As always, lots of questions. (photo by Jamie Ceaser)

On earlier visits to elementary schools in the suburbs, my Seeing Eye dogs would lead me to the transportation station in downtown Chicago to catch a commuter train to get there. Luna’s got it good. Yesterday our friend Jamie gave us a ride. Door-to-door. Many, many reasons to appreciate this so much:

• Freezing temperatures — if Luna and I found ourselves lost or turned around on the long walk,, for just a few minutes, we might have ended up with frostbite!
• Snowy slippery sidewalks.
• Salt (it can end up in Luna’s paws).
• The train we would have needed to catch left at 7:40 a.m., which meant we’d be approaching the train station precisely when commuters were getting off trains and rushing to work.
• And oh, yeah. I still have a cast on my broken right wrist.

Jamie drove us to Pritchett Elementary in Buffalo Grove, bought me a cup of coffee along the way, videotaped parts of my presentations there, and then drove us all the way back to our doorstep in Chicago afterwards. Thank you, Jamie!

The third-graders we visited at Pritchett School were sweet, polite, and very curious. The Q & A part of the presentation was entertaining, as always. A sampling of their questions:

• • Can you remember the names of all the Seeing Eye dogs you ever had?
  • How can you open a door if you can’t see ?
  • How did you get blind?
  • How long did it take you to learn to read and write Braille??
  • How do you write if you can’t see?
  • Do you cook by yourself?
  • How do you drive?
  • Can you write cursive?
  • This doesn’t pertain to you personally, but to all people who are blind, I guess: what happens if you are blind and you are allergic to dogs?
  • Does Luna ever bark?
  • If your dog is color blind, and she can’t see red and green lights, what colors can she see?
  • Do you like chocolate?
  • I have a dog at home, she’s not as big as your dog and she’s not black and her name is Luna, too, so how can I get a service dog?
  • How do you know what you’re eating if you don’t see it first?
  • Do you always have to say your dogs name before you tell her what to do?

For that last question, I picked up Luna’s harness and told the kids that when you’re training at the Seeing Eye school they teach you to always say your dog’s name before giving them a command. “If I just say the word ‘outside’ like I just did there, Luna doesn’t even notice, but if I say, ‘Luna, outside’…”. I had to stop talking right there, mid-sentence. Hearing the command, Luna immediately stood at attention and guided me to the door to the hallway! “I guess the Seeing Eye knows what they’re doing,” I said with a laugh. The kids laughed right along and applauded us as we left. Pretty good for her first ever school visit, eh?!

Have you read the first part of Ali’s Story? Check it out!

My parents drove me to Chicago Midway airport for my flight. I had been a little nervous that morning, but once I realized weather wasn’t going to stop me, excitement took over. The anxiety about my first time flying alone started to fade, and I could sit in the car and enjoy the ride.

A good 45 minutes later, my dad was driving circles in the parking lot while my mom led me inside to the ticket counter. My dad had told me they could get special passes to take me from the ticket counter to the gate, but I said no. “The point of this is for me to do this by myself,” I explained to him. He understood. I think. No matter how old you are, or how much you’ve prepared for something, parents always worry about their kids. Then, add a disability to the mix.

At the ticket counter, I showed my ID and requested assistance to my gate. Mom led me to a seat to wait for airport assistance, said goodbye, told me to have fun, and left.

This was the worst part. What is considered a normal wait time? “I’ve been waiting for like 10 minutes,” I texted my friend Juan in Houston. “Is this normal?” He replied in less than a minute: Yes!” Another friend I texted sent a reassuring reply: “They won’t forget about you.”

And they didn’t.

“Ali?” a man said, standing a few feet away. I stood up, smiling. “Hi! Yep, that’s me!”

“Do you need a wheelchair?” he asked me. I thought for a second. I had anticipated this question — when I asked my blind friends about what to expect from airline assistance, they told me that this wheelchair question is very common. Oddly enough, I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t sure I wanted the ride. “I mean…I don’t need one, but if it’s faster, sure.”

He helped me into the wheelchair, and I laughed and made some light-hearted joke about how I didn’t know what I was doing. “I’ve never been in a wheelchair in my life!”

We zoomed down some hallways, took an elevator down, zoomed down more empty hallways, and wound up at the front of the security line with two people ahead of us. I was instructed to put my phone in my purse, so I did. The skycap took my things, I stood up, and walked through security.

“Okay, you’re through,” the TSA agent said. She sounded friendly and I could tell she was smiling. I smiled back.

“Okay, awesome!” I said – which, okay, probably isn’t your typical response at TSA, but I was feeling so excited and proud of myself that I couldn’t help but call it the way I saw it: it was awesome. The TSA agent laughed. “Is this your first time flying?”

