My sister told me one time that she and Mom used to take walks together near Lake Babcock in our home town of Columbus. Though I was already in my 60s when she told me about these intimate little adventures she and Mom had together, I reacted like a 5-year-old. At least in my mind. I might have said out loud something like Well, isn’t that so nice through gritted teeth, but inside I was seething. I never went for a single walk alone with Mom. Not Lake Babcock (to which you had to drive); not around our block. No walks for us. None.

I come from a family of four kids, and I am the second oldest. There is five years between Bec and me; Jen and I are four years apart; Dave is the baby, being a mere two years younger than Jen. In case you aren’t familiar with the new Common Core math being taught in today’s schools, that’s 11 years between Bec and Dave.

What occurred to me is that we all had different parents. Oh, stop gasping. Marg and Reinie fathered and mothered all of us. But the truth is, each of us were in our formative years at a different time of Mom and Dad’s lives.

Bec was 5 years old when I was born. Frankly, she couldn’t have been too damn glad to welcome me into the home. She was Mom and Dad’s first-born. She was also the first-born paternal grandchild. She was adorable and smart as a whip. One time Dad and Mom dressed her up in bakery attire, and used the photo as Christmas card. Isn’t that sweet?

And then I came along. Not only did Mom and Dad have a 5-year-old, but the bakery business was going well. That also kept both of them busy. They had an inquisitive kindergartner to handle, and a baby who, though I surely was as cute as the Gerber baby, I still pooped and puked and woke them up in the middle of the night. Four years later, along came Jen, and the window of opportunity for me to go for walks with Mom closed amidst the cries of this premature baby.

And so it went. All of what I’m saying isn’t confined to our family alone. All families face these kinds of realities. Our family was different in that we were all spread so far apart in age.

By time Jen was at an age where it was reasonable to think that she and Mom could enjoy a walk together, Bec was off to college, and I was in high school. If Mom had asked me to go for a walk instead of, say, hang out with my boyfriend, I would have looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights.

Dave’s experience as Mom and Dad’s child was significantly different than that of the rest of his sibs. He started working in the bakery as a kid, as did we all. But his role was different. Dad was teaching him everything he knew about baking. He was passing along his knowledge which he undoubtedly hoped Dave would absorb. Dave did, in fact, absorb it, and went on to be the outstanding baker he is today. Mom was in her mid-30s when she had Dave, and was working full-time at the bakery. She also had a two-year-old toddler, who, frankly, wasn’t too happy to have a baby brother.

The truth is, we parent according to our abilities, but also according to our time constraints and, frankly, our age. We look lovingly into the eyes of our fourth-born a lot less than we did our first-born. We are more likely to be looking lovingly at our bed.

I’m happy to say that all of us survived and have become productive and loving adults.

For the most part, I believe we have done a pretty good job at maneuvering an unanticipated and completely unwanted worldwide pandemic. By we, I’m including local communities, restaurants, professional businesses, churches, gyms, grocery stores, and most of Johnny and Jane Q. Public. Many businesses have managed to survive. Churches are reopening, and worshipers are carefully returning to worship as a community. Restaurants have found various ways to survive.

Bill and I flew to Denver on Friday from our Arizona home on Southwest Airlines. Both airports — Phoenix’s Sky Harbor and Denver International Airport — were crazy busy. Still, stores and restaurants were social distancing. Servers were wearing masks. Menus were only available by scanning the little black square. People were trying to the best of their ability to social distance in the waiting areas.

And then we got onto the airplane. There were 143 seats on the plane. Sitting in those seats were a total of at least 143 people. (I don’t know how many babies were sitting on parents’ laps.) The flight attendants kept reminding us that every single seat was sold, so don’t avoid middle seats. I was so close to the man sitting to my left on the plane that I accidentally grabbed his leg as I tried to grab the arm rest when the plane hit turbulence. To his credit, the man (who appeared to be a Southwest airline pilot heading home) didn’t even miss a beat. He just kept looking at his phone. By the way, I also grabbed Bill’s leg at the same time. He, too, didn’t seem to notice.

As we landed, the flight attendant, somehow managing to maintain a straight face, said, “As you are leaving the airplane, please remember to socially distance yourself from the person ahead of you.”

