Keep your hopes high

When the packet of thank you notes from the fifth graders at St. Mary of the Lake School arrived in the mail, a light bulb went on over my head: take them along to my presentation at Northern Illinois University!

That's us with 4th, 5th, and 6th graders at St. Mary of the Lake

The undergraduates in the class Whitney and I visited last week at NIU are studying to become elementary school teachers, and their children’s literature class is three hours long. After talking to them for the first hour, I bribed them with the letters: I’d give them a ten-minute break if each of them agreed to select a random letter from the pile and read it out loud when they returned. They jumped out of their seats at the opportunity.

The exercise of reading the letters out loud was educational for all of us. I, for one, learned to bring apples with me to future elementary school visits. Let me explain. During the Q&A at St. Mary’s, one of the fifth graders asked how I can use a knife in the kitchen without cutting myself. I knew the kids understood fractions, so I described holding on to the very edge of an apple with one hand while I cut it in half, then holding on to the very edge of the half to cut that into quarters, then eighths. “When I’m done, the pieces aren’t all the same size, but they still taste good!” I laughed, spreading my thumb and forefinger to show that some pieces might be more like thirds, others like teeny-tiny-tenths. “But at least I can say I sliced that apple all by myself.”

Almost every thank-you letter the undergrads read aloud to me mentioned cutting an apple. The future teachers learned how much elementary school children learn when they are exposed to different sorts of people and different ways of doing things. Each college kid seemed to take a sweet sort of pride in the fifth grader whose letter they read aloud, but none could compete with this one, written by a girl named Cindy (the letter is spelled out for screen readers below, also):

The note from Cindy.

To my blind blog readers, the note scanned above reads: Dear Miss Finke, I really enjoyed having you come to our school. It was amazing how you said you would cut the apple. I was also amazed when you said you would go grocery shopping with your husband. Also how you could figure out what things were missing. I was shocked at how you type really fast without making a mistake. This may not be about you, but Whitney is well-trained Seeing Eye dog. You are also a well-coordinated woman. The doctors might have said that there isn’t any cure, but keep on hoping. I tell you this because I passed through surgery, and I’m hoping to get better sooner. Keep your hopes high.

PS: You can check out the guest blog I wrote for The Bark in April to read about the first and second grade classes Whit and I visited at St. Mary’s, too.

Missing: 30 million words

As a kid, spending three days with a bunch of schoolteachers would have sounded like the ultimate form of punishment. I guess wisdom really does come with age — when the Illinois Reading Council contacted me last Fall to see if I’d be interested in coming to their annual conference and spend time with thousands of teachers from across the state, I considered it a privilege.

That's me at the SCBWI booth. Whitney's under the table. (Photo by Cheryl May.)

My sisters Cheryl and Marilee accompanied Whitney and me on the trip from Chicago, and when we stepped off the train in Springfield, our driver Brian was there with a sign. “It says your name!” they exclaimed, describing the B-E-T-H F-I-N-K-E in bold lettering. I felt like a star.

The star treatment continued throughout this well-organized and well-attended three-day conference. Award-winning author Esther Hershenhorn had published an extremely flattering post about Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound just days before the conference started. Attention from Esther’s Teaching Authors blog brought a lot of teachers to the Illinois Society of Childrens Book Authors and Illustrators (SCBWI) booth to meet new Seeing Eye dog Whitney and me. I Brailled out words for the teachers to take home to their students along with a bookmark of the Braille alphabet. I could almost hear the wheels spinning in the teachers heads, conjuring up ways to use Braille to encourage their students back home to read print.

I gave a presentation, enjoyed time with the seven lively teachers at my table as one of the featured guests at the author luncheon, and attended a few sessions, too. Everywhere I went I heard dedicated teachers asking questions, looking for suggestions, sharing ideas, all of them oh so eager to learn tnew techniques and methods to motivate their students.

My Chicago neighbor Margaret MacGregor is one of those dedicated teachers, and so is my sister Marilee Amodt. Margaret teaches in the Chicago Public Schools, and Marilee teaches in the Orlando Public Schools. The two of them teamed up to lead a session about teaching vocabulary to students from lower-income families, and on our train back to Chicago Margaret mentioned how important it is for kids to learn a lot of vocabulary words before they start school.

“Books have a lot of words in them that kids don’t hear spoken out loud,” Margaret said. In fact, children’s books use twice as many words as kids hear

That's Margaret on the left, with Marilee, before their presentation. (Photo by Cheryl May.)

on regular TV. And even, get this, twice as many, like, words, like than, like, college students like, use when they are, like, talking to each other.

