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.

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.

A familiar and most unwelcome feeling

Hi folks, here’s the first of my substitute blog appearances. Hope you’ll bear with me while Beth’s in her residency at the Vermont Studio Center.–Mike

So, Beth and I were in Montreal before we dropped her in Vermont. Everything about our Quebec weekend was fabulous. Fantastic food, charming people–and some great artwork–in our hotel! But more on that later. First, a dispatch about Beth’s first week in Vermont.

Beth and Whitney outside our hotel–Lhotel–in Montreal. The place is packed with the owner’s art collection.

On Sunday we woke up in Lhotel, went downstairs for one more sublime breakfast of sublime croissant and sublime coffee–not to mention meats and cheeses. Then it was off to…Hertz. Somehow, nothing kills a croissant buzz like a rental car. But hey, we got a nice Jetta, and we headed to Johnson, Vermont.

Beth and I had already talked about dropoff day — it was a source of quiet dread for both of us. Now, Beth getting an NEA fellowship to work on her writing was a terrific thing. The Vermont Studio Center — by multiple accounts of friends who’d spent time there — is a terrific place. Still, the dread — well beyond the natural trepidation about a month-long separation.

We figured out that it traces back almost 28 years. That’s when I dropped off Beth at what was then called the Illinois Visually Handicapped Institute — destined to be renamed Braille Jail by Beth after an up-and-down stay of nearly three months. The application process to get into IVHI had been a classic paper chase — with doctor’s reports, waivers, and endless mortgage-financing-style requests for more and more documentation.

We’d been married a year and already had spent a good portion of it apart from one another. Beth’s surgeries and hospitalizations and followup visits were in Chicago — but we lived in Urbana. So I’d see her on weekends and head back to Urbana and back to work, always hoping for the best. After the doctor said Beth would not see again, she came home. It was difficult and awkward, but at least we were together. And I wasn’t trusting her care to strangers.

So, by the fall of 1985, even though we both knew Beth needed to spend time at IVHI, the last thing we wanted was for her to go away for several months.

Still, we thought, it was worth it: Beth would learn Braille. And orientation and mobility skills (using a white cane to navigate). And the romantically labeled Activities of Daily living (cooking, cleaning, daily grind stuff). And, importantly, she’d learn to measure out and give insulin injections for herself using some adaptive tools and techniques. I’d been preparing her shots since she came home.

We moved Beth into her dorm room, we took a guided tour, we met the director. I felt like I was dropping her off at college. Except it wasn’t anything like college. It was something she had to do because she was blind. It didn’t help that though that neighborhood has changed radically for the better since 1985, back then, it was treacherous. And the place felt a little prison-like.

It was not a happy time. We said teary goodbyes, and I drove south to our apartment in Champaign. Telling myself that it was silly to worry and that this was important, all the way down the straight, flat and lonely I-57.

Well.

Not long after I got home, the phone rang. It was Beth. She had a shaky voice. I asked her what was wrong. “I’m at Cook County hospital,” she said. “WHAT!?” I boomed over the phone. I collected myself. Until Beth learned how to do her own injections, a nurse would have to do it. Except IVHI had forgotten that. And no nurse was on duty. She asked staff who were there to simply measure an injection, but they said the rules said they couldn’t do that.

So, of course, the reasonable next step was going to the Cook County Hospital emergency room, where Beth waited in a hallway for hours to receive her insulin injection. It was an awful start to an awful stay that was rife with bureaucratic snafus and delays. For example, we’d obtained a doctor’s statement that Beth was fit enough for the occupation and mobility training — which could be strenuous. But that paperwork got lost. We got replacements, but it set off a dominoes-from-hell chain reaction that prevented Beth from getting mobility training for more than a month. She really was something of a prisoner.

All of this came from an entity that was supposed to be helping. It was the last thing Beth needed at that point. I didn’t much care for it, either.

And so, whether it’s been going away to get her dogs or — going to Vermont — we are both haunted by those dark times whenever she’s headed off for an extended period of time.

Whitney likes the view outside Beth’s studio.

