That's Tracey and Emerald.

While Whitney and I were training at the Seeing Eye last month, the PR people interviewed a few of us for a short one-minute promotional video. You can link to the video on YouTube, but get out your Kleenex first – it’s downright heartwarming. And be sure to watch from beginning to the very end, otherwise you’ll miss a quick snippet of fellow Seeing Eye graduate Tracey Melchiorre, who more or less bookends the video. Tracey is a feisty gal with a Texas accent, and she’s alive and well today thanks to a young man who believed in organ donation.

Tracey was diagnosed with Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, when she was eight years old. She lost her sight in 1991, when she was 24. A year later, she met Mike Melchiorre at a Houston Rockets game — they fell in love, got married, took classes to become certified as foster parents, and adopted Elijah, who they had fostered as an infant. Elijah is seven years old now, but he was still a toddler when diabetes started damaging Tracey’s kidneys. She was on dialysis for a year and a half before receiving a kidney and pancreas transplant. “It was on July 27, 2008, not that I remember the exact date or anything!” she says with a happy laugh.

Like Tracey, I was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when I was a kid, and over the years, friends have asked if I might consider a pancreas transplant. It’s true a pancreas transplant might offer a “cure” for type 1 diabetes, but many physicians are reluctant to transplant a pancreas alone for diabetes without renal failure. The reason? Side effects of the immunosuppressant drugs required after transplantation are more detrimental than the complications of diabetes.

When someone like Tracey (who had severe kidney damage due to type 1 diabetes) is experiencing renal failure, doctors reason they may as well combine a pancreas transplant with

There's Elijah the Rockets fan with a Yao Ming bobblehead. Thanks to a young man who donated his organs, Elijah's mom is living a healthy life.

a kidney transplant. That way you end up with a healthy kidney, plus a pancreas that won’t damage it anymore.

Being a transplant recipient is great, Tracey would tell me. “No more diabetes or kidney problems!” At the same time, she readily acknowledged that she’d exchanged one set of challenges with another. I’d hear her alarm go off twice a day to remind her to take her anti-rejection medication, and she still has regular doctor visits and blood tests and a compromised immune system to deal with.

So while I envied the way she could eat desserts at dinner without worrying how much extra insulin to inject to “cover” the extra carbs, or how she’d scurry out to the Seeing Eye shuttle bus without pricking her finger to check her blood sugar level first, or never had to pat her pockets to confirm she had a glucose tablet along, you know, in case of a low blood sugar en route, I am hopeful my kidneys stay healthy and I never need a transplant.

I have a brother-in-law who has been on dialysis for over a year. He’s still waiting for a kidney donor. He is not a complainer, but I know dialysis is tedious and tiring. When I asked Tracey what got her through all those months and months on dialysis, she said, “God brought Elijah into our lives at just the right time to keep us going and smiling.” She also credits her church family, who provided prayers and food, and her parents, who helped almost daily. My brother-in-law seems buoyed when he’s with his family, but he tires easily and is not able to travel as much as he used to. We are all hopeful he gets news of a donor match soon.

Tracey’s pancreas and kidney came from a 23-year-old man in the Carolinas, and she is grateful that young man believed in organ donation. In a thank you note to the donor’s mother, Tracey said that the transplant will add an indefinite number of years to her life, and healthy years at that. “I told her about Elijah, and how my son will grow up having a healthy mommy who can go to his games, cook his meals and take care of him.”

Signing up to be an organ donor is much easier than you might think. A web site called Donate Life America provides a list of where to register in your state, and United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) provides an easy-to-read fact sheet dispelling common myths about organ donation.

One thing I learned from that list: a history of medical illness does not prevent you from donating organs, and neither does old age. With recent advances in transplantation, many more people than ever before can be donors, and while it’s good to sign up to be an organ and tissue donor on your driver’s license, it’s best to sign an official donor document, too.

Tracey says the most important thing to do if you want to be a donor is to tell your family your wishes. She doesn’t have information on how many other lives were changed by this young man’s decision to become a donor, but she did tell me this: a single donor can save up to nine lives, and improve the lives of as many as 50 people.