I literally laughed out loud at her words. I had been sitting so close to the people in front of me and behind me that I’m pretty sure I’m now on their Christmas list. The pilot sitting to my left and I are practically engaged. There isn’t a mask in the world that could prevent the virus from spreading with the crowd that existed on our airplane that day.

I imagine that 10 or 15 or 20 years from now, we will look back, and second-guess how we responded. Did it really make sense that we had to wear masks as we walked into a restaurant, but could take them off as soon as we sat down? Why can’t I go to my granddaughter’s high school graduation, but I can sit literally inches from others on a plane? Ours is not to reason why.

Still, I’m sighing with relief at the fact that we are making progress at returning to a normal life.

Here is a link to a You Tube video about Corona logic that my sister Jen sent me that makes me laugh every time I watch it….

(41) 2021 Covid Logic – YouTube

We flew back to Denver yesterday. As we waited for our flight at Sky Harbor in Phoenix, I saw something that made me laugh out loud. Also waiting for our flight was this burley-built man with two sleeves of tattoos. Peeking out of his pack was a little dog. I was so surprised that I asked the man what kind of dog it was. He told me it was a Maltipoo. It even made me laugh to hear him say that word.

I love when I run into someone who puts all cliches aside, and does his/her own thing…..

We’re safely back in Denver.

Have a great weekend.

Camping Out
Our neighbors here in Mesa are a young couple with a child of about 6 years old. Melissa called me night before last to ask if I would bring in their garbage can because they were going camping for two nights. Of course, I said yes. Yesterday morning, I got up around 5:30. I opened the front and back doors — as I always do once the weather is warm enough — to get some air moving and listen to the birds. About 15 minutes later, Kevin started packing up the truck. He packed and he packed and he packed. He seriously worked for over two hours putting their camping gear into the truck. I went out to tell them goodbye since we will leave for Denver before they get back. “That’s a lot of camping gear for two days,” I laughingly told them. “We like to camp,” said Melissa, “but we like to be as comfortable as we are at home.” There might have been a La-Z-Boy in there somewhere.

It’s Like a Disney Movie
My brother sent me this photo the other night. His daughter Brooke took it from their patio. She was taking a photo of the deer, and got photo bombed by the roadrunner. He is so happy to have this beautiful view from his back patio every night, especially the gorgeous sunsets. Drinking a martini while watching the sun set from that very patio is one of my favorite things to do. That just doesn’t make as good a song for Sound of Music.…

Dancing Queen
Bill found out yesterday afternoon that he has to have a bit of surgery when we return here at the end of May for the wedding. He has some basal cells that need to be removed from his back. His appointment is three days before Brooke’s wedding. He asked the doctor’s office if he would feel good enough to go to a wedding. She assured him he would, but he couldn’t do any wild dancing. So, no lampshades on the head for my husband.

On the Road Again
Bill and I will fly back to Denver tomorrow, leaving our car here in AZ for the time being. We will fly back on May 26 for Brooke’s June 4 wedding (and now for Bill’s surgical procedure). We will return to Denver sometime that week, driving our car, and will settle in for the interim. If I miss a day or two of blogging, don’t panic. I’m not in the hospital, and I will return soon.

Ciao.

Remember the television show House? You know, the medical program where every episode, the protagonist — the brilliant but irascible Dr. Gregory House — would misdiagnose a patient 10 or 15 times, before figuring out that he/she had some obscure disease. The misdiagnoses would often result in blood coming out of the eyes or ears of a patient who was undergoing an MRI scan, making every single patient now who gets an MRI concerned about exploding body parts. I know this because I have gotten about 78 CT scans since the program went off the air. Every single time I get a scan, I make a comment to the radiologist along the lines of I’m hoping Dr. House didn’t order this scan. Invariably, they smile through gritted teeth, all the while thinking, “Yep, funny guy. I’ve never heard that one before.”

The actor who portrayed Dr. House was Hugh Laurie. I will admit that he is one of my favorite British actors. Actually, he’s probably one of my favorite all-time actors, and I can’t exactly tell you why. Perhaps it’s because of Jeeves and Wooster, a British comedy based on stories by P.G. Wodehouse, in which Laurie plays the rich and dumb but likeable Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry’s Jeeves, the butler who saves his butt every episode. Unfortunately, those DVDs are hard to get, but worth a watch if you ever can find them.