Margaret told me about the Hart-Risley Study, which says low-income children hear, on average, 30 million fewer words spoken than their more affluent peers before they turn four. Margaret was not misspeaking, and that is not a typo. I looked it up when we got home. 30 million fewer words.

It seemed particularly fitting to be listening to Margaret and Marilee’s presentation the weekend before Whitney and I head to Hendricks Elementary School on Chicago’s Southside. Hendricks is one of the Chicago Public Schools participating in the Sit Stay Read! (SSR) program I volunteer for. In order for a school to participate in Sit Stay Read!, 95 percent or more of the students enrolled must qualify for the National School Breakfast program. The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Center for Literacy helped Sit Stay Read! design the program to coordinate with school curriculum — it’s meant to improve children’s reading fluency, encourage them to become successful readers, inspire them to explore the world through books, and help them learn to respect people and animals. A Chicago Tribune story by Rick Kogan explains:

SSR’s mission is fueled by sad statistics: On average, a child growing up in a middle-class family will have the benefit of as many as 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture-book reading before he or she enters school, while the child in a low-income family will have 25 hours.

Sit Stay Read! uses dogs and volunteers in all sorts of clever ways: children read aloud to specially trained therapy dogs, human volunteers visit as “book buddies” to help individual kids, and people like me come as guest readers – the books we read to the kids always have something to do with, guess what? Dogs!

Guest readers also teach the kids about possible careers – when members of Chicago’s Lyric Opera visit, they read The Dog Who Sang at the Opera to the kids. Firefighters read Firehouse Dog during visits, and visiting police officers read about police dogs. I was asked to come with Whitney and talk about being a writer.

I’m looking forward to visiting Hendricks Monday. It’ll be Whitney’s first experience as a Sit Stay Read! dog, and I hope my stories of learning new ways to read and write after losing my sight might encourage the students at Hendricks to keep trying, too.

Puppy love

On Monday morning Whitney and I caught a commuter train to Easter Seals DuPage and the Fox Valley Region to visit the Lily Garden Child Care Center, a preschool and child care program that mixes classes up with kids with and without disabilities. The center is working on a new project this year that features guest authors who come to read to the kids. They thought it would be especially appropriate for me to read from a Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound, and they were right. Our son Gus was in a program like this when he was three and four years old, so I felt right at home with the students. and, hey, I work part-time for Easter Seals, so I’m familiar with the work they do.

I’m the Interactive Community Coordinator at Easter Seals Headquarters in downtown Chicago. That’s a fancy-schmancy title that means I moderate the Easter Seals and Autism Blog. I keep my ear open for articles and events involving autism, then ask spokespeople at Easter Seals affiliates across the country to write blog posts about those things. They email the posts to me, I edit them and add html code, and, presto! Their posts get published on the Easter Seals blog.

Come to think of it, You have Easter Seals to thank — or blame — for this Safe & Sound blog — it was at Easter Seals that I learned to use the blogging tools. I wrote about our trip to the child development center Monday for a post on the Easter Seals and Autism blog — thought you all might like to read an excerpt from that post here, too:

I’m sure some of the kids at the Lily Garden Child Care Center had autism, but truth is, without being able to see them, I couldn’t tell. Some were scared of Whitney, some couldn’t stop petting her, others gave her kisses. Some seemed shy, others went on and on and on and on and on and on about their own dog at home. Which were symptoms of autism, and which were symptoms of … well … childhood? Who knew? All we did know is that something different was happening in the room today, and that we were all having fun.

A big thank you to the folks at Easter Seals DuPage and the Fox Valley Region for inviting Whitney and me out to their child development center on Monday. We had a ball!

Generations united

Check this out: Mrs. Walsh’s first-graders made a book to thank me for visiting their school with Whitney last month.

That

When the book arrived in the mail I knew right away who I’d enlist to read it out loud to me.

A number of the seniors in the Wednesday memoir-writing class I lead are retired Chicago public school teachers; others worked as aides or substitutes. When I pulled the book out of my backpack last Wednesday, these senior writers gathered around as if it were a precious piece of art – which is exactly what it is. They took turns and read every page out loud to me, ooing and ahhing over each drawing and complimenting the kids’ writing skills.