Sometimes she's a little too smart for her own good, not to mention mine.

Today Bark Magazine published a blog post I wrote about my first weeks at home in Chicago with Whitney. I start out the post describing how the Seeing Eye-dog thing is supposed to work. The blind person memorizes or finds the route, the pair gets themselves situated on the sidewalk, the blind person commands “Forward!” and the dog guides them safely to the curb. When the dog stops, the person stops. That’s how a blind person using a guide dog knows they have arrived at an intersection. If the person wants to turn right or left at that corner, the person commands the direction, and the dog turns. If the person wants to cross the street, the dog waits while the human being listens to traffic, and when it sounds safe to cross, the person says the dog’s name and commands, “Forward!” After confirming it is indeed safe to cross, the Seeing Eye dog leads the human to the other side of the street.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyways. Unfortunately, The near miss I had with my Seeing Eye dog Harper last year had left me more anxious than I wanted to admit. I wasn’t letting Whitney lead me right to the edge at intersections. She was already beginning to know our routes –- why make her go all the way to the curb, just to wait there before I told her which way to turn? From the Bark Magazine blog post:

Whitney’s decision to keep us away from the edge of the intersections, to just go ahead and make turns on her own, well, it meant I didn’t have to face the rush of traffic in front of us. I felt safe.

Until Whitney started crossing intersections diagonally, that is. Dang that smart bump! The girl is so clever that when she knew we’d be turning right or left once we crossed the street, she figured hey, why not save time? We’ll just go kitty-corner.

For those unenlightened ones out there, a “smart bump” is the occipital bone on the top of a dog’s head. All retrievers have this bump, and when it really sticks out the way Whitney’s does, we call them “smart bumps” and convince ourselves our dogs are smarter than others. And so, my two-year-old genius was not only crossing intersections diagonally, she was also anticipating a turn at every corner, veering as we approached intersections and leaving us all discombobulated. And if there is one place you especially don’t want to feel discombobulated with a Seeing Eye dog, it’s when you’re approaching a city intersection.

So are you wondering what Seeing Eye trainer Chris Mattoon suggested when he visited last week, and whether his advice is working for Whitney and me? Well, I guess you’ll have to link to my post on the Bark Magazine blog to find out!

First, Anita.

Anita with her little sister AnneMarie, Anita's #1 fan.

I especially like the line in this profile about her being unselfish — my great-niece really is great in every way:

ANITA STERLING
SCHOOL Willowbrook
CLASS Junior
POSITION Guard
IMPACT Sterling has proved to be a versatile player for the Warriors with her ability to impact games from both the paint and the perimeter. The junior is averaging nearly nine points per game and also provides a presence on the glass with six rebounds a game. Sterling is unselfish with the basketball as well, leading Willowbrook with 29 assists. Defensively, she also has 29 steals and a team-high nine blocks.

And as for Mike, the ArchitectureWeek article explained that Passivhaus Institut (PHI) in Darmstadt, Germany and Passive House Institute US (the non-profit Mike works for in Urbana, Illinois) have severed ties. If you know Mike at all, you will not be surprised to hear that his quotes were among the more colorful in the article. Here’s one example:

“We had honest differences,” he says, “but it went from talking to this sort of nuclear option with no sort of warning.”

And then this one:

Knezovich, the PHIUS communications director, adds, “We looked around and said, ‘Nothing has really changed except we don’t have the blessing of the mothership anymore.’ We’re as busy as we have ever been.”

I love the way that guy expresses himself. And hey, Whitney and I feel as busy as we’ve ever been, too! We’re meeting with Chris one more time tomorrow before he heads back to New Jersey. I’ll fill you in with details of what we’ve accomplished in a future post. For now, I will leave you with this tease: tomorrow’s trip may include a visit to a diner!

That's Chris and the late, great Gilda.

