Happiness in the Time of Covid

 For the sake of history, I have investigated the myriad ways our planet's 15-month sojourn with Covid has sparked joy.

There are none.

But Covid lockdowns and isolation forced my family to purposefully seek out and choose ‘happiness.’  And I mean, in earnest.

Beyond catching up on every novel I meant to read as an English teacher and every streamable show I’d missed (same reason), I found that, of all things, technology made me happy. Which is impossible. My husband and I recently retired (early), so even though we are BARELY Boomers by age, conquering tech is a thing. 

There we were, co-retired the moment Covid diffused itself through winter of 2020, working hard to learn streaming platforms like Hulu and Netflix, and stuff that sounded like 90s video-game bosses. Or sushi.  Tubi, Fubo, Crackle, Crunchyroll, Sling, Venmo, Optimus Prime. 

And WHAM. Our first lockdown struck, just as we became addicted to streamable crime shows.  

We felt patriotic, staying in. Saving the nation.  Binge'ing Mindhunter,  Evil, and an Aussie show, Harrow. We lost track of a few network favorites when Covid halted production.  So we missed a season of Walking Dead, then discovered it was only streamable through AMC-Plus — which we did not have. We were too busy upgrading to ad-free YOUTUBE and buying K-95 masks and canned meat through an Amazon app.

None of our crime shows felt long enough, though, to fully rot our minds in early 2020. So Helen Mirren’s Prime Suspect seemed perfect, as it had aired from 1991 to 2006. But it was soooo long, and so British, we wondered if we’d contracted Covid due to fatigue. For instance, Helen’s character’s pregnancy at age 47 went from season 2 through season 3 until she scheduled a termination, which was when we terminated Prime Suspect. We are not necessarily Pro-Life. We just needed faster intrigue. 

The Hulu algorithm thoughtfully noticed we liked crime dramas, so it began suggesting some. When it got frustrated when we weren’t watching them, it auto-played Murdoch Mysteries without us touching the remote. 

At first, we rejected Murdoch and his Mysteries because it appeared to be set in Industrial London, which any English teacher will tell you was a damp, uncheery time featuring syphilis and Jack the Ripper and I felt if we wanted that kind of clinical depression, we had CNN.

But due to actors using the words “sorry” and “out” in a familiar way, we learned this was a Canadian show set in Toronto.

Toronto, as you may know, is not the same city as London. But one of our four adult children lives in Toronto. We had not seen him, our daughter-in-law, our two grandkids or the new baby bump since early December of 2019. So Murdoch Mysteries it was. 

It made us happy to hear constant references to landmarks we had personally seen and streets our Ubers got lost on.  We became deeply involved with 19th Century Toronto.  And this brought us happiness.

Plus Murdoch Mysteries is visually beautiful.  They open each show with stunning digital skylines, then pan downward through quaint, undangerous alleyways until viewers seamlessly land in open air markets with horse-drawn carriages and costumed folks milling about with typical Canadian joy. The dialogue is legit 1890’s, interior sets gorgeous. It was inspiring how a place with such pretty digitized buildings could be so infested with crime.  It all felt so authentic, it was easy to find happiness inside this temporal vortex and come to believe we  lived in that time. 

This hallucination took days of disciplined, marathon viewing, from 9 am until midnight, also called Total Immersion, which I believe is how Virtual Reality got started. And that is how I acquired my Oculus Quest.  I wanted to see if I could stream Murdoch through the Oculus, and maybe never re-emerge. (Murdoch wasn’t compatible with Oculus.) 

But the show continued to bring joy whenever we heard familiar street names like DUNDAS, because we'd stayed at a B&B on Dundas, and another on Queensway, although their reference was to Victoria, not Elizabeth. 

It was on these comforting, familiar streets that the most diabolical murders occurred.  Poisonings, garrotings, electrocutions, drownings— “except there’s no water in the lungs”… dun dun DUNNNN—das. Plus their autopsies were magnificent. That’s when this show does its finest work with latex and tripe.

