Just finished an uplifting weekend at a time when I was beginning to wonder whether I was still liftable.

It started with, of all things, a wake on Saturday morning. Yes, there is inherent sadness in all such events. But always there is recognition of what really matters, and most always, when someone leaves, we learn things we never before knew about him.

This wake was for Judge John “Jack” Keleher. Judge Keleher is the father of one of Beth’s best long-time friends, Colleen. The two of them go way back, to when they were waitresses at Marshall Field Walnut room in Oak Brook. At this point, I go pretty far back with Colleen—and her husband Dennis—too.

Judge Keleher, to me and Beth, was first and foremost Colleen’s dad, and the man who married us in the Keleher family’s back yard in 1984. For those narrow reasons alone, he is an unforgettable character in our lives.

What we learned since is that we are just two of a small army of people who will not forget him. Just read this obituary. He worked for the common good, for civil rights, and he introduced Martin Luther King at an event for crying out loud! Who knew?

The judge’s admirers showed up in force on Saturday – the chapel was standing room only. Here’s to Judge Keleher.

From there we had a short window for errands, which in this case, included upgrading Beth’s cell phone. We stopped at the phone store, and were helped by an African-American man who was more than courteous, he was especially helpful with regard to Beth’s blindness. I don’t know how to explain what that means—it’s a combination of acknowledging and addressing it practically, without obsessing on it.

I’ll confess here as an aside that since all the police shooting stuff has been in the news, I’ve had this impulse to ask random black people what they think of it. The reporter in me wants to talk to the man in the street, and not rely on CNN, Fox, or other outlets.

I stopped myself Saturday, as I had before, because, for one, Beth gets questions sometimes that imply blindness is the most interesting thing about her, and for another, suggest that she speaks for all blind people. (And besides, the guy was working.)

Kennedy (aka “Toots”) and Whitney took to one another right away.

Anyway, we got home in time to receive Beth’s 6-month old great niece—we had volunteered to watch her overnight while her parents attended dad’s office party. (Well, office party is maybe an understatement, poppa Brian works for Lagunitas Brewery.)

Beth likes all kids, but especially the little ones that walk and talk a lot and ask lots of questions—the ones that drive me up the wall. I like babies—easy to manage—and then I like them again when they reach, oh, 25. So I was in my element with Toots (Beth’s new nickname for her.) We sat together, we played with Whitney together, she played with my phone. I watched her work intently on making new sounds, manipulating little toys I put in her hand. I could almost see new neurons firing. Never gets old.

Of course, Toots also kept either of us from getting a full night’s sleep. And I was reminded of that very particular brand of fatigue that only comes with a particular stage of parenthood, and that it’s great to be an uncle and not a father at my age.

After a workout at the gym, I put on a pot of stew and we headed down to our local, Hackney’s, while it finished cooking. Beth and I are partial to the two last seats farthest away from the door (at least during the winter season).

Sure enough, they were open, but one was wedged in a little tightly next to another patron, a 20-something (I thought) black guy who looked like was a college student.

I asked if the seat was taken, he said, enthusiastically, “No, sit down,” and he moved his cell phone and other bits of belongings, apologizing as he did.

Somewhere along the line between our eavesdropping on him and his friend and his eavesdropping on Beth and me, our conversations crossed. And he turned and said to me, “This being the holidays and all, would you mind if we bought you your backup?”

I said, ever so cleverly, “Backup?” He said, “Yeah, your second drink.”

His buddy nodded his approval.

We said yes, of course (the stew still had time). And we broke into conversation and I learned that he is not 22, he is 45 (his buddy vouched for that, giggling like someone who’d won a bar bet or two on that issue).

He’d gone to DePaul University and then gone to work there and had worked at DePaul for 25 years. His name was Mike, he grew up in Pilsen, he lived out toward O’Hare but he and his buddy Mark like this neighborhood and come down from time to time.

I told him he’d made my week. I meant it. He said, yeah, with everything going, you know, we just need to love each other, don’t you think? Ordinarily, that kind of talk makes me crazy. Not this time.

“Yeah,” I said, “You’re right.”

“Besides, I got a good vibe from you two.”

Beth chimed in at some point as she often needs to when we meet new people—she and I are so into our routines that we’re not even aware of when they might look odd—“I don’t know if you know, but I’m blind.”

Mike said he’d thought so, he’d once dated a visually impaired person for several years.

I told him that the recent events had me down, and I asked what he thought. He quickly launched into a prolog that went, “I respect the police, I respect how hard their job is, I really really…”.

