Today is November 2, though here in Chicago, you’d think otherwise. Brilliant, radiant sunshine, 70 degrees, sublime.

The sunshine is the tell, though. This time of year, the sun hits at flatter angles than it does in the summer. Lots of contrast, and the things that glimmered in July sun positively gleam this time of year.

Salute to the Royals.

And ten years ago, the sun never gleamed so brightly. I was working at an office on LaSalle Street, which happened to be the final leg of the 2005 White Sox World Series victory parade. Mayor Richard M. Daley, a stalwart White Sox fan, and never afraid to spend money on what he liked, made sure it was worthy of a moon landing or the end of a war.

I left my office, met Beth about halfway on her walk to help her navigate the throngs, and we walked until we got a good spot.

And there really were throngs. On the sidewalks, streets, and in upstairs office windows. And confetti. And that flat sunshine that made the confetti pieces explode into something that, well, to me, was not close to heaven. It was heaven.

Baseball is not like other sports. It  requires a greater commitment from its fans. Even casual baseball fans live through more grief and more joy and more of everything than devoted fans of other sports. Baseball, compared to other sports, is like reading a difficult book—one that tests you page after page, and is still worth it.

Reaching the parade point requires a lot of work, a lot of great defensive plays, a lot of great at-bats, a lot of great pitching (like, say, four complete games in the American League Championship Series in 2005) and at least some luck. It’s harder than hell.

And so, on this glorious day while the sun still glints, before I go into delirium tremens because there is no baseball to watch, I tip my White Sox cap to the Kansas City Royals, 2015 World Series Champions.

It was about a quarter mile into the short hike to the Wisconsin River that I threw off the weight. The weight of sirens, impatient car horns, tourists, shootings, and the helpless feeling of being unable to help homeless people.

Looking skyward from the trail.

I stopped in my tracks, recognizing that the only sound to be heard was the wind in the trees. I did not check my phone or even think about the mountain of email that I’d find when I returned. I just looked up into the canopy of trees and felt the thin length of sunshine that made its way through.

That’s when I remembered that the power of nature is the only thing worthy of the term awesome. And it is. Awesome.

Back in the nineties, I worked for a dot.com that took me on a wonderful and demanding roller coaster ride. I reached a point where I was waking up at 2 a.m. thinking about what I hadn’t gotten done or what I had to do. And I was told by my employer to take a vacation.

Beth, I and Pandora the Seeing Eye Dog rented an oceanfront place in the basement of an old Nags Head style cottage in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. We frolicked in the ocean, we ate fresh fish, we befriended our upstairs landlord. And lulled by the sound of the ocean through our bedroom window, I slept. Like a baby.

And so it was this past week in Wisconsin. I was told by my bosses to take a vacation. This time it was a one-room log cabin just about a mile from the Wisconsin Dells. For those of you who don’t know, the Wisconsin Dells is a ticky tack tourist destination where you can eat all the fudge and buy all the moccasins you want and go on amphibious duck rides and slide down enormous water slides and jet ski and well, you know. The Dells are also a real thing—beautiful rock formations carved by the Wisconsin River.

Despite Scott Walker’s best efforts, Wisconsin remains a wonderful place. Full of wonderful people who demonstrate the opposite of the ostentatious. On a walk through town, I passed a pizza joint that had a sign on the door: “Tree fell on our roof at home. We’ll try to be back by 7:00 p.m.”

Wisconsin is also full of natural beauty and fresh water left by glaciers. And a whole lot of trees. I took the hike to the river over and over again just to smell the trees and fresh air. I took a dip in the river while boaters passed by. I went into town to get groceries and drove down the main drag to find that the motel that I’d stayed in with my family decades ago was still there. I missed them. I took a Wisconsin Ducks ride.

My time near the river was too short, but I’d planned my re-entry well. I took a tour of Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece residence, and it was an unexpected delight. I went there feeling like it was something I should do because it would be good for me, and I left feeling like… it was good for me.

I then drove to Madison for a night in the “city.” City is in quotes because Madison isn’t really a city like, say, Chicago. It’s more a state of mind. It’s a great college town like Champaign-Urbana or Ann Arbor or Iowa City–times 10. I went to a place on the Capitol Square called the Old Fashioned and had a proper Wisconsin Fish Fry. The perch was superb. I walked down State Street to the University of Wisconsin Student Union and watched sailboats on the lake.

