So yeah, that really happened

Hi,

My husband Mike’s giving me a blog break again. Here’s his latest:

She’s back on top of the world.

Today Beth had her first followup visit with one of the cardiologists who treated her the morning of her emergency surgery. Three notes about our time with Dr. Ranya Sweis today:

1. She’s the best cardiologist in the world in my book, not to mention a helluva human being.
2. Beth’s doing great, on or ahead of schedule on all counts. She’ll be swimming laps before you know it.
3. Dr. Sweis recounted the events of that Thursday for both of us. I had most of it right, but she added some missing pieces. And her  account confirmed that when my own heart missed a few beats that morning out of fear that I was losing Beth, it was for good reason. I wasn’t over-reacting. Beth was on very thin ice. The team at Northwestern worked magnificently, heroically, efficiently. They have a lot to be proud of.

We’re lucky. And one of these days maybe I’ll feel lucky. And triumphant. Until then, I’m just content to feel a little numb and worn out and not so much lucky as … grateful.

Grateful that we have health insurance. That we flew Beth home from Vermont early. That she had her first scary incident in a cardiologist’s office, and that Northwestern Memorial Hospital was the nearest trauma center.

That I could get a concerned call at 5:30 a.m., take a shower, step into a cab and be at the hospital in roughly 18 minutes. That all those people with all that training and experience were there. Fantastic young people. Twenty-something Amandas and Beckys and Christophers and Laurens with knowledge and presence beyond their years.

Grateful that they all told me everything as soon as they knew it, before, during, and after the surgery. That Dr. Sweis made me promise her — after delivering the news that Beth’s heart had gone bonkers and had to be shocked back into rhythm, and that she was heading to emergency surgery — that I’d call a friend to be with me. That I made good on that promise, something I probably wouldn’t have done 25 years ago.

And that when I called our friend Greg he said he was on the first day of five days off. Greg’s a flight attendant. He never has five days off. “Do you want me to come down there?” I said yes. And he did. Within an hour. And he brought a fresh new Hav-A-Hank, some sugarless gum and salty junk food. And he shepherded me through the next few hours when I was in a kind of trance and couldn’t make mundane decisions about things like whether to go for a walk to get some fresh air or not.

Grateful that the cab driver who took me to the hospital on Saturday morning was tuned into WBEZ and This American Life. After I got in he turned it down to be polite. I asked him to turn it back up, and we rode to the hospital listening to David Sedaris read his story about his jazz-loving father’s record collection, his dad’s ill-fated attempt to enlist his children into his own private jazz combo, and listening to Sedaris’ uncanny Billy Holiday impressions. The cab driver and I laughed together the whole ride.

And grateful that family and friends made respectfully, perfectly timed visits that broke the hospital monotony. (And later, after the hospital, took Beth on walks, took Whitney on walks, and delivered meals to our door.)

I have relived those terrifying hours in the hospital, retold the story again and again;  I’m grateful to all of you who’ve listened. Once I start I have to tell it all, just to get to the good ending, almost afraid that if I get stopped in the middle it’d end differently. It’s crazy all the vignettes that still stream through my head.

I imagine the heartbreak of folks who do lose someone suddenly, unexpectedly; to illness, to accident, to violence. And I wish so hard that they all had our outcome. And I hope they have the kind of support I’ve had, we’ve had.

Thank you all.

Time for the next chapter.

Where Whitney was

People have been asking if Whitney stayed with me while I was in the hospital last week.

She did not.

That’s Greg with his and Lois’ dogs Gamma and Griffin.

Legally, I could have had her in the room with me — Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act allows those of us who rely on service dogs to have them along in hospital rooms. All bets are off, however, if the dog constitutes either a “fundamental alteration of goods and services available for all” or a “direct threat to safety.” So while Whitney could have legally sat at my bedside once I was recovering in a regular hospital room, she would not have been allowed while I was in ICU. She wouldn’t have been with me in any sterile rooms (such as the operating room). Certain areas of the emergency room/departments would have been forbidden, and she wouldn’t have been able to ride in the ambulance with me to the hospital in the first place — even Mike had to follow behind in a cab.