But, after he made all that clear, he added that he’d been terrified of the police his entire life, and remained so. It was impossible to imagine anyone taking this cherubic, manically upbeat guy as a threat.

Mark reminded him that they had to get going, we shook hands, Beth hugged, and they were off.

On our drive out to the Judge’s wake in our Zipcar, we had listened to Saturday Morning Flashback. A local station—WXRT—spends all morning recounting music and movies and pop culture from a bygone year. Saturday’s was 1970. One thing: music was better then. There will be no argument.

For another thing, one of the songs was the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion.” Lordy, I thought, nothing’s changed.

But between being reminded of the work of Judge Jack, the twinkling promise of Toots, that wonderful guy at the AT&T store, and the holiday gift that was Mike and Mark, I concluded otherwise.

A lot’s changed. But I take Mike at his word about being terrified. Not being terrified of police isn’t a privilege. It’s a right.

We, that includes me, have a fair piece to go. And I believe we’ll get there. But not by accident.

In honor of Thanksgiving, I asked seniors in my memoir-writing classes to write on the subject “Thanks, but No Thanks.” To explain what I was looking for, I said, “Say you were offered an opportunity, a job, a marriage proposal, a real estate purchase, an adoption, anything, and are sorry you refused that offer, you could write about that.” I told them that on the other hand, if there was something in their lives that they were oh so thankful they said no to, they could write about how relieved they are that they said thanks, but no thanks to that offer.

Seniors worked on their essays over Thanksgiving and read them aloud in class this week. Shunned lovers and refused marriage proposals showed up in many of their stories. Other essays were about job offers they’d refused or schools they’d decided not to attend.

Ninety-four-year-old Wanda wrote that while she has learned how to use a computer to send email and write essays for class, she has no interest in tweeting or apps or looking at photos on instagram. When asked to embrace technology, she says “Thanks, but no thanks.” Judy wrote about how proud she was of the sit-upon she made while she was a Brownie, how intrigued she was by the wood-burning stoves they made from tin cans and cardboard toilet paper rolls once she’d “flown up” to Junior Girl Scouts, but then, when it came to joining a high school troop, she said no.

I can only think of one writer who wrote about regretting he’d said no to an opportunity, but even that essay had a happy ending. Dave hadn’t yet visited a foreign country by the time he graduated from college, but when he moved to Texas and a bunch of his buddies asked him to join them on a trip to Monterrey, Mexico, he decided not to go. His pals came back with all sorts of amazing stories. “I’ve regretted that decision ever since,” he wrote, but then acknowledged that foregoin Monterrey changed his life in a very positive way: he’s been adventurous ever since, taking on just about every travel opportunity that comes his way.

Mary’s essay was inspired by the title story in M. F. K. Fisher’s book Sister Age. Mary wrote that she noticed Sister Age visiting her 60-year-old mother, “softly draping a shawl around her shoulders on cold winter nights, fixing a breakfast of warm milk toast drenched in honey and butter, accompanying her to multiplying trips to doctors and hospitals, and comforting her in attending increasing numbers of funerals of old friends.” Mary’s mother died when she was 99 years old, and Mary said that by then “Sister Age was her constant companion and nurse.”

Now Mary sees Sister Age at her own door. “She brings pills and appointments with physical therapists for my hands that move with more difficulty and my joints that stiffen and creak, eyesight that requires stronger prescriptions, nostalgic conversations with friends from high school and college, rooms full of memorabilia from Japan and all our other travels around the world, and a list of things I want to do before I am slowed to a standstill.”

Mary explained how she knows Sister Age is there: she hears her knocking at the door, and when she peers out, she sees Sister Age through the peephole. “But I resist welcoming her completely into my life and accepting her invitation to pass the threshold into my consciousness,” Marywrote at the end of her essay. “I want to say to her thanks, but no thanks – but I know that I cannot do that forever.”

So, it’s already been a week since my last post? Yikes. A lot’s happened, and not all of it uplifting (though we had a swell Thanksgiving, and hope you did, too). So, bereft of inspiration, I’m repurposing a little something I wrote around 10 years back when Beth visited our friend Sheelagh in Northern Ireland and left Hanni home with me. I hope you enjoy it.

I was Hanni’s favorite…until Beth got home.

For years after my wife lost her eyesight, I dreaded when she went away without me. Not trusting a world of redcaps, connecting flights, and shuttle buses, I worried about her travels more than she did. I always imagined the worst, fretting until she returned home, safe.