Beyond feeling closer to our Son and Family of the North, Murdoch Mysteries is pro-woman, so the coroner was female, who eventually practices psychiatry when that became a thing, and was replaced with — another WOMAN CORONER.  Joy! Both physicians struggled with misogyny in every episode in authentic ways, but sadly, only a portion of each show was devoted to this.

Best of all (for English teachers), they used word-play for inventions from the distant future, which they could never quite properly coin. Murdoch was always inventing, but poorly naming, cumbersome versions of contemporary conveniences. They even playfully called him Detective Gadget — because he was not, technically, an Inspector. Our favorite Murdoch invention was something called The Bicycle-Pedal-Powered Balance Device which looks like a time machine.  It “detects metal.” Surveillance cameras were Scrutiny Cameras. And in one episode Murdoch mixed modeling clay with a polymer to lift newsprint and discovered the substance was bouncy when he dropped it, and his boss told him to put away his putty — "because it is silly." 

By the end of March '20, Murdoch Mysteries crested the 20th Century where opportunities  to mis-name inventions abounded, so that is pretty much the reason we watch the show today. It is no longer mysterious that a body will wash up on the same part of Lake Ontario we have paddle boarded, or that the villain is not who we thought. Although it's fun to pick the least likely character and be foiled. “Dammit. It wasn’t Murdoch!!"

In April ‘20, it was clear our Early-Retirement Plan to travel seemed beyond “postponed,” and grocery shopping felt lethal.  So I abandoned my Smartphone destination-searches and replaced them with online shopping. That brought supreme happiness, even though I hated recycling cardboard and wiping groceries with Lysol.  But we adapted. And soon turned our attention to missing our four kids and all of our infant and toddling grandkids.  

That is when had to force ourselves to focus on things that we HAD... vs things we ...Had Not.

We HAD Early Retirement.  We HAD cellphone chargers.  

Cellphones are the most consequential joy-generators for lockdowns and quarantining.  That device can do anything.  I taught mine to read me the news in an Australian accent, until political news sparked dysentery. And it was a cellphone company that employed our daughter for years, until that store shut down due to Covid. But I DID learn to find my husband whenever I lost him using a Tracking App. He was usually less than twenty feet away, taking cellphone photos of his re-stacked wood pile and posting them to the family chat on WhatsApp.

Isn’t it strange that it is a cell “phone” -- yet "calls" are not the first or tenth thing I think of, regarding their sorcery-like powers? 

Sometimes strangers call my cell to alert me that my Social Security number has been linked to heroin trafficking in San Antonio and I must press “1" to connect to a sheriff waiting to arrest me.  When loneliness strikes, I appreciate their interest.

And I can literally no longer cook without my phone.

Covid made us all expert-chefs because we couldn't go out to restaurants, and I still limit the amount of take-out we get because: 

1. We live in rural Massachusetts and restaurants are a 75 minute round-trip; and 2. Lysol Wipes create napalm when rubbed on styrofoam and I won’t eat what’s inside until I disinfect the packaging.

So I think about a restaurant food I’ve missed and Google it, or just scroll around Sally’s Baking Addiction Blog to find a novel dinner concept. It gets frustrating when the phone-recipe goes blank because of the screensaver. So I email myself the recipe, turn on the printer, kick up the points to 40, delete photos to save ink, paper the bin, print, then bind my recipes into what is called A Cook Book so I can forget where I keep it and re-search Safari for new recipes.  Happiness restored.

Another happy thing that we ‘had’ vs things we didn’t:  We "had" our 29 year-old daughter who, joy of joys, lost her job due to Covid and came to live with us, then start a new remote job, here.  This made us ecstatic.  She is bliss to be around.  We like to pretend she just graduated from college and we are 45, unemployed, and under house arrest.  

We also regularly SnapChat her from an entire floor away, though she is nowhere near as enchanted with this as we.

But there were other platforms to learn, other offspring to annoy.  There was the FaceBook Portal, Google Duo, and FaceTime. Every nanosecond on each, every technological feature, was a treasure. And not JUST because we got almost good at three separate virtual visit platforms, but that did make us happy. 

Oh who am I kidding? We are really bad at all of it. My phone regularly FaceTimes the entire WhatsApp Family Chat when I slip my phone into a cushioned chair pocket. No one ever answers.