The next morning I walked the Square and took in what has to be the greatest farmer’s market in the world. Well, I’m saying it is, anyway. Street musicians, cheese, local produce, and food trucks. I had the breakfast empanada, and it was sublime.

It was hard to leave. It was hard to come back.

I picked up Beth on my way home. She was visiting with our great-niece Floey and some other friends in the suburbs. Back at our place, I read the mail, dropped my bag, and we headed out to return the rental car. We walked home downtown and stopped for a drink to debrief one another about the past few days.

I was a little melancholy, as the taste of vacation had just whetted my appetite for a longer one. The remedy: We went to the White Sox game Saturday night, John Danks pitched like he was a young man who’d never suffered a shoulder injury, and the Sox beat the Yankees.

On Sunday, we got a text from some dear friends whom we met a few years ago by some crazy happenstance worthy of its own story, for another time. They invited us to a picnic in the little park just outside our place. We ate cheese and olives and a fresh green bean and tomato salad and drank wine, and were cooled by something stronger than a breeze but not strong enough to blow our goods away.

We sat opposite another group that had gathered for their own picnic, and one of them—a friend who lives in our building—brought us some home-made potato salad to share.

It was good to get away. And it is good to be home.

Last May my friend Lynn LaPlante Allaway, the principal violist with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, came to our apartment to perform a private concert to help me heal from open-heart surgery. Whitney and I tried to thank Lynn for her music therapy by visiting her kids at St. Petronille School, and gee whiz, now I have to thank her again for this guest post about our time together that day. I’m blushing at the glowing account — and reminding myself that she’s a biased reporter. But I’m biased, too, and I’m happy to share Lynn’s post:

The craziest thing happened when I went to meet Beth and Whitney at the train platform here in Mayberry, err…Glen Ellyn. After big hugs all around, we were standing there deciding very important business — coffee first or straight to the school? — when I saw a tall gentlemen walking behind Beth, coming straight at her. I could only see his head, coming closer and closer and….what the hell, is he going to just crash right into Beth? Doesn’t he SEE her standing there with her damn GUIDE DOG? Are you kidding me? Annnd…he did. He just smacked right into her.

I was shocked, Beth was shocked and so was this gentleman, who was also blind and using a white cane instead of a guide dog. Are you kidding me, people? What are the odds of two blind people colliding on the totally empty Glen Ellyn train platform, midday on a Friday? We were the only three people standing there and I looked around to see if we were being punked.

And: they knew each other. Of course they did. They laughed about being part of a blind mafia, but I’m not so sure they were joking. This gentlemen had taken the train to Glen Ellyn to catch a bus to take him to the grocery store. (Note to self: I will never, ever complain again when I get home from Trader Joe’s and realize I forgot cat food and I have to go back and get it.)

We all had a good laugh, and that began a day of coincidences, connections, and little woo-woo moments that I just LOVE. The day felt magical, pure and simple. It was more than just me having the “day off” to play with my friend Beth all afternoon. It was one of those full-moon, all the stars are aligned, everything goes smoothly and beautifully kind of days.

Right–to that point: we got coffee, stopped at The Bookstore to see Beth’s friend Jenny Fischer (all these coincidences between Beth’s childhood friends who now happen to live here, then I moved here, our paths cross, see what I’m talking about?) and got to school.

These kids have been so excited about Beth and Whitney’s visit! Talking about it all week, reading her book, preparing questions ahead of time! And the teachers were so appreciative of Beth and Whitney being there. Honestly, we were feeling the love all freaking afternoon.

All three classrooms were as rapt as this one.

First class was my son Aidan’s class — all 60 5th graders gathered in the Art Room and sat there, so quiet, so still, so mesmerized. I spend a lot of time in my kids classrooms, volunteering, assisting, whatever. They are lovely children, but trust me when I tell you they do not sit this quietly and engaged for me when I am giving an Art in the Classroom presentation. But that’s Beth for you: always gotta one-up me and show me how it’s really done!

She talked to these students about what it feels like to be blind, about how she lost her sight, about how she does her daily tasks. Beth has this ability to talk *to* these kids rather than *at* them. She assumes they are intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful and can comprehend what she is describing. And she is right: the level was raised that day for those 5th graders.

She asked Aidan to join her in front and call on classmates who had questions. He was so cute and blushed a bit while he did that. I hope he doesn’t read this; he’ll kill me for saying that.

