May the Holidays Deliver Cheer

Most days our mail does not arrive until after five o'clock. It's a large building in a sea of large buildings, but I don't think that's the reason for the late delivery.  

Snow, rain, heat, or gloom of night, just as the Postal Service has always promised, our mail carrier, Teresa, shows up. She unloads her little truck, piles packages and letters and lord knows what else into the sort of wagon most of us use for idyllic summer picnics, and hobbles into the lobby. Hobbles, because she has some sort of crippling condition that renders her stooped and painstakingly slow. Teresa spends only a few moments in the lobby, catching her breath, no doubt, dropping off the larger packages, and sharing some gossip with the afternoon door-person. Most of us never cross paths with Teresa, as she disappears quickly -- as quickly as she can -- into the back, where she wheels around in some sort of assistive device, filling  upwards of 400 boxes. 

The first time I actually met Teresa, I had caught up with her in the lobby to let her know that I had changed apartments, hoping she would intercept mail not yet forwarded. She already knew -- not me, but my name and my new location -- and she assured me it would be done. What struck me most was not her efficiency, admirable though it was. It was her smile. Wide, radiant, sincere. Such a smile atop a body that seems to have broken down a good bit, a body compelled nevertheless to slog through the sort of abominable meteorological onslaughts that keep those of us with fully functioning legs increasingly dependent upon Grub Hub, wishing they would also walk our dogs.  

I kept my eye out for Teresa's truck yesterday, because I wanted to give her a little something for the holidays. I wondered whether even somebody like Teresa, dedicated and dependable no matter what, would show up to navigate the day's icy walkways and arctic temperatures, not to mention the winds near Lake Michigan that made it almost impossible to open our building's back door. 

Shame on me for my skepticism. Teresa was already in the back, so I opened my little box and called out to her. She wheeled around, perched exactly at the right level to peer back out at me. Just her sparkling eyes and her glorious smile sending rays of light through my empty mailbox. Largely invisible Teresa, radiant just to say hello, even before I handed her my insignificant gift. 

She is retiring this week, she told me.  As thrilled as I am for Teresa -- she has certainly earned some R & R -- I feel a little lost. Not because of the mail -- I do most things on-line, so snail mail has become somewhat irrelevant. I expect though, that in Teresa's place, there will be somebody young and upright, someone who arrives much earlier in the day, someone who maybe resents having to lug around other folks' mail in snow, rain, heat, gloom, or whatever else Chicago winters have to offer. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and Glorious Retirement, Teresa. And happy and healthy holidays to all the Teresa's out there, and to the rest of us who might try harder, next year, to find things to smile about. 

When I'm Almost 64!

I was seven years old when the Beatles recorded When I'm 64. The ancient age seemed unimaginable to me back then, as I'm sure it did for the 24 year old Paul McCartney. Or for John Lennon, who probably didn't have dying by assassination at the age of 40 on his Bingo card. 

Well into the first week of my 64th year now, I distinctly remember reading the poem by A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six. I had yet to turn six when my parents bought me the collection of poems, but, from what I could tell, six would be great. The pinnacle even.

When I was Five, I was just alive. But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever, So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever. 

I don't recall much about being six, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't as great as A.A. Milne cracked it up to be, and I'm willing to bet I couldn't wait to be seven. At the very least, I'd be more clever, with nothing but good things ahead. 

Sixty-four looms large now. Paul's musings about irrelevance seem a bit harsh, and Milne's musings about cleverness seem a bit short-sighted, but the future seems daunting in its increasing brevity. I've read that Paul has rethought the lyrics over the years, suggesting recently that he should move the goalpost  to 94. Sigh. From the guy who yearned so wholeheartedly for yesterday, it's refreshing to see such a sanguine endorsement of the present, at any age. 

My 64th year began well. I flew into the path of an oncoming hurricane and did not blow away, barely even got wet. In other weather news, a red tsunami never materialized and a democratic republic far more ancient and fragile than I am managed to live another day. Another two years, at least. My faith in humanity has been reinvigorated, though I realize there is so much work to be done. The good guys are neither irrelevant nor as clever as clever can be, and it's up to us -- all of us -- to determine what lies ahead.

As I travel toward older age with what appears to be accelerating speed, I cannot help but wonder what life will be like when I'm 64. Or 65, or 66. I'm neither clever enough to know, nor irrelevant enough to not care. I believe in yesterday; how else does one learn how to handle today, or tomorrow. As Paul has no doubt discovered, birthday greetings and bottles of wine and Sunday morning rides are here to stay. I've yet to learn to knit or mend fuses, but I'm always learning something, and there is never a shortage of sweet surprises. 

When I'm 64, in less than a year, the one thing I know for sure is I'll still be a work in progress. 