The Seeing Eye is sending instructor Chris Mattoon out tomorrow to help Whitney and me. Blog readers might recognize his name: Chris came out to help me with Harper last fall, and my husband Mike Knezovich wrote a blog post about the visit. During that visit, Chris explained that Harper’s training at the Seeing Eye had included a trip or two to New York City, but that there is really no way to know for sure how a dog will react to city surroundings — or any surroundings, for that matter – or in the long term. From Mike’s post:

He also explained that although Harper didn’t start balking right after the near-miss with the car, the stresses on the dogs can be cumulative.
The three of us talked and imagined what swirled around in Harper’s head. In the end, Chris made it clear that city life had just become too much for Harper. Beth would have to get matched with a new partner.

Chris is the superstar who trained Whitney to become a Seeing Eye dog. The day he introduced her to me in New Jersey last November, he started receiving calls from home. His beloved 13-year-old canine companion was ill and getting worse. It might be time to put her down.

The Seeing Eye gave Chris time off to be with Gilda, and the five of us in his group worked with Jim Kessler, Senior Manager of Instruction and Training, while Chris was gone.

Gilda died in Chris’ arms, and Chris returned the very next morning, sounding understandably sad. I gave him a hug and wondered out loud if it might be especially hard being back at the Seeing Eye at that particular time, with all of us gushing over our brand new pups and all. Chris shrugged and said, “I can’t think of anywhere better to be right now than right here.” That’s when I decided to break the rules. I took Whitney’s harness off and let her jump up on Chris to give him a kiss. He didn’t object.

Chris worked with Whitney and me for three weeks. He knows us very well, and he is well-equipped to help us fine-tune our work together in Chicago. Curious about what we’ll be working on? Here’s an excerpt from a note I sent the Seeing Eye about specifics we need help with:

-we don’t always go all the way to the curb at the end of busy city streets, especially if she anticipates we’ll be making a turn there, she is reluctant to go to the curb (I am reluctant to admit that after my near miss with Harper last year I may be transferring a bit of fear through the harness, too) — sometimes when we *do* go all the way to the end and I point “right” or “left” and command the turn, she can’t find the crosswalk of the street we’ve turned to — when she knows where we’re going, she can be a bit overconfident, i.e., wanting to cross diagonally or veering in street since she knows we’ll be turning right or left once we get across anyway — all to say, we can be a bit sloppy at intersections — distractions (children and dogs) I correct her but she’s all discombobulated after that — plows through crowds of people rather than taking us around them — running me into people — misbehaving at pool (I swim laps every other day and she is a disaster while I swim, for a while she stayed behind the desk with staff while I swim but she still goes bonkers) this week I’ve left her at home and found a human being to escort me to the pool instead

That note makes it sound like Whitney and I are having a terrible time! Really, we’re doing very well. I just need some fine-tuning and reassurance, and I’m grateful that the Seeing Eye is sending Chris Mattoon to provide just that.

Chris’ father, Gary Mattoon, was also a Seeing Eye dog instructor. Gary started training there in 1965, so Chris grew up with the Seeing Eye. The father-and-son team worked together for years before Gary died. While I was in New Jersey Chris told me he misses his dad “each and every day” and hopes he is honoring his father’s memory by his work at the school and his dedication to the dogs he trains.

I’d say Gary would be proud.

Dr Daniel Levitin is a cognitive psychologist who runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University in Montreal, and he said music is involved in every region of the brain scientists have mapped so far. Music is processed in the emotional part of the brain. It stays deep in our long-term memory.

Research shows that listening to music releases certain chemicals in the brain. Dopamine, a “feel-good hormone” is released every time you listen to music you like. Listening to music with someone else can also release prolactin, a hormone that bonds people together. And if you sing together? You release oxytocin, which causes feelings of trust.

I have happy memories of singing “Shine on Harvest Moon” during car rides with my sisters and Flo, I am still bonded to friends I made in my high school band, and yes, I do get a happy feeling whenever I hear a good tune. Everythinghe Levitin said about hormones made perfect sense to me, but his claim later on that humans develop a taste for music by the time we are five years old seemed a bit outlandish.

Then again, my brother Doug did buy us that piano when I was three or four years old, and when I flip through our CD collection, what do I find? A heavy dose of piano players. Randy Newman. Todd Rundgren. Stevie Wonder. Joni Mitchell. Marcus Roberts. Ben Folds Five. Maybe that Levitin guy is on to something after all.