Hospital staff cannot be made responsible for caring for a service dog while a patient with a disability is in the hospital, and I’m afraid my case left doctors and nurses with bigger problems to solve than figuring out when and where to take Whitney out to pee. The truth is, we never even thought of asking my Seeing Eye dog to sit still and behave at my hospital bedside while I recovered. It wouldn’t have been fair to an energetic ball of fur like her. I didn’t need her to guide me anywhere, and she would have been bored out of her mind.

Our dear friend Greg Schafer rushed to the waiting room after cardiologists recommended Mike call a friend to be there with him while I was being operated on. After surgery was over, Greg offered to stop by our apartment and fetch Whitney, take her home with with him for a few days. Greg and his wife Lois have a huge yard with two dogs and all sorts of other critters. Whitney spent the weekend there tracking deer and enjoying long walks while Mike spent time helping me recover at Northwestern Hospital.

Greg and Lois returned Whitney to Chicago on Sunday. After getting her settled in our apartment, they stopped by the hospital to regale Mike and me with details of ways Whitney spent time with their own beautiful dogs, Griffin and Gamma. Their stories really cheered me up. Whitney was there to greet Mike at home that night, and she was at the door waiting for me when I finally returned home Tuesday. A joyful reunion for sure.

That’s Whit wearing her Gentle Leader.

Surgeons had to cut my sternum to perform open-heart surgery, and until that bone heals I can’t let Whitney wear a harness and pull me. Trainers at the Seeing eye have dealt with graduates who have had open-heart surgery before. Until my sternum heals, they recommend I have Whitney wear a Gentle Leader, a collar designed to gently discourage dogs from pulling while walking on a leash. Mike comes along on my walks with Whitney, and each day the length of our cardio walks expands a minute or two. Neighbors are getting used to seeing me sauntering down the block with Whitney on my left, Mike on my right: a heart-healthy sandwich.

Friends have been volunteering to take Whitney on faster walks every day too, to keep her in shape. Others fill in for Mike when he isn’t available to take me on the slower-paced walks. Between these volunteer walkers, the friend who brought her violin over to perform for me, the ones who have sent or delivered food, friends who have sent cards and music CDs and concert tickets and audio books and get-well bracelets and a lounging gown and body lotion and flowers and gift cards and whew, you’ve all been so kind I need to stop here to take a breath before I go on: my lungs aren’t back to normal quite yet!

Pause.

Okay, I’m back. Thanks to all of those friends and all of you blog readers who have left such encouraging comments here on the blog, I feel loved, and I feel grateful. I’m alive, and I’m healing. And I’m looking forward to getting on the road again with Whitney.

For my first cardio rehab walk, I’m heading to 7-Eleven for a Megamillions ticket

Mike chauffeured me home on Tuesday.

Listening to Mike read all your loving and glowing blog comments out loud to me in my hospital room over the past week sometimes gave me the feeling I was attending my own funeral. Doctors did have to shock my heart back to work last Thursday, so it was kind of like that. But I’m still here, and I’m more grateful than ever for my wonderful friends and family.

I am a lucky girl.

Turns out the cardiac surgeon who happened to be on hand to do my emergency open-heart repair job last week is one of the top cardiac surgeons in the United States. Patrick McCarthy came to Northwestern Memorial Hospital via the Cleveland Clinic. And a Couple nights ago, he came to my hospital room to introduce himself and see the miracle girl sitting up in a chair and talking. The benign tumors he’d removed were like a sea anemone, he said. “It was flapping around your aortic valve and attaching itself here and there for a while, and then flapping around again.” He’s done over ten thousand heart surgeries and has seen a benign tumor on the aortic valve a few times before. Never one this big, though. He said it was as big as a marble.

The famous doctor sounded very pleased to have a photo of the tumor he could send to the cardiologist who’d had me ambulanced here last Wednesday. “It really is very exciting.” Considering the outcome, I had to agree.

