A 1-1/2 minute clip from Carol’s son Steven’s labor of love.

I am pleased to introduce Carol Rosofsky as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. A consultant at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Carol was once married to Chicago artist Seymour Rosofsky, who was part of a cluster of returning soldiers dubbed the “Monster Roster” after seeing the horrors of World War II and studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Chicago on the GI Bill. They preceded to influence Chicago’s Hairy Who Movement.

Carol is a longtime member of the memoir class I lead for Village Chicago and has written a number of memorable essays about life with Seymour, and then later about marrying civic leader Robert “Bud” Lifton 30 years ago on a ski vacation in Canada with their seven kids in attendance. That memoir-writing class is on spring break now, and for their last class of the winter session I asked them to use 500 words to tell us if –- and how — their life has changed over this past year. Here’s the honest, thoughtful and sweet essay Carol came back with.

by Carol Rosofsky

It’s been a year — one very tough year dotted with few memorable highlights, the monotony, the fear, the routine, the lethargy, pajamas, sweatpants…and then there’s that moment after lockdown kicked in when we realized the scale of disruption ahead. This wouldn’t be weeks, but months. A year.

To get through it I thought deeply about renewing or learning something that might come in handy to distract myself for the long term. What a great time to immerse myself in a master project of some sort, Something deep, thoughtful, requiring a significant amount of uninterrupted time to think through and execute.

In my head this was a perfect response to facing the reality and the dire circumstance at hand: a long cold winter, quarantined. I refurbished the old Singer sewing machine and resurrected the quilts and quilt books that inspired me as a first-time maker 25 years ago. But threading the needle and the bobbin with 86-year-old eyes was so challenging I only managed to semi-finish a part of one quilt and pillowcase and have been unable to locate a long arm quilter to follow up with the finish .

Next I hoped to revive the jazz piano lessons I had been taking at Merit Music before COVID, but online and not in person was not fulfilling. Cooking, a former passion, also lost it’s magic when it had to occur so often every day, plus the cleanup. I ended up ordering and stashing quarts and quarts of organic soups produced by Green City Market’s Bushel & Peck’s vendor, delivered directly to my door every other week. .

These projects soon revealed themselves in the form of no real inspiration or motivation, just coping elements that I’ve found tend to come in handy when attempting to create — and sustain — hope.

After a period of looking at blank projects and frustration, I made a conscious decision to allow myself to try to feel OK about “just getting by.” I’ve read a lot of studies saying that it’s going to be hard to have good memories of this past year (it all still feels like “Groundhog Day”) but I’m proving them wrong by ending this essay on a few upbeat, standout moments.

Number 1

This November in Lincoln Park, at Diversey and Stockton, near Bacinos’s Pizza, the news exploded in the air that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were just confirmed. As the staff spread out into the crowd around Bacino’s everyone in the park started screaming and dancing, high-fiving, filling the air with unmitigated joy. It was the first time in a long time I felt genuinely three-dimensional and excited in months, resisting the temptation to hug every stranger in the crowd, mask or not.

Number 2

This past December, when son Steven finally invited the entire family to view his final updated version of the 1-and-a-half-hour documentary he’d been working on since 2004. The film is an homage to his artist father who died unexpectedly at 56 in 1981, a couple of years after Steven finished film school at NYU.

For over 17 years Steven worked on the film, interviewing family members many times over in various settings; also colleagues, friends, critics, artists, gallery owners, curators and museum personnel without showing his work-in-progress to anybody.

It was thrilling to see, over time, who we were then, who we are now. The good, the bad, the edited and unedited, the film is an homage and wonderful document for a lifetime.

Impromptu Number 3, added virtually after listening to all the class essays Monday

.The Wall Street Journal published a piece saying that in this past year memoir-writing has become an epidemic.

I am pleased to feature Annelore Chapin as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Born and raised in post-war Germany, Annelore met her American husband Roy there and left for the U.S. at age 20. The couple settled in Chicago for their retirement, and Annelore has been a writer in the Me, Myself & I memoir-writing class for years. Sharon Kramer generously volunteered to lead that class after I was put on furlough last year, and when Sharon asked writers to “Find a Photograph and Describe It,” Annelore came back with this tender essay

by Annelore Chapin

Two fresh young faces smiling from ear to ear straight into the camera. They belong to two second-graders sharing a school-bench made from wood. They are front-row occupants looking out from the photograph, so close I am tempted to touch them. These two girls are sitting at a small desk built for two, their legs covered by the attached table. You see their arms with both elbows resting on that table, the right arm on top of an open book, index finger pointing to a line as if to remember the spot they left while reading.

