The three days I spent In New England over Memorial Day reminded me of trips I used to take in my college years. Only difference: Back then I would have found a ride on the “ride board” at the U of I snack bar and sat in the back seat of a stranger’s car to get there. This time, I flew with friends: Whitney and Mike.

The three of us glided relatively easily through TSA lines at Midway Airport, and our travel good karma continued when what might have been a fiasco in Cambridge unexpectedly turned into a bonus.

Here’s what happened. The manager of the bed & breakfast we’d booked in Cambridge told us we couldn’t stay there with Whitney. “No dogs, “ she said. I told her Whitney is a guide dog. “I need her to get me around safely,” I explained. “No dogs,” she said. I quoted regulations from the Americans with Disabilities Act. “No dogs,” she repeated. I didn’t want to waste our short time arguing with the manager, and I didn’t want to waste my good money on a room where we were obviously unwelcome. We cancelled our room and Mike found a last-minute deal at a hotel on Copley Square.

The blues sound a little spooky on a harpsichord.

I was as giddy as a schoolgirl when we checked in. Our room was cheaper than the one at the @*)! B&B would have been, and for some odd reason, we’d been upgraded, too. We landed a room on the swanky 36th floor.

The concierge recommended a good joint for oysters nearby. “They have a really long bar there,” he said. “You should be able to walk right in and find a couple seats.” He was right.
We took our bartender’s recommendations on which ones to order. Oysters taste different in Boston than they do in Chicago. I had six.

A friend met us there half way through our first dozen oysters. Lydia moved from Chicago to Boston last year to take a job with Harvard Magazine, and visiting with her Friday and Saturday morning marked the first throwback to my college and post-college years: I got out of Illinois to see a friend who’d just left for a new cool job somewhere else.

Saturday afternoon our friend Siobhan Senier picked us up at our hotel and drove us to the lovely place she and her husband Greg live alongside the Lamprey River in Epping, New Hampshire. Mike and I knew Greg and Siobhan when they lived in Urbana, Illinois. They left town after Siobhan received a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, and now she’s a literary historian at University of New Hampshire. Siobhan gathers Native writing from New England and works to figure out why that writing isn’t more widely read — or understood. She’s building a digital archive of that literature, and you can read more about it on her Indigenous New England Literature blog — pretty cool stuff.

We spent Saturday afternoon and evening sitting on the patio behind Siobhan and Greg’s house — who needs to leave home when its sunny outside and there’s a charcoal grill nearby? Surrounded by a little grass and a lot of forest, Whitney chased a tennis ball, ran it back to us, chased a tennis ball, ran it back to us, chased a tennis ball, ran it back to us, chased a tennis ball, ran it back to us…you get the picture. We humans ate delicious food — including local swordfish — from the grill and caught up and just hung out and laughed and laughed and laughed — like we used to do in our twenties in Urbana. In a morning walk the next day, Greg — an avid birder — identified the birds we heard by their calls.

On Sunday, we had a two-hour drive with Siobhan to the farm where our friends Mim and Kin live in northern New Hampshire. Again, the nostalgia: a road trip! Siobhan would be staying overnight with us at the farm house, and Mim’s mom was coming in from Vermont to see us, too.

I met Mim when we were both dopey college students — we were on the same study abroad program in Austria. She’s Dr. Miriam Nelson now, author of a best-selling Strong Women series of books about the benefits of strength training. Mim is the one who got me an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She was on Oprah touting her books, I stood in the audience to ask a question, mentioned my job modeling nude for art students, and Oprah used the clip in a special “Best of After the Show” segment the next year. So thanks to Mim, I had a moment of Oprah fame myself!

Mim recently accepted a new position at University of New Hampshire where Siobhan teaches. Mim and her husband Kin inherited Kin’s family farm in northern New Hampshire some years ago after his parents died. Their three children are all grown now, so the two of them moved permanently to the farm in March when Mim started her new job.

Yet another beautiful place surrounded by trees and fields, but this time, a working farm, too. As baffled as Whitney was by the cows and sheep on the other side of the fence, she was more taken by the tennis ball she uncovered in the field. Kin threw the ball, she chased it and ran it back, Kin threw the ball, she chased it and ran it back, Kin threw the ball, she chased it and ran it back, Kin threw the ball, she chased it and ran it back, Kin threw the ball, she chased it and ran it back, …you get the picture.

Mim and Kin have been married more than 25 years now. Mike and I went to their wedding, I catch up with Mim in New England any time I’m up that way, her mom and brother visited while driving through Chicago way back when  — we went to the Checkerboard Lounge when it was the real deal. Mim’s met up with me here in Chicago many times while on business trips. With all that, until this visit, I’d never had a chance to really get to know her husband Kin. Another throwback to my college days. I felt like I was meeting a friend’s boyfriend for the first time. Kin passed the audition — in one short overnight stay, we bonded! (He makes a mean cappuccino, which didn’t hurt.)