Mike and I both thanked Dr. McCarthy profusely before he left the room , of course, and I told him surviving all this has given me a lot to ponder. As we shook hands to say goodbye, I jokingly asked if he thought I should join a religious cult now and move to an underdeveloped country to help people less fortunate. Dr. McCarthy didn’t bat an eye. “No,” he said. “I think you should buy a lottery ticket.”

Miracle girl lives!

Wedding day, July 28, 1984. Thanks to some terrific people, me and the miracle girl can look forward to another anniversary. (Photo by Rick Amodt.)

Hello everyone. It’s still me filling in for Beth. She’s home — from Vermont, anyway — but a funny thing happened on her way back to the blog. Many of you already know the story — for those who are reading it for the first time, apologies for the scare. But Beth and I pieced together the following account because we thought you’d want to know. We’re still sorting some things out, so don’t be surprised if we don’t respond right away. Thank you for reading—Mike

Beth had emergency open-heart surgery Thursday morning, and she is OK. More than OK. She’s recovering remarkably well, crazy remarkably well, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I just left her room. She is walking the hallways, with a guide, and still attached to surgical drains.

The docs and staff who got her to this point have been streaming through over the past couple days and they all come through Beth’s hospital room door saying, in a tone of amazement, “I just wanted to lay eyes on the miracle girl.”

For the past two weeks, starting when Beth was still in Vermont, she had been experiencing infrequent burning sensations, followed by pain in her chest. Our friend Debbie Wood had a heart attack in her 40s. Debbie works at Northwestern University and by chance was involved in the design project Beth worked on there last month. During that time, Debbie reminded Beth to see a doctor if she ever had any chest pain. “Women tend to ignore them,” she warned. “It could be serious.”

Friends from New Hampshire drove to Vermont and brought Beth to the Burlington airport and she flew home, earlier than planned, to me. At home, her pains seemed to increase in frequency. But they didn’t fit the description of angina – no swelling in the ankles, no lightheadedness, and the pain didn’t spread into her arms or back. Rather than go to the ER, we had our endocrinologist get Beth in for an appointment for a stress test/echocardiogram last Wednesday afternoon at a downtown cardiologist’s office.

That’s when the sh-t hit the fan. Beth had what was technically a heart attack while she was on the treadmill. A Chicago EMS crew rushed Beth to the Northwestern Emergency Room in an ambulance. Followed by me in a cab.

Her angiogram the next morning showed, against all reasonable expectations for someone who’d been diabetic 47 years, that Beth’s arteries were clear. When the cardiologist came from the cardiac catheterization lab to brief me, she said, “Dude, I hope my arteries are that clean when I’m 54.” Which sounded like good news. Except it still left them not knowing what the problem was. And that’s when Beth’s heart went into fibrillation. They had to shock it back into rhythm.  No time to spare now. No decision , either. Open heart surgery.

A dozen staff frantically prepped her for surgery, like a scene out of House. When the anesthesiologist came with release papers for me to sign, and just before they wheeled her away, he said, “ She’s unstable. We’re going to do the best we can do.”

It was only on the operating table that they solved the puzzle — why she had been experiencing chest pains over the past couple weeks. We worried that it had something to do with that staph infection she’d gotten back in Vermont. Or coronary artery disease, which diabetics are more susceptible to than the general population. But no. They’d found — and removed — three benign tumors on Beth’s aortic valve. Such tumors are uncommon. But Beth was, as is her wont, one-of-a-kind. In the surgeon’s words, “I’ve done 10,000 operations and I’ll tell you — one of these tumors was the biggest I’ve ever seen. It’s more than a centimeter.”

He explained that the tumors flapped when Beth’s valve opened and closed. And one of them, the big SOB tumor, intermittently cut off blood flow to Beth’s heart. Leaving her with a burning sensation followed by pain in her chest.

And so, through the combination of some good decisions, some absolutely terrific, wonderful, heroic medical staff at Northwestern Hospital, the good wishes and support of our wonderful friends and family, and, some simple good luck, Beth will be coming home to me again early this week.

