My hometown, Milwaukee

Today it snowed, tying some kind of record for winter days with snow and tonight the temperature is going down to 22 degrees. I saw a Cardinal bird today in the backyard but he or she is probably going back south or in hiding. The Cardinal baseball team is in town so maybe the bird came with them for the road trip.

Tonight a good friend who suffers from I call a brain illness or some call a mental illness told me, unexpectedly, that he needs to move out Milwaukee to one of two other smaller towns in Wisconsin. I asked him why and he said that ‘they’ were after him. He could not define who ‘they’ were. I told him about the great support network he has here in Milwaukee that he cannot find quickly in these two other towns, but that did not matter much to him.

Our conversation reminded me of many conversations I had with my son, Peter, who thought that if he just moved to another city all his troubles with his mind would be over. Actually he did go to San Francisco and Settle one journey and to New Orleans and Texas at another time. Both journeys ended with disasters since by changing locations he could not get free from his illness.

After the second journey he stayed in Milwaukee but kept talking about, up till the night before he died, about going to another city to live, most notably Chicago. However, I believe that deep in himself he knew that he could not escape the suffering he felt by moving. After his death our pastor said that Peter finally got to Chicago, where there was no more suffering.

This common illusion of persons with mental illnesses is deep in all of us. If only we could go somewhere else all would be good. A friend of mine got herself into some trouble in a northern city and had been talking with me today about how if she and her son could be back to California all would be well, despite the fact she and her son would need to live in a homeless shelter. Talking with her today, reality set in, and she will try to get herself out of the mess in her life where she is now.

Half jokey, I told my wife tonight that if we ever felt we had to get out of Milwaukee that I would like to go to Hawaii. From what I remember from my visits there when my brother and his family lived there, was that the weather was always nice, bright and sunny, the scenery was beautiful and people there had a laid back lifestyle.

I will probably live and die right here in Milwaukee, my home town. Not looking for change of locations my home town looks better and better to me each day.

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