I asked them to choose a favorite page to publish with this blog post, and they were hard-pressed to pick just one. “Oh, I like this one!” one would gush. Others would chime in with their opinions, and when the page was turned to the next masterpiece, the raves would start anew. “Ooo, but I like this one, too!”

During school presentations, I show school kids how Seeing Eye dogs safely lead people like me, who are blind, where we want to go. I talk about Braille, too, and read a bit from the Braille version of my children’s book, Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound aloud. I tell them how I listen to audio books. I explain how a talking computer works and describe the way I use a screen-reader to read email messages and check out newspaper articles online.

The kids learn I can’t read print. So when teachers ask them to write thank-you notes afterwards, some of them reason they shouldn’t bother – Beth can’t read print, and neither can Whitney!

Truth is, Whitney and I honestly and sincerely do not need to be thanked for visiting classrooms. If anything, we should be thanking the kids — their enthusiasm and curiosity buoys us for days and weeks after each school visit.

But all that said, I gotta admit: I do enjoy hearing what the kids have to say about Whitney and me after we’ve been at their school. Mike has developed a knack for describing crayoned illustrations, and although it is entertaining to hear him read the handmade thank-you notes out loud, I thought I’d give him a break this time. Hearing my senior writers read this book from Warren G. Harding Elementary School in Kenilworth, NJ out loud last week was a special treat.

After much hemming and hawing, the “Me, Myself and I” memoir-writing seniors finally chose, drumroll, please…)

Note to blind blog readers: the picture shows a very long Whitney dog smiling at the camera. She is wearing a harness, and all you see of me is a very, very long arm holding on. The first-grader’s writing reads like this : “I like when the dog was woking the prsin.”

Practice makes perfect

Last month I published a post about two trips I took to New York City with Whitney during our training. Here’s an excerpt:

I am happy to report that corrections don’t shake her confidence. “Oh, you meant for me to turn into Penn Station, Beth?” she seemed to say once. “Well, then, let’s back up a few steps and do it again, get it right this time.”

Those two NYC trips were part of the “freelance” period of our training: during our last week at the Seeing Eye, instructors expose us to some of the specific things they know we’ll be facing once we return home. The confidence I gained working with Whitney in NYC is coming in handy here in Chicago.

I work part-time for Easter Seals, and their headquarters is located in Willis Tower (the tower formerly known as Sears). Our route to work involves going down steps to the Blue Line El stop (we don’t take the subway, I just use the stop to go under a very busy street), and then coming up the steps on the other side before embarking on a seven-block walk of lefts and rights. Once we get near the entrance of the building, I feel for a dip up and down to indicate we’ve crossed the entrance to a parking garage, suggest left, avoid the revolving door and find the button to open the accessible door instead, and…voila! We’re there!

My husband Mike trailed us on our first trial run to Willis. The next day, Whitney and I did it on our own. Whitney was a trooper, and she handled all the city hustle-bustle with eagerness and confidence.

Whit and I headed back to Willis Tower last Wednesday. A friend met us there to help me teach Whit how to get through security, navigate the lobby, go through the turnstiles, find the elevator, head to Easter Seals reception desk, find my cubicle. We went through the route more than once, and the third time was the charm. “Good girl, Whitney! You got it!”

A lot of temptation for a pooch who likes kids (photo courtesy of The Seeing Eye).

The next challenge: children. I visit a lot of schools with my children’s book Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound, so while I was still training with Whitney at the Seeing Eye, Jim Kessler (one of the Senior Managers of Instruction) arranged for me to visit his daughter’s elementary school in New Jersey.

The gymnasium was empty when we arrived, and I had Whitney follow Jim to a seat. After I sat down, I commanded Whitney to do the same. “Whitney, down!” She lay down and stayed still. Until the kids marched in, that is. That’s when she started crying.

”Great,” I thought. “She’s not afraid of Penn Station, but she’s afraid of kids!” This did not bode well for my career as a children’s book author. “Rest!” I told Whitney. She whined and sat up. “Whitney, sit!” She stood up and tried to wrangle out of her harness. I panicked. Jim Kessler to the rescue! “Put your finger under her collar,” he suggested, his voice totally calm. “Lift the collar closer to her ears.” It worked. She settled in and lay down at my feet. By the time we got to the Q&A part of my presentation, Whitney was asleep.

I’d assumed Whitney was scared of all those kids crowding her space in the gymnasium, but it turns out she likes kids. The reason she cried in the gym? I wouldn’t let her play! We don’t run across a whole lotta kids in our Chicago neighborhood, but any time we do, Whitney loses focus, turns towards the kid and invites them to play.

