This past Saturday was out of the ordinary in no small way. To start, I went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Me. Mike Knezovich, lifelong White Sox fan. I went because our good friend Denny Wills has season tickets this year, and he’s not a casual fan—he’s a supremely knowledgeable baseball fan who happens to also be a Cub fan. So it was an opportunity to watch a game, drink beer, and completely geek out on baseball talk without apology.

Early in the game, I sensed the flutter of insect wings to my right. But for some reason, I didn’t shoo whatever it was away. It landed on me above my right knee. It was a beautiful monarch butterfly. In the second deck of Wrigley field between home and first base. On my leg.

It flapped its wings, and turned and stared straight at me. I motioned to Denny to check it out. His eyes got big. The butterfly sat and stared at me for several batters. Denny, who is about the least sentimental person I know, turned to me and said, “Do you think it’s Beth’s mom?”

Which brings me to the other extraordinary thing about this past Saturday: It was the day after Beth’s mom’s funeral. Flo, after a series of maladies and hospitalizations and things that just go along with being 98 years old, died on Friday, June 20. So last week was consumed by grieving and ceremony.

What to say? Nothing covers this. Which is probably why we rely on ritual and ceremony to get through the first difficult days. They give us things to do. Places to be. And people to be with.

Beth and her sisters Cheryl (who has been on the front line of caregiving along with her children Janet and Ben), Beverle and Marilee got together weeks ago to begin planning the funeral. And they made a lot of really, really good and thoughtful decisions. One of them was to ask their brother Doug, an accomplished trombonist, to put together a traditional jazz combo for the event.

Flo was a fan of that music, and so are her children. So last Friday, when Beth and I arrived, we found the musicians warming up and otherwise preparing in the church kitchen. It was a wonderful start on a difficult day.

They played as people arrived for the hour visitation before the ceremony. To be honest, I can’t remember the songs they played as friends and family gathered. I just know that they struck the perfect balance of reverence and celebration.

During the program, when Doug rose with a solo on “Just A Closer Walk with Thee,” well, I know there was not a dry eye in the house, and I don’t recall ever hearing a more pure or appropriate sound. It was perfect.

The ceremony was a mix of biblical reading, prayer, music—and recollections from family members. It was telling that the four folks called upon to speak were in-laws or step-children. Flo was truly beloved.

As the ceremony ended, the band broke into a rousing rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching in,” which was one of Flo’s all-time favorites.

After a short service at the cemetery, we reconvened for lunch, and it was crystal clear from the conversations and memory-swapping that the ceremony had served us and Flo well. It brought home that somehow, a modest soft-spoken person had touched, for the better, countless disparate lives. All without a college degree or a big title or big bank account or even a Facebook page. Her default mode was to think the best of people until proven wrong. And even then, she didn’t hold to grievance. She was beautifully and boringly consistent in her routines, in her kindnesses, and in her dignity and grace.

There are days when reading the news or just getting through the workday makes me fear for how awfully we can treat one another. And I wonder what we can do about that. From now on, I’ll try to remember what Flo taught me: that the one thing we can control, maybe the only thing, is how we behave and how we treat other people. Thank you Flo, for reminding those who knew you, every day of your life, of that simple truth.

And so, on Saturday, as I got ready for the game, I resisted the temptation to wear my White Sox World Series cap. I will confess to putting on my White Sox t-shirt (to protect against Cub cooties), but I covered it with a buttondown shirt. I didn’t need to aggravate the Cub faithful any more than their team is doing these days.

And I had a wonderful time. As for the butterfly, all I can say is: Flo loved flowers, and she loved bright colors. Who’s to say it wasn’t her?

Think people who are blind can’t benefit from the visual arts? Think again! I have visual artist Vanessa Navarrete (and Kathy Zartman, a writer in my Lincoln Park Village memoir class) to thank for giving me the benefit of connecting with writer Francisco Navarrete. I was flattered when he contacted me for help on a short story he’s working on, and honored that he’d take time away from his fiction writing to put this guest post together to explain how we met.

A work of art is never finished

by Francisco Navarrete

That’s Francisco with his kids. (Photo by Vanessa Navarrete)

I am not blind, but in a short story I’m working on now I’m trying to “see” what that might be like. The main character is a teenager who has been blind since she was born. Janey’s boyfriend can see, and she’s spending her last evening with him before he leaves for college.

My attempt at blindness is combined with an attempt at being female, and at being seventeen — I’m a thirty-seven year old man. In fact, the impetus for writing this story was to escape myself for a little while, to be someone else who senses life differently than I do.