Aside from short walks around the farm, we never leftthe Mim and Kin’s farm house. After a traditional Memorial Day dinner –hamburgers on the grill — Kin led us upstairs to their music room. He’s an accomplished musician and treated us with some tunes on his  violin. I played blues tunes on a harpsichord Kin’s father had built (think Addams Family). Mostly, though, we laughed and talked over meals at the kitchen table.

Siobhan was sitting next to me once when none of us could remember an actor from some movie or another. “If I had my phone with me, I could look it up,” she said. That’s when it dawned on me. All weekend long, not a single conversation had been interrupted by the ding or ring of a phone. None of us seemed to need to take a phone out to entertain ourselves.

Another throwback.

A hand-addressed envelope from a long-time friend showed up in our mailbox Saturday. Dianne had been my supervisor when I interned at Washington Consumers’ Checkbook magazine as a hayseed college junior. She was also kind of a cruise director for me and another intern, making sure we got something out of the work experience and also from living in the Capital of the United States.

Old school technology, timeless sentiment.

Dianne was there again when, after I graduated, I moved for real to D.C. to take a job at Checkbook. That was a tough time for me— I was homesick, felt lost and found myself literally lost virtually every day. The work required a lot of driving, and though D.C. proper was designed in logical fashion by Pierre L’Enfant, suburban Virginia and Maryland never got a whiff of the grid system.

Dianne was a steady force, helping me grow into my professional role, and to stick it out on the personal side. And she introduced me to her friends who became my friends—and are to this day.

Eventually, she was tagged to establish Checkbook’s second magazine, this one in the Bay Area. When she moved, I wrote her a letter expressing my appreciation for all that she’d done for me, and my general admiration.

When I opened the envelope from Dianne, that letter was inside with a sweet note from Dianne saying, “Obviously it meant a lot to me given that I’ve kept it 35 years.”

Just seeing the letter was powerful. The yellow legal paper (I couldn’t be bothered with stationery). My handwriting actually being legible (it no longer is). It transported me to my early 20s, and all of that period rushed back.

I was almost afraid to read the letter, but mercifully, it was pretty well written. And it sincerely reflected my abiding gratitude for all she’d done for me.

I still write emails like the one I wrote to Dianne way back then. But I wondered if these kinds of pen-and-paper experiences will be entirely lost to the digital age.

My uncle George Knezovich (left) and my pop, Mike Knezovich on the right. Thanks Aaron.

Then this morning, I received a text message from my nephew Aaron. He was going through some belongings and happened onto a photograph of my father with his brother, my Uncle George, at a brothers reunion during WWII. That photo was attached. The twinkle in my father’s eye just kind of dropped me in my tracks. And handsome George’s unmistakable jaw line. And their uniforms.

Beyond those memories, it was Aaron, very much in the present day, letting me know he was thinking about me.

So maybe it’s really not about the medium—legal paper and postage stamps and ink vs. pixels and jpgs and cable modems.

Maybe it’s what it has always been: However you accomplish it, never underestimate the power of making clear to people in no uncertain terms what they mean to you.

When Beth and I saw Bonnie Raitt last week at the Chicago Theater, I looked around and had a laugh—it was all 55-65ish people like ourselves, grayer and more, ahem, prosperous-looking than when we all first listened to Bonnie decades ago. But something in the air felt the same (and it wasn’t pot smoke).

The warm-up band—the California Honeydrops—was fantastic. A rootsy mix of horns and great vocals and harmonies. And then Bonnie came out. She looked exactly as she’s always looked, which is to say cool, naturally sexy, and kinda tough in a good way. And she’s 66.

Sweet Home Chicago at the Kennedy Center tribute to Buddy Guy.

When she did a number from Luck of the Draw, Bonnie noted that the album had come out 25 years ago. Which just doesn’t seem right but it is, and that’s just how it is now. And I remembered Beth and I seeing her at the Assembly Hall in Champaign, Ill., back then in, gulp, 1991. Her then-husband Michael O’Keefe joined her on stage for a duet, which completely stoked the crowd. And I remembered running into our friends Karen and Jim, who extended their condolences—my father had recently died. I remembered how bewildering that all still was, and how much their kindness meant.

Back at the Chicago Theater: When Bonnie did a Sippie Wallace tune from her very first album (1971), I was reminded of my sister, when she brought home a new album from college during a holiday break. She and her dorm pals had discovered this cool girl singer named Bonnie Raitt who played a mean slide guitar. Kris played it for me, and I was hooked as a teenager, way back then. And I remembered how much good music my big sister introduced to me.