Beth will be coming home to the blog eventually, too, and I probably will do a post or two on the subject. There are people to thank, wonderful friends, family members, and complete strangers. And probably a lot of thoughts to be sorted out via writing.

Until then, please, take care of yourselves, and each other.

The Humanity Project and other light topics

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.

Whitney and Beth (and Hanni), Safe and Sound

Beth and Whit have settled into a routine up at the Vermont Studio Center.

Hi all — it’s still Mike here. Beth’s taking this work retreat seriously, staying offline as much as she can — but the short of it is, all is well. That staph infection that put a scare into us has passed, thanks to some attentive and caring folks up in Johnson, Vt. at the Vermont Studio Center, and to the the good people at Copley Hospital.Beth spent two nights at Copley, and so did Whitney — which presented a little bit of a logistical challenge when it came to taking Whitney out for “park time.” Well, the hospital staff rose to the occasion. They took Whitney out and played with her while Beth stayed attached to IV pole. And Beth and her publisher — Francine Poppo-Rich at Blue Marlin Publications — thanked them by shipping copies of “Hanni & Beth, Safe and Sound” to all the caring people who helped Beth and Whitney.

One of them — Penny Hester — took care of Whitney for an hour and a half while Beth was in the MRI tube (they were checking to be sure the infection had not spread to muscle and joint tissue). Penny is a speech/language pathologist. After she received her copy of the book, she wrote Beth a very thoughtful note — turns out Penny has a therapy dog that helps with some of her patients:

Dear Beth,

You have no idea how much it meant to me to receive your book. I used it with a patient the next day who had no idea of what being “blind” meant. With limited words he would close his eyes and point to the book-“no see Beau.” Beau is my pet therapy dog and Hanni looks very much like my Beau, in the beautifully illustrated pictures of  your book. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to open his world to a new concept.

That Hanni. Even in retirement, she’s winning friends. So is Whitney — though she’s doing it a little differently…Penny sums up Whitney’s goofball personality pretty well:

I found your sweet, clowning companion an absolute joy. She was hysterical playing with Beau’s squeaky toys. She would push her nose against the toy until it would squeak and then jump back a bit and yip.  I loved spending time with her and I was honored to be entrusted with her. When you instructed me about not letting her off her leash — it brought chills up my spine to imagine you having to worry about that when others provide her with “park time.”

Well, Beth says that thanks to Penny and all the good folks out there, she didn’t have to worry at all.

On the air again, and on the road again, too

Sound the trumpets! Here’s something I never dreamed would happen to me: I’ve been awarded a writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts! Mike, Whitney and I take off today for a couple days vacation in Canada, and on Sunday morning Mike will rent a car and drive Whitney and me from Montreal to Johnson, Vermont. Thanks to fellow writer Jeff Flodin, who encouraged me to apply for this fellowship, I’ll be spending the entire month of April with 50 other poets, visual artists and writers at the Vermont Studio Center, where I hope to make some progress on a manuscript I’ve been working on.

That manuscript is about all I’ve learned leading memoir-writing classes for senior citizens here in Chicago, and I got the perfect sendoff yesterday afternoon: Chicago Public Radio aired a piece on All Things Considered featuring the writers in my Wednesday class. WBEZ has been doing a special series on what was going on in people’s lives the year they turned 25: scientific studies have shown that the frontal cortex area—which governs judgment, decision-making and impulse control—doesn’t fully mature until around age 25, which can make that year a transitional one for many people. After hearing a few Chicago celebrities interviewed on WBEZ about their 25th year, I assigned “Being 25” as a topic for my own celebrities, the writers in my classes. From the WBEZ web site:

In this installment of the Year25 series, WBEZ Producer/Reporter Lauren Chooljian visits a memoir writing class for senior citizens at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Their assignment? To write 500 words about where they were at 25.

Lauren stopped by to hear their essays and talk to the students about their stories. She came to find out their teacher, writer Beth Finke, also had quite a story to tell about her 25th year. It was not only the year she was married, but it was the last year she could see. Finke has been completely blind since she was 26 years old.