“Sort of,” I said, explaining this was my first solo flight. “I’ve always flown with my parents.” Just then the airline assistant returned with the wheelchair, my purse and my cane. Once I was seated and situated again, the skycap placed my suitcase on my lap. “Before we go to the gate, can we stop at a restroom?” I asked, letting him know I prefer the family style ones. “Those are one-person, right?”

The skycap confirmed that yes, they were, and we started moving again. “Okay, then that would be great if possible, and not too much of an inconvenience. I just hate public restrooms, you know? Wandering around looking for everything,” I laughed. The assistant laughed, agreeing with me. As we rode along, I pulled out my phone and texted my parents that I’d made it through security.

After the restroom I asked for one more request. “Can we go somewhere to fill up my water bottle?” I apologized after I asked. That’s something I’m trying to work on. His job is to assist me; I don’t need to apologize for said assistance. We filled my water bottle and then headed for the gate.

“Can you let the gate agent know I’m here? I’m doing pre-boarding, so I’ll need help,” I told the airline assistant as I got out of the wheelchair and sat at a regular seat. “Absolutely,” he said.

I tipped him when he returned, and he thanked me and went on his way. A lady across from me called out to me then. “Excuse me, mis?” she said. “I can help you as well, if you’d like.”

“Thanks…the airport provides assistance, though, so the gate agent knows I’m here,” I replied. It’s not that I didn’t trust her, but I felt more comfortable having an airport employee help me on the plane than anyone else, just for the sake of assurance that they knew I was there. Or that I’d actually get on. And that’s when I texted my parents (and Juan) to let them know I was waiting at the gate. I’d promised my parents I would text them with updates along the way.

Stay tuned for Part Three, where Alicia talks about how her second solo flight, the trip back to Chicago from Houston, compared to the first time she’d ever flown on her own, and how it feels now to be a seasoned traveler.

An “All fall down” update:

Cast and all, the girls are back at it.

Beth’s wrist was indeed broken by her fall. In two places. When against all hope the pain did not go away on the Monday after the tumble, we ended up in the ER on Tuesday morning, where doctors were fairly amazed that Beth had made it that long with just a couple ibuprofen. For the record, the docs at Rush were fantastic—asking detailed questions about whether she hit her head, and x-raying her bruised knees, which were, but for the bruising, just fine.

They put on a humongous cast that severely limited any motion in Beth’s right hand an arm. And we went home, pulled the blinds down in our bedroom and curled up in the fetal position for a couple hours.

Here’s the deal. Beth won’t say it but I will. Her life is made pretty complicated, difficult and sometimes tedious by her not being able to see. Add anything onto that, and it just sucks. It doesn’t do a lot for me, either. For a couple days, I had to tie her shoes, zip her coat, there was the bra thing, and, well.

We’ve gotten nothing but support and love from friends and family, and for that, we are grateful as always. (Zingerman’s care package! Cheese from Marche! Homemade meatloaf and fixins’ for an entire meal!) But some stuff, we just have to do ourselves as a practical matter. The worst part for me, frankly, is seeing Beth have to deal with this. But we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.

And now for the answer to the question that some have asked and others are afraid to ask: No, it wasn’t Luna’s fault.

Luna likes to go fast, really fast, and I think after walking at a snail’s pace with Whitney for months, Beth was thrilled by the pace. Kinda like going from a Ford Pinto to a Ferrari.

Still, Beth decided she needed to slow Luna down. So, before taking off on that ill-fated walk to the pool, Beth decided to use an apparatus the Seeing Eye had given her to use at home. It’s called a Gentle Leader, and it helps dog focus, it gives the human another way to give the dog feedback, and generally helps them work better alongside one another.

The Gentle Leader really worked. Luna and Beth were walking at a deliberately slow pace and the damaging fall was slow-motion. Thinking back, it was sort of like some snow skiing falls; sometimes the slow ones are the worst.

On the Thursday after the accident, we saw a specialist. They replaced the log on Beth’s arm with something still cumbersome but much more manageable. Also, no sling. So, there’s that. We’ll go back this Thursday, and if a new x-ray shows it’s healing properly, it’s a few more weeks in the cast. If not, outpatient surgery will ensue.

Beth and Luna have eased back into working together—for Beth, even though she’s right-handed, it actually would’ve been worst to break her left wrist—it would have meant she couldn’t work at all with Luna at a really important time. Beth taught her class last Wednesday. She’s teaching again this afternoon, and she and Luna are visiting a school Wednesday morning.

And Luna’s just fine. She is, in fact, at this early point in their union, better than any of Beth’s other dogs.

Me, I’ve become a version of Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good as it Gets. All I see are cracks and irregularities in the sidewalks. And there are a lot of ‘em.

