I am pleased to introduce Jane Gallagher as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. A writer in Wanda’s Wednesday “Me, Myself and I” class, Jane is a retired psychiatric nurse, and until the pandemic, she volunteered at O’Hare, assisting passengers getting around the airport. The tales she shares with us in class of growing up in Oak Park with four brothers and one sister are a delight. Her mother died when she was 14 years old, and her descriptions of how the five siblings ended up separated into foster homes and far-away boarding schools after that are painfully moving –and honest.

Today’s guest blogger, Jane Malone Gallagher.

After years living out-of-state, Jane’s husband and their two children moved back to the Midwest, where she reconnected with her siblings. She and her husband have retired in Chicago, and Jane shared this little ditty with her fellow memoir writers , who meet weekly now on their own via zoom:

by Jane Malone Gallagher

A couple weeks ago, while sitting on my little old gray couch — which now has a big slump in it — I was listening to the president’s latest daily briefing on the pandemic. “We will all be together at church on Easter,” he said and, as if that wasn’t irresponsible enough, he added, “And won’t that be glorious.”

“Oh my Lord,” I thought.

Don’t tell me he’s actually going to send people out of their homes at this critical time. We should be hunkering down. As if on cue, my husband’s cell phone started ringing. A little unusual because my husband is almost totally deaf. Anybody who knows him wouldn’t call his phone. He only texts. Must be somebody we don’t know, a scam maybe — we get a lot of them. Once I hear the come-ons, I just hang up. In my hotly irritated state after the president’s speech, however, I grabbed my husband’s phone and prepared to yell at the scammer.

The caller began, “Hi, I’m from State Farm and we want to check up on you.” Wow, what a clever way to start a scam. “No really, what do you want?” I replied tersely. The caller said, “I just want to make sure you’re all right.” Now I was really irritated. The nerve of this woman. She’s going to persist.

“Well I would be just fine,” I shouted over the phone, “Except we’re in a crisis and we don’t even have a decent president.”

The caller replied in a gentle tone of voice, “You’re right. It’s hard to be without a leader in this crisis. Reassurance is what we need, and we should have a good president.”

She went on to describe how the pandemic had affected her kids and how she was not always coping well herself. Surprised and touched by her openness and sincerity, realizing that she was not a scammer, my throat tightened. I wanted to cry.

This kind-hearted person feels like I feel. We said a few more words of encouragement to each other before hanging up. Then I let the tears flow.

Today, it feels more hopeful to me that we will get out of this. We may have an incompetent president, but we have an astute governor, who has likely saved many lives. We also have a smart mayor who, gratefully, has a keen sense of humor.

And Chicago, as we know so well, is a resilient city.

Largely, people are rising to the task during these extraordinary times. Our friends and family have been heroes to us.

But.

There’s a Lincoln automobile commercial that shows a woman in a luxurious remote house looking out at her luxurious driveway. One Lincoln car is parked in the drive. Another pulls up. She’s traded in one obscenely expensive car for another. Somehow surviving this crisis! The driver hands the woman some documents, gets in the other Lincoln and drives it away. The young woman looks in at her kids. Everything is copasetic! People are dying and she got a new car without having to deal with the unwashed masses!

Dear Lincoln Motors, Toyota, Chase, Fifth Third Bank, Pizza Hut, Apple, Google, and every fricking corporate piece of shit, STFU! You don’t care about me anymore than you did a couple months ago. You got a ginormous tax cut awhile back and you hoarded it.

One thing this thing has done is lay bare what’s wrong with everyday America. The most glaring thing? The plight of lots and lots of black people and moreover, people without the means to live in a luxurious remote home and drive a goddamn Lincoln. Many people, owed to our illustrious history, don’t have access to the stuff that people like me take for granted. Like health insurance. Like doctors. Like healthy food and grocery stores. Like clean air.

Lots of us at certain levels get severance packages when we’re let go from our jobs. It sucks getting canned, but getting severance is a shit ton better than going through the demeaning process of applying for unemployment. I had to apply for it once, decades ago. It IS demeaning, and we make it that way on purpose.

The gap between the haves and have nots is insane, and it’s not based on merit. Just look at the parasitic monkey family in the White House.

We can do better. We have to do better or we’ll go down the drain.

By the way. I’m back.

All five of the memoir-writing classes I lead in Chicago are cancelled while we shelter in place, but a number of students are braving the world of technology to continue writing — and meeting — on their own. writers in Wanda’s “Me, Myself and I” class enjoy the zoom memoir class they put together so much that they’ve added a second zoom meeting to their weekly schedule: happy hour on Fridays (alcohol not required, some drink tea!). A memoir-writing class I lead at The Admiral at the Lake (a senior living center on Chicago’s north side that also provides healthcare services at an adjacent facility called The Harbors) is requiring members to stay in their individual apartments/rooms to shelter at home now, and visitors are not allowed. Rather than gather in the dining room, residents get their meals delivered to their door by staff members who are covered in personal protective equipment.