At the Vermont Studio Center, I helped her get situated in her room — and her cute little studio space, which happens to be right beside a lovely little stream, which runs down from lovely mountains. Nothing fancy, but, well, lovely. Still, Vermont is not know for right angles or a grid road system — which present challenges to Beth and Whitney. And we both knew it would take her days before she was confident getting from her dorm to her studio to the dining hall and back.

But, we both know she would. In a very short time on Sunday afternoon, we met terrific people — staff and fellow students–who had already been extremely helpful. And so, though it was sad to part, I felt good by the time I got home Sunday night.

And then, Monday, I got a call. “I’ve had an eventful day,” Beth said. And she had. She slept fitfully her first night. Her elbow hurt. She had a fever. One of the Vermont staff looked at her arm and said it looked bad, and wisely took her to the nearest emergency room. There, they suspected a staph infection. They did an incision — and an MRI — to determine that the infection had not gone deep into her joint and muscle tissue. Still, because of the threat of superbugs, they started her on a cocktail of antibiotics, including some pretty strong stuff.

Luckily, cultures came back that indicated it wasn’t as serious as it might have been. And the antibiotics did their job. And today, she called to say that after two nights in the hospital, she was back in her studio. Writing. With Whitney at her feet. Next to that beautiful little stream. In that beautiful little town. She’ll get visits from a nurse for 10 days, but she’s in great spirits. She says the food is terrific — the Studio has a staff chef!

Whew. She’s back. She’s fine.

And just maybe, the ghost of Braille Jail is gone. For good.

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!

Whitney on the go, go, go

Whitney and I got off the train from Milwaukee Saturday only to turn around and jump in the car with Mike to drive down to Champaign! I spoke to an animal sciences class yesterday morning at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and Whitney stole the show, of course.

My three-year-old Golden Retriever/Yellow Lab cross has been home with me a year already, and I spoke with the class about how confident and comfortable she seems in her

Whitney chillin’ at home.

work now. After that I went over some of the qualifications necessary to become a guide dog instructor. Most guide dog schools require instructors to have a college degree and then do an apprenticeship, and apprenticeships can last as long as four years. I hope I did a decent enough job explaining how complicated it can be to train dogs, train people, and then make a perfect match between the human and canine — if so, those undergrads walked out of class with a new appreciation of why the apprenticeships last so long.

Once apprentices finish their training and become full-time Seeing Eye Instructors, they’re assigned a string (a group) of dogs and given four months to train that string. Throughout the training, instructors pay close attention to each dog’s pace and pull, and they make careful notes about how each dog deals with distractions, what their energy level is, and all sorts of other characteristics. And then? We blind students fly in from all over North America to be matched — and trained — with a new dog.

Seeing Eye instructors have to be as good at evaluating people as they are evaluating dogs. Our instructors review our applications before we arrive on campus and then ask us tons more questions when we get there. Instructors take us on “Juno” walks (they hold the front of the harness to guide us through all sorts of scenarios to get an idea of how fast we like to walk and how strong of a pull we’ll want from our dog) and then combine all of this information with what they know about their string of dogs, talk it over with fellow instructors and the team supervisor, mix in a little bit of gut instinct, and voila! A match is formed.

Each Seeing Eye instructor trains more dogs than they’ll need for a class. If a dog has a pace, pull, or energy level that doesn’t match with a blind person in the current class, that dog remains on campus with daily walks and care, and perhaps more training, until the next class arrives.

My first dog, a Black Lab named Pandora, was one of those Seeing Eye dogs who went through a second round of training before she was matched with me. Back in 1991, the Seeing Eye knew that the dog they matched me with would be landing in the home of a very unique five-year-old boy named Gus, and that the dog would be in the hands of a woman who had never had a dog before. I’m sure they figured Pandora would need all the extra training she could get!

The Seeing Eye took special pains to train Whitney for me, too. She did a lot of her training in New York City, and if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Our past week together serves as a great example of Whitney’s versatility: one day she leading me down streets to a St. Patrick’s Day parade in downtown Milwaukee, the next day down crooked brick sidewalks in rustic Urbana, and today, back to work leading me down Michigan Avenue.