Luna, Beth’s new dog, is a gem. She doesn’t wake us up at 5:30 to eat (which is when Whitney used to wake us up). She stays out of the kitchen. She likes to play fetch. She only poops once a day. She walks really fast.

That big red coat provided a nice cushion.

And sometimes too fast.

I know this because I’ve been on a ton of walks with Beth and Luna since they got home from The Seeing Eye. And I can barely keep up. Our pal Laura witnessed it first-hand this past weekend when we took a walk downtown. She and I also witnessed Beth taking a scary, headlong fall. Beth was wearing a big puffy coat, and that helped ensure there was no harm. But it’s a very difficult thing to watch.

Or to think about, if you’re me. I try not to think about the perils Beth faces in everyday life. Mostly I’m OK, and manage not to dwell. But this past few months, as we retired Whitney, I’ve been more attuned to Beth’s vulnerabilities. To how remarkable she is to live the full life she does.

And so, I was vociferous in suggesting to Beth that she needed to learn to slow Luna down. (Especially after a snowfall.)

Beth took it to heart. And yesterday, before we headed out to the gym where Beth swims and I work out, Beth put a thing called the Gentle Leader on Luna’s snout. The Gentle Leader makes it easy for Beth to provide Luna a reminder to focus on what’s ahead when they encounter distractions like other dogs. It also slows Luna’s pace.

And as we walked east on Harrison yesterday, our usual route, Luna indeed walked at much more relaxed pace.

Things were going fine and then I noticed Luna and Beth veering left a little. Then I noticed that Luna was trying to route around a big, snaking pavement crack. Then I kind of froze up before saying, “there’s a crack!” By that time Beth was nearly horizontal on the way to the pavement.

There was an awful thud. And a combination scream/groan from Beth who wisely laid in place to take stock. Her knees hurt. Her wrist hurt. A pizza delivery guy who witnessed it pulled over to ask whether we needed help.

Beth was eventually able to rise to her feet with my help. We turned around to head home. I tended to her left knee, which was bruised and slightly bloodied, but overall, OK. The other one was fine.

We iced her wrist, and at first Beth had hope that that’s all that would be required.

Today, not so much. She’ll be going to the doctor and we’re expecting bad news. But it’s not her dog harness hand, so Beth expects not to miss a beat teaching classes.

Still. It’s hard sometimes, for both of us. In the universal kind of tug of war that life partners tend to have, I worry too much sometimes and Beth doesn’t worry enough. Or, we worry about different things.

And I’m left wondering if I’d just shut my trap about how fast Luna was going, maybe the second fall doesn’t happen,

On the other hand, Beth did everything right—the Gentle Leader did make sense.

And I’m reminded, once again, that despite all precautions and intentions, bad things can happen to really good people.

Another writer from one of the memoir classes I lead in Chicago has hit the big-time: a story about the beautifully-named Bindy Bitterman was on the front page of Friday’s Chicago Tribune. Friday being Valentine’s Day and all, the article was about Bindy’s unique collection of three-dimensional “pop-up” Jewish Valentines. An excerpt:

Bitterman, who is Jewish, conjectures that the valentine’s cards became popular among Jewish immigrants to the United States in the early 1900s, but despite her efforts, which include contacting the Smithsonian Institution, she has never been able to pin down a reliable history.

Bindy takes the memoir class I lead at a senior living center called The Admiral at the Lake, and while her fellow writers there applauded the story, some questioned the headline’s emphasis on age. In the print edition of the Chicago Tribune, the headline read like this:

The old lady and the Jewish valentine mystery

Online, the headline reads like this:

An 88-year-old Chicago woman and the mystery of the Jewish valentines

”How the first headline got through the editors in this day and age beats me!” one of Bindy’s fellow writers said in an email to me. “That guy — and it had to be a guy right? — should be sent to some kind of sensitivity training class on how to be respectful to seniors!” Was it necessary to give Bindy’s age, they wondered? Her age wasn’t that relevant to the story, they said. “And anyway, if she’s living here at The Admiral you know she’s of a certain age…”

The headline reminded them of a woman who lives there at The Admiral who wouldn’t divulge her age. “My reaction was ‘Oh come on, who cares?’ but when I kept bugging her, she fired back “Well how
much do you WEIGH?” Touché! No answer there.

The Tribune column was written by Mary Schmich, and by the time I woke up Friday morning the link to the online version was already in my in box: one of Bindy’s proud fellow writers had already written to let me know it had made page one. I emailed Bindy right away to congratulate her, and she emailed right back to let me know her new best friend Mary Schmich had contacted her already that morning. “Mary wanted to let me know she hadn’t written the headline.”

Having only read the online version, I wasn’t sure what all the headline fuss was about. Bindy had seen the “old lady” print version but didn’t seem all that concerned, either. “After all,” she wrote to me, “I am an old lady!”