Today’s guest blogger Gabriela Freese, pictured here with her 16-year-old granddaughter, Nina.

I am pleased to feature Gabriela Freese as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Her parents immigrated from Germany to South America; she and her twin sister were born and raised in Paraguay, and Gabriela immigrated to Chicago in 1959, where she met her future husband, a German immigrant.

After receiving a degree in denistry from Loyola University, Gabriela had a practice in Oak Park, home to the world’s largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings. How better to embrace America than to purchase a home designed by FLW? They did exactly that, raised their children in that home, and after retiring, Gabriela moved to Admiral at the Lake in Chicago. She’s been a writer in the memoir class I lead there ever since the class started, and she continues to participate now as we meet via Zoom.

The Window

By Gabriela Freese

Looking into a chocolate store window, nose pressed against the glass…as a little girl I’d imagined smelling some of that haunting aroma. And tasting it, too! Intense moments like that have a way of resurfacing every off and on, and this time it resurfaced as a simile of what I’ve experienced in the last few months. The shut-down began in March. Not really an ideal time of the year to be outside, so the first few weeks sheltering in place were rather welcome. My usual activities cancelled, days were wide open for me to decide how to fill them.

I began by sewing fabric masks, using material donated by the quilters in our building. New regulations for all residents at The Admiral — and our workers, caregivers and staff, too — required lots of masks, so I sewed on and on.

After about 120 masks I decided to diversify. I put away the sewing machine and decluttered my files instead. My to-do list was shrinking. I felt so accomplished!

However, by the time I started yet another cross stitch project, the days started getting longer, we had a bit more sunshine, the ‘nose pressed against the window’ feeling became more acute.

On my daily walk I checked for tiny green shoots on bushes, on trees. I remembered how many ginkgo trees were along each path (those are my favorite trees). The smell of warm earth was as good as that of chocolate. I greeted even the weeds.

Slowly I exchanged winter coats for lighter coats. The walks got longer, and, indeed, one day little green things appeared everywhere, as if on cue.

What a joy to see that normal things were still happening at this time of pandemic illness. Not only that, the little shoots had turned into beautiful leaves, into flowers, into beacons of color and growth — to the point where they now need to be trimmed. This recurring phenomenon that nature puts on for us is what we see through the window of our choice. Of course we cannot see COVID 19 – the virus itself is invisible, So all wee see is the devastation it causes. But pausing to look for something that lifts our spirits can help us come out the other side. All we need do is choose our window and…start looking.

Joe Segal founded what morphed into Jazz Showcase in 1947. He was also named 2015 Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Awhile back I wrote about an especially kind musical instrument maker and repairer. The short of it was, after a valiant effort to repair my upright bass, the effort failed. He kindly agreed to take it off my hands and save me lugging it back upstairs, and he even refunded, in full, the repair fee I’d paid.

“I’d like to pay you something,” I said.

“No, keep it,” he insisted. “When you can, use it to go out and hear live music.”

Last Thursday night, we did just that.

Of all the local businesses that have been hit by covid, we most dreaded that Jazz Showcase, a Chicago institution, would not reopen. The Showcase has lost leases and moved several times over several decades. We feared that covid might be too much.

But Beth got an email last week: They would open. With live music. Dee Alexander, another local institution, would appear with a trio.

Advance reservations only. Temperatures taken at the door. Mandatory masks. Six feet. You know the drill, and if you don’t, I don’t want to know you.

The place seats enough people that it was easy for them to simply use table tent signs to indicate what tables were off limits. It was day one, and we were among a total of maybe 15 people. It was good to see Wayne Segal, founder Joe Segal’s son who now runs the place, as well as the still familiar crew.

We felt completely safe, and we kept masks on except when we were sipping while we listened.

As the saying goes, this group had not missed a beat. It was as if there was no layoff. It was their first time in front of people in forever and clearly, they loved it as much as we did.

We have a really nice stereo system, and we love our CD collection. But in the first 30 seconds, we got the glorious reminder that nothing’s like live music.

Let’s all behave so we can see some more.

Today’s guest blogger, Annelore Chapin.

I am pleased to introduce Annelore Chapin as our featured Saturday with Seniors 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. Three children later, the family left Roy’s hometown in Wyoming to folllow his career — twice to Argentina, then the Caribbean, then Egypt. Twenty-plus years later, they found themselves in Houston, where Annelore finished her education and worked as a translator. They finally settled in Chicago, their city of choice, at retirement.

Annelore took a short trip to Argentina earlier this year and is still stranded in a Southern Argentine winter, waiting for international flights to resume to America. In the meantime, she participates in Wanda’s class from Argentina via Zoom.

Annelore’s Pajamas

by Annelore Chapin

My eight-year-old heart jumped an extra beat as I pulled away purple wrapping paper. This was my very special present. It came from America.

After WWII life in Germany was not easy. As stores reopened, shelves were empty. The main concern for production was food, but items like clothing, shoes, toys, or household goods were slow in becoming available again.

Germany was occupied by those nations who had won the war and my hometown was governed by American forces. Over time some of the soldiers stationed there ended up marrying German women and taking them back to the United States. One of these women was a good friend of my mother. Her name was Gaby and she made her new life in Pennsylvania.

As soon as “Aunt” Gaby was settled in, she put together a package to send to our family. When the box arrived, excitement and wonder jumped out of that package. For me, everything was a “first.” A box of salted peanuts — heavenly! Strange cookies like sandwiches with a filling (I think they were Oreos). My mother smiled from ear to ear as she held up a feathery light silk blouse with flowers all over. Grandmother held a silvery paper bag to her nose and closed her eyes as she inhaled the aroma of real coffee beans.