Now she travels alone regularly. I’m still unhappy, but for less admirable reasons. A couple days before she goes out of town there’s a mix of sadness and tension. For her, it’s all anticipation and packing and every once in awhile an “I’m going to miss you.” For me it’s “I’m going to miss you, have a good time, but how come I’m stuck at home taking care of things while you’re having a good time?”

On her last trip she went to Northern Ireland, which meant she couldn’t take Hanni, her Seeing Eye guide dog. I’ll save the explanation, but it has to do with rabies quarantines and such. For a week, while Beth yucked it up and drank Guinness in a nice little pub with our friends, Hanni and I would be stuck with each other.

Still, on the day she left, I got a jolt of that thing that made Tom Cruise dance in his underwear in Risky Business when his parents left him home alone. No rules!

Except I’m not a teen-age Tom Cruise. I’m not an anything Tom Cruise. And there’s nothing I want to do that I haven’t done or don’t do regularly while my wife’s around. After 20 years of marriage, she’s seen it all; it’s not like I have to wait until she’s gone. If I had friends she despises I would make a point of seeing them. Except all my friends are her friends, too.

So my guilty pleasures amounted to eating food she’d never eat—barbecued ribs that night—and incessant channel surfing, watching sports, staying up into the wee hours catching fragments of action movies she’d never watch on cable TV. All because I could. The next morning I was groggy and heart-burned, wondering why I did this to myself.

With no payoff for her absence, I brooded. I was joined this time by Hanni, who acted like a child who’d been left with a mean relative. She went into a deep mope, curling up to sleep near the door to our apartment—she never, ever sleeps there otherwise.

And so for the first couple evenings, there we lay, me on the couch with remote in hand, she on the floormat by the door.

But after a couple of days, I started getting used to not having to consult with anyone on what to eat, what to do, where to go, or when to go there. To walking down the block to our local, just because I felt like it, to read the paper at the bar while sipping a beer. The good parts of being single that single people take for granted.

And there were good reports on the notes left by the dog-walker we hired for the week. “We had a great time at the park. Hanni was perfect, stopping at every curb. #1: Check. #2: Check. Gave her a treat.”

Hanni didn’t mind the new life, either. She wasn’t threading a blind woman through chaotic Chicago traffic anymore, but she still got fed and petted lavishly. I took her for long walks, she played with other dogs, and their companions struck up dog conversations with me.

Hanni and I bonded. I became certain we shared an ambivalence about my wife’s return. Who does she think she is, anyway? She goes away, we have to adjust. She wants to come back, we have to adjust. It’s all about her.

When a week passed, I left the office to pick up my wife at the airport. My cell phone rang, I answered, and a British woman introduced herself. She told me she sat next to my wife on the plane, that they had a great time talking, and that she’d help her to the curb with her luggage. I pulled up to find my wife and her British flying chum.

After I grabbed her bag, my wife said a hasty goodbye to her helper and we were off.

Like always, we started in as if resuming an interrupted conversation, each pouring out stories of the past few days as I drove downtown from O’Hare.

My stories stunk by comparison, of course. Between lists of who called, what teams won what games, and other droll details, I strategically mentioned the hardships I—and this time, the dog—suffered in my wife’s absence.

And like always, she ignored this accounting.

I made do with having made my comments for an imaginary record. We moved on to dinner plans for the night, the wheres, whats and whens, and charted out the rest of our week.

At home, whatever special bond the dog and I had forged evaporated before my eyes as Hanni, completely forgetful, forgiving, or both, threw herself at her partner without giving me a second look.

And it was like my wife never left.

The success of our “Mondays with Mike” feature has a lot of you blog readers wondering: what does my husband Mike Knezovich do for a living? An online article in the Chicago Tribune helps explain. (The print piece is scheduled for Sunday.)

Katrin Klingenberg is featured in a Tribune article about passive house and PHIUS.

The Tribune story profiles architect Katrin Klingenberg, co-founder of a non-profit called Passive House Institute U.S. That’s where Mike works, but we usually refer to it as PHIUS.

I’ve written here before about how Mike met Katrin, and now this excellent short piece in the Tribune explains what Passive House is:

“Passive house” is a concept based on a set of design principles used to create buildings that use minimal heating/cooling, employing elements such as thick insulation, energy-recovery ventilation, high-performance windows and a steady supply of fresh air.

Born in Germany, Katrin had seen Europeans applying passive principles to buildings for decades. “But their principles only applied to the European temperate climate,” she told the Tribune reporter, explaining how she’d applied it to America’s extreme temperatures.
PHIUS started in 2007 and has already trained 2,000 architects, engineers, builders and energy raters. It’s certified 129 buildings, with many more in the works.