Beth let Whitney off her harness so all 60 kids could get in line and pet her — Whitney looooved this. She is one playful and cute dog, and the kids looooved this as much as Whit did. I heard all about it later from friends with kids in the class.

From there, we went downstairs to visit my daughter Sophie and the third graders. Beth told them that in some ways losing her sight was a relief. It meant the painful, difficult time in the hospital with all the tests and surgeries was over. She also talked about the job she’d had before losing her sight, and how she had considered her boss a friend. But that was before the Americans with Disabilities Act was a law. “I couldn’t see anymore,” she told the kids. “So my boss fired me.”

The most poignant question came during that presentation, when a student circled back after Beth was done talking and asked her if she was sad her “friend” hadn’t let her keep her job after she lost her sight. This was such a gorgeous moment because it showed, crystal clear, how these students were able to feel compassion and empathy for another person’s pain. They saw Beth as she is, her funny personality, her great storytelling, her ease and comfort in front of and surrounded by people. And they understood. They related to the story she told them about her life, they were able to imagine how they themselves would feel if they were in the same position. They understood that people who appear to be “different” from them are not different at all.

What an education Beth provided that afternoon! I loved watching the kids’ faces watching Beth and Whitney. Sophie also got to lord over her classmates and call on them for the Q&A section. My little budding Napoleon, drunk on her own power, as she decided who got to ask questions. Hilarious.

And finally, off to first grade. I’m with these kids A LOT and when we walked in, I couldn’t believe it. No one was squirming or wiggling. None of these kids were talking or doing gross things involving their fingers and noses. They were spellbound from the first moment. Beth changed her talk again for this age-group. She is really ridiculously good at this: three different talks for three different age groups, la de da, no biggie.

Whitney stretched out here in this classroom and took a little snooze. Our son, August, got up to call on kids. I’d explained ahead of time that he couldn’t just call on boys. “You HAVE to call on girls, too.” He apparently was so scared of catching cooties from calling on a girl. At one point, Beth had to ask, “August, are there any girls in your class?” Adorable.

Beth ended each presentation by showing the kids how Whitney can show Beth where the door in the classroom is located and lead her to it so she can get out. And with that, and lots of applause and thank-yous from the first-graders, we left. But for Beth and me, the fun was just beginning.

We shopped at Marcel’s, her high school friend Jill Foucré’s sublime cooking store in downtown Glen Ellyn, and then Jill and Jenny from The Bookstore (they are sisters, see above about connections and coincidences) and Beth and I met for happy hour at the sushi bar down the street. We talked about books, being working moms, family. We talked and talked and laughed and laughed. It was heavenly.

I took Whitney and Beth back to the train station, and after scanning the platform to make sure there were no more blind people waiting to ambush her (for real, I still can’t believe that happened?) I waited with them until their train to Chicago arrived and watched them get on board. That was a solid six hours of bliss. Come back, Beth!!

That’s wee Sheelagh on the left, our friend Jim Neill, Beth, and Beni. It was taken in August, 2011 in the picturesque Collioure, France.

It’s difficult to put thoughts about our one-of-a-kind friend Sheelagh into words, so I am very grateful to my husband Mike Knezovich for doing that for us in his guest post today.

In August of 1986, our son — name still to be determined — was getting ready to be born. About the same time, Sheelagh Livingston — an unsuspecting college student from Belfast, Northern Ireland — arrived in Urbana, Ill. Sheelagh had qualified for a year-long exchange program at the University of Illinois, and found herself in the middle of corn and soy bean fields and 90 degree heat with 90 percent humidity.

Undaunted, she asked at the university Study Abroad office about volunteer opportunities outside of campus. She wanted to learn about real Americans, she said. Beth had worked at that office in her seeing days, and one of her former colleagues suggested that Sheelagh contact Beth, who needed a volunteer reader.

On September 3, 1986, the ob-gyn doctor said it was early, but it was time, and scheduled a Caesarian section. Gus was born, he nearly died in the delivery room, and he ended up being in the neonatal intensive care unit for a month. It was crazy, and I took to leaving status updates on our answering machine for concerned family and friends. During that time, young Sheelagh called our number and was treated to a message with a crisis-filled report on Gus and Beth’s condition.

