Last Saturday I got in a rental car (actually an enormous minivan—I know, oxymoron, but that’s what it was), figured out how to start the damn thing and put it into gear (I’m sorry, but shifting gears shouldn’t be done with a dial), stopped home to board Beth and Luna, and headed north.

Eat your heart out, Tom Selleck.

To Watertown, Wisconsin. To see our son Gus in his group home. That used to be a routine, monthly occurrence. But, you know what happened. It’s been a long while.

Typically, we call the house on the drive up to let them know we’re coming—and to be sure they didn’t have some outing planned. But Saturday, the house phone was busy. And busy. And busy.

It’s common advice for those of us who have loved ones in the care of others to make unannounced visits…to check on their care. And early on we did that from time to time. But over time, our trust grew, and well, you know, we don’t really like sneaking up on people whom we’ve come to trust.

But this time we had no choice and we just showed up. Gus’ house is actually a duplex, with four bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen on each side. That way staff members can toggle between as necessary. But Saturday, when I rang the bell on Gus’ side, there was no answer. Between the phone being busy and not raising anyone despite knocking, my heart sank at the thought that maybe they were on an outing and we’d missed him.

I went to the other side, though, and this time a staff member opened the door. All the residents were just finishing lunch. I explained that we’d tried to call and she apologized—she had just realized the phone was knocked off the hook, and the other doorbell was broken. About that time a resident walked out of the bathroom in his birthday suit.

“Sorry,” the staff member said. “I’ll be right back.”

While she tended to business, I went back to the car to get Beth and Luna, and we joined Gus in his room for the first time in forever.

He looked great. He would’ve looked great after all this time no matter what, but his hair was groomed and he had recently been shaved—save for a thick, dark mustache. My nephew, upon seeing the picture, said “He’s rocking a Tom Selleck ‘Magnum P.I.’ stache!”

Way back—nearly 20 years ago—when Gus first moved away, when we visited we took Gus on outings. Typically to Culver’s, where he’d demolish a double cheeseburger. Then we’d take a ride with the radio blasting tunes.

That was fun, but I got older and weaker and he got bigger and stronger. Which meant I could no longer muscle him in and out of his wheelchair and in and out of the car like I used to do routinely.

So we’ve taken to just making house visits and sitting and talking with Gus. Now, Gus is a bit of an enigma. For example, he can see well enough to wind his way through doorways in his chair. But he only (as far as we know) has peripheral vision. So he doesn’t look at anything straight on. He cocks his head to look at us.

And when I said I talk to him, we don’t converse, exactly. Beth will provide an update about us and our families—he doesn’t understand but it’s enough for him to recognize that it’s Beth. Then I’ll say “Hi Gus!” in my best booming dad voice. He has always immediately recognized our voices and Saturday was no exception. He immediately smiled and laughed.

And then he just erupted, about every 10 seconds, with an excited roar of joy. Don’t know how else to explain it. We often match his odd sounds and he’ll reply, and that’s what we did. We put some music on and just chilled.

After goodbyes, Beth and I headed to Milwaukee where we stayed at Brewhouse Inn and Suites, a nice hotel in a renovated building from the old Pabst brewery campus. A pretty remarkable and historic little corner of Milwaukee: two thumbs and a paw up.

Our Milwaukee hotel.

We could easily have made it home the same day but long ago, we adopted a policy of staying over night after visits. Mostly Milwaukee, sometimes Madison. In the early days, when Gus had moved away, visits were emotionally draining and the long ride home just felt empty and lonely. So we decided to give ourselves a treat with a stay at a nice place each time.

Visits are no longer taxing—Gus has been settled in for a long, long while. But it’s still fun to make a weekend of it.

This time we walked around the corner from the hotel to a modern microbrewery. We had a “Milwaukee charcuterie board,” which included local Usinger summer sausage, cheese curds, pub cheese, pickles and pretzels.

And we went to bed knowing, for certain, that Gus was safe and sound.

I am pleased to have Maggy Fouché as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. The prompt for this past week was “Witness” and Maggy’s essay shows she’s been keeping her eye on a lot lately!

by Maggy Fouché

My friend Ted and I have been regularly emailing each other about amazing corporate social changes. Aunt Jemima pancakes will get a new name! IBM declares it will get out of the facial recognition business! Walgreens’ new CEO is a black female! Band Aid will introduce products in a variety of skin tones!