The girls look statuesque, both in equal positions, one arm across the other. Not only are their smiles identical, so are their clothes. There is no doubt that these dresses had been knitted by my mother. A solid-colored bodice or vest gave room to colorful designs on the emerging sleeves. They are woolen, warm sweater dresses, so the photo must have been taken in winter.

The two girls are my cousin Elfriede and myself. I had had an operation earlier that year on a so-called Lazy Eye and was wearing glasses. I am surprised that I was wearing them while the picture was taken, as I was embarrassed to be seen with them on. Both girls are missing a front tooth, and my round face shows too much forehead beneath bangs cut too short — as well as crooked.

The photo also shows the two girls sitting in the row behind us. Those two girls seem more relaxed and somehow older. I remember their names: Annemarie and Roswita.

What touches me deeply when looking at these two young faces is the innocence, the wonder, the curiosity. They were looking at a life not yet lived, time not yet spent, and dreams not yet realized. When one is seven years old, much has been learned and much more is to come.

I cannot help catching a little spark of the miracle of life every time I look at that photo.

On this date last year, Illinois Governor Pritzker ordered all bars and restaurants closed as of March 17 until …  March 30. On March 17, I walked across the street to our polling place and voted in the Illinois primary.

Needlefest!

Then I went home to get back to work, when working from home was still kind of novel. About 2 p.m. I started feeling a little off—it felt like the beginning of a cold. At around 4:00 p.m. I was struck by the worst case of the chills I’ve ever had. They were positively convulsive and I could not get warm.

This wasn’t a cold.

Badness ensued. After passing out walking out of the bedroom to get a banana, I hit my head hard enough to be unconscious for what Beth described as maybe 30 seconds. On March 26 I entered the hospital—I was there for a week followed by three days of confinement in my room at a City of Chicago COVID quarantine hotel. I was deemed safe to go home on April 4.

All the details, outlined in an earlier post, kind of rolled back into my consciousness last week. That’s the bad news. The good news was the trigger: Beth and I went to the United Center vaccination site last Wednesday and got our first shots.

We were a little trepidatious: Going to a big gathering place seemed shaky. And our appointments were on the first full day of operation. The previous day was a sort of soft launch, and there were reports of long waits and confusion. We were prepared for the worst.

We needn’t have worried. We took a cab, got out, followed clear signs to a giant tent. Lots of people, but all masked and distanced. National Guard members everywhere, answering questions, helping people to their next processing station.

And a palpable sense of gratitude, relief, and of yes, joy. It was inoculation Woodstock. After months of being apart and understanding ourselves as a threat to others and threatened by others, people were together, and glad of it.

At our first stop a young Guard member took our tickets, scanned them, asked us a bunch of health questions, and then paused to ask me, “Are you planning on getting pregnant?”

“That’s always the icebreaker for nervous people,” he said.

We had a laugh. Beth had brought Luna, and he commented on how good she was. “I miss my Cocker Spaniel back home,” he said.

I asked where home was.

“Indianapolis, so not all that far.”

When Beth thanked him for doing what he was doing, he said, “When I raised my right hand and took the oath, I signed up for this—whether it’s here or overseas.” He gave us clear instructions about the next step, We said goodbye and checked in at another table.

We were directed to a distanced line. There were rows of distance, tables. Behind each was a uniformed, masked Guardsman (or woman) and a bunch of hypodermic needles and other supplies.

I thought about where I was just about a year before. I looked around and took it all in. I didn’t have a dry eye the rest of the time.

Beth got the first opening and had her shot in no time. I followed and barely felt a thing. We thanked our injector and moved on to a space where we would wait fifteen minutes to make sure we didn’t have a reaction.

The eavesdropping was great. Person after person profusely, sincerely thanking the Guard and the volunteers and staff. One of the Guards responded to a woman who thanked him by saying, “You don’t need to thank us, we’re having a ball!” People were happy! And they were together! At an event!

OK, it wasn’t exactly Lollapalooza (thank goodness), but it very much was a performance.

A really good one. I give it five stars.