She admitted later that she wondered what she might be getting herself into. “Bloody Americans,” she said, astounded that we’d share personal details on an answering machine. But she left a message. Beth returned it, and eventually, Sheelagh was coming to our home all the time. Ostensibly, she came to read to Beth — mail, bills, and other printed stuff I couldn’t keep up with. But Beth and Sheelagh hit it off riotously from the beginning and became partners in crime. They were two jigsaw puzzle pieces that somehow, serendipitously, fit together perfectly.

I had a lot on my plate back then, so I wasn’t always tickled to learn that somehow walks with Gus in the pram or visits to coffee shops had replaced reading that day. I’d come home, there’d they be. I’d ask how the reading went, and they’d both break into laughter. Reading?

Beth — and I — had a new friend. An interesting one. A vibrant, cherubic, impish, knobby-kneed, twinkly blue-eyed, red haired force of nature who talked a blue streak in a beautiful lilt. She was just good to be with in a room. Beth had been laid pretty low by going blind and then a year later giving birth to a baby with a genetic disorder. Sheelagh was unfazed by it all. And that meant everything to Beth, and really, to me, too.

Sheelagh took road trips with us, had dinner at our place, met our families and friends. And charmed pretty much all of them. When the academic year ended, we gave Sheelagh a hearty farewell party, and she was off for the finale of her American adventure: hiking the Grand Canyon. Beth was despondent. Sheelagh was the first friend she’d made after losing her eyesight. That hadn’t occurred to me until Beth said it. And it really drove home how, for just awhile there, Beth had lost her mojo. With Sheelagh, it’d come back, but Beth thought she’d seen the last of wee Sheelagh.

I, on the other hand, had no doubts that we’d see her again. And I was right.

By 1988, our lives had settled to the point where we could take a trip, with Gus in tow, to Europe. Beth’s sister Marilee and her family were living in Germany then, and they generously agreed to care for Gus so that Beth and I could take off for Berlin to meet up with Sheelagh and our mutual friend Gerald.

A lasting memory from our arrival at the West Berlin train station: I told Beth I could see Sheelagh and Gerald walking toward us on the platform. Sheelagh’s lilt was easy to distinguish from the other accents on the platform, and when she called out a hearty “Hullo! Beth spread her arms for an embrace. At that very moment another woman rushed by to catch a train, and Beth joined the stranger in a perfect, figure-skating pair twirl. They came to a rest, both broke into laughter, and the woman ran on toward her train. Sheelagh saw it all and arrived in a stitch, as she would say.

We sort of traded off continents from then on. We visited Sheelagh in her hometown, Belfast. We met her parents, ate shepherd’s pie cooked by her mom, heard the story of how her dad had been hijacked by an IRA operative, and got a taste of Belfast life during the troubles (it was actually pretty normal, save for the troop carriers). Sheelagh visited Urbana and joined us on a driving trip to the North Carolina coast, helping with Gus. We listened to Country Music, explained–as best we could–about the South and the North. She was entertained, if not also a little stunned. (“This country is so bloody big!”)

And so it went. We traveled back to Berlin after the wall came down, and we took a holiday in Italy together. Beth visited Sheelagh on her own in Rome once, too, and then with a friend years later, after Sheelagh became an occupational therapist and resettled in a lovely lough-side town in Northern Ireland called Portaferry. Sheelagh met her loving companion Beni after she moved back to Northern Ireland, and the two of them were married in 2011. We met up with them in Warsaw, Poland, for our friend Gerald’s wedding. And when Sheelagh and Beni visited us in Chicago we spectated at the Chicago Marathon, attended a gospel choir rehearsal at a friend’s South Side church, and biked the lakefront.

We were lucky to reassemble the crew this past July in Portaferry. That’s the beautiful Strangford Lough in the background.

Through it all, whenever Beth and Sheelagh would come together, they were immediately joined in rhythmic chatter. I have no idea what all they talked about — at least partly because Sheelagh talked very fast in her accent — and I gave up trying. Eventually I knew to learn to get out of the way for at least a couple hours a day and let them pick up from wherever they had left off, whether that was yesterday or last year.

We’ve communicated by sending old-fashioned cassette tapes back and forth over the years, and a few years ago Sheelagh sent a tape with some bad news: She had cancer. She underwent vigorous chemotherapy, and by the time we met her, Beni, and our London friend Jim (who generously organized our holiday) in France, you wouldn’t have known she’d had so much as a cold. After a long, tough go of it, she was the little bouncy ball of sunny mischief she’d always been. And we had a delightful time.