I’m off to play the stereo now. Bring on the dopamine! What music do you like to listen to? Leave a comment — I’d love to hear what sort of music gets you high.

Harper and his Collie-buddy Beau wait for a treat in the backyard at Chris and Larry's.

The email came from a veterinary student in England. Her name is Rachel Orritt. “I hope this isn’t too out of the blue,” she wrote. “I have been enjoying reading your ‘Safe and Sound’ blog and was wondering if you would be interested in guest posting for my blog.” Rachel’s note went on to explain that her Animal Translation blog describes “aspects of animal science in plain English.” She asked if I might “share some of the practical aspects of Hanni’s help, and any instances in which she has gone above and beyond expectations to help.”

Hanni retired from guide dog work in 2010! Harper, my third Seeing Eye dog, retired in 2011. I didn’t tell Rachel that, though. I knew I already had a post written about Hanni that would fill Rachel’s requirements, and laziness won the day. After making just a few tweaks, I sent it to Rachel, and she published my guest post on her Animal Translation blog as an intro to a week of guest posts about assistance animals.

It wasn’t until I fetched, ahem, that post I wrote years ago about Hanni that I realized how much my near miss with Hanni in 2007 parallels the one that caused Harper’s early retirement last year. An excerpt from that post I sent to Rachel:

Traffic was rushing by at our parallel, cuing me that it was safe to cross. “Forward!” I commanded. Hanni looked both ways, and judging it safe, she pulled me forward. But then all of a sudden she jumped back. I followed her lead and heard the rush of a car literally inches in front of us. Hanni had seen the car turning right off the busy street. I hadn’t. She saved my life.

Hanni worked for three years after that near miss. Harper retired months after his brush with danger. Three major differences between the incident with Hanni in 2007 and the near miss I had with Harper last year:

• The car in Hanni’s close call didn’t brush her face, in Harper’s case he was brushed by the car.
• I didn’t fall backwards in the Hanni close call, but with Harper I ended up flat on my back in the street.
• By the time Hanni and I had our near-miss, we’d been working together for six years, three of them in the city; Harper and I had been together less than a month.

That last difference is the one I didn’t understand until I’d had a dog for awhile. I had to learn to trust each dog. And each dog had to learn to trust me. By the time Hanni and I had our scares, we’d been through a lot successfully. Not so with Harper.

The similarity: in both cases, I worried the near miss might cause my dog to develop a fear of traffic. Staff at the Seeing Eye have seen dogs react three diffrent ways to near misses:

• Some shrug it off as if to say, whew, we almost got hit by a car, but hey, let’s keep going.
• Some are slightly traumatized but with a bit of retraining can work themselves out of it.
• Some are so traumatized they can’t work again.

The only way the Seeing Eye can determine ahead of time how a dog might react to getting brushed by a car would be to do that in training. Brush them with a car, I mean. They obviously are not going to do that. They do teach the dogs to back away from vehicles heading towards them, and Harper had succeeded at that many times in my early months at home with him in Chicago. The near miss, however, was enough for him.

The other day Whitney was guiding me through our apartment lobby when a neighbor remarked, “This one’s a lot better than that other one, isn’t it?” I didn’t take the time to explain. The four Seeing Eye dogs I’ve worked with have all been great. Each one, and especially the three that I’ve had here in Chicago, have heroically saved me from cars pulling out of alleys, rushing into parking garages, ignoring red lights at intersections. Some “traffic checks” are more dramatic than others, but I am living proof that each and every one of them — Dora, Hanni, Harper and now Whitney — did their job, and I’m proud of all of them.

Which is to say, I’m a little defensive of Harper, and rightly so. The dogs aren’t robots — they’re doing something very, very difficult. And I still miss Harper.