Chasing Rainbows in New York

My mother has been deaf for so many years I barely notice. She seems unfazed by silence, and I only register her deafness when it becomes inconvenient for me.  Like when she would call to me from another room and, not hearing my response, just call to me again. Like when she makes me write even the most insignificant conversation fillers down. Like when she insists she can hear some people, but not me.  I have become oblivious to the void. 

Until there is music.

Somewhere, over the rainbow. . . .   I was sitting in companionable silence with mom while she watched the news and I sort of half listened. The deafness I’m used to, but the whole nursing home thing, well, that’s a different story. Again, though, she seems unfazed by her new reality, while I focus obsessively on petty inconveniences. My frequent trips to New York. Nursing home smells. My vital and independent mom, confined to a bed. 

Someday I'll wish upon a star, and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. . . .  Maybe. The television is always on, with closed captions for mom and low volume for me. I like background noise, and it occurs to me how privileged I am to be able to have it but ignore it – do something more interesting. It’s a guilty pleasure, relegating sound to some auditory footnote while my mom doesn’t even have a choice.  She cannot hear the steady drumbeat of hallway noise –the periodic beeping of call buttons, the gentle patois of gossiping aides. And she was utterly unaware of the dulcet tones that suddenly wafted in -- soft guitar chords, a sweet and clear male voice, a faint yet equally sweet male voice joining in. I went out to investigate.

Where troubles melt like lemon drops. . . .  An elderly gentleman, sporting a red white and blue tie, bald on top, a soft cloud of strawberry blond hair cascading over the nape of his neck. Had there been a pot of gold, I would not have been surprised. The gentleman in the next room had pulled into the doorway in his wheelchair, and was singing along. Neither appeared to notice me standing there. 

Hearing loss sometimes has its perks, I suppose. Several years ago, mom came with me and my daughter to see Bohemian Rhapsody. Not the sort of movie that lends itself to closed-captioning, but it was a perfect way to give her a chance to rest for a few hours before dinner. It was joyously deafening, Bohemian Rhapsody. Mom slept. We all emerged raving – a win-win. I hoped she could at least feel the beat. 

But now, hearing loss seemed to be anything but a perk. I leaned against the doorjamb and listened.  If happy little bluebirds fly, beyond the rainbow – why, oh why can’t I? I clapped. I thanked the gentleman with the soft voice and the soft cloud of strawberry blond hair. He nodded. Then he was gone. Beyond the rainbow? To the elevator? I don’t know.  As quickly as he had appeared, he was nowhere to be found. 

I went back in. Mom hadn’t noticed I was gone, so I didn’t bother to explain. I looked out her window. It was raining, but no rainbows. No bluebirds, just pigeons. 

When Your Town Becomes a Headline

 I hesitated for a moment when the young woman in the elevator asked me where I had gotten my sandals. In Highland Park, I whispered. At my friends store. The young woman flinched ever so slightly, as the degrees of separation in which we all tend to take comfort suddenly disappeared.

Sandy Hook. Parkland. Uvalde. Countless others, and now, Highland Park. Ordinary towns to many, at one time, but now horrific -- albeit ordinary -- headlines to most. Still, we don't tend to dwell on the names of these places, most days.  Just on the days when a new one is added. The woman in the elevator told me she had once been to Lake Forest, but never to Highland Park -- just an inch away. The stain of tragedy seeped toward her now as the mere mention of my having been there breathed life into the unthinkable thing that only happens elsewhere.

For six years, somewhere between packing up my five bedroom house in Deerfield, one town over, and my move back to Chicago, I lived -- and worked, and played -- in Highland Park. It was close enough to my friends in Deerfield, convenient enough for my daughter to finish up high school there, but just far enough away for me to start a new chapter, relatively unencumbered by old wounds. I took to Highland Park, well, like a fly takes to shit. The people, the relatively bustling suburban downtown, the watering hole that became my real-life "Cheers." I lived within spitting distance of the massacre, have walked the now blood-stained sidewalks countless times. 

When I finally packed up and left for Chicago, I did so with some trepidation, but not nearly as much as that of my friends. Will you be careful? The city is dangerous. The concern worsened over the past few years, with good reason, after violence littered my neighborhood with boarded up windows and the steady drumbeat of shootings seemed to rise. Lately, I've rolled my eyes at the concern, musing out loud about how no place is safe, nobody is safe. Still, when I visited Highland Park just two days before "it" happened, I considered moving back to the idyllic embrace of its leafy and quiet streets. 

Highland Park, my town, has become a headline. Just like Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde, and countless others. I have left, but I return often, and it is still my town. I am geographically removed, but a piece of my heart remains, now heavy and broken. I held my breath as they released the names of the dead, relieved that I did not know any of them but devastated beyond words. I have read and listened to stories shared by people I do know, who were right there, having escaped the carnage but for the grace of who knows what. My obstetrician, the good-natured doctor who delivered my third child, is now a household name, a hero of sorts. There are too few degrees of separation this time, and my already overwhelming sense of anger and despair has reached new heights. 