Ted was my boss before he became a friend. A well-known executive in the multi-billion-dollar personal care industry, Ted boasted a long and successful career that started with the small relaxer company his chemist stepfather launched in the 60’s and eventually sold to Revlon.

Ted hired me in the 1980s to be the marketing director of what was then called the “ethnic” hair care division of a long-established salon-specialty corporation. After my dad, he was the smartest man I’d ever met, seemingly knowledgeable about everything from ancient Greek philosophy to the latest urban slang. Just before the meeting with the CEO to present the new product launch plan, he stopped to correct his secretary’s posture so that she sat with elbows and wrists at proper angles to the typewriter, as prescribed in the IBM manual.

Ted knew that the most important item in our new product line would be the relaxer and its ability to thoroughly straighten hair. In side-by-side trials in the testing salon, however, our relaxer did not perform as well as the leading competitor. We learned that the formula contained buffers that the chemists said were necessary to lessen the potential damage to the hair.

Ted argued that any damage would be repaired by the post-relaxer conditioning treatment that contained the parent company’s legendary restoring serum. But R&D refused to change the formula which, they proudly informed us, they’d spent ten years developing. “Ten years,” Ted said to me later. “What’s the matter with those guys? In ten years they could have developed an atomic bomb!”

The corporate bosses were unwilling to rely on Ted’s product expertise. The product launch was a disappointment and our division failed to meet sales goals in the succeeding quarters. After about three years our division was disbanded.

Ted and I kept in touch through the ensuing years of our respective careers. Now retired, Ted has plenty of time on his hands and diligently tracks the corporate response to America’s racial unrest.

An undertone of amazement runs through our conversations, amazement at how quickly these changes have come about in the inflexible, conservative, risk-averse culture of big business. He was more philosophical when he wrote me about Major League Baseball’s decision to combine the stats of Negro League players with that of their white counterparts. I leave you here with his own words:

What are we to conclude from these turnabouts along with others affecting American Society? My theory: The George Floyd tragedy triggered a slow-moving earthquake in how Americans of all ethnicities see each other. More change is necessary before the battle is entirely won, but this surrender by America’s favorite sport, professional baseball, is a symbolic milestone not to be lightly dismissed. Stay tuned for what is yet to follow.

Last Monday, I watched an MLB game. In person. With Beth and our friend, a Cleveland fan who lives in the hood.

It felt pretty normal–in an abnormal way. Fans were scattered through the lower and upper

Yahoo!

decks, with the largest grouping being four. Our electronic tickets indicated which gate to enter and which zone we’d be in. Each zone was like a piece of a stadium pie chart, and once in, we could wander the concourse within our zone, but no farther.

But that was fine. Our zone had everything we needed: beer, bathrooms bratwurst, Polish and Italian sausage, and yes, the smell of grilled onions. Though the number of fans were limited, those who were there were excited enough to cheer like a much bigger crowd. And though we were distanced, we were close enough that we could eavesdrop on baseball chatter and join in. Beth struck up a conversation with the young woman who was our usher. Her father and grandfather loved baseball, and she inherited a general love of the game from them.

Yesterday afternoon neighborhood friends generously gave us their matinee tickets to Jazz

Back in business!

Showcase, which reopened to limited crowds recently. The talent on stage was not at all limited—Ari Brown, a legendary local saxophonist led the band. And one of our favorite young Turks of the Chicago jazz scene—saxophonist Isaiah Collier—sat near us in the audience until called up to join the band for a couple of stirring numbers. Old guard and new guard fused as one.

Those two events reminded me of what we’ve been missing in the 2D world of screen living. Things are better in 3D.

And next Saturday, we’ll get to be with Gus, in all three dimensions.

