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!”

So many of you were impressed with the post our guest blogger Ali Krage wrote way back in 2016 when she was starting at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and figuring out how to get around a new campus without being able to see. Ali sure mastered that very well – she graduated from NIU in December! To celebrate, she took a round trip flight to Houston to see friends last month – her first time flying without her parents along. Part One of a three-part “Flying Solo” series she wrote for Easterseals was published on the Easterseals National blog yesterday, and here it is now for you Safe & Sound readers to enjoy as well.

by Alicia Krage

Photo by Dolores Pantaleone

I love traveling. I don’t need a big, extravagant trip to feel pleased about my travel abilities, either. Just taking the train to downtown Chicago is enough to make me feel proud of myself, simply because I did it by myself – or at the very least, without my parents.

I’ve taken cabs, buses, Ubers, Amtrak and Metra trains all by myself. I’ve flown many times before, but always with my parents.

I have friends who are also blind and have flown countless times, and thinking about them always left me feeling a mixture of pride and envy. I was proud of them for their independence, but also envious, wishing I had that kind of courage. I really wanted to challenge myself, so I set a goal: this year, 2020, I would fly alone at least once.

A friend of mine who is blind flew out to Chicago from Houston in November to celebrate my birthday with a group of friends, and while Juan was here we discussed my “first solo flight” idea further. I asked him question after question about everything. What airline do you recommend? Any specific airport? Do you do curbside check-in or go to the counter? How did your parents react? Juan’s parents seem similar to mine, especially in how they raised us as children with disabilities. So hearing how his parents reacted to him flying alone gave me the last boost of confidence I needed. Juan invited me to come to visit him and his family in Houston, and I started looking up flights. Imagine how hard it was to get through finals week – my last finals week, no less, as I graduated in December! – spending every minute of my free time looking up airfares. The affordable prices were taunting me.

I was so tempted to act first and think later – buy the tickets, then tell my parents about it. Realistically, I’d never do that, but checking fares and checking my bank account, knowing I could actually afford this…it all amped up the excitement. I can do this!

My parents were very encouraging, and my dad helped me book my flight on the Southwest website. I was pleased that the Southwest website provided me the option to check a checkbox indicating I am blind and needed gate assistance. A few days before the trip I had been waiting so long for, an anticipated snow storm threatened to ruin the entire thing. I spent the day before and the day of the trip asking our Google home device how much snow was expected, already jumping ahead and asking Juan for alternative dates for me to fly from Chicago just in case. He wasn’t worried at all. “This is how Chicago always is!” he laughed. “You’re always supposed to get a storm – it won’t happen.”

And it didn’t!

Stay tuned for Part Two, where Alicia talks about waiting for airport assistance, getting through airport security with a white cane, and, eventually, sitting in the plane ready for takeoff.

I rarely go to the movie theater these days, and Beth and I have never gotten into the streaming thing, so each year, when the Oscar awards are broadcast, I typically say, “Why botha’?” I don’t have any dogs in the hunt. And each year, I end up watching the Oscars. Somehow, I can’t look away.

I don’t know if it’s just a deep-seated habit, having grown up watching every minute of every Oscars with my family. Or that somehow, every year I am actually entertained. Probably a little bit of both.

I do get sucked into some of the acceptance speeches. And Bong Joon Ho, Parasite director, was pretty much worth the price of admission last night. (He may still be drinking in celebration.)

And the Oscars usually has it’s intended effect—that is, it gets me to get out and see some of these movies. So I expect to see Parasite, Little Women, and Ford vs. Ferrari sometime soon.

Oh, and also Hair Love, which took home an Oscar for animated short. And that one’s easy—you can stream it free. I learned about it—as I often learn about pop culture things—from Beth. She listens to lots of public radio, and she heard an interview on WBEZ with filmmaker Matthew Cherry  (Chicago native and former NFL player) and Karen Tolivar, the producer.

She said they were terrific and personable, and that he was inspired by his daughter to make the animated short. He wanted to show more African Americans in animated work, and to, as he puts it, “normalize” black people’s hair.

I’ve learned from our black friends that hair is a big, big deal for them. And unfortunately, it’s sometimes a big deal and (shouldn’t be) in the broader community.

Me, I just wish I had more hair in some places and less in others.

Meantime, congratulations to Hair Love, and enjoy.