Wedding day, July 28, 1984, photo by Rick Amodt

If you missed hearing the piece on the radio yesterday, never fear: you can still hear it online. Mike will fly home from Burlington this Sunday after dropping Whitney and me off in Vermont, and he has generously offered to keep up the Safe & Sound blog while I’m away. You’re in good hands.

All for now, folks: we gotta plane to catch!

Understanding blindness–through photography

My husband Mike does the Facebook thing, and earlier this week he posted a link to a collection of portraits of people who can’t see there. That post of his got so many comments that I thought maybe my blog would be a good place to explain how we met the photographer.

One of the portraits in the “Fade to White” project.

A couple years ago I got an email from a stranger who said he was taking portraits of people who can’t see. “I am emailing you to inquire if you would be interested in participating in the project,” he wrote. “It would be an honor to take your picture!”

Uh-oh, I thought. Another nutjob who heard about my job modeling nude for art students. Before hitting the delete button, though, I did a little research. And guess what? The guy was legit!

Charlie Simokaitis is a sought-after commercial photographer whose 13-year-old daughter has a deteriorating eye condition that will soon leave her completely blind. Faye Simokaitis is the inspiration for Fade to White, a compilation of the portraits her dad has taken of people who are visually impaired or blind. Charlie Simokaitis describes the project as an “effort to try to understand the impending reality” of his daughter’s loss of sight. From his artist statement:

As I spend more time with blind people, I am developing a perverse kinship with the very condition that will eventually lay claim to my daughter’s eyesight. For me, solace lies in the creation of this work.

After reading that, I hit the reply button on his email message. Y-E-S, my talking computer parroted the letters I typed. Sitting for a portrait would be an honor.

Charlie likes to meet with his models to chat before a shoot, so I suggested we meet for lunch at Hackney’s. Once Mike took a look at some of the portraits Charlie already had up on the Fade to White web site, he decided to come along. “These pictures are great, Beth,” he told me. “I want to meet this guy!”

Charlie is as striking as the photographs he takes. Over lunch, he told Mike and me a little about the research he had done before starting his project. Photographing the blind has its roots in street photography, he said. It was pretty much voyeuristic. “You know, the blind person would have no idea the photographer was there.” In contrast, Charlie wanted his subjects to know exactly what he was up to, and he didn’t need us to be grasping white canes or posing with our guide dogs. “Most of my portraits are from the waist up.” More from his artist statement:

This work looks at the unseeing Other while attempting to understand the fetishism of other people’s perceived pain and the taboos and tacit responsibility of representing a blind person.

It was hot the afternoon we scheduled the photo session, and I showed up wearing a dark red tank top. Charlie knew right away where he’d want me to pose, and our session took about an hour. “Look up at the sky,” he’d say. “Don’t smile. Look towards the sound of that truck. Chin down. Don’t smile. Shoulders back.” For most of my shots, I’m standing against a yellow brick wall in Printers Row Park. The session gave me an idea of what it might be like to be a fashion model.

Charlie used film to take his portraits, and he completed his project — and his Master’s thesis — this past year. My portrait is included in the collection, and it’s getting rave reviews. See for yourself: Charlie’s Fade to White photos are available online.

Worst in show

It’s guest post time again. Here’s my husband Mike Knezovich.

Dogs ain’t the problem.

It’s Westminster Dog Show time — bringing infinite Facebook posts of mugshots of canine contestants, and, for those of us who love that kind of thing, internal laughs just thinking about the movie spoof set at this annual event, “Best in Show.” (Best line from the movie: “We met at Starbucks — not at the same Starbucks. We saw each other at two different Starbucks across the street from each other.”

Apparently, though, Westminster also brings a behavior that is absolutely not funny. Before and after the show, airliners in and out of town are filled with an inordinate number of “service dogs,” at least according to this blog post at The Bark.

The author of that blog post has traveled to many Westminsters and notices that lots of folks bringing their dogs to the show falsely claim their pooches are service dogs. I get why these people want to do that—I don’t get, never will, why they don’t understand why they absolutely shouldn’t.