Anyhoo, what impressed me most about Hugh Laurie is that the character he played on House was American. In fact, I had no idea that the actor was British since I hadn’t yet seen the Jeeves and Wooster comedies. I told a friend of mine how much I liked House, and he broke the news that Laurie was British. He was only able to convince me by lending me his DVD Jeeves and Wooster series.

All this is to say that I am unfailingly impressed when British actors play American roles. I really should say I am impressed when British actors do impressive American accents, except I am hard to convince that we have an accent. I know intellectually that we do, but if I can hear it, well, butter my butt and call it a biscuit.

I used that phrase because I know that there is such a thing as a southern American accent, and a Minnesota/Wisconsin accent, and a Maine accent. I can tell when people are from the north side of Chicago and Texas. But doggone it, Coloradans don’t have an accent. Ha!

I encountered a new British mystery program on my Acorn streaming app. It’s called Above Suspicion. I was clicking around the app, and a face came up that looked familiar. I clicked on the program, which is a detective program based on books by author Lynda La Plante. The main character — Anna Travis — is portrayed by a woman who looked so darn familiar to me. I watched for a bit, but couldn’t get it. So I began to investigate, starting with Wikipedia. The actress’s name is Kelly Reilly. I looked up that name, and lo, and behold, she plays Beth Dutton — the daughter of John Dutton — on the television program Yellowstone! Who knew she was British?

Well, probably everyone but me. I am telling you, I am impressed as hell that these Brits can lose their accents and speak with no accent.

All I can say is Bob’s your uncle. (Look it up.)

In 2011, I spent a month in a Mesa hospital. Twenty-eight days, to be exact. After about three weeks of trying to figure out how to fix me, doctors finally decided to do surgery. As you can imagine, a month is a long time to be in a hospital. In total, I had five different rooms, including one time in which they stuck me in the maternity ward. I didn’t mind that gig because I could wander down and look at the new babies. But except for the short stint in the maternity ward, I had the same batch of nurses.

Nurses are my heroes. I guess we all know this on some level, but I was able to observe with my own two eyes that nurses put up with a lot of crap. Patients are crabby and in pain and, since it was Mesa, AZ, and many of the patients had just had knee or hip replacement, pretty demanding and short-tempered.

My parents taught us to be kind. Or maybe I learned that from watching Romper Room followed by Captain Kangaroo. Anyway, I’m kind. I was patient and respectful. I did what the nurses asked me to do. I didn’t snap at them, even when they had to come fix my IV 15 times during the night. So I was well-liked.

It was my lengthy hospital stay that first showed me just how attached I get to people who are nice. I got so attached to a couple of the nurses during my time in the hospital that I literally cried — tears rolling down my face — the day I said goodbye to them. That seems so ridiculous, but the truth is, they teared up as well.

Now you’re going to laugh at me. I had the same experience yesterday morning when I said goodbye to my new friend, the barista at Buddha’s Brew Coffee and Tattoos. I have been going to that particular coffee shop for about three weeks on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when Bill is at his boxing class. My friend works on Monday mornings. She probably works other times as well, but I only see her on Monday mornings. We became friendly almost immediately, and have subsequently shared stories about families, Parkinson’s, dreaming, and other things.

One day she asked me what my days were like. Isn’t that the most interesting question? I told you all that the reason I was immediately taken with her is that I often feel invisible, and she actually SAW me. I told her that I was retired, and mentioned that I write a blog. Her face lit up. Really? she said. What’s it called? I told her and she immediately logged on and read the latest post. She told me she enjoyed reading it. I was pleased, but assumed that it was a one-off.

Yesterday, as she was making my iced coffee with a splash of cream and two Splendas, she said, “I read your blog every day. I really enjoy it.” I was ridiculously pleased. And if it’s true that she reads my blog, I’m now ridiculously embarrassed that she knows how pleased I am.

As I was getting ready to leave, I told her that we were heading back to Denver and would return to AZ in the fall. “You won’t be here by then,” I told her. She didn’t confirm or deny. But she did thank me for the nice conversations we had been having.

For the record, I didn’t cry, nor did she.