The couple who adopted Harper are having fun with him, and they are also, slowly but surely, working with him to help him overcome the fears that cropped up after my near miss with him in Chicago. Harper has lived with Larry, Chris and their cat George in a quiet Chicago suburb for two months now, and Chris sent us an email yesterday with a subject heading, “major progress.” Harper had walked completely around the block with them two days in a row! “Most of the time it’s me walking backwards, coaxing A LOT, but we’ve gotten it done!” she wrote, the number of exclamation marks in the note accentuated her delight in Harper’s progress. “All of this has been without the leash — he still wigs out when I put it on him outside (inside, it’s not a problem at all).”

Every one of my guide dogs has been a hero. None of them better than another. Just different. And if you ask me about Harper, I’d say he’s still showing his bravery: Chris sent another email just now to say Harper went all around the block for a third day in a row. “I’m so excited!!!!!!!!!” Chris wrote. Me, too!

Dion and Daddy

by Cheryl May

That's Cheryl's yearbook picture when she was 15 years old.

Fifty years ago, on January 6, 1962, I was waiting for my friends to pick me up to go to the Elmhurst Youth Center to dance and just hang out together. This is what a 15 year old looked forward to on the weekend. While I waited, I watched The Red Skelton Hour with my dad. No one had T.V. sets in their bedrooms back then, but this small black and white T.V. was sitting on their bedroom dresser.

My dad had been sent home from work a few weeks earlier because he wasn’t feeling well. After a visit to the doctor he was told to get some bed rest and not to exert himself. This was a lot to ask during the Christmas season with five of his seven children still living at home. It was the first time I put the lights on the Christmas tree — a job my Dad had done previous years.

Family and friends came over to celebrate Christmas like always, but daddy didn’t move from his bed — everyone took turns visiting with him in his bedroom. Mom took good care of Daddy and we even rigged up a “new found contraption” that let him read a book while lying flat on his back.

On that evening of January 6, as I waited to go out dancing, Daddy and I talked about the popular music I listened to on the radio. Daddy loved music. He sang with the Illinois State Champion Lions Barbershop Quartet and was a member of The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA). A popular song in 1962 was “Runaround Sue” by Dion and the Belmonts. We talked about the song and Dad said he liked it. I thought that was pretty neat that my dad could like all kinds of music. My friends arrived, and my dad said, “Have a good time!” I squeezed his hand and told him to rest. That was to be the last conversation I ever

Eddie and Flo clearly enjoyed their time together.

have with my dad.

I arrived home later that evening and found Mom sitting quietly in the kitchen with our neighbor Marion. They told me to sit down. “Your dad had a heart attack,” they said. I was not prepared to hear the rest. “He died at home. An ambulance took him away.” I put my head down and sobbed. I would never see or hear my dad again.

After wearing myself out crying, I walked down the hallway to the bedroom I shared with one of my little sisters and caught a familiar smell of my dad from his jacket in the closet. I went and found a picture of my dad taken at my sister Bobbie’s wedding a couple years before. I put it on the table next to my bed.

A while later I heard the back door open. My older brother was home. I had never heard my brother cry like that before. I stared at my picture of Daddy. I was afraid I would forget what he looked like as time went by.

Our lives changed that day 50 years ago. I got a work permit and got a part time job as a waitress after school and on weekends. Mom found a job in a bakery. Our family pulled together and we made it through some tough times.

Daddy was 47 years old when he died. Over the years I would think of all the good times he was missing with his family. I’d think of Daddy when I was at a parade in town, or when my brother took my sister to a Father-Daughter dance at school, or when I’d hear Mom crying quietly in church. When I think of all Daddy missed, I think of what we missed, too. But I sometimes see his smile, his patience, his kindness or his quiet sense of humor when I look at my children and grandchildren. And whenever I hear Dion and the Belmonts I smile at the memory of our last time together.

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.

Beth has written — in her memoir and in blog posts here — about adjustments she and we learned to make to her blindness. For Beth, getting around is the most obvious challenge — how do I get to the post office? There are the basic features of day-to-day life: labeling spices, differentiating between shampoo and conditioner. By no means easy, but there are answers — a guide dog, braille on the spice jars, and a simple rubber band on the conditioner bottle.

If you get a chance, see "Senna."