Well, I should say, that’s what she did when she first came home with me. Since then I’ve learned to snap a quick “leave it!” any time I hear a kids voice anywhere near us, then snap the leash if Whitney ignores my command and lunges towards them anyway. Whitney is a quick learner. She’s starting to leave kids alone.

I already have a number of presentations scheduled at elementary schools, colleges and conferences in 2012, plus a return to the children’s section of the Milton H. Latter Branch of the New Orleans Public Library in February. Whitney’s first test will come later this month at a disability awareness presentation for thirdsecond graders at Kipling Elementary School in Deerfield, IL. Let’s hope she gets an A.

Smiling dogs

Here's another of Mary Ivory's shots, from the jacket flap of our award-winning children's book.

While preparing my essay for Chicago Public Radio this week I decided to send something about Harper’s early retirement to Bark magazine, too. They liked what I wrote and published When a Seeing Eye Dog Gets Off-Track as a guest post on the Bark blog last Tuesday.

The post I wrote for Bark is similar to what I’ve been writing here, but you might want to link to it anyway just to admire the photograph they published along with it –it’s another photo taken by my friend Mary Ivory. Mary is a licensed clinical professional counselor, social worker, life coach, and from all accounts, a very talented photographer. She took the photograph on the book jacket flap of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound, and when I phoned her earlier this week to ask if she could take a last-minute photo of Harper and me for the Bark blog, she came in, ahem, a flash.

Having work published in Bark puts Mary and me in some darned good company: the magazine’s impeccable pedigree includes publishing many of today’s most acclaimed authors including Ann Patchett, Augusten Burroughs, Rick Bass, Amy Hempel, and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver. Bark has been honored with an Award of Merit from The Society of Publication Designers, and their photo book DogJoy features the magazine’s popular “Smiling Dogs” submissions. from their web site:

Bark is the magazine of modern dog culture—it speaks to the serious dog enthusiast. Bark is the indispensable guide to life with dogs, showing readers how to live smartly and rewardingly with their canine companions. Founded in 1997, as a newsletter to advocate for off-leash dog parks in Berkeley, California, the magazine quickly grew into a glossy, award-winning publication acclaimed for its timely commentary and rich literary offerings. Today, Bark has a nationwide readership of over 250,000.

In addition to regular guest Bark blog posts,I’ve had a few stories published in the four-color “glossy, award-winning” version of Bark, too. It’s always a thrill to be contacted by their staff — it gives me the opportunity to brag that I write for the same magazine Ann Patchett writes for. And now Mary Ivory can brag, too. Her photography has been published by the same folks who honor photographs of “Smiling Dogs” in every issue.

National Geographic photo shoot

In my last post I told you I’d written a story for National Geographic School Publishing. What I didn’t mention is that they sent a photographer and staff out to take pictures! And as much as I’d love to tell you that they asked to take shots of me topless in a grass skirt, well, the orthopedic shoes didn’t work with that outfit. I wore jeans.

Here's one pose I know they didn't get. (Photo by Mike Knezovich>

The National Geographic photographer took photos of me working on my computer with Harper at my side, feeding Harper, playing with Harper, grooming Harper outside, him leading me around. Good thing I like attention so much! Harper didn’t seem to mind, either.

I have my orthopedic shoes on in every shot, and since most shots feature Harper at my feet, you wont’ be able to miss the clodhoppers. The book will not be published until sometime next year, and I am hoping, hoping, hoping that by then my little experiment with platform shoes will be such a distant memory that I’ll have to rack my brain when anyone asks what’s up with the funky shoes in the photos. “Oh, I forgot all about that,” I’ll say, running out the door to head downtown with Harper. “That must have been the summer I broke my foot.”

A succession of extraordinary days

My foot is feeling better. If I’m allowed back in normal shoes after my doctor appointment this Wednesday, I’ll be so busy dancing I won’t have time to assess that list I posted here of all the things I’d accomplish during my 12-week convalescence. Better do it now.

Fingers crossed: A good visit with the doctor on Wednesday means I can retire these things.