I FaceTime Canada by mistake during that son’s workday pretty regularly, too. And although the FaceTime outgoing ringtone is different than incoming, I always forget that. I can only tell I’ve committed an Erroneous FaceTiming by the recipient’s expression. “Um. Hello???” Faux smile. “Oh. Did I FaceTime YOU? Or did you FaceTime ME?”  Faux smile.  “I see. Goodbye.”

Google Duo? The first hundred attempts, I routinely answered and disconnected at the same time. This defies Space-Time but I did it. I only recently learned that answering Google Duo with sound, is half the process. There is this neat Camcorder Icon that appears to be outlined in pencil that I must also touch in order to SEE that particular son and our toddling granddaughter.

It astounds me how patient everyone is with me. That they continue using my personal phone to initiate a visit. In fact, Canada only FaceTimes my husband’s phone when mine is lost in soft furniture.

And The FaceBook Portal. It was our Covid Christmas gift, brainchild of our engineer daughter-in-law. It is amazing technology affixed to the Smart TV. The camera is sound-and-motion-activated, so it self-pans to whomever is speaking or walking out-of-shot. An important privacy-violating feature. Our son Zach steps away to do work on his computer or eat cake and thinks he is off-camera. But depending how quiet his girls are, the camera just follows him. 

By February the Portal had self-improved with various upgrades that only Zach down or uploaded. We are waiting for ours to upgrade itself.

Our first five Portalings had not yet benefited from any upgrades, confounded as they were by our fruitless search for the remote. Zach upgraded this experience by calling us 30-60 minutes prior to an attempted Portaling so we could begin the search early. 

Today it takes less than ten minutes to activate Sound, but we still puzzle over the blank screen until Zach’s wife gently urges us to remove the plastic cover from the camera’s eye. It feels like a War-Time Victory when we finally connect so we can watch our livingrooms fade in and out like a Star Trek episode when the Transporter is on the fritz and we are stuck between dimensions. There’s always that moment where we fear the Portal will transform us into yak meat. But we are getting better and better, faster and faster, exploring animated options where we can read stories to the girls that have music and characters, or we can turn our faces into cartoon yak meat. 

In person visits, though, are particular fun. Yesterday we visited our family IRL that we usually enjoy via Google Duo.  It was insane. We had not been together in person in 31 days but who is counting, and we all underestimated how important it is to be together. It’s nice to hug and smell other humans, especially toddlers because they smell magnificent, mostly, and that kid is dope at 23-month-old hugs. It’s more like a protracted snuggle-collapse and it’s glorious. We drank Jake’s coffee and ate homemade cookies and devoured piles of Chinese food via touch-free delivery. And we played sooooo many games with our grandchild, marveling at how much difference 31 days, I counted, make in the development of a turning 2 year old. 

I do not personally enjoy Zoom Birthdays because that platform was designed for business conferencing, so feels like a meeting without agenda or facilitator where attendees help the birthday person feel old. Everyone looks exhausted and tries not to yawn and check their watches. We’re coming up on a second birthday Zoom  for our Toronto son and I think we’re going to use filters so each of us is a yak.  That makes me happy.

As the nation begins to open back up, as we are newly reunited with our Early Retirement Boat, as Father’s Day approaches and lockdowns and masks are gone for the vaccinated, I cannot help but acknowledge that our 15-month quest for happiness has become a habit of mind.  Of heart.  Plans are underway for our Massachusetts kids and grands to visit together at our house for the first time since the toddlers were infants.  We’re even hoping to plan a Toronto visit late summer to finally re-smell our Canadians and meet the newest baby boy addition.  These things used to be ‘events to look forward to’ but— truly.  Now they’re everything they were always meant to be.  They. Are. Everything.

OUR WEBER GRILLE PURCHASE... because LaFranc's 'No No NO' didn't work

We were recently shopping at Walmart getting annuals and tulips and black filthy dirt...  when grills popped up and my husband’s eyes went wild with desire.

Me: "Honey -- I know you THINK we need a new grill--"

Jonathan: "We DEFINITELY need a new gr--"

Me: "What about THIS one?"