Whitney is very game. She is nonplussed by unusual or chaotic predicaments, and her confidence in the city is contagious. None of the dogs are perfect, though. Whitney chewed through yet another leather leash while lying at my feet on the train ride home from Milwaukee. Hard to blame her, I guess. Sitting on the train is boring. She’s a cosmopolitan girl who needs to go, go, go. I just need to check on her more often when we’re sitting still. And always make sure I’m carrying a spare leash.

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.

Hank calls himself a volunteer, but I say he’s a pro

If you read my husband Mike Knezovich’s guest post earlier this month you know how excited we were that our friends Keith (aka Pick) and Hank would be joining us in New Orleans. Now here’s a guest post by Hank about our time together. I agree with him – it’s always too short!

Right back in the groove

by Hank Londner

From left to right: Hank, Mike, Pick and moi

Beth and Mike, who live in Chicago, and Keith and I, who live in Virginia, communicate regularly by mailing cassette tapes back and forth. The tapes are always a treat, especially when Beth and Mike bring the recorder along on a trip to New Orleans, a city they visit with some regularity and apparently know quite well.

I was determined to get invited the next time they planned a trip there and, fortunately, they agreed to let us join them for a few days this past week. Our timing couldn’t have been better. We hit a great streak of weather that made it easy to walk everywhere. Still, keeping up with Beth and her guide dog, Whitney, can be challenging. I think their normal pace is about a fifteen-minute mile, which is a lot faster than I am used to walking, that’s for sure. Beth insists that Whitney sets the pace and has only one speed setting, but I’m not totally convinced.

This was the first time I met Whitney and I was smitten the second I laid eyes on her. She really is a beauty — and I’m not even a dog person. I never did get to pet her because whenever we saw her she had her harness on and was working, which I knew meant “hands off!” Next time we’re together I’ll have to set up a play date, I guess.

It seems that Beth and Mike know all the cool places to go to in New Orleans. We ate at wonderful restaurants, enjoyed a few adult beverages at various watering holes around town and heard quite a bit of local jazz too, including a wonderful concert by the Ellis Marsalis Quartet at Snug Harbor and Jeremy Davenport with his jazz combo at the Ritz Carlton bar, where there was no cover charge and we were treated like royalty. We managed to avoid most of the tourist traps, although Keith and I (OK, I) couldn’t resist a visit to the Café Du Monde for some beignets and café-au-lait.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was a little outing Beth, Whitney, and I went on to do some shopping for Christmas gifts for Mike. I think it may have been the first time Beth and I were out together alone. I’ve been volunteering as a reader/helper to blind people here in Virginia for at least five years and it just seems very natural to me to be in this role. Still I realized that slight adjustments are needed to accommodate each individual I work with. Some examples:

• When credit cards are involved, one person I work with in Virginia likes to sign the charge slips himself. His wife, who is also blind, hands me her credit card and lets me do all the work. Care to guess which Beth prefers?
• Talk about signing — One person likes me to provide a straight edge below where he needs to sign, another likes me to put the guide above.
• When we go grocery shopping, one person likes to hold onto the shopping cart like a sighted person would, with me pulling it from the front. Another likes to stand next to me so we both push the cart together.

Minor adjustments, but I understand that respecting their preferences allows each person to have some measure of control of their environment. I guess the moral of this story is that I have to stay on my toes so that I don’t step on anyone else’s.

Beth and Mike and Keith and I go back together about thirty years now and it seems that no matter how much time passes between our visits, we are right back in the groove by the time we are done saying hello. Sadly, we have to say goodbye again all too soon. Still, now we have great memories of our time together in New Orleans, and we have our next visit to look forward to.

Breaking bad

That’s Whitney and me from a previous visit to New Orleans. Kids love us in the Big Easy.

As it always goes with school visits, the questions students at the Waldorf School of New Orleans asked after our presentation last Wednesday were the best part of the show. One of the younger girls wondered, “If you can’t see your dog, how can you tell when she’s telling you what she needs?” and an older boy asked “Do you ever get stressed, you know, being blind and everything?” but my favorite question came from a boy who sounded to be ten or eleven years old. “Do you break a lot of stuff?”