Then Bonnie did a song that was written by a member of NRBQ, a band that warmed up for her when I saw her with my friends Mike, Susie, and Pick at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. back in the 80s. And I remembered all the good times we had back then, camping along Skyline Drive, and just sharing home-cooked meals.

She closed with this favorite. Perfect.

And during Bonnie’s final encore, well, I went into full teary-eyed nostalgia mode.

Pick and I go back to 1978. We met when I was a college student on a D.C. internship.

And I’ve known my friend Kenwood since we were freshmen in college—we became roommates as sophomores and have been fast friends ever since. Let’s say we have stories.

When I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1979, I was one of the lucky few who had a job waiting for me—in D.C. with the same organization where I’d interned. I was a green kid away from home, lonely, and living in an expensive place on a very modest salary. Pick took me under his wing—and his friendship helped keep me above water. We hung out together, and eventually, when he decided he wanted to save a few bucks by taking on a roommate, we moved into the euphemistically named “Country Club Towers” apartment building.

One thing, though: Only a couple weeks after we’d moved in, my old buddy Kenwood would be visiting. He was on the tail end of a months-long motorcycle journey. He’d been on the road, camping and rarely sleeping in a bed, and when he arrived, well, that’s how he looked.

He announced his presence by pulling his motorcycle onto our apartment’s first-floor patio. I wasn’t sure what the neighbors would think, but I was more concerned about how my new roommate would take it all.

Pick didn’t blink. Kenwood ended up staying a few weeks, and somehow, the Culpeper, Va.-born gay guy—and the Mossville, Ill., country boy with long hair and bug splatters—hit it off splendidly. They even sang some hymns they both knew from childhood churchgoing days. Who knew?

Over time, the three of us adopted a song from Bonnie’s Home Plate album called Sweet and Shiny Eyes. It’s a simple little tune written by Tom Waits that recalls a road trip with friends. Over the years, we’ve been known to sing this song and drink a toast to one another on our birthdays.

So yeah. Music is pretty damn amazing. If you’re keeping score, in a two-hour span in a theater in downtown Chicago, I was transported to my hometown when my sister was still alive and introducing me to cool stuff from college. To my college dorm room in a triple in Hopkins Hall. To Washington, D.C. where I met friends from exotic places like New York and North Carolina and Virginia. To our lives and friendships in Champaign-Urbana.

Thanks Bonnie.

And here’s to great music, and all my great friends.

One good thing came from the fall I took in December: Breaking my hand convinced me to apply for a Taxi Access Program (TAP) card.

The TAP card gives taxi discounts to Chicagoans whose disabilities make it difficult to access regular public transportation. Just “tap” the card on a screen in the back seat the same way others tap their credit cards and receive a discounted ride (taxi drivers are reimbursed for the remaining cost by the Regional Transit Authority).

I won’t stop taking the bus–at least when the sidewalks are all clear.

My pride prevented me from applying for a TAP card before. I felt perfectly capable of taking a regular Chicago Transit Authority bus with my Seeing Eye dog Whitney to the memoir-writing class I lead in Lincoln Park every Monday. That was until it started to snow and was difficult to get to the bus stop. And then I fell and broke my hand. I wore a cast for six weeks. I started to think, gee, maybe those cards are intended for people like.me!

I called the RTA to apply. The RTA sent reams of paperwork, Mike helped me fill the forms out, we mailed them in, the RTA called me for a phone interview, they set up a time for me to come to their office in-person, I arrived at the RTA office and answered more questions, Whitney led me to a bus stop and an RTA staffer trailed behind to watch us step onto a bus. All this to see whether I’m “disabled enough” to qualify for a TAP card.

I don’t berate the RTA for putting me through all those hoops. I blame the scoundrels who fake or exaggerate their disabilities to use service animals, park in handicapped parking spots, and get cab discounts. In the end, I passed the audition. Or, I guess I failed: I qualified. My TAP card came in the mail last week! Perfect timing, as I’ll need it on my totally blind day today:

• 10:30 a.m. Call Flash Cab to Use TAP card for cab ride from our apartment to Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA)
• 11:00 a.m. Attend first ever special hour-long tour at MCA for people who are blind or have visual impairments
• Noon Review tour with MCA staff and share suggestions and recommendations for the next special tour
• 1:00 p.m. Phone Flash Cab for pick up at MCA and ride to Chicago History Museum
• 1:30:p.m. Attend first ever touch tour created by the Chicago History Museum for visitors who are blind or have low vision — it’s a 90-minute highlights tour of a permanent exhibition called Chicago: Crossroads of America (can you believe both of these are on the same day?!)
• 3:00 p.m.
  A friend who is meeting Whitney and me to join us on the Chicago History Museum tour will walk with us to La Diosa to enjoy a delicious early dinner together — La Diosa owner and manager Chef Laura Martinez is, you guessed it…totally blind
• 4:30 p.m. or so Call Flash Cab to use TAP card for taxi ride home.