Jonathan: "It'll melt down in a year."

Me: "THIS one?"

Jonathan: "Piece a shit."

Me: "Oh, LOOK! A WEBER like your father’s! I know he's been gone a while but his Weber lasted ... well -- HIS lifetime at least!"

Jon: -- strokes beard -- "Hmmm."

Me:  "You like that don't you."

Jon: "Mayyybe."

Me: "Let's just get it.  It's only $800 and all the rest are half that."

Jon: "What about the one with the SIDE burners and rack and pinion steering with push button STARTER and an undercarriage WARMER and . . . indecipherable grill gibberish from hell. . ."

Me: "Um... the diff between the Spectrum and the GENESIS and the TRON-MAXIMUS SPECIAL?  Probably the difference of, like, thousands of dollars."

J: "But they last."  Looks wistfully off to the rafters where actual birds are perching...

Me:  "Can't do it.  Can't get a grill worth thousands of dollars No. NO, NO.”

Me to clerk:  "Please construct the Ex-Caliber Maximus Death-Star Weber Elektra Special."

Sales Clerk:  "That will be half the price of your first mortgage."

Me:  "I have a credit card."

I feel like Mark Antony from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  We have to ask friends, neighbors, countrymen, to lend us their truck... 

Cuz Walmart has now CONSTRUCTED the Ex Caliber Vlad The Impaler Weber Vaporizer Grille.

It is ready.

That is the pressie Grammy GiGi (*my future grammy handle!) is giving to Jonathan -- sans cute grandfather name -- for his birthday cuz he evidently NEEDS a Pompey Volcano on his deck.  And let me note this:

It is a good thing I just BOUGHT for him the Weber Lava Deluxe because only THREE NIGHTS ago he left our clearly faulty irregular-lava-throwing grill ON after we grilled steaks... which Jonathan remembered mid mouthful when --GASP

-- Out to the deck he ran ...

-- then... there was a flash downstairs.

I wasn't sure if it was Jonathan or the Shadow People from Ghost Hunters that come through my TV and live here now.

I'd have preferred Shadow People 

Cuz back UP ran Jonathan with our 1988 fire-engine-red flame extinguisher, mumbling the words, "GRRR--lammickFLAME-furbabblefuck.”

He returned with massive blisters held in check by bags of frozen peas.

The handles for temperature control melted right off our ex-grille. 

It is a good thing we had the Weber Millenium Falcon constructed days after the nuclear holocaust of our ex grille...   so we could enjoy newly-endless days of Grill Free Life until we find a Truck Family that loves us.

WE HAVE A DELUXE WEBER-BRAND HERO GRILLE THAT WILL LAST UNTIL THE SUN BURNS OUT BUT WE NEED A TRUCK TO TRANSPORT IT TO WEST STREET.

Family? Neighbors? Ski-Pals?  Work-Mates? Pat?? Therese?  Christopher?  Rent-A-Truck????  

. . . we can no longer FEED ourselves ...  because we cannot transport our Grill-Furbabble Maximus-Love-Falcon-Ex-Caliber-from-Walmart to our home because the grill is larger than our house.  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRAMPY GIVEN!!!!!!  XOXOXOXO  

All Creatures Great And Small...

You’d have thought I had learned to keep my phone at-the-ready for our next April Vacation Adventure, but no. My next undocumented jaunt involved Bardeau The Cat and it began early Tuesday at Happy Pelts Day Spa. Our friends Lauren and Paul have a similarly-styled cat as our Bardeau, and they have him regularly fashioned at Happy Pelts. Their Facebook avatar depicts one happy feline, frolicking about in his own sculpted fur, looking chic to the point of snooty. I wanted our cat to feel similarly superior, so I booked him a grooming appointment at Happy Pelts.

Except I did not know it was a Multi-Species grooming facility.  They service all creatures great and small, which should be their name. You can bring in tropical fish to have them de-scaled. Or add fur to lizards for winter. 

I erroneously assumed it was a cat-exclusive spa when their receptionist said to me on the phone, "Drop off is between 9 and 10 am, so we have the whole morning to massage, pet, and talk to the cats.  We play them music in rooms infused with essential oils.  All of this LONG before the more traumatic parts where we brush, bathe and barette them."