Undaunted, memoir writers at The Admiral come up with their own weekly prompts and email completed essays to each other for comments and suggestions.

To honor my writers-in-exile, we’re starting a new “Saturdays with Seniors” feature — every weekend I’ll publish a new essay written by one of them. Today’s essay is by Kathie Babcock, a soft-spoken writer in the Admiral class whose piece is poignant, honest and reflective of the confusing times we are all going through.

Staying Home Away from Home

By Kathie Babcock, as told to Maya Lea

My world has become very, very small these days. A month ago I moved from my individual apartment to Room 965 on the Harbors rehab floor because my hip hurt and I was having trouble walking and standing. We made a grand procession: me in my wheelchair with an entourage of four, each carrying armloads of what I needed for what we thought would be a two-week stay.

Here’s to daffodils and tulips!

My daughter Shauna and our friend Maya helped me settle in with a few favorite photos and cards on the windowsills, a supply of coffee yogurt from my fridge, and — fortunately — my mechanical pencils and notepad for writing memoir essays!

Ever since then it’s been one disorienting thing after another. I moved into my room on a Wednesday and was looking forward to getting to know people on my floor, but they closed down the dining room and the PT gym a day or two later. Shauna and Maya came that Saturday, but then the next day we were suddenly confined to our own not-very-familiar, not-very-large-not-very-interesting rooms with no visitors allowed.

The following Saturday someone stuck a swab all the way up my nose — an experience I don’t recommend — and X-rayed my chest. It took six days to get my COVID-19 test results back, but they saw right away from the X-ray that I had pneumonia, even though I never had any symptoms. So I went on antibiotics. Until my coronavirus test came back negative I couldn’t have my daily PT sessions or any OT or speech therapy. either, so all I could do was watch TV and sleep.

Each day seemed pretty much the same and I really missed having places to go, people to see, and things to do!

Even though nobody is allowed to visit, Shauna has been able to deliver daffodils, tulips, Grape-Nuts, and more coffee yogurt to the front desk — staff members deliver them to my room to keep me going. She continues to call me every morning and evening, as she’s always done, and Maya calls me every afternoon, too.

Kim Kohler and Karen Clinton have been helping me do FaceTime video calls with Shauna and participate in Chorus rehearsals on Zoom, all of which I appreciate. (I have my laptop with me here but need Maya’s help to use it, so I haven’t been able to keep in touch with people on email, just over the phone). Sometimes I do the exercise classes on The Admiral’s TV channel, and I’m catching up on some old movies.

My favorite thing about “staying home away from home” is the food here. Unlike all of you, I’m getting three hot meals a day, delivered! This morning I had breakfast in bed: scrambled eggs and pancakes.

Not bad, huh? It is a little strange being awakened by someone in a space suit, but knowing that the staff is taking every precaution to keep us safe from the virus eases my mind.

I can see the Bird Garden three floors beneath my window here in Room 965. I’m looking forward to watching Spring unfold outside and to sharing stories with all of my fellow memoir writers in the coming weeks!

Every night at 8 pm, our neighborhood has a social distancing party. Saturday’s was an especially good party–it was Mike’s first.

Two weeks ago today Mike was admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago with the COVID 19 virus. Here are some things that happened at home while he was away:

• When I let my friend Jamie (yes, the same Jamie who was driving me to school visits before the pandemic hit) know, she rallies her book club and some old college friends to help.
• Each would choose a night and charge a meal for me at one of our small Printers Row restaurants taking to-go orders now (ordering directly means restaurants do not have to share proceeds with delivery companies).
• Neighborhood friends volunteer to pick up my dinners and deliver them to our condo
• I eat well.
• “It takes a village,” I text to one of those local volunteers to thank her for delivering a meal to me one night.
• ”And ours is a good village!” she texts back.
• I miss Mike.
• I get hooked on audio books by Irish author Maeve Binchy. The sweet lilting accents carry me far away, stories are playful. Kind of like Louise Penny books, but they take place in Dublin rather than Three Pines. And no one dies.
• Becoming more adept at using VoiceOver (the speech synthesizer that comes with every iPhone) to text and answer the phone when Mike calls, or when caring doctors, social workers, friends and family contact me to see how he’s doing.
• My part-time job moderating the blog for Easterseals National Headquarters (located in Chicago) continues, I am grateful, working from home, and, while distracted, I do what I can to devote my thinking brain to that work.
• I miss Mike.
• I set an alarm for 2:30 pm every day to listen to our governor and Illinois Department of Public Health Director give their daily update. Their honest and intelligent talks are comforting, and every once in a while the fabulous Mayor Lightfoot speaks at these, too.
• I miss Mike.
• Every night my longtime friend who is a doctor checks in with me, or I check in with her. She is working at one of the COVID testing sites and has sequestered herself from her family. Her COVID information helps me understand what Mike and I might be facing, and her friendship is sustaining.
• I join the 21st century and start carrying my iPhone wherever I go.
• Finish Quentins by Maeve Binchy. Starting her book Evening Class now.
• A box of treats — and a bottle of white wine! — arrives by UPS from my friend Jill, owner of the sensational cheese shop Marché” in Glen Ellyn.
• That’s when my nightly ritual begins: I pour a small glass of that wine every night at 8 p.m., open the window, get comfortable on the couch, nosh on Marché snacks and sip wine while listening to the nightly sing-along going on outside
• Somehow the days fly by.
• A box of unused masks and disposable gloves arrives here from my great-niece in Minneapolis, who took care of her mom (my niece Lynne), who was in hospice last year. The unused disposable gloves and masks were left over from that sad time — a bittersweet — yet extremely thoughtful and helpful — package
• Mike usually takes my Seeing Eye dog Luna out for her last “empty” of the day. Now I don a mask and disposable gloves every time I take her out, and, assuming bad guys are staying home during the pandemic, I am fearless when out with Luna after dark.
• Without being able to see, Unless people talk — or walk — loudly, it can be difficult to judge what six feet is. Luna and I do our best.
• When I hear the “ding” that tells me an elevator has arrived, I point that way, command “forward! And Luna leads me to the opening. “Anybody in here?” I ask. Not sure if the elevators here are even six feet wide, so if someone answers, I urge them to go ahead without us: I’m not pressed for time!
• Discovery: when wearing plastic disposable gloves, you can still feel the Braille dots in the elevator.
• I finish Evening Class by Maeve Binchy. On to her novel Heart and Soul.
• I miss Mike.
• Day 7 of Mike’s hospital stay, and Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens contacts us to see if Mike and I would be willing to do phone interviews with her. ” I do think your story is a really important one to get in front of readers,” she writes, adding that she thinks it illustrates the complexities that this virus presents for different families. “It also emphasizes how problematic it is that testing is sometimes hard to find and the results take so long to get back, leaving families in limbo.”
• We both are willing.
• Heidi interviews Mike in his hospital room that morning by phone.
• I am interviewed separately by phone at home.
• Photographers not allowed in hospital, so Tribune photographer comes to Printers Row, meets me outside to follow Luna and me on her afternoon “empty” walk.
• Heidi works fast. Her column about Mike is published by 5:30 pm that same afternoon.
• I miss Mike.
• In our evening phone call that night, Mike and I marvel at how Heidi Stevens does it: the column is beautifully written, accurate, and touching.
• Word is out now. Mike is in the hospital with COVID 19, and I am home alone with Luna.
• I miss Mike.
• Okay, enough of those Irish books. I start Kill “em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by writer, musician, and national Book Award winner James McBride — he grew up near James Brown, and the book is fun to read. Now reading Slam by Nick Hornby
• In her column, Heidi referred to Jamie’s dinner delivery group as my “meal train,” and friends, family and memoir-writing students near and far start asking me if they can hop on board.
• “Sure!” I respond, suggesting they buy gift cards in my name at local restaurants.
• Many of them do. Thank you all!
• I grant Jamie’s group a furlough from the meal train and start phoning local restaurants who’ve received those gift cards to order my meals.
• Neighborhood volunteers continue picking up and delivering those meals to our condo, and, I think, appreciate the opportunity to check in at the restaurant to-go windows and see how their friends on staff are doing.
• I continue eating well.
• I miss Mike,
• I start ending my email and text responses to all the friends and family members who contact me after reading the Heidi Stevens column asking that, “If you pray, please pray for us. If you think, send good thoughts our way.”
• They do.
• It starts working. Mike getting better
• So it dawns on me. Yes, Mike has been away for two weeks now, but I haven’t been here alone at all: all these people thinking about us reminds me. I’m one of the luckiest people I know
• Over the weekend, Mike is discharged after three-day hotel stay. Clear of COVID 19, he can come home.
• He does.
• We hug.

If you missed it, grab a Kleenex and read this beautiful post Mike wrote about his experiences for his Mondays with Mike column earlier this week

Great news! Beth got her cast off!

I can’t remember when, though. And all that, well, it seems like a long time ago. Between eight days in isolation at home with a fever, six nights in the hospital, and three nights in isolation at a boutique hotel that the city used to keep me until I was positively, absolutely safe for the world, I’m feeling a little like Rip Van Winkle.