But mine was the very best present by far, something I had never seen before: shimmering blue like the sky on a hot summer’s day, soft, yet solid to the touch. Ruffles around the neck, the seam on the bottom, and the sleeveless edge. It was as short as a summer dress, completed by puffy underwear. Reading from the explanatory letter she’d taken from the box, my mother exclaimed, “Annelore, this is what they call a Babydoll nighty.”

That day I fell in love with that nighty, with my aunt Gaby…. and I fell in love with America.

If they can have fun wearing their masks, can’t we all?

We Americans are largely failing at our jobs as citizens. We, myself included, are prone to taking personal insult to things that are not personal, and we argue about stuff in ways that make no sense at all. It’s cultish. “If Hillary Clinton was for it, it has to be bad.” “If Donald Trump is for it, it has to be bad.” OK, bad example, because the second is true:)

You get my point. My friend Greg puts it this way: “We never talk about the plumbing.”

Which is to say, we don’t have substantive and comparatively boring conversations with our friends and family at the dinner table or barstool about what works and what doesn’t work. We argue about third parties and which of them is worse. We can still have our leanings and orientations, but sometimes, a cigar is a cigar, and a P-trap is a P-trap—doing a good plumbing job doesn’t have to be linked to some broader ideology.

We also confuse privileges with rights. We forget that with rights come responsibilities. Freedom is not an absence of responsibility or obligation.

As a society, Americans simply are not pulling our weight right now.

We are flunking the very simplest of tests: Wearing masks when we can’t be more than 6 feet away from people. Or when we are doing something that means we can’t count on being 6 feet away. It really isn’t that hard. This has nothing to do with rights. The word “mask” doesn’t appear in the constitution.

Masks work. If we all, across the country, were religious about masks for a month, we would crush the virus. But we’re too spoiled.

Wearing a mask, simply put, is what we should do for ourselves and one another. It is a moral imperative. It is a character issue. If you don’t wear one, you have low character. OK? Yep, I’m judging.

Fortunately, there are lots of Americans who rate high on character. We need to stay the course, and push our fellow citizens to get on the mask train. I wonder if Cat Stevens could rework Peace train…. Maybe not.

With all that, I give you an example of young Americans with golden character. Check out this video (hint, the audio alone is worth it),  and here’s to the future.

Today’s guest blogger, Dick Coffee.

I am pleased to introduce Dick Coffee as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. Born in Gary, Indiana, Dick attended a regional campus of Purdue University while working as a foreman in a steel mill. A lay-off in 1975 enabled him to finish his undergraduate work and end up in Law School at Valparaiso University, where he graduated first in his class. “At age 31, I was 10 years older than my fellow students,” he says. “That helped me, I think.”

J.D. in hand, Dick returned to the steel mill and finished his career there as the Vice President of Human Resources. Here’s the essay he wrote when I assigned “The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship” as a writing prompt. Enjoy!

by Dick Coffee

My name is Dick. It’s a pejorative to many. I don’t know. Maybe I even use it that way myself at times. While my oldest son is also named Richard, I imagine he is content to go by Rick. That way he does not have to contend with the snickers and sideway glances of people he introduces himself to.

A television show on Bravo called Inside the Actors Studio used to interview performers and creators of theatre and film in front of a live audience of students from the Actor’s Studio Drama School in New York City. At the end of each interview, the actor was asked to name his favorite swear word. I always thought that to be an odd question. But, I suppose it was designed to humanize some star, make it easier for the students to connect with them?

Anyhow, I was traumatized when Kevin Costner said his favorite was “dick.”

But, Dick is my name. It’s what my mother wanted to call me, on purpose, because she had a dear friend named Dick. And even now, my 99-year-old mother is pretty naive. She would be chagrined to find out that the word dick is anything other than a name that belongs in the lexicon of friends alongside Tom and Harry. Her father, an old sailor, used damn and hell quite naturally, but she did not like her sons to talk that way — she’d wash out our mouths with soap or make us take a teaspoon of cayenne pepper to make that point.

I am also a recovering alcoholic. So, I am used to introducing myself this way. And, it’s how I first introduced myself to a group of similar folks. “Hi, my name is Dick, and I’m an alcoholic.”

A beautiful friendship began at one of those meetings. I’d been meeting for a year or two with a small group that convened in an artist’s studio in a small town in Southwest Michigan. The studio owner generously welcomed us to use the sort-of-garage area of his home for our meetings. His paintings were there on the wall and also hanging from the beams, which had a calming effect on us. On nice days we’d open the overhead garage-type doors to hear the birds singing and let the sun and breezes in. Of course there were distractions, too, if someone down the street began to mow their lawn.

I had been attending this meeting for a year or two and knew most of the regulars. One day a woman walked in and greeted our host, the gallery owner. Like him, she was dressed in painters’ clothes. Two things were clear to me. They shared something kindred: They were both artists. And she was suffering from something, as she was crying.

Nothing at all transpired that day to make me know that a beautiful friendship would arise between us. I imagine she heard my name without making any sort of connection. She had much bigger things to think about that day than me or my name. Likewise, I doubt that I remembered her name after that one meeting. I meet new people at meetings all the time, and one thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I seldom remember a person’s name until I’ve met them at least a half a dozen times. I gather that says something about my selfishness? I’m more focused on me than on them.

Still, it’s obvious that something happened that day. I like now to think of it as a God moment. For years after that I knew her only to say hello. And then she asked me to look at a letter she had received — she knew I was a so-called lawyer and thought I might have some help to offer.

That one small gesture led to our getting to know each other better. She came to trust me and I came to trust and admire her. Our relationship has grown into the closest friendship I have ever had, and you know what? Throughout our beautiful friendship, she has made no pejorative conclusions about Dick.