There are two issues going on here: one, outright lying about the status of one’s dog and one’s disability (or lack thereof). The other issue is stickier: what kinds of dogs qualify as service dogs—more to the point—what kinds of disabilities/maladies constitute a legitimate need for a service dog to travel on a plane with its companion.

Warning: I am a hawk on both fronts.

On the first, there is no wiggle room. You’re lying. You’re disrespecting people who really need the dog for basic issues like mobility, and all the work The Seeing Eye and others have done to advocate for guide dogs to be admitted to public places. And all the work the respected schools do breeding and training a dog to behave flawlessly so as not to be a nuisance in public.

I got news for you dog lovers who think it’s cute to lie about your dog: It ain’t. And Beth and I have encountered it countless times. A young woman who sat next to Beth on a flight actually told the story, giggling throughout, about how her father regularly dons a pair of dark glasses and puts a fake harness he fashioned onto their German Shepherd so the dog can go on board with them. Haha.

Other news flash for you who think your dog is as well-behaved as a well-trained service dog. It ain’t. And every time your dog acts up, it’s an insult to everyone who really needs their dog, and to the airlines, hotels, restaurants and stores who are trying to do what’s right.

How do I know this? Well, years of experience. But I’ll bring up the most recent. While Beth and Whitney and I waited to check our bags to fly to New Orleans, a woman was making herself very conspicuous as she barked at the airline employee behind the counter. Conspicuous because she was very tall and very broad and wearing a leopard skin jacket and skirt. She had one of those luggage arrangements that looks like a wheelie luggage skyscraper. Down at the bottom was the actual wheelie suitcase; strapped above were several floors of who knows what.

She was up there for probably 10 minutes as we weaved our way through the maze. We checked in, headed to the gate and passed her just as she was about, finally, to wheel away from the counter. At that point a whir of grey and white spun around near the top of her little tower—two dogs were in a fabric cage of sorts with a screen in front, and shrieking barks—or something like barks—pierced the air.

The airline person said, “Oh, I didn’t realize–there will be a charge for those dogs.” At which point, the woman said, “Oh, those are my assistance dogs.”

I’m pretty sure the only person in that exchange who needed assistance was the poor airline rep. Beth wanted to ask the conspicuous woman what her dogs did for her, but I herded us on—not because I didn’t want conflict, but because when I travel, I’m crazy nervous until my butt is in the airplane seat.

Which brings me to the second issue. I’ve met people in wheelchairs who have dogs who provide critical assistance. And dogs that help people with hearing impairments.

But I’ve also met people who swear they need their dog for anxiety they experience when flying. My glib answer is, “Try alcohol. Or Dramamine.” I’m only half kidding; I had a short period where out of the blue, I had high anxiety on planes. Those two substances worked wonders.

But I’m also familiar enough with mental health issues to take them seriously. If a dog can help, good. But if the dog is not extremely well-trained, that dog doesn’t belong in public spaces. These people are basically bringing on their pets. I know you all love your pets, but many pets are not reliably well-behaved enough to bring them on planes.

I’m not sure where the line is. The government and the many, many legitimate organizations that train and match service dogs with human companions wrestle with it. Then again, the abuses seem obvious when encountered. As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote of hard-core pornography, “I know it when I see it.”

I’ve seen too much of it.

When Pick met Henry. And Mike met Beth. And Mike and Beth met Henry and Pick…

Whitney and I are giving a presentation at the Waldorf School of New Orleans this Wednesday, and I’ve asked a few guest bloggers to fill in for me while we’re away. This first guest post is by my husband Mike Knezovich, who’ll be coming along with us to NOLA with some other dear friends, too.

I lived in Arlington, Va., in the early 1980s, and after coming home to Illinois for 
the holidays one year I headed back with three friends who were up for a
 road trip and a visit to D.C. We took turns driving and made it straight 
through.

