Awhile back I posted about receiving and giving soup as a gift. A few weeks ago, the company we received and ordered from, Spoonful of Comfort, sent me an email—nothing unusual, as I had opted into their promotional emails. What was unusual was the subject—it wasn’t a special offer, it was an opportunity to opt out of Mother’s Day-themed emails.

The message was pretty thoughtful, noting there are any number of reasons that a person night not want to think about or hear about or participate in Mother’s Day festivities.

Beth and I well understand complicated feelings around celebrations like Mother’s Day and, for that matter, Father’s Day. Very early on, they were bittersweet days because they reminded us that parenting Gus wasn’t anything like the parenting experience of our contemporaries who had children–or the experience we’d imagined. We have always loved Gus as much as anyone loves their children. But that’s where the similarity ends.

Rather than get morose on Mother’s Day, Beth and I made a pact: We’d use the day to celebrate having made it one more year—Beth, me and Gus—as a family. Given that Gus was given a 50-50 chance of surviving his first night on earth, each year is no small feat. Given that he was born just a year after Beth lost her eyesight and that she was fighting to find her own footing, each year was and is quite a feat. She’s been one tough mutha to help raise a severely disabled child while adapting to blindness herself.

Beth was very serious about her cheese plate.

So this year we splurged and had a leisurely, lavish  fixed-price meal at our favorite restaurant, Sofi. It’s a cozy, rustic northern-Italian focused place that is conveniently located just outside our building entrance. Our neighborhood businesses, like all local small businesses, suffered mightily this past year. There was the pandemic, yes, but there was looting as well. The looting shuttered one beloved business for good. Others had to close temporarily to restock and repair.

We and other neighbors have held our breath, hoping against hope that Sofi would not fold. Fantastic and genuine food, old-world service, and lots of Italian spoken—it hearkens me back to Sunday afternoon meals at my Italian grandparents’ house.

We didn’t want to lose Sofi, so during the lockdowns we ordered take-out and bought gift cards. When Sofi put up a sidewalk tent this past winter Beth and I bundled up and ate on the patio next to propane heaters—as did our neighbors.

What better place to hold our survival celebration? We toasted to Gus, to each other, to our friends, to our waiter, to us all.

We made it another year.

During my reading over the past weeks I came across a couple of articles that make clear that our society has not always given police legal carte blanche about what justifies a shooting of a citizen. Right now, in layman’s terms, all a cop has to do is pretty much say (s)he was afraid for their life. (Which, when you think about it, is goofy on its face—as the most skittish officers will be more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.) Any decision deemed “split second” justifies shooting, in essence.

A good read.

That approval by the legal system didn’t always exist. In fact, the standard for justified shooting was higher until 1989 when the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice William Rehnquist,” weighed in.

From “Split-Second Decisions: How a Supreme Court Case Shaped Modern Policing;” in the New York Times:

The officers’ justification for the use of lethal force in each instance differs with the circumstances. But as in almost every other recent case involving questions of police use of force, law enforcement officials defending the officers are relying on a doctrine set forth by the Supreme Court three decades ago and now deeply ingrained in police culture: that judges and juries should not second-guess officers’ split-second decisions, no matter how unnecessary a killing may appear in hindsight.

It’s a meaty but very worthwhile read.

This piece in the National Law Journal explains the legalities even better—also highly recommended.

By my lights, police unions and law-and-order hawks have perverted the Rehnquist court’s decision in a way that even Chief Justice Rehnquist would think produced deadly unintentional consequences.

I think we and the police have to do better. And I think we can. I offer this article, from New Jersey.com, in evidence.

Newark cops, with reform, didn’t fire a single shot in 2020

As is this.

That headline sums it up. Mind you, Newark ain’t Mayberry, so this was a remarkable accomplishment born of afederal consent decree. Diversifying the force, de-escalation training, deploying the Newark Community Street Team to defuse violence in the city’s most violent wards, and an array of other efforts made an enormous difference.

Beyond binary arguments about police being good or bad, beyond blaming the victims of shootings, I see some hope.

Al Hippensteel

I am pleased to introduce Al Hippensteel as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Raised on the far south side of Chicago, Al has been a White Sox fan since 1957, he’s been married to his wife Donna since 1972, and says he “has never met a donut he didn’t like.”

After years working in the ad departments of Suburban newspapers, he transitioned to a 20-year career in the printing industry. Retired now, he serves as editor of three newsletters, including the popular Dearborn Express that covers news in our Printers Row neighborhood. When his fellow memoir-writing class member Regan Burke suggested “Witness” as a writing prompt, Al came back with a piece so thoughtful (and in the end, so positive) that it reads like a Poem.

by Al Hippensteel

Ihave witnessed the greatest threat to the health of all earthly people in a hundred years in the form of a pandemic.

I have witnessed the most chaos and divisiveness in US politics since the Civil War.

I have witnessed the greatest amount of economic pain weighing down on the average citizen since the Great Depression.

I have witnessed an all-out assault on the veracity of the fourth estate, our traditional news media.

I have witnessed the resulting mental anguish and depression caused by all of the above.

Conversely…

I have witnessed heroic individuals in medical gowns saving people’s lives.

I have witnessed a group of workers providing us with essential services while bravely facing the virus danger.

I have witnessed a resurgence of activism and protests relating to social justice like Black Lives Matter; or a voice for indigenous people, the Chi-Nations Youth Council; or Help increase the Peace sponsored by American Friends Service Project, a Quaker group.

I have witnessed young people protesting together, supporting each other, representing no fewer than a dozen causes.

I have witnessed people reaching deep into their pockets to support financially-strapped businesses.

I have witnessed creativity in art, music and dance to provide us with culture virtually in the desert of closed venues.

As we look forward toward the light at the end of a long tunnel, we will witness change. We have changed. The world has changed. Our habits have changed. We will witness the peeling off of layers of fear, illness, and misinformation.

The world has always been a miasma of good and evil. It will be the youth with their ideals and optimism who will guide us to a better place. We are a better people than we were 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago. We don’t know it. We just can’t see it yet.

But we will witness it.

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.