We wouldn't have exposed Bardeau to Tuesday’s antithesis of massage and soothing chats, if we had known he was to be honked and moo'd at as we transported him through the waiting room.

In fact, if Bardeau were not afflicted with severe dredlocks, I might have marched him out of Noah’s Ark. But since January, he had begun to ‘mat.’  He was clumped in several hard to reach spots like the backs of his arm-elbows and his entire undercarriage. 

By March the mats became impenetrable, like body armor, with new clumps forming along his spine. By April he looked like a dimetradon.

Bardeau’s most recent car ride was four weeks ago when he had his check-up and vaccinations and there was nary a sound from his cat carrier.

But on Tuesday, driving the back roads through dairy farm country, up and down, around winding bends . . . well.  The mewling in the cage got muted briefly due to Bardeau’s Lack Of Dramamine.  

When we went past a fragrant dairy farm, my husband reminisced about how he used to instruct our kids to 'Breathe DEEP!  Can you smell the Apple PIE?’  And everyone in the car would huff the farm air, nostrils hung from the windows -- then gag and wretch and he would erupt in peals of laughter.

He laughed so hard remembering this Tuesday, tears formed at his eyes.

Only when we arrived at the Exotic Animal Day Spa did we realize his eyes were leaking from Bardeau.

NO IDEA he was capable of emitting fresh Farm Smell. It was a relief to get to the Spa because IT emitted hundreds of different pet perfuming smells, even before we got inside.

Once inside, a host of comfortably-caged creatures -- some I believe to have been created with science -- were gawking at us, and then they started up with the noise-making.  Howling, hissing.  A squealing pot bellied pig. Bardeau shat himself in response, which only made him more nauseous.

He was an effluviating machine erupting like a volcano from all directions. I kept apologizing.  "I am SO sorry he is so... fragrant.  But YOU guys smell GREAT!"

"Thank you!" beamed the pleasant booking person as she seamlessly collected up the entirety of Bardeau and His Cage of Emissions.

She passed the whole thing off to a well-heeled grooming cat stylist, who resembled a hobbit, only older and more hairy. 

His name was Sven.  And he glowered at me while wafting a ham hock hand in Bardeau’s direction.  “This cat, she is RIPE.”

I've been glowered at by worse than Sven so I said cheerily, "He… is car sick. And I'm sure he's not done, now that he's next to a growling Rottweiler and that… alligator over there."

Sven ignored me and addressed Bardeau. "LET'S see what we've got!"

Sven reached his hand inside the transporter and scruffed our 14-pound cat, and Bardeau shot me Manga Eyes that said, “What fresh hell is this?” 

Sven palpated all seventeen of Bardeau’s dredlocks proclaiming his undercarriage 'ENTIRELY matted' and that Bardeau would require “The Simba.”

"Sounds good to me!  Peace out!"  and I grabbed up The Befouling Cage, hoping to leave before more glowering could happen. But the cage was intercepted by The Friendly Booking Specialist who said, "We'll be taking that from you now."

“But I was going to take it all home and wash it for Bardeau’s trip home!”

“Oh, we take care of blankets and cages.”  And this is where Happy Pelts won me over for life.  She smiled and said, "We take care of EVERYTHING!" 

Even pungent, chainmailed Bardeau smiled at the Friendly Booking Specialist.  

Sven got to work on Bardeau -- and we were OFF like a simile.  

          Regard below to see what Bardeau looks like!         (No wonder they call it The Simba!)

Meeting Baby Zofia! --- aka: My House is SO Not Baby-Safe

On my first day of April vacation, I got to visit with one of my favorite friends and her gorgeous new daughter, Zofia.  While Zofia is not all that new (she is ten months old) she still feels new to me.  Much like a previously-owned car. Only cuter and more interactive.

I don't know why I didn't snap a thousand photographs of Baby Zofia yesterday, performing feats of strength usually reserved for Olympiads or super heros that fly.  Like wielding my six-foot nine husband’s seven-pound shoe, with her pinky.  Pictures say a thousand words, like, “Ya know what they say about tall men and big feet!?”