When it comes to living life together, the question “What do you want to do tonight?” was a bigger problem than we might have predicted. For example, while we had not been avid movie-goers, we did get out to our share in Beth’s sighted days. We saw “Risky Business” in Urbana, and  I remember that we — like the rest of the audience — hooted when Tom Cruise gets his Ivy League rejection letter, grins, and says, “Looks like the University of Illinois.” Before she lost her sight entirely, Beth was undergoing treatment and in a kind of vision limbo — some days good, some days bad, one eye OK, one eye bad, and other permutations. During that period we saw “Purple Rain.” Between what she could make out visually and the music, she enjoyed it as much as I did.

After the lights went out for good, we made a couple of attempts. Looking back they were pretty stupid — “Back to the Future” for example, or a rescreening of “E.T.” on campus. That’s when I learned how long a modern special-effects driven movie can run without a single line of dialog. Minutes, literally, went buy. And they were awful, because it drove home to both of us that this wasn’t going to work anymore. I felt bad and overcompensated by trying to translate in real time what the hell was going on (it was like a bad SNL skit). Beth felt bad that her predicament left us in that spot. Pretty awful. We tried a few more times — largely because we had this feeling that we were supposed to go on with our lives, and not let what had happened stop us.

Well, it certainly didn’t stop us. And we did have to go on with our lives. Just differently. We eventually realized that trying to force things was just dumb, and sure to drive us both into depression or stupid fights. Take vacations: If it’s all about the scenery, I go there myself or with other friends now. That doesn’t mean that Beth couldn’t enjoy the Grand Canyon or Glacier National Park on her own terms. It just means that if we’re going to use the money and time, there are better trips for us to take. Like going to New Orleans, where the food, music, and smells put us on pretty even ground.

As far as movies — after a long layoff we now do go occasionally. Usually, we’re careful to read enough about a prospective film to have confidence that it’s dialog-heavy.  We saw the “Descendants” right after Thanksgiving. (Great performances, but I can’t honestly remember much more about it than that.) Last night, we took a little risk: We went to the Gene Siskel Film Center to see “Senna,” a documentary about the  Brazilian Formula One race driver, Ayrton Senna.

I’d already seen it and was blown away by how much I liked it. I’m a casual race fan; I knew of Ayrton Senna largely because we have a couple friends who are fanatical about racing. Reviews of the movie made it clear that it was just a very well-told story about an enormously charismatic and enigmatic man. And that you didn’t need to know anything about racing to enjoy it. Sure enough, I was mesmerized by the story, which — although it captures the spectacle and intensity of racing — is as much a character study of Senna as it is a glimpse of Formula One racing.

“Senna” is certainly “visual” — all movies are, of course. But much of the story is told by narration by journalists and family members. In other words, I thought Beth might enjoy it. So when some friends of ours told us they were going, Beth — who likes popcorn and a night out as much as the next guy — suggested we go.

It was a mixed bag. While much, or even most of the narration was in English, I’d forgotten that a whole bunch was spoken in Portuguese — and subtitled. Yet other portions were spoken in sub-titled French.

But it wasn’t like the old days. We both made the best of it. I summarized only the most important bits of subtitled narration. Beth’s French is good enough that she actually could follow those passages. The lightly-buttered popcorn was perfect, as were the (all-red) Swedish Fish. Whit curled up at our feet and slept throughout. And we had a great chat with our friends about the movie afterward.

Which is all to say, not everything about getting older is bad. And if you get a chance, go see Senna, it’s well worth it.

Buying Christmas gifts for this brood is out of the question. So we pick names instead. But here’s the rub: you have to make a gift for the person you choose.

Mike chose our six-year-old grand-niece AnnMarie this year. Our dear friend Siobhan might describe AnnMarie as suffering from “verbal incontinence.” In polite terms, we might say that AnnMarie has strong verbal skills. When Uncle Mike tires of hearing AnnMarie talk, he gives her a maniacal look and repeats, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” until AnnMarie stops blabbing, shrieks in laughter and runs away. Works every time.

I told you he's maniacal.