There will be detail that comes to me I’m sure, but right now I’m left with impressions. First, I’m concerned for all the good front line health care providers. They’re living a strange and lonely existence. Our doctor friend has taken an Airbnb—she doesn’t want to carry the virus home to her family, and she hasn’t seen her family in a month.

My own doctor was fantastic. I got a call from him within hours of reporting symptoms. He directed me to self-isolate immediately. Beth and I had already taken up separate kingdoms at home, texting and making sure we didn’t pass too close. He was responsive, supportive, and gave me great advice—including “get to the ER, now!”

Nurses rock. I’ve known that for a long time, but it just got reinforced. All of mine were fantastic, but one really stood out. She was from Cincinnati, graduated from nursing school at Ball State a year ago, and is coming up on one year working at Northwestern. Imagine this being your first year. She was professional, self-possessed, and impossibly perky in the right kind of infectious way.

She allowed, as did two others, that the worst part of this is they are urged not to spend much time with patients. And spending time with patients is the part these nurses liked most. Rather than coming to the room to check on us, nurses would call our rooms to check on us, only visiting to take vitals and take blood. As they left they peeled off their rubber-plasticky aprons and dropped them in a hamper, never removing their masks. I have no idea what any of them looked like from the top of their noses down, I never saw them without masks. To my mind, they were the extent of my human contact, and as such, they were all beautiful. Including Edgar, my overnight nurse.

The sense of isolation—on all our parts—was palpable. And anyone who’s been in the hospital or been with someone who needs medical care knows the value of having a third party around when the docs visit. It’s two minds to remember what was said, and two minds asking questions. There is no substitute. But there were no visitors, so I was on my own, and often lacked the answers to questions Beth had.

By the end of my stay, I made a point of engaging my nurses. My Cincinnati RN’s boyfriend hailed from Beverly, and is a die-hard White Sox fan. She of course is a Reds fan. I had similar chats with others, and it became clear that they needed it as much as I did.

I’ve found myself trying to remember all their names, but alas.

The other impression is one that still leaves me gob-smacked: Our state and city governments and leaders are kicking ass. It’s been a long time for us Illinoisans, but I think we have keepers in Pritzker and Lightfoot. My personal experience: After six days in the hospital my symptoms had waned, but they wanted to take no chances sending me home. So the city has deals with various hotels. One is for cops, fire department staff, and other first responders who want to avoid taking the virus home. They stay free at a pretty nice place downtown.

When I was discharged from Northwestern Hospital last Wednesday, a Chicago Fire Department representative came into the lobby to retrieve me. We walked to a City pool van. He pointed at the back door. I got in—we were separated by a huge plastic curtain. He drove to the service entrance of a boutique hotel just a few blocks from the hospital. As I left the van, he said “Good luck.” That was the extent of our interaction. A gowned up, masked up woman with a clipboard greeted me and checked me in. (We’d had phone calls about the details in advance.) Then a woman in a full hazmat suit wanded me for weapons.

I was escorted to my room. No key, as they didn’t want me or others wandering. Inside there were masks and hand sanitizer galore. Three times a day I’d hear a knock on my door. I’d don my mask, open the door—no humans in sight, just a bag of food in front of my door, and at about a dozen doors down the hallway.

Each time I retrieved my food and ate like a stupid person. The food was essentially bar food—everything came with fries! OMG, after the hospital food, I couldn’t get enough. I also developed a Coke jones—and I hardly ever drink soda. Twice a day a nurse would call and run me through a questionnaire, and then wait on the phone while I took my temperature. (The electronic thermometer had memory so there would be no cheating.)

On Saturday, 10 days after I took the cab to the ER, a nurse handed me a letter from the city that stated I unequivocally was no longer radioactive and was clear for normal life, whatever that is. I got in the cab, and took an other-worldly ride down Michigan Avenue on Saturday afternoon. There were more construction workers on the streets than anyone else (also smart: Chicago is going all out on street construction during this quiet period).

I’ve never been happier to walk through my front door.

I think for a while I’m just processing vignettes from the past few weeks.

But there is this one thing: I never worried once about Beth while I was laid up. I didn’t have to. Because our friends delivered food, and friends and family called from points around the country to check in. One couple from the neighborhood offered their apartment to me while they were out of town—but they have cats so that wasn’t going to work.

Collectively, they all had our backs.

I can’t name you all. Just know that it meant everything to me. George Bailey has absolutely nothing on me.

I love my city, I love my neighborhood. And we love all of you who helped prop us up. And we can’t wait for the day that we can tell you in person.

It was not a typical Saturday cab ride down Michigan Avenue.