Thanks for all the sweet comments to Wednesday’s blog post about leading memoir-writing class in-person again. A few of you requested I let you know how “opening day” played out, so here I am with some highlights:

• My good pants still fit
• Luna emptied during her morning constitutional – welcome news
• The cab I ordered arrived late – unwelcome news
• Everything I’ve heard about drivers ignoring speed limits during the pandemic proved true
• Cab driver floored it on Lake Shore Drive
• Luna and I arrived at The Admiral just a few minutes late
• I had the right amount of cash on hand to tip the driver
• The temperature check at the front entrance came out normal
• Barbara, the class organizer, was right there to direct us to the conference room we were meeting in
  

  We’re on the road again.

The writers cheered when we entered the conference room and were especially excited to meet Luna. Barbara led me to a seat at the table that was socially distanced from others seated there. The four or five who couldn’t fit sat socially distanced behind us, a peanut gallery of sorts. I don’t give writing assignments during breaks from class but I do encourage those itching to write to do so on their own and bring those essays along to read out loud during the first class. A majority of them did just that, and when Bindy Bitterman was called on to read first, we readied ourselves for something uniquely Bindy.

She did not disappoint.

After pulling her mask down to read, she started her essay with a question. “Remember the song ‘Que Sera, Sera’?” From there, she belted out the first part of the 1956 Doris Day hit song for us. What can I say? Joy, laughter and applause comes through a lot better in person than over Zoom! For an encore, she sang her personalized-for-Bindy version: “Will I be published? I won’t be rich! That’s what I say to me!” Bindy has been trying two years to get her children’s limerick book, Skiddly Diddly Skat,” published, and she used the rest of her 500 words to share some good news. A mishap with her laptop required her to get help retrieving lost data. The data retrieval recovered long-lost information of an artist who been a friend of her late husband and the two got back in touch. “Self-publishing didn’t appeal to me before, but now it feels perfectly do-able,” she read with joy in her voice. “No, I won’t make money at it, and yes, it will cost a lot — Rich is much younger than I, and this is how he earns his living — but this style fits Skiddly so perfectly it’s bound to be a hit!”

What a great start to the in-person class. Being in the room to hear others read their essays was so moving, many of them featuring personal encounters in the past with family members, caring for a grandson who’d been born prematurely and is now a healthy teenager, making friends with a man who happen to sit next to him on a flight — back when strangers were used to sitting together on flights. A piece one writer wrote about how Zoom helped her survive the pandemic served to remind us that holding class online this past year was downright amazing.

At the end of class I took Luna’s harness off and welcomed those interested to come on over and pet her. When she rolled on her back for bellyrubs I knew for certain: Luna prefers in-person learning.

Happy Immunity Day! It’s been 14 days since Mike and I got our second Pfizer vaccine, and I’m celebrating by leading a memoir-writing class in person this afternoon.

Luna’s not worried.

The last memoir-writing class I taught in person met 13 months ago. It is downright amazing how quickly we all adjusted to using Zoom and meeting online. So comfortable that, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m feeling a little anxiety over physically attending class in a few hours. A story on CNBC tells me this is normal –sort of.

More than a year into the pandemic, people have become accustomed to the lives they’ve built and the routines they’ve created in their “Covid caves” and are not looking forward to a return to normal.

For some, this comes from an extreme fear of the disease, or anxiety about reacclimating into society.

Others have found that the pandemic has brought about positive changes in their lives, and they’re afraid of losing what they’ve gained.

My anxiety has little to do with the COVID virus: today’s class meets at Admiral-at-the-Lake, a Chicago senior housing facility where every resident and all staff members received their vaccines in February. I’ve been fully vaccinated, my writers have all been fully vaccinated, we all can meet in the conference room around one table and, get this: read essays with our masks off. So why am I nervous? It’s the little stuff.

How did I used to get there every week? What’s the address again? Do I have the right cash to tip the cab driver? What time should I leave so I get there on time? What should I wear? Will my good pants still fit? What do I need to bring? Where is my lipstick? In class we pass Scrabble tiles around to see who reads first, second, third…where on earth did I stash my little zippered bag of Scrabble tiles after classes were cancelled last year? Will my bus pass still work? My Seeing Eye dog has only been to the Admiral once or twice, will she get me into the lobby alright? What prompt should I assign for next week? Is my iPhone fully charged?

I look forward to coming home this afternoon, rereading this post and wondering what I was so worried about. But that comes later. Now, I’d better start getting ready.