Earlier this year, Sheelagh scheduled a Skype call with Beth. Beth knew immediately it couldn’t be good news. I opted for denial. Beth was right.

The cancer was back with an evil vengeance. Not much more that doctors could do. Sheelagh’s wish? She wanted to be with friends. We planned our visit to Portaferry for May, but Beth’s SOB aortic valve tumor canceled that. We arrived in Dublin on the Fourth of July instead, after Beth’s doctors said it’d be safe for her to travel. Sheelagh and Beni met us in a camper van — they’d bought it earlier this year to take trips to see the friends Sheelagh loved so much.

It was a wonderful few days. Each morning, Beth joined Sheelagh in her bedroom while I read downstairs. Our friend Jim flew in for the visit, too, and every afternoon he’d arrive from the B&B he was staying at and we’d all have an outing together — Sheelagh was still mobile, if laboriously slow. “Our house looks like an OT equipment showroom,” she joked — and she and Beni did have walkers, grab bars, and other hardware of all stripes. We had lunch with her parents, who’d come down from Belfast. We took turns pushing her in a wheelchair as we walked along the Strangford Lough. We met the locals, all of whom knew Sheelagh and Beni.

Throughout, Sheelagh was…Sheelagh. I don’t know how, but she was.

This past Wednesday we heard from Beni:  After a bash for Sheelagh’s 48th birthday last week, things had gone bad to worse quickly. Sheelagh died at home, with her sister Fiona and her beloved Beni at her side.

It’s never going to make sense to me. I know that. I just hope I eventually learn to accept it. I’ll take great comfort from the gift of those four sublime, sunny days in Portaferry with Sheelagh and Beni and Jim. The combination of sparkle and spunk in Sheelagh’s face is etched, and I will always be able to recall her beautiful, sing-songy voice. And like all of her friends, I will always ache for just one more visit.

Some week, huh?

Well, luckily, defying logic, life goes on. Here’s how life has been going on in the Finke-Knezovich worlds of late:

• Beth and Whitney have been on a roll since their staph-infected first few days at the Vermont Studio Center. Beth says she’s getting a lot done, that Whitney seems to be mellowing in accordance with the more pastoral pace and setting. And Beth says the food at VSC is terrific.
  
• While in Urbana this week, I had a great lunch of Thai food with Jean Thompson. Beth has written here at the blog about Jean, our dear, one-of-a-kind friend. Jean was a mentor to Beth while Beth worked at writing and publishing “Long Time, No See.” Jean’s a spookily talented writer who gets into characters’ heads and lays them open to readers like no one else. During her teaching career at the University of Illinois, Jean produced a highly regarded body of short-story collections and novels. One of the collections, Who Do You Love, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Well, since retiring from the academic world, she’s been producing more great work than ever. Her latest — The Humanity Project — just received a thoughtful and glowing review at the New York Times. If you’re a reader, go out and get it, or anything by Jean.
• Roger Ebert is dead. Long Live Ebertfest. My friend Brand Fortner, whose daughter contributed a guest post here about her father’s adoration for Ebert, is at this year’s Ebertfest in Champaign in the newly, grandly renovated historic Virginia Theater. Another Urbana friend—Steven Bentz, of Steven and Nancy—who adopted Hanni, is director of the Virginia, and has been working heroically  to ensure the theater was ready after months of work.
• There are some nice things about being a bachelor for a few weeks. Utter spontaneity is one. A week or two ago, on a Sunday night, I was restless. I’d heard that pianist Eric Reed and his trio was putting on a great Thelonious Monk-themed show at Jazz Showcase. I looked up at the clock, which read 7:30. I closed my computer, I put on my coat, and walked the two blocks to the Showcase. Walked in, bought a ticket, sat down, and enjoyed a sublime set. Sometimes, life is just good.
• I just learned that thanks to the good people who care for our son Gus up at Bethesda Lutheran Communities in Watertown, Wis., Gus will be getting an hour-long joy ride this summer — in either an open-top vintage car or…a sidecar on a motorcycle! (I love motorcycles, and based on how much he enjoyed riding in our bicycle trailer, I think Gus would love either the sidecar or the antique auto).

Happy birthday Flo.

Best of all: Tomorrow, April 20, Flo — Beth’s evergreen mother — turns 97 years old. She’s still living in her own place, and her face lights up about any number of simple pleasures.

Happy 97^th Flo.