• Read books. This was a joy. I thoroughly enjoyed In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard and Ursula Under by Ingrid Hill, and I especially recommend The Year We Left Home by my friend Jean Thompson. I finished State of Wonder by Ann Patchett yesterday –fantastic! Today I’ll start Turn of Mind by Alice La Plante. I am friends with Alice’s little sister Lynn and sat with Lynn to hear her big sister give a presentation on this book at printers Row Lit Fest in June – am looking forward to getting lost in Turn of Mind now.
• Brush Harper. Another joy, for both of us. Even with my fiberglass cast on, we managed to hobble to the little city park next to our building for a daily grooming.
• Watch White Sox games on TV with Mike. Did that, but considering how things are going this particular baseball season, I prefer listening to Brewers games on WTMJ-Am. No one announces a game like Bob Uecker.
• Attend lectures. I only went to one, but I wonder. Does it count if I gave one?
• See a few plays. Again, we only saw Porgy and Bess. We had ideas about seeing Chinglish until I found out a lot of it was in Mandarin. Subtitles don’t work when you can’t see!
• Play fetch with Harper. Over and over. And over. And over. And over again.
• Check my blood sugar levels. Over and over. And over. And over. And over again. When I went to my endocrinologist the other day, the results from my A1C test was 5.9. (For you lucky ones who don’t have Type 1 diabetes…that’s a very good number!)
• Get more comfortable using my iPhone. Took a cab over to Guild for the Blind in Chicago for one-on-one tutoring from a volunteer last month. I’m making progress, but am still on the uphill side of the learning curve.
• Work up some jazz tunes on the piano.I have been playing piano more lately than before the break. Can’t say I’ve worked up any new tunes, though.
• Share stories with friends. As corny as this sounds, my friends carried me through my convalescence. Thank you, friends. Thank you.
• Practice my newly-repaired accordion. Mike has been amazing during my convalescence, too. To thank him, I’ve kept my accordion in its case.
• Publish blog posts. This took up the majority of my time with a foot in a cast. Supervisors at my part-time job at Easter Seals Headquarters allowed me to work remotely, so I continued writing and editing posts for their blog about autism from home. The Bark started something they called The Broken Foot Chronicles and published a number of posts I wrote about Harper’s disposition while I healed. And then there’s the posts I publish here. Thanks for reading them, loyal blog readers!
• Write a few books. Okay, that was a lofty goal. While my foot was still in a cast, though, I did manage to write a piece for a book National Geographic School Publishing is putting together. Maybe that counts?!

Today, August 28, happens to be Goethe’s birthday. Along with giving Chicago one of its best street names, Goethe also gave us this fabulous quote: “A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.” When I found out my foot had been broken, I wondered if I’d be able to stand a summer of ordinary days. With the way things have turned out, though, I find myself wondering what the heck I was worried about.

From Art & Craft to Garlic and Greens

I am thrilled to be presenting at a writer’s conference in nearby Evanston later this week along with the likes of Miles Harvey and Audrey Petty. What’s even more thrilling is that I call those two fine writers my friends.

That's Miles Harvey. (Photo by Matt Moyer.)

I met Miles long ago when both of us wrote for the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois. His first book The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime was a national and international bestseller. Another book, Painter in a Savage Land: The Strange Saga of the First European Artist in North America, received a 2008 Editors’ Choice award from Booklist. Miles used to light up the dingy Daily Illini production room in the basement of Illini Hall, and to this day, being around him makes me smile. I was delighted when he accepted a position at DePaul University, it meant he’d be staying here in Chicago, and I knew he would serve as a terrific mentor to hundreds of writing students there. His generosity of spirit encourages many a writer, including me, to keep at it.

I met Audrey Petty in Urbana, too. She’s the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and she and I took to each other the minute we met. Audrey is a Chicago native, and Mike and I have had the good fortune to meet and know her entire family. Her father, Joe Petty, is credited with getting the Chicago White Sox into the 2005 World Series. “MoJo” went with us to a playoff game against Boston, and he mesmerized everyone in the seats around us (and the team, too, of course) with his confidence and calm.

Audrey is back in Chicago now to work on an oral history book project gathering stories from residents of Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes, Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens and Cabrini-Green—all publicly-funded buildings that no longer exist. High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing will be published by Voice of Witness, the nonprofit division of McSweeney’s Books. And of course we all know that McSweeney’s is the brain child of yet another Daily illini alum: author Dave Eggers.

Dave wont’ be making an appearance at Art & Craft: Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference this week, but Miles, Audrey and I will all be making presentations. Miles will lead a Reporting and Research 101 workshop and is also sitting on a panel called Writers Point of View: How I Got Published. Audrey’s workshop is called Fiction: Object Lessons and mine is Getting Children’s Books Published. I’m also sitting on a panel called Writing for Children/Young Audiences with Jim Aylesworth and Laurie Lawlor.