The people of Highland Park, like the people in all those other towns, will survive. But how many others will suffer, or die, in the meantime?

Looking for that Groovy Feeling

On my way to the hospital to visit my mom this morning, I walked under the tram that glides alongside the Queensboro Bridge (aka the 59th Street Bridge  and the "feelin groovy bridge of Simon & Garfunkel fame) to transport commuters back and forth to Roosevelt Island. Commuters and, one day about 46 years ago, me and my mom. Because it was new, and we had been shopping nearby, and, well, just because. 

It's one of those days that has always stayed with me, and when I asked my mom whether she remembered, her broad smile assured me that it has stayed with her as well. It was uncharacteristically impulsive for my mom, who, for as long as I can remember, has always tried to adhere to some sort of plan, to take a tram ride for no reason at all, particularly when there was still good shopping to be done. My favorite memories of her always seem to involve veering from the plan. I remember we giggled when we took that tram ride to nowhere, back and forth, just for the fun of it. Me and mom, feelin' groovy. 

I find myself yearning to tell the nurses, the doctors, anybody here, really, about that day in 1976 when my mom and I sailed through the air across the East River, the intricate frame of the bridge close enough to almost touch. I want to tell them about that groovy day, and all the other unexpectedly groovy days in between in an otherwise overly orderly life. Like the time she zip-lined over a canyon (in her seventies). Or when she laced up a pair of ice skates and seemed surprisingly graceful and at home. Or when she flew out to Chicago for a day just to see her grandchildren when my father was ill. 

There is somebody new in the bed on the other side of the curtain in mom's room today. I glanced at her as I walked in but I didn't really see her, did I. Like all the others who have come and gone in that bed, in all the beds here, she is sick. She is alone. She is utterly without history or context, other than whatever medical notes are in her chart. I don't know what might make her smile, what memories she holds dear, what she has done in her life to make herself feel groovy, if only for a little while. Nor do the doctors and nurses. It's not their business, and it is, quite legitimately, not relevant.

Last week, during a brief stint in the emergency room, it took me hours to realize that the woman languishing in the bed next to mom, still wearing her boots and street clothing, was somebody other than a woman languishing in a bed. It was only after I realized she was about to drift over the side of the bed that we started to talk. I learned of her husband, recently felled by a horrible dementia. How she grapples with what has happened to him, the man who practiced law for so many years and took such good care of her. How they lost a son 18 years ago, and how she is only now able to talk about it without bursting into tears. Her surviving son showed up later, seemingly as annoyed with his mother as I tend to get with my own. We both need reminders, I thought, of who they are and who they have been and how they have lived and what they have lost. What we stand to lose. 

A little over two months ago, just as things began to unravel, we took my mother out to dinner for her 91st birthday, and had to  put her in a wheelchair to make the journey feasible. Still, she could walk shorter distances, and take care of herself. Still, her hair was perfectly coiffed and she was wearing her impeccable designer clothing and her favorite jewelry. My brother is the one who noticed, as we wheeled her the few blocks to the restaurant, that she had become invisible. People always remark how beautiful she is (and with good reason), but in a wheelchair, as beautiful as she still was, nobody saw her. Oddly, from my vantage point behind her, I was pushing a veritable queen, or at least a force of nature. 

As I stare out the window of her hospital room now, I can see 59th Street Bridge, in all its splendor, and I can see the tram lumbering by every so often. I can see me and my mom through the windows, giggling, feelin' groovy, taking it all in just for the hell of it. 

Swimming Against the Tide

The gloves are off, and so are the masks. Spring is paying an early and no doubt brief visit to Chicago, just in time for the river to be dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day. A pall appears to have lifted, different from the previous teasing respites from pandemic restrictions. Very few masks at all today, not even hanging at the ready off of wrists. Tougher to discern political affiliations on sight, but that's probably a good thing.  

Today I reveled at the faces in the elevator, surprised at what some of the dog owners I've known for months actually look like. A new neighbor introduced himself, and it took us both a moment to realize we had spoken at length only weeks ago, hidden behind our masks. I reveled as I strolled along the lakefront toward the river, not just at the mosaic of faces but at the palpable sense of renewal, of a city being reborn. 

My revelry is tempered, of course, not quite as unadulterated as I would like. For two years, all of us -- my brother, my children, and I -- have taken every precaution to ensure that my elderly mother would not become an untimely covid statistic. We celebrated her 90th by zoom, and a few months later, about a minute after I received my second shot, I traveled in for a real hug. We convened for her 91st in person, about a  week late and complicated only by the need for a wheelchair to transport her. That was only a month ago. The tussle over the wheelchair seems quaint now. 