Yes. Small children get lost in their foot ware.

Anyway, Baby Zofia was oodles of afternoon fun!  And now that I am about to become a Grand Mama times TWO, it was blissful to learn just how unprepared my home is… for babies.

Our house is the least baby-proofed zone in the Cosmos. Babies would be safer on Saturn.  Or the Sun.

Zofia emerged intact but I can't say the same for a cluster of vine tomatoes I didn’t want anyway, three wooden Easter eggs still rolling themselves down the stairs en route to the Mutility Room (which thankfully Zofia never discovered), the cat’s mood, or two-thirds of a peeled apple she could almost fit in her mouth due to what I believe is a genetically-superior adaptation where she can unhinge her jaw like a snake.

It’s not that any of these items necessarily posed a threat to Zofia.  It was the lightning speed at which she could acquire them.  One second, she was harmlessly tapping a glass slider, appearing to enjoy the wind moving trees outside. And the next, she was a room away chewing the fifth page of a photo album while lifting a four pound lid off a cast iron pot.

“How did I MISS those?” I asked myself, mentally reviewing a half dozen baby-level hazards I had pre-removed: the cat box, workout weights that might crush a toe or break a tooth. Anything that might pinch, choke, cut, blister, drown, emblazon or impale.  Our home was the equivalent of Guantanamo Bay, and I had only removed the first layer.

I also learned that a ten month-old baby is like a hamster. You know how they make their bodies flat to squeeze inside small spaces? I swear I lost Zofia inside walls three times. 

I COULD have lost her inside a storage compartment in our new Riding Coffee Table, but it’s so large and intricate, and Riding, that its hinged trap door is its least interesting feature. This coffee table lives on four casters and roves throughout the living room of its own accord.  A stiff breeze and the table is mobile. I am kicking myself that I didn’t whip out my phone to capture video of Baby Super-Z moving a 97 pound cherry table the size of Buick from one side of the room to the other. 

Eventually the Nap Monster visited, and my friend had to collect Baby Zofia and a few baby sundries and whisk her away so I could stop drooling and nodding off in front of them. 

It was a joyful, awe-inspiring visit, a testament to our species, and commentary on how quickly one can fall in love.  I missed Zofia the instant I lost sight of their car motoring down the street. And I became instantly greedy to speed gestation so I could meet my two grandbabies, due in late summer.  A summer I vow to remember that my phone can take photos and videos.  They aren’t just for writing blogs anymore.

Diamond In The Roughage

On my recent commute to the school where I teach, I hit the directional to make a left-hand turn and noticed in my periphery that my engagement ring looked odd.

It was because the diamond was missing.

You know, I gasp even now, just writing this. But when it actually happened, I was barely flummoxed. In fact, I instantly started troubleshooting: 

 ... Let’s see. I DID slide my left arm into a nylon fishnet arm-sleeve and my ring claws caught the netting. Ergo, the stone will be on the floor... it's wood.  I'll use a flashlight.

 -------------------------------------

And with a plan to recover my diamond firmly fixed, I pulled into the parking lot and marched into school.

But once I shared my plight with co-workers, their eyes went wild with terror. Some welled with tears.  One colleague commended me on my stalwart demeanor and I realized, 'I know! Right?”

Fortunately the bell rang for period one so I didn’t have time to panic.

Later that morning, our department had a lunch-time  meeting -- sans food -- but slated to last only ten minutes. It took about an hour, like LensCrafters, and the bell eventually rang for us to teach afternoon classes. I was famished.

When I got to my classroom, a handful of students were loitering at the door and I blew past them to get to my salad. As more students filed in, I shoveled a plastic forkful of salad and chicken into my mouth. Yum.

Another forkful and –

WOW that felt like a plastic particle from my fork or shrapnel from a recent kitchen cleaning. Not swallowing THAT.  

I spat arugula and chicken into the trash.

And because I teach high school, no one noticed I’d spat chewed food into the trash in front of them --  because … I teach high school. These were seniors -- busy chatting and organizing their lives, trying to text without me seeing, mentally erasing me from the room.