Through the magic of the internet, Mike discovered Target sells $12 DIY snow globes. “Our Photo Snow globes are fast and easy; No gluing required. Just follow the included template to cut your photo or artwork, and slide it into place.” What made this particular DIY snow globe that Mike found especially special was that one could make a recording, too. The lucky recipient of this gift can press a button on the bottom of the snow globe and hear your personalized holiday message.

Mike the maniacal Christmas elf got to work. He slid his close-up photo into the globe, recorded himself repeating “blah, blah, blah” over and over, and wrote an instruction card for AnnMarie:

• Step 1: Press the button on the bottom.
• Step 2: Run away!

And you know what? It worked! AnnMarie opened her gift, laughed at the funny picture of Uncle Mike, pressed the button, shrieked, and ran away! She did this so many times that her mother finally had to take the snow globe away from her with a promise she could play with it that night when they got home.

Without the Blah Blah Snow Globe to distract her, AnnMarie started talking again. I called her over. “Have you ever heard of this word?” I asked her, pronouncing e-a-v-e-s-d-r-o-p-p-i-n-g slowly enough for her to take in each and every syllable. “People who are blind like me are pretty good at it, you don’t look at the people you’re eavesdropping on,” I told her. “Just close your eyes, be quiet and listen.” I demonstrated. Keying in on a conversation behind us, I heard AnnMarie’s Uncle Ben mention a man’s name to Mike: Robin Ventura. Next it was Theo Epstein. Rebuilding. “They’re talking about baseball,” I whispered to AnnMarie. “They say the new year will be interesting to watch.” She said “oh” and raced off to play with her cousins.

Our little family really scored with the homemade gifts we received this year. Our great-nephew Grant made a desk lamp for Mike, and our son Gus will stay warm in Watertown, Wisc. Wrapped in the Snuggie his Godmother Caren decorated with Milwaukee Brewers logos. My present from AnnMarie’s dad isn’t quite finished yet, so I got a “substitute” gift: With the help and patience of her big sister Anita, AnnMarie read and recorded the book The Night Before Christmas for me to listen to.

AnnMarie (with some help from big sister Anita) recorded a wonderful talking book for me.

I am not a weeper, but I about cried as AnnMarie turned the pages for me to listen to her recorded voice reading that poem. How thoughtful! How sweet! The Night before Christmas is no easy read, and it’s fun to hear this little girl struggle – and succeed—at reading phrases like “droll little mouth” and “nothing to dread.”

My 95-year-old mother, Flo, enjoyed listening to the book with me, too. Flo sat right next to me the entire night, describing each homemade gift as it was unveiled: jigsaw puzzle, barbecue rub, homemade play-doh, bracelets, painted pint glasses, a fleece blanket decorated in school colors. Even Whitney got a gift: my sister Cheryl bought her a homemade fleece pull-toy at a craft fair. My personal favorite (after the Blah, Blah Snow Globe, of course!) was the energy drink my nephew Brian made for his cousin Colin. The drink is called “Colinade.”

After the festivities, Flo brought up more serious stuff. Her good friend Dorothy had died on Friday. Dorothy had always been a big help to my mom, very caring, always wearing a smile. “You’re going to miss her.” Flo nodded, then reached out to hold my hand.

My friend Denny and his sister Maureen had lost their mom on Friday, too. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to attend both funerals. Flo understood. Babies cried, wrapping paper was collected, teenagers called out NBA scores from downstairs, and Flo squeezed my hand until a certain six-year-old tapped my arm to interrupt the moment.

Me: AnnMarie! I didn’t know you were there!

AnnMarie:I was eavesdropping.

Me:What’d you learn?

AnnMarie: You were talking about funerals.

She left then, and the chaos continued. And so, life is too short, friendships are precious, we learn far more by listening than we do by talking, and it is a joy to be around those we

At the end of the evening, we Skyped with Caren and Mark's family, who live in Minneapolis. Flo wasn't really believing what she was seeing and hearing.

love. I could go on and on about how poignant this particular holiday season has been for me, but hey, we don’t want to make poor Mike feel pressured to make another Blah Blah Snow Globe for me this time, right?! I will end here instead, leaving you with the final line of one beautifully read holiday poem: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.