I workshop my work, with my wife or my writing group, and that usually acts as a filter for certain moments in a story. Having a blind character, though, I wanted to share my story with someone with that sort of specific first hand experience.

I was in Janey’s mindset for ten weeks and was generally happy with my story, and then I got to talking with a collector at my wife’s art opening and found out she has a writing teacher who is blind. What a tremendous opportunity to get it “workshopped” by someone with a very unique perspective! Rather than write Beth, though, I did nothing about it. Janey’s story was stuck in its present form, like the ice on the sidewalk this winter. And you just get used to things like that.

Spring came, and the changes that come along with it started affecting my sense of duty to my story, to my character. The more I write, the more I really care about my characters. I don’t shelter them or anything, I send them off into deep dark places that I don’t want to go to; but, I look out for them. Well, Janey needed somebody. She was patiently waiting for me to have someone see her for who she was, so I sent her to Beth, all the time thinking that I probably wouldn’t hear anything back. I mean, how often does one call out into the void for an answer and actually get one?

The very next morning, I had the kindest and most thorough response I’ve ever received waiting in my inbox. Beth’s writing voice was immediate, clear and masterful. She gave me insights into how blindness doesn’t really make you turn to your other senses so intensely. That there is a casual quality to going about your day like anyone else would. That when she gets up, or walks down the street, it’s simple shifts she notices, or things that are of immediate but not necessarily noteworthy importance.

Beth was quick to call out things I might assume a blind person would do, but that she doesn’t ever do herself. For instance, early in the story, I originally wrote:

Tracing his nose, up the bridge, over his brow, she followed the contour of his temples down over his cheekbones and along the sides of his neck to his collar.

In response Beth wrote, “I never ever want to feel the faces of people I meet or know. Lots of sighted people think blind people do this a lot –I have even had some relative strangers ask me if I want to feel their face. Okay if the woman in your story feels her boyfriend’s face, though — he’s her boyfriend! I just might not put such an emphasis on it — she would probably feel his face just the way other lovers feel each other’s face — not feeling for the contours or the shape of his nose, just a loving brush of the back of her hand on his cheek or some other loving touch.” So, I changed Janey’s gestures to be simply romantic:

She followed the contour of his cheeks along the sides of his neck down to his collar.

The change successfully economizes the moment, and puts the emphasis on their relationship – not on pointing out that Janey is blind in a way that might not be true to being blind. Beth told me to try writing descriptively and trust my readers to know what it is I mean. Reading Beth’s letter, then reading through my story, I see that as a writer I am often out there shouting, “Look, I’m writing this,” when I should be entirely invisible. Or at least only whispering.

I’ve printed out Beth’s letter, so now I have it accessible for quick reference while I work on my revisions. I guess the moral of the story is always share and always listen, and, as Flaubert said, “A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.”

I’m afraid “the beautiful game” reminds me of this.

A few days ago the LA Kings finished off the NY Rangers in the National Hockey League Stanley Cup Finals. Last night, the San Antonio Spurs dispatched LeBron James and the Miami Heat in the National Basketball Association Finals. NFL training camps are still a ways off.

Ordinarily this would begin the best time of summer for baseball fans like me, because baseball takes the American sporting world’s center stage without distraction. Except, it being 2014, we have something called the World Cup.

I’ll be rooting for the Americans this afternoon against Ghana. (Though I have to say, I feel a little villainous rooting against Ghana in anything.) And I love how the Cup reveals just how much the United States is still a melting pot — folks from other countries are nuts for the World Cup, and at some bars and restaurants here in Chicago, it’s like a United Nations meeting. (more…)

It’s Father’s Day, and tomorrow Nancy Lerman — a writer in one of the memoir classes I lead in Chicago — will be on stage at the Goodman Theatre to read an essay about her dad.

That’s Nancy and her father, awhile back.

This is a big deal! The Goodman won a Special Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre in 1992, and it’s recognized for its artists, productions and educational programs. One of those educational programs is a six-week writing workshop for people over 55 called GeNarrations, where participants develop personal narratives (more…)

The World Cup starts tomorrow, and while I won’t be paying much attention to the games, I am interested in the opening ceremonies. Here’s why: a teenager who is paralyzed is going to use a mind-controlled robotic suit called an exoskeleton to do the first kick.

I learned all about this thanks to my part-time job at Easter Seals Headquarters in Chicago. I’m the Interactive Community Coordinator there, which is just a fancy-schmancy title that means I (more…)