My TAP card won’t work on Uber or Lift or other ride-sharing services, but all the registered cab companies in Chicago are supposed to accept them. I like to use Flash Cab, however. They have a long history of being respectful to riders with disabilities, and Flash Cab drivers are familiar with the TAP card and how it works — I don’t have to worry that they’ll question the TAP card or make a fuss about accepting it.

If it weren’t for my new TAP card I don’t think I’d sign up for so many things in one day — I’d be too anxious about bus routes, getting to new bus stops, knowing what commands to give Whitney when we disembark — excuse the dog pun — at a new and unfamiliar corner. Thanks to TAP, I’m actually looking forward to going totally blind today.

I have a part-time job moderating a blog for Easter Seals National Headquarters, and in honor of Valentine’s Day, Easter Seals HQ is devoting the month of February to stories about “love and relationships.” My mission? Recruit people with disabilities (or those who love or have a relationship with someone who has a disability) to write guest posts on the subject.

I started by contacting a writer in one of my memoir classes. She often mentioned her fondness for a brother-in-law who’d been born with developmental disabilities back in the 1940s. Gerald died in December, and when I contacted this writer to see if she had any interest in writing about him for Easter Seals, she emailed back and wasn’t ready just yet. “Would it be okay to pass the opportunity on to my daughter Katie?”

Katie Irey started her Tribute to my Uncle Gerald post explaining that her Uncle Gerald was a lifelong Trekkie. “I didn’t know my uncle when he was a child, but I imagine he may have found some comfort in this TV community where it was okay to be different,” she wrote. “In fact, it was celebrated.”

Katie was a teenager in 1995, when “Star Trek: Voyager” introduced Captain Kathryn Janeway, its first female commanding officer. “Whenever we were together, Uncle Gerald never failed to remind me that the Captain of the Voyager and I had the same name, Kathryn, that she was the first female Starfleet commander, and that maybe I could be a commander, too,” she said. “This I believe was my uncle’s way of encouraging me to pursue my dreams, and letting me know how proud he was to be with me on my journey.

Another guest post on the Easter Seals blog was written by Bryan MacMurray, a friend I met at the University of Illinois. Bryan is blind, and he’s married to a woman who uses a wheelchair. Lots to say about all that, so Bryan’s essay was split into two. One part is about Bryan and Joanna’s lives now, after retiring to Arizona. The other part is called Every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite, and it explains how the two of them met in an elevator. “I realized right away this sweet-sounding girl with the slight accent was in a manual wheelchair,” he wrote. “That was fine by me — I am just a couple of inches over five feet tall, and I tended to like girls who didn’t have a big height advantage.”

Today the Easter Seals national blog published a piece by Bernhard Walke, whose five-year-old daughter has cerebral palsy (you might remember the post we published here on the Safe & Sound blog when Elena dressed as a bulldozer for Halloween).

Elena, the bulldozer.

Bernhard is an administrator at a high school situated in a Chicago neighborhood that has a long history of gang activity, marginalization, poverty, and other social problems. His wife Rosa is a teacher there, too, and his guest post is about the kinship their high school students have formed with their daughter.

I encourage you to visit the Easter Seals blog to read Bernhard’s thoughtful post in its entirety, and I’ll leave you here with a sneak preview I know will leave you wanting for more:

As I pulled into my parking spot, assembled Elena’s wheelchair, and planted her in it, I heard the 3:30 dismissal bell chime. I grunted and bemoaned that I would have to navigate my way through hundreds of high school students at dismissal in order to pick up my wife.

As I began to make my way through the halls, though, one of our senior boys who is typically very quiet and has a meek personality noticed me pushing my five-year-old through the crowded halls. He sprung to action, clearing a path like a border collie through the halls. He admonished other students,”Hey! Get off your phone and pay attention! Mr. Walke is trying to get through with his daughter.” “Javier! Can you get the door and hold it open for Mr. Walke and his daughter?” “Mrs. Walke! Mr. Walke and your daughter are both here.”

I thanked him for his unsolicited help and we were on our way to Elena’s appointment.

As we were driving back home, I marveled at the selfless love and care that this student demonstrated toward a young five-year old that he had just met. I also remembered that this student had lost his mother at a young age. It was just him and his father at home. I like to think that we both realized that life doesn’t often go as planned, but it doesn’t mean that there is any less love in it.