With many of the seniors in my Zoom memoir-writing classes away on Spring Break now,so I am pleased to have 14-year-old Anja Herrman as a guest blogger today. I got to know Anja very well when she was nine years old and learning at home during a casting program (casts on both legs from her hips down to her ankles). She was schooled at home for two months back then, and I was her at-home writing tutor. Many of her completed assignments were published as guest posts here on our Safe & Sound blog, and you can read this post from 2016 to learn how and why she had all her posts back then published under the pen name DJ Mermaid. A disability activist, Dj Mermaid is in high school now and goes by her real name.

by Anja Herrman

Marie Curie. Madeline Albright. Rosa Parks. Michelle Obama. Just a few of the role models I’ve looked up to in my fourteen years of life, all for different reasons: their perseverance, courage, bravery and strength, to name a few. As a young girl, I had these women to emulate and to champion.

There’s just one problem. While these women are all incredible in their own right and this is not to be dismissed, none of them openly identify as disabled. Growing up, whenever I looked for role models to help guide me along in my journey from childhood to adolescence, I never felt like I had people who “got me.” None of them understood the deep nuances of my life, so the “guidance” they provided for other pre-teens never rung true for me. These women existed, I just couldn’t find them, even though I spent a long time searching.

What to do? Well, if I couldn’t find any role models, I told myself, then I’ll be a role model, both for me, but most importantly, those who come after me. I was nine when I made this resolution, and over the past half decade (wow, I’m old!) I’ve been working on this promise to myself: to be a good role model and make the world more accessible and equal for people with disabilities. I want to forge a path that, if I’m lucky, others may choose to follow.

One such opportunity arose almost exactly a year ago (curse you, COVID, for drying up all of my speaking opportunities!) when I was asked to be a keynote speaker at an International Women’s Day event in Chicago. The speech was supposed to focus on advocacy and the disability community. Okay, piece of cake, I thought. The catch? The speech also had to be tailored to the business community. Which, in hindsight, makes sense, since it was hosted at an advertising firm.

But here’s the thing: I had absolutely no idea how to do that. Hence, for the very first time in my life as a writer, I found myself in a battle against every writer’s worst nightmare: writer’s block. Intense pressure doesn’t help, but what would you expect from a girl who compares herself to a lauded Secretary of State, a First Lady who is the literal definition of an icon, a famed scientist and a civil rights pioneer?

So, to conquer the writer’s block, I went back to basics and wrote a speech explaining what right I had to be speaking up on that stage. Using what I’ve learned from my life as a disabled adolescent fighting for equality, I crafted what I thought was a good speech and then I moved on to something else. I put the speech on the back burner, letting it simmer in my subconscious like a soup. Instead, I worried about other tasks: mainly the French test coming up in a few days.

Pro Tip: Another surefire way to get writer’s block is by over-critiquing. Critiquing beyond the point of being constructive stifles ideas.

The event drew nearer. So near that before I knew it I was sitting in the passenger seat of our car putting my mascara on while my mom was driving, and my brother was playing some sort of game on his phone, probably Minecraft…is that even a thing anymore?

Looking back, it’s a miracle I didn’t poke my eye out with a mascara wand while going over my speech one last time.

We got out of the car, raced up to the event space and, thankfully, I had a half an hour before I had to speak. So begins all the pre-event tests like checking the ramp to make sure I don’t tip before I have to speak (can you think of anything more embarrassing?) and introducing myself to all the other speakers and wishing them luck.

Before I know it, it’s showtime!

All the way through my speech, I imagine a little tiny me, with her pigtails and AFO’s sitting in the audience, biting her lip with anticipation. I look out, and notice that tiny Anja is laughing at the funny parts, and solemn at the serious parts, which means everything is landing exactly as I wanted it to back when I was sitting at home in my ratty pajama top writing the speech.

I conclude the speech. Over the roar of applause, I look into my younger self’s eyes, and see that she’s proud of me, and I know that I’ve succeeded in my quest, to be the role model that I needed.
And, guiding another person down the path to their own definition of success, well, that feels pretty great too.

An earlier version of this post was originally published on the Easterseals National blog.

Over the years, many writers in the memoir classes I lead have self-published their work. Until now, only three had found independent publishers:

• Hanna Bratman’s collection What’s In My Head was published by Blue Marlin Publications in 2011
• Anna Perlberg’s The House in Prague was published by Golden Alley Press in 2016
• Regan Burke’s long-awaited memoir In That Number was published by Tortoise Books in 2020

And now there are four: Sharon Kramer’s book Time for Bubbe was published by Golden Alley Press! Many of you know Sharon from my mentioning her in Saturdays with Seniors blog posts here. She was a writer in the Me, Myself & I memoir-writing class I was leading before COVID, and generously volunteered to lead it via Zoom after I was put on furlough.

