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My friend Don Hohlstein is now eighty-nine years old. I don’t recall when I first met him, but it must have been shortly after I moved back here, to Rio, Wisc., in the summer of 2006. So, come to think of it, he was just about the age then that I am now. My first specific memory of Don is from seven years later, when Carol and I, and Don, sat in lawn chairs at a big birthday party, a summertime, suppertime picnic in a park, in a nearby town.
The honored guest was a prominent businessperson, a woman celebrating forty-five good years of life, but she had been in and out of hospitals, and we who knew her realized the possibility of her reaching forty-six was slim. The event had what I would call a festive-funereal tone to it, with cheerful, well-dressed attendees, lots of flowers, a small church choir, and a bagpiper. Someone provided an opening prayer; others gave brief speeches with references to Scripture.
When there was a pause in the formal presentations, and some of the “audience” got up to move about, Don leaned toward me and, with furrowed brow, asked, “Bud, are you a Christian?”
That seemed to me a larger question than I was used to fielding in this south-central Wisconsin culture. It seemed an odd thing for a Lutheran to ask another Lutheran, although I wasn’t sure Don was actually aware of what religious label had been placed on me in infancy. I took a second or two to gather my thoughts, and, in that same second or two, someone on the bandstand began tapping the microphone and calling for quiet so that the formalities of the occasion could resume.
“Don,” I said, “the short answer is Yes.”
One of the many things I love about Don Hohlstein is that, more than once on later occasions, he did remember to revisit that topic, earnestly and respectfully inviting a richer reply.
♦
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