I took one last bite not bothering to use a fork, then jumped into our work together. When that class ended, I jumped back into my salad.

As I stabbed at another chicken and greenery bite, I was struck by the sense memory of having bitten into something hard an hour ago. In fact, one molar in need of costly dental work screamed, “That was probably a DIAMOND you moron.”

I raced to the trash to dive for my worfed out food.

In front of my next class ambling in.

Due to being younger freshmen, they took instant notice of their teacher hunched over the trash, rooting about like a homeless ferret -- and became paralyzed, but said nothing. So I continued rooting until I retrieved what might have been the remnants of an autopsy.  One child gasped.

I explained in my most respectable teacher voice, that this was chewed chicken, which I had personally chewed an hour ago, and I NEEDED it.

The kids screamed silently. 

I placed the clot onto a tissue and poked about.

And

THERE

In the midst

Was

My

Diamond.

-------------------------------------------- 

This is where I had to recreate the storyline so my students were caught up and I could keep my job. 

Pretending I was the star investigator in my own CSI episode, I explained to the children that, in the early morning, I’d slid my ringed hand through a nylon sleeve and caught a prong on my ring, which I’d felt.

Without realizing this loosened the stone, I jostled my hand about in my morning routine, and the final dislodging happened when I thrust my hand into a Family-Sized Salad Trough, then thrust mini-handfuls into my Travel Dish.

“I think you saw the rest.”

They were awestruck.

I noted what a blessing it was to chew my diamond. “I might have 'thrust' it into the bathroom trash, deep inside my linen closet or the laundry hamper beneath. It might have ended up in our dishwasher, the garbage disposal or an industrial sized carton of cat food.”

The fact that I didn't swallow the diamond when I ate ravenously, they believed to be divine. That the diamond didn't sink to the bottom of my travel dish? That my second forkful contained the diamond then rode on the molar needing a root canal?! 

One freshman, the kind that’s good at math, suggested my diamond had a better chance of ending up in lunar orbit than my mouth.

And, like that -- the miracle of the occasion erased forever the image of an adult they personally knew engaged in public, ebola-trash-diving -- so that, before their very eyes, she could bring forth … a diamond.

It became a lesson in destiny, plotline, metaphor and sense imagery. And thanks to dramatic irony, I later learned the cost of replacing that uninsured stone was the same as my root canal estimate.

It was the best lesson I’d taught all year.

Mostly it was a lesson that dumb luck and grace are often indistinguishable.  So we have to be ready for the signs. Like the one that read, “Our office provides financing for dental work starting at $7000.”

Run, I told them  – don’t walk – from these signs. You never know when a dying molar might have the fate of an engagement diamond resting, quite literally, upon it.

Why Did Grandma Put Her Underwear in the Refrigerator? -- An Explanation of Alzheimer's Disease for Children

   I just finished re-reading Come Back Early Today – A Memoir of Love, Alzheimer’s and Joy by Marie Marley, Phd. 

   Max Wallack had invited me some time ago to co-author his children’s book,  Why Did Grandma Put Her Underwear in the Refrigerator? An Explanation of Alzheimer's Disease for Children.  He sent me Dr. Marley’s memoir last winter, as one way I might prepare for our work together.   

   Last winter was a profoundly difficult time. Roughly four months after my husband Jonathan’s diagnosis with Multiple Myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow’s plasma cells, I found myself in the dead of a snowy January, housebound alone for a week. Our daughter Abby was away at college in Salem, Massachusetts, battling the snowy front closer to the ocean.  Her Dad was off at Dana Farber for daily out-patient collection of stem cells to store for a future stem-cell transplant.  This is typical front line treatment for his disease.  He was staying nightly at our son Zachary’s place in nearby Watertown. 

   The collection process occupied an entire week rather than the one or two days we’d planned on.  Some of his aggressive autumn therapies had suppressed his body’s ability to produce stem cells, so different techniques to stimulate stem production were employed.

   It was at this time that I began poring through Dr. Marley’s memoir and a strange thing happened.  Rather than enjoying this precious chronicle as one way to prepare to co-author a children’s book, I found myself relating to its author.