A few years ago I assigned “Write About a Grandparent” as a prompt to that class. Sharon came back with a story written in the voice of her grandson talking about visiting her mother (his great-grand-Bubbe). We all loved the piece and thought that, with a little revision, it’d make a great children’s book.

So Sharon got to work. She revised and reworked, sent the story to publishers, Golden Alley Press took it on, a Yiddish glossary and Bubbe’s recipe was added, illustrator Michael Sayre added his special touch, and voila! Sharon’s masterpiece, Time for Bubbe is available. I’ll say goodbye here and leave you with more about Time for Bubbe from the Golden Alley Press web site.

“Don’t worry, Bubbe, I have all the time in the world.”
—Boychik

All the time in the world.

That’s what this 6-year-old boychick and his great-bubbe have for each other.

Join their adventures in Bubbe’s hi-rise city apartment as they nosh, play, reminisce, cook – and learn a bit of Yiddish along the way.

Snuggle up and share this story with anyone you have all the time in the world for!

Includes bonus Glossary of Yiddish Words and Bubbe’s Recipe for the Best Noodle Kugel Ever

Age range: 4 – 8
Grade level: K-3
32 pages, full color
From the author’s bio:

Sharon’s grandmother came to the United States from Russia in 1888, when she was 12 years old. She read Yiddish books and newspapers. She went to Yiddish plays. When she grew up and married, her grandmother had seven children – including Sharon’s mother. They spoke Yiddish at home but spoke English when they were outside and at school.

When Sharon was a young girl, her grandmother lived with the family. She and Sharon’s mother spoke Yiddish to each other, so Sharon learned to understand many of the Yiddish words they used.

The grand-bubbe in the story is Sharon’s mother. The boy in the story is Sharon’s grandson. He knows a few Yiddish words and Sharon thinks he is a real mensch.

Editorial Reviews for Time for Bubbe:

“This book is about the special connection between grandparents and grandchildren. A young boy’s weekly visits to his Bubbe’s hi-rise apartment are filled with imagination and traditions…He loves babysitting Bubbe and she loves babysitting him…[The story] will inspire conversations about being great babysitters for children’s own grandparents.”
—Marilee Amodt, M.Ed., retired curriculum resource teacher, elementary teacher and media specialist

“Time for Bubbe is so much fun to read! The six-year-old narrator’s description of weekly visits with his great-grandmother are both honest and playful. What a joy to go along for the ride, whether it’s pressing every button on the elevator…or turning Bubbe’s walker into a train. What will they do next?

These weekly visits are special to this mischievous and playful pair, and you can’t help but wonder: is the 96-year-old taking care of the six-year-old? Or is the six-year-old taking care of the 96-year-old? Time for Bubbe’s sweet ending provides the answer: every week, they are taking care of each other.”
—Beth Finke, Author of Writing Out Loud: What a Blind Teacher Learned from Leading a Memoir Class for Seniors

“When her six-year-old great-grandson visits his Bubbe in her high-rise apartment building each week, they create countless adventures together….an authentic portrait of the great-grandson and Bubbe’s sweet convincing relationship…The pastel illustrations are the background for their delightful loving bond. [The] glossary of Yiddish words and Bubbe’s recipe for kugel…make the book both joyful and interactive…for folks of all ages.”
—Janie Friedman Isackson, retired educator, DePaul University, Chicago

“…a wonderful book showing the relationship between a six-year-old boy and his great-grandmother. Bubbe entertains [him] with scarves from her drawer, pots and pans from her kitchen, and treats from the party room. They both enjoy making noodle kugel together…The book starts with Bubbe having all the time in the world. It ends with her great-grandson having all the time in the world. What a great way to connect the two generations with love and respect for each other.”
—Nancy Koehler, retired 3rd grade teacher, Skokie, IL

“…Bubbe and the boy have vivid imaginations…crisp dialogue moves the story along at a good pace…drawings vividly show their close relationship. The sprinkling of Yiddish, such as “L-chaim” when they make a toast with apple cider, passes along a bit of Jewish culture to the kinder…highly recommended to parents, grandparents and teachers of first graders, who can share their own cultural heritage and relationships…”
—Leslie H. Laila Kramer, ESL Professor Emeritus at City College of San Francisco