I resent the jarring twist of fate that suddenly stopped her in her tracks after two years of extraordinary prudence. A twist of fate having nothing to do with covid and everything to do with age and a deteriorating spine and a bunch of other "stuff" -- to be technical -- a twist of fate that I suppose should hardly be jarring. I'm not a mathematician, but I can do basic math, and I was pretty certain she was somewhere on the back nine (as am I). I chided her repeatedly when the threat would temporarily abate, told her to get out and live because, really, what was she waiting for. And she did get out, with some trepidation. And I kept my fingers crossed each time she did, because, realism notwithstanding, there is a piece of me that always believed my mother was immortal, and why mess with that.

In what seems like a blink of an eye, my mother is now confined to a bed in a hospital, existing in some ill-defined space between the mental coherence my brother and I crave and her dire need for pain medication. A blink of an eye for us, though knowing her she has likely been "playing through the pain" far longer than we realize. We don’t know if she will ever get better, and we don’t know what "better" might look like. We don't even know what we want it to look like, but, lucky for us, that's not our choice to make.

With somewhat divergent manifestations, my brother and I are devastated, and we will wallow together and separately in our sorrows as we need to. Geography and disposition have long allowed him to be far more attentive to our mother. This, with a sense of finality far greater than any illness or accidents we have dealt with before, has forced us both to reckon with our differences. Sometimes, I think we exaggerate our reactions to our newfound despair, if only to emphasize to the other -- or to ourselves -- that our own way makes sense. But none of it makes sense. If anything, though, these past few weeks of far too much time together in a hospital room followed by surprisingly therapeutic dinners together in a nearby Italian restaurant have helped us with that. For that, I am grateful, and I revel to the extent I am able.

The river is bright green today, and, thanks to a controversial feat of engineering at the turn of the last century that reversed its flow, neither that shade of green nor the algae- and clay-induced mud green of normal days will ever spill into the crystalline sparkle of our lakefront. Still, under the surface, the water is murky and the tides shift, no matter what we do. 

I Need a Hero. Or a Banana Forehand.

 Yesterday, I watched the final set of the men's final at the Australian Open three times, knowing the outcome before I saw a single point. No suspense, not even a shred of skin in the game, but for almost an hour, three times in one day, I watched, transfixed, holding my breath as I waited to see whether another seemingly wide ball would descend in some impossible arc onto the fuzzy edge of a line. 

Greatness is refreshing. I have not written in a while -- at least not for the sheer joy of it -- because, quite frankly, joy tends to be elusive these days. The kind of joy that infects your days, reminds you that everything will be all right, that makes you not toy with the idea that "it's five o'clock somewhere" at ten o'clock in the morning. Sure, happiness pays a visit every so often, and I still laugh (a lot), but it's so hard to keep the despair from creeping in, even with a quasi-moratorium on cable news. 

We are desperately in need of heroes, and I have believed for a long time that athletes are good candidates. As a Jewish girl growing up in Brooklyn, I was not exactly raised to value athletic prowess, at least not as a virtue that would benefit me in my own life. (I like to think I could've been a "contendah" in some sport or another, if only my parents had poured themselves into it, but they were probably right to assume that was not my best path to success.) Still, I discovered, when I was nine, the inexplicable and unadulterated joy one feels as a fan when athletes become heroes. The Mets beat the unbeatable Orioles. The Miracle Mets. The Amazin' Mets. Against all odds, they were the champs.

At some point, it's less about the athletic gifts than the sheer mental fortitude, and, as I spent more than three hours yesterday on the edge of my seat, I wondered why we don't have more heroes like Rafa (or my beloved Roger) or any of the others who have that rare combination of genius, integrity, grace under pressure, and faith in themselves that the rest of us can only dream about. Even for those among us without genius or gifts, the grace under pressure and faith in oneself is certainly a goal worth achieving, one that, for me, remains elusive. Shame on "Novax" and others like him who possess the genius but don't make the most of their gifts. For the rest of us mortals, who were not born with it, it's the chicken soup we need for our souls. 

I need a hero. We all need heroes. Maybe we need to be our own heroes, if we want to see how this is all going to play out. We are not alone in this, but we are supposed to be exceptional, and we find ourselves  at the mercy of evil, ignorance, cowardice, and greed. Evil, because the worst among us have crawled out from under rocks and have risen to the top, displacing the cream that's supposed to be there. Ignorance, because we have half a country that believes abortion is comparable to the Holocaust and books in school are bad but guns in school are not really a problem and the workings of a free market to eradicate hateful or dangerous speech equates to a violation of the First Amendment. Cowardice and greed, well, looking at you Republicans in power. 

We are spinning wildly out of control, and we need to be a bit more than good ball strikers. We need passion, and fortitude, and the belief that we can change the arc, bring ourselves back inside the lines.
We need a banana forehand.