    Marley, too, struggled with the shock and awe of living with a profound and incurable illness, then processing the illness itself, and its various challenges. She even shared, in a very early part of her memoir, her struggles with employment, as was I!  More precisely, the two of us were getting acquainted with ‘unemployment.’  In her case, she was a new PhD struggling for a university position.  Mine was a bit more self-imposed as I embraced the role of caregiving and medical research.

    The pinnacle of our parallel was a stalwart love that kept everything forward-moving.  For Marie Marley, her love for Ed and his for her was the bedrock from which she moved out of her sadness, toward a healthful self-identity and an evolving, beautiful relationship with her life partner.  Marley writes in her third chapter:

“He could have ended our relationship, and no one would have blamed him, least of all me, considering how unpleasant and stressful those depressions must have been for him.  But as far as I know, he never considered that option.  He was there for me no matter how far away I was from him.  He wasn’t able to make the deep depressions go away, but his steadfast love, caring and support made them far easier to bear.  I have often shuddered to think how I would have managed those dark days without him.”

   The passage above was steeped in irony.  At the time, I was trying to emotionally navigate the unthinkable: the prospects of my husband’s battle with an incurable cancer.  That week, he was at a myeloma center at Dana Farber, receiving harrowing treatments while I was snowbound at our home, with endless chunks of solitary downtime.  Reading this poignant love story was meant to be an academic exercise for a writing project.  Instead, it drove home how lucky I was to have a similarly stalwart love in my life.  Ed was to Dr. Marley what Jonathan was to me.

   But the irony was troubling: the patient himself in both cases was responsible for bringing their women comfort. 

   Early in my husband’s diagnostic process, I was SO busy distracting us both with research, collecting a rainbow of bottled supplements, joining website support groups and sites for myeloma trials -- ultimately speaking and writing in medical jargon.   Or in alternative-medical jargon:  hatha, vinyasa, bikram yoga, acupuncture, curcumin and alpha-lipoic smoothies.

   None of that frenetic activity provided the strength I needed to move forward with confidence and faith.  That all came from my husband.

   I relate deeply to Dr. Marley’s words, “I have often shuddered to think how I would have managed those dark days without him.”     

   Fear of life without my spouse caused trepidation in the first place:  how ironic that he was the antidote for my fears.

   But it's also been through the writing process (email shares, journaling, my blog) -- but especially my work with Max Wallack in this beautiful educational children’s book -- that I continue to educate myself.  And any teacher will tell you, education is the real antidote for fear.

   A seven year-old protagonist named Julie spans three years of her own young life remaining stalwart, holding faith and constant love in her heart.  Part of this young character’s “hope” is her future, a word that, to many caregivers, is the enemy.

   But there young Julie hangs her hope: hope to grow up to engage in Alzheimer’s research; hope as she watches her grandmother participate in exciting new clinical trials; hope that one day there can be an end to the “incurable” side of Alzheimer’s.

    I was honored to help breathe life into Max's character.  It was through Julie that I was reminded of bravery, love and hope. 

   If a seven-year old protagonist holds courage to enhance her present by ‘living strong’ inside it and embracing her future, so can the rest of us.

   Seventeen year-old Max has actualized Julies’ dream in real life. He currently studies in his junior college year at Boston University and works in the Alzheimer’s research field.  This children’s book is autobiographical for Max.  At a tender age he became a companion and caregiver to his own great grandmother following her diagnosis with Alzheimer’s.  And ever since he’s devoted each day to easing patients’ suffering by inventing adaptive equipment, recreational supports, and ultimately searching for a cure.

   We all do battle in one way or another with fear and foible:  overall I feel lucky to have in my arsenal my husband, four kids, the writing process, and friends such as Max who give me as much time as I need to “learn.”

   Today marks a special day:  I must say farewell to a fellow traveler I only knew through support groups, firefighter John Knighten, whose battle with an aggressive sub-type of myeloma finally ended peacefully last evening.  The end of his journey was apparent to all of us about eight days ago, but now that it is here, I feel no fear.  Just gratitude to have known of his strength and stalwart love of his own family.  

   In the end, the strength of love is all that matters.  Even fictional seven year-old Julie knows this.