Month: October 2023

After he retired, my father, Frank Bahlert, dreamt about his work in the steel factory for a long time. After he retired, he spent part of each day reading. And in those years, before his death from colon cancer in 1986, he enjoyed time with my mother. He loved to talk, and she was a listener. So in its own way, it worked.

When the weather is warm in Wisconsin, the people are outside! Long, cold, grey winters give way to a late spring and then hot, humid summer days, the humidity often broken by a thunderstorm. The best time to be out on those hot, humid days is early in the morning. And so, Mom and Dad would go out for a walk and ride in the mornings. Mom would walk, and Dad would ride his bicycle. “He follows me everywhere,” she joked at one point.

Dad had fun in retirement. One summer day in August, when the Wisconsin State Fair was on in West Allis, a suburb to the south of the city, Mom and Dad went to the Fair on Senior Citizens’ Day. They enjoyed the free entry to the Fair that day, and I can picture them, eating fresh-made cream-puffs – a Wisconsin State Fair specialty – skirting the midway to look at the animals in the rows of barns, talking to the children from towns and country-side outside the city who lived with their animals in the stalls during Fair Week. On Senior Citizen Day during Fair week in the late 70’s, the “Who’s Legs Are the Best?” contest was held at State Fair. Retired Men stood behind a curtain, their legs lined up in a row.

When I came home from work that day, I opened the evening paper, “The Milwaukee Journal”. Centered on the front page was a photo of 5 pairs of legs – men’s legs – bare below their bermuda shorts, in white socks and black shoes. The headline: “Whose Legs Win the Best Legs Contest?”

I took one look at that line of legs and saw Dad’s! He hadn’t won the contest – who cares? – but he’d had a bit of fun that day. I called my parents’ number immediately, and we had a good laugh together, the kind of fun Dad liked to have.

***

A few years later, Dad would lie in St. Joseph’s Hospital, Milwaukee, for many weeks, dying of the cancer that had struck him ten years earlier. He was grateful for those years, years he hadn’t expected after the heart attack and cancer diagnosis. But one day when I visited him that early spring of 1986, he looked at me, grief in his eyes. “I wish I could be out riding my bike,” he said.

Indeed.

Mom and Dad, circa 1980

I am part of a small group of fellow spiritual directors that have met faithfully since the beginning of 2014. Of course, the presence of COVID in all our lives beginning in 2020 prevented us from meeting for many months, but for the past year, we have come together again as regularly as we can.

Our lives have changed over time, of course. One member is full time caregiver now for his spouse; another member is slowly moving toward being caregiver for her spouse. One of our friends has just completed a “Swim Across the Bay” as a way to support cancer research; she shares her disenchantment with “church” as she has known it, disenchantment heightened by having the forced break of COVID as time to reflect. Another shares honestly with us all his changes as he grows older. I remind the group, often as we meet, that they are my “church.”

The group’s purpose has evolved since our journey with COVID. Sometimes now, we do not have a presentation for our listening and wisdom. Sometimes, now, one person will bring a reading or a topic to us for us to think about and to consider aloud what it means to us.

At the beginning of 2023, a member of the group suggested that we choose a Word for the Year. When we met in January, we spoke aloud our word to the group. My word, however, didn’t resonate deeply and well with me. I did not take it with me as the days and weeks lengthened into this year. But as we met this past week, a quiet, simple statement arose from the group, and I had it! I had chosen my word – two words, really – to be my guide as the days and weeks now flow gently to the end of 2023.

And so I ask: “What now?” I ask, “what now?” of God, of the Holy, of my Deeper Self, of the gathering dusk of each day, of the quiet moments I cherish early each morning. I have written on each page of my calendar until the end of the year those words: “what now?”

And as I ask, I wait.

“What now?”

At dusk you fly over our place,
coasting on the graying sky -
your number rising from the shadow of the trees,
     a strong battle-front:
     a murder of crows
     squawking your firm presence on the wind:
     a soaring chant.
You ride your voices and your wings 
into the sun
as it dips into the Bay.

Each evening at dusk, I wait for you.