On the left that’s Pick (a.k.a. Keith Pickerel) and on the right Hank (a.k.a. Henry Londner while touring Turkey on a recent trip. (They get around.) We’re lucky to count them as friends.

We were a little tired but swinging open the apartment door woke us right up again.  Dance music was blaring from the stereo, the living room was full of people, and my roommate Pick — all lanky 6’3″ of him — was right there in the center in the midst of a move. He looked like a figure skater, posted on one straight leg, the other leg raised parallel to the floor, and starting to whirl like a helicopter. He yelled “SQUAT!” to his dance partner, a diminutive woman friend who did as instructed, thankfully, and Pick’s propeller leg cleared her head comfortably and made a full rotation. She sprung upright, they completed their disco number, and I said to my Illinois friends, “This is Pick.” We weren’t tired anymore.

Today, with everyone videotaping and photographing everything, I imagine there’d be a YouTube of the whole thing. But back then, we focused on living life in real time and I can tell you, there isn’t a video on the net that’s as good as my memories of that night. Back then I was a green college graduate from the Midwest, wide-eyed, an eager worker at my first real job, but a little lost and a little lonely. Luckily, I’d met Pick through a colleague at work and we stayed in touch. He generously invited me to parties he’d throw with his old William and Mary college pals. They weren’t like other parties I’d been to. Playing and singing show tunes (and sometimes hymns) on the piano, doing helicopter dance moves, Pick occasionally donning the tap shoes for a number, and usually, there was the deliberate and artful telling of an off-color joke. (Pick came by it honestly, from his father Cecil, who could keep you spellbound and then deliver a punchline like nobody else.)

At some point both our leases came up and by then we were confident we wouldn’t drive one another crazy and we stood to save some money, so we got a two-bedroom place in a euphemistically named building called Country Club Towers. It was no country club, but we had a blast for a couple of years. I got to meet Pick’s family—including his beloved grandmother, who made the best damn fried chicken I’ve ever had during a visit to her Danville, Va., home. We motorcycled the Skyline Drive with some friends. Thick as thieves, as the saying goes.

Eventually, I decided what I’d never imagined I would: I wanted to move back to the Midwest. So I packed my stuff and headed back, thinking I’d settle in Chicago, but then I was re-acquainted with Beth, and I came to roost in Urbana, Ill.

After Beth and I decided we were going to get married, we made a trip out East to meet my Pittsburgh area relatives and to meet Pick. I think Beth was as anxious about meeting Pick as she was about meeting my extended family. And why not? Pick’s as close to a brother as I’ll ever have.

Pick and Beth hit it off immediately. To this day they sometimes entertain themselves by ganging up on me. We had a marvelous time and we got a bonus: We met Henry (Hank) Londner. Pick and Hank had met about the same time Beth and I got together. Hank sports a Long Island accent, a total contrast to Pick’s Virginia drawl. Hank’s Jewish—born in Belgium to parents who narrowly survived the Holocaust. After Hank’s mother died, Hank moved with his father to the United States to be near family who had emigrated. Pick grew up in rural Virginia a Southern Baptist. Hank’s a burly bear, Pick’s a lanky type.

Opposites attract. They’ve been together ever since. They live in Alexandria, Va., in a dee-luxe apartment in the sky. Pick works as a massage therapist, Hank has managed to retire, but stays busy volunteering for—among other things—a couple of blind people who need a little assistance with shopping, reading, etc.

I always savor trips to New Orleans—but none more than next week’s, when Pick and Hank will join Beth and me. Lately—perhaps it’s a stage-of-life-thing—I’ve been prone to reminiscing. And so it is with this upcoming visit. I grew up in the thick of what was called the New Math. You know: sets, subsets, bundles of pencils, and the best thing ever—Venn diagrams. In my mind’s eye, I see a Venn diagram. Each of us—Pick, Hank, me and Beth—a circle. And like in all Venn diagrams, the most interesting parts are where they overlap—the overlaps are a slightly different color, denser, and richer for the blending.

And I marvel that in the crescent city next week, we can share time and these four very different circles will overlap.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!