Now, PHIUS works with policymakers to get passive-house principles into local building codes.  They’re working with the U.S. Department of Energy on the next generation of climate-specific passive-building standards, too — those standards will be much more energy-efficient than the current International Energy Conservation Code. Katrin told the reporter that we absolutely must solve the climate crisis. “Energy-efficient buildings do make a difference,” she said.

As Director of Communications, Mike
helps get the word out via the Web, Social Media, trade and general interest press, and the organization’s annual conference. This article — which includes what Mike tells me is a terrific photo of Katrin — will help those efforts. Give the article a read yourself, and don’t miss the extra Q&A with Katrin at the end.

Every once in a while my part-time job at Easter Seals Headquarters asks me to do something out of my comfort zone. Writing a letter to my teenage self was one of those things.

That’s me in the hospital in high school. (Photo courtesy Laura Gale.)

I’ll try to explain. Earlier this month Easter Seals helped expand Thrive, a mentorship program for young women who have disabilities. Thrive’s Letters to Thrive blog encourages women with disabilities to write letters to their younger selves. The hope is that young women might read the letters and benefit from the lessons other women learned growing up with a disability.

I didn’t grow up with a disability (I lost my sight when I was 26) but my supervisor at Easter Seals still thought it’d be a great idea for me to write a letter to my teenage self. “They can post it on the Letters to Thrive blog, and we can publish it on the Easter Seals blog, too.”

I supposed I could write about the disease that caused me to lose my sight, but I don’t like thinking — or writing — about going through high school with Type 1 diabetes. I already had to write about that for Long Time, No See, and I much prefer thinking about the goofy and fun times I had as a teenager. You know, rather than the hospital visits. I respect my supervisor at Easter Seals, though, and I like working with her. I agreed to write the letter.

The Letters to Thrive site was easy to access with my talking computer, and it even has a What Should I Write About? link for those with writer’s block.

I’d love to tell you that composing this letter was enlightening or, ahem, eye-opening. Truth is, it left me feeling bittersweet — sad for my younger self, while simultaneously hopeful for the future. My letter was published on the Letters to Thrive blog last week, and I’ll paste it below. But first I must give credit where credit is due. Mike Knezovich provided the Nostradamus reference — I would have never come up with that on my own!

20 November 2014

Dear Younger Self,

The blip on your popularity chart peaked off the screen last week when you returned to high school — other kids think it’s cool to know someone who was in the hospital and was almost in a coma.

Right now the two shots you take each day are long-acting insulins, far too slow and weak to handle the carbohydrates in the popcorn you like to snack on, the ten-cent rice dish you buy to save money in the high school cafeteria at lunch and the ice cream you cheat with from time to time.

This was your third hospital visit during your high school years, and before you were released this time, your doctor declared you won’t live to see your 30th birthday. What you and your doctor don’t know right now is that before you turn 30, people with Type 1 diabetes will be able to test their blood glucose levels at home throughout the day. They’ll use an insulin pump or take a shot of fast-acting insulin to counteract the sugar and carbohydrates in all sorts of foods. You’ll be able to be more spontaneous, you won’t have to plan every meal, and you won’t have to feel guilty when you snack.

What your doctor could have told you as you left the hospital this time was to keep taking care of yourself the best you can — that way you’ll live to enjoy these breakthroughs. Your doctor isn’t a bad man, and in the end, the impact his Nostradamus prediction made on you won’t necessarily be the one he intended. In fact, it’s already sparked a sense of urgency in you: you want to squeeze in a full life before you turn thirty. You’re on a streak where you’re saying yes to almost any opportunity for adventure that comes your way, and now, speaking to you 40 years later, I say…go, girl!

One of the major (if only) advantages of having a chronic disease or disability when you are young is that it can give you the wisdom to understand life could be cut short at any time. Keep working at staying healthy — that way you’ll steer clear of the hospital and have more time for adventures.

Keep taking advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Open yourself up to all sorts of people. See what you can see. Experience what you can.

Choosing a full life now will expose you to many people of many cultures making many different choices. You’ll witness people going through transitions and see how the decisions they make during those times affect their well-being later.

Younger self, I can tell you now that you are going to live past thirty. I can also tell you that you are going to face a lot of life-altering changes along the way, and the people you meet the next ten years or so will be the role models who will inspire you when you go through these changes later on.

Get out there and meet them. Listen to them. Learn from them.

And above all, keep having fun!

Love from your future self