with some colleagues from the university.  Well, the meeting was postponed, but my wife had already told my four-year-old son about coming to visit me.  And she mentioned the playground.

I'm actually looking forward to this evening.  Normally, I don't get much time to watch my kids being kids.  I'm always driving my daughter to dance lessons or giving my son a bath.  By the time I get home, it's late.  Within an hour-and-a-half, my son is in bed.  My daughter's nose is always buried in her iPod or Kindle or smart phone.

However, there's no WiFi at the playground.  And my son will have plenty of towers to climb and holes to crawl through.

I will sit with my wife on a bench and watch our children play.  Lake Superior will be over my shoulder, shimmering like a broken mirror.  Maybe I'll read a book.  Maybe I'll close my eyes and listen to the waves.  Maybe I'll reach over and hold my wife's hand.

Saint Marty loves playgrounds.

Beat you to the top!

January 9: Killing Some Time

At the moment, I'm killing some time with my son at the office, waiting for my daughter to get done with her dance class.  It is a strange and violent expression, "killing some time."  It calls to mind images of stalking, hunting, and execution.  It also calls to mind the idea that this time is something useless and unwanted.  It is true that I'm sort of in limbo right now, unable really to do anything productive besides type this blog post.  I can't go to Wal-Mart to buy a needed item for my medicine cabinet; I don't have enough time for that.  I can't go visit my friend, Keith, and his wife, Gloria; by the time I had my son's winter jacket was off and my shoes unlaced, I'd have to lace them back up and dress my son again.  Once more, not enough time.  So, in many ways, I'm time's hostage this evening.

As I watch my son play on my i-Pad, I realize that his concept of time is completely different from mine.  The time he is spending playing some game called Minecraft of Mind Craft or Mined Craft right now probably seems infinite to him.  I could tell him, "Ten more minutes and we have to go pick up Sissy," and he would probably say "Okay" without even really knowing the difference between ten minutes and ten hours.  He just knows that in some segment of time from now, we will have to leave to pick up his sister at the dance studio.  I imagine all of his days are adventures in time.  The time from when he wakes up to the time he gets on the school bus.  The time from when he arrives at school to the time he eats his breakfast.  The time from when he eats his breakfast to the time his bladder tells him he has to go to the bathroom.  Those are his measurements of time.

I think I prefer his concept of time.  It's friendlier.  Less stressful.  No time clock to punch.  No looking at the calendar and thinking, "I have only five more days of vacation left."  No deadlines to meet.  Just Minecraft and waffles and bus rides and cheese cubes and baths.

Saint Marty has a lot to learn from his son.

Not killing any more time

November 7: Daddy/Daughter Time

Tonight, my wife and I are splitting the parenting duties.  My wife took my son to his preschool classroom for a craft night.  I stayed with my daughter while she went to her dance classes.

I like when I can spend time with just one of my children.  I sometimes feel as though my daughter gets the short end of the stick when it comes to my attention, simply because my son is four years old and destroys everything he comes in contact with.  He takes a lot of my energy when I'm with him.  This evening, my daughter got to choose where she wanted to eat, and then we drove down to Lake Superior and watched the lights in the dark water.  It was really nice.

After dinner, I took her to my office at the university, and I let her pretend she was a college student.  She liked that, as well.  Now, she's back at her dance studio, and I have an hour to kill.  But the important thing about tonight was my daughter getting my full attention.  I wasn't distracted by my son saying, "Can I play your iPad?" or "Pleeeeeze can I play your iPad?" or "Daddy, I love you.  Can I play your iPad?"  (I have begun to have some suspicions that the only reason he wants me around is because I'm his iPad supplier.)  No, it was pure daddy/daughter time, and it was golden.

I remember when my daughter was four years old, and I would sit next to her bed and read her book after book.  I read her Charlotte's Web and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  And we would laugh and say prayers together.  Those are some of my best memories.

Now that she's almost twelve, I am dealing with a different kind of daughter.  A daughter who goes to school dances.  A daughter who wears training bras.  And a daughter who doesn't want to hug and kiss me in front of her friends.  That's sort of depressing.

Saint Marty wants his little girl back.

My not-so-little girl