”Art and Craft: the Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference” is for new writers, established writers, and anyone looking for a better understanding of the craft—and business—of writing. Some of the workshops are full, but you can still register for panels and available workshops — they start tomorrow, August 3 and run until Friday, August 5.

If you can’t make the conference, you’ll have another chance to learn from Audrey Petty this Saturday, August 6: She’s joining Tim Black, author of Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s First Wave of Great Migration for a free presentation at Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History this Saturday at 2 p.m. Their presentation explores Black culture through migration history and food heritage.

Audrey’s essay “Late-Night Chitlins With Momma” was first published in Saveur magazine and subsequently selected for inclusion in Best Food Writing 2006 and Cornbread Nation 4.

Audrey’s presentation Saturday is part of a series at DuSableseries from Archeworks called Garlic & Greens, and she’s invited Mike and me over to dinner tonight with her family to get some practice in. We are two very lucky people.

My left foot

I swim laps two or three times each week. Tapping the lane marker with every other stroke keeps me swimming straight, and limiting myself to the crawl stroke means I always have one arm in front of me — my head never bangs the end of the pool. Swimming has always been a safe form of exercise for me. Until last Thursday, that is.

I finished my laps that night and was heading back to the desk to fetch Harper when I slipped and fell back into the pool. My left foot must have gotten caught in the gutter as I took the plunge. It broke. In three places.

Can you tell which foot was broken?

“That cast is huge!” my friend Jenny’s 20-year-old daughter Claire exclaimed while we shared iced tea on their deck late Saturday afternoon. “It looks like the kind of Santa Claus boot we would draw when we were little!” The image made me laugh — one of many laughs I’ve shared with friends and family after my fall. All to explain how it is I am able to sit here and publish this blog post today. You know, rather than curling up in the fetal position in the corner to spend my days whining about my inability to swim or dance or walk or do much of anything until August.

Mike helped me hobble into the car Friday morning and accompanied me to Midwest Orthopedics for the diagnosis — and the cast — that I had dreaded. The first call we made once we got home was to the Seeing Eye so Mike could talk with trainers there about what he could do to help keep Harper on track during my recovery. Doug Bohl from the Seeing Eye encouraged Mike to take Harper on long walks for exercise. “But really, you all should focus on getting Beth’s foot back to normal rather than worry about how Harper will perform once she’s better,” he said, describing one Seeing Eye dog who had to quit working for four months when the person he guided got hurt. “That dog did fine after that. These dogs don’t forget their jobs.”

Mike uses a leash on walks, and the two of them stop at each curb, just like I do when Harper is on harness. Mike follows other Seeing Eye rules, too: dog lovers can’t pet Harper, and Mike doesn’t let Harper lunge or sniff at other dogs during walks, either.

Harper was supposed to lead me to the train to Glen Ellyn for their Bookfest Saturday. My friend Jenny’s husband was working in downtown Chicago Friday and offered to pick Harper and me up and drive us to Flo’s. My sister Cheryl was there waiting with a bottle of wine when we arrived. We shared some wine and laughs with Flo, I stayed overnight and slept like a baby.

Jenny’s sister Jill picked Harper and me up and took us to breakfast near The Bookstore the next morning: Harper’s first ride in a convertible. I hobbled with them to The Bookstore after breakfast and spent the afternoon seated at a table (foot up, per doctor’s orders) visiting with friends, signing books for customers and using my slate & stylus to poke out children’s names in Braille for them as they passed through the store. Bookfest 2011 was a hit.

After the Bookfest, we sat outdoors (my foot elevated, of course) at Jenny’s, sharing iced tea and stories with her and her family. Mike drove in from Chicago and joined us for a while, then helped Harper and me into the car for our ride back home.

Being with Mike and all of these other loving and supportive people the past three days really lifted my spirits. This is only a broken foot, after all. It will heal. And in the meantime, I’ll read books, work on a story assignment from National Geographic School Textbooks, brush Harper, watch White Sox games on TV with Mike, attend lectures, see a few plays (I have tickets for Porgy and Bess at Court Theatre), play fetch with Harper, check my blood sugar levels, get more comfortable using my iPhone, work up some jazz tunes on the piano, sit and share stories with friends, practice my newly-repaired accordion, publish blog posts, write a few books…as Flo would say, “I’d better get cuttin’.” There’s not enough time in a day to accomplish everything I need to do while this cast keeps me off my feet!