I answered that last question with a hearty laugh and an emphatic, ”Yes!” I acknowledged that I should probably only use plastic cups and plates. “But I don’t like the way they feel in my hands, or the way they taste.” This boy’s honest question made me smile, and it gave me an opportunity to share some blind tricks of the trade:

• I use a placemat, and Mike and I are consistent about where we place things on it when setting the table
• I keep my hand on the table top and kind of “spider” my way to a drink rather than reaching across the table for it (and knocking it over)
• I try to always put dirty dishes right in the sink or dishwasher rather than leaving them on the counter where I might knock them over
• I feel inside the cupboard to determine what’s there already before putting clean dishes away
• I have one certain place in my office and the kitchen where I set my coffee cup so I know where to “look” for it again
• If I’m sitting down at a party I’ll often sandwich a drink tightly between my feet rather than risk reaching for it (and spilling it) on an end table

Friends and family accommodate me by setting drinks down loudly enough for me to hear where they are, my Sunday morning book club rings my cup with a spoon so I’ll know where my coffee is, and the bartenders at Hackney’s always serve my drink in a solid pint glass so I’ll know what to expect when I reach for it. I had to admit to the kids that even with all these tricks I still manage to break a lot of stuff. “It makes me sad sometimes, but then I to stop and think, “I shrugged. “It’s just stuff.”

The kids were listening. A few days later a package from the Waldorf School of New Orleans was hand-delivered to thank me for our visit. The kids had bundled an assortment of tiny tubes of fragranced creams and emollients inside, guess what? A new coffee cup. “Just in case…”.

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!

A year with Whit

Whitney taking a break from her Nylabone on Thanksgiving day.

My husband’s giving me a holiday blog break with this guest post–here’s Mike Knezovich!

On Friday night Beth came through the apartment door sounding slightly panicked. “Mike, take a look at Whitney — I think she’s bleeding.”

A dog had lunged at Whit in our building’s elevator, and Whit was bleeding from a cut across her nose. As I cleaned it up, Beth recounted what happened. And then we both fell silent.

Of the many, many things Beth and I have felt thankful for over the past few days, one stands out: This is the first year of the past three that Beth wasn’t flying to New Jersey the weekend after Thanksgiving to spend three weeks training with a new Seeing Eye dog. Like many other couples, Beth and I appreciate our breaks from each other, but I don’t like it when she’s gone that long. And I particularly don’t like the yearlong process, after being matched with a new dog, where we figure out how and if it’s going to work.

Regular “Safe & Sound” readers know the story…in 2010, Beth’s guide dog Hanni began a well-earned retirement. Though it was sad to say goodbye to the intrepid Hanni, it all felt natural. We both looked at this next episode with positive anticipation. Sure enough, Beth returned with Harper, a gentle, loveable and handsome Yellow Lab. All was well until Beth and Harper had a terrifyingly close call with a car—and Harper was never the same.

So last November it felt more like “Groundhog Day” than Thanksgiving. For the second straight year, Beth juggled her work schedule, packed her things for a three-week stay at The Seeing Eye, and girded herself for the physical and emotional challenges of training with a new guide. I crossed my fingers that this one would take.

And it has. It’s been a year since Whit and Beth met, and Whit continues to learn and improve. She still has her moments—she’ll just sort of space out and lollygag, veering here and there to sniff around—I liken it to teenage behavior.

But those episodes are fewer and further between. More often she walks—trots, really—with a purpose, stops precisely where she should at the crosswalks, and waits for Beth’s command to go. Her head is high, and on a swivel—she’s always scoping out her environment. She’s affectionate but independent—she prefers to sleep in her luxurious bed under the piano in the living room rather than on the floor in our bedroom.

And so, after the elevator episode, Beth and I each quietly feared the worst: Whit might get scared in the elevator, and then, who knows.

We headed out for a long city walk yesterday and she didn’t miss a beat—in the elevator or on the street. Whit seems undaunted, and boy, am I thankful. Hanni’s enjoying a splendid retirement. Harper’s got a best friend named Beau. I’ve got a new favorite in Whitney.

And Beth’s right here where she belongs.