In the first 3 parts of this series, I talked about the transition between “just friends” and being in a relationship…slowly. Our first date, my first solo flight, and the aftermath of spending a week together.

We’ve learned a lot since then.

One morning during his visit back in September, I broached the subject of the post you are reading now, and asked him if he could help me write this by sharing some things he’s learned — either from me or this experience as a whole. I wanted to hear his perspective, and I also wanted this to be more about us, not just about me. “This is such a great idea,” he had said enthusiastically. So I pulled out my phone to jot down some notes and made a list.

1. We both learned about patience…very quickly. I’ve made some light-hearted mentions of my level of patience — or lack thereof — in previous posts. But as visits got pushed back due to travel restrictions and quarantine, I had to learn to be patient — to remind myself that this was not a reflection on him, but this was out of our control. He wasn’t blowing me off, we just couldn’t travel. We discussed this further as I took diligent notes to prepare this post, and he added something that I loved and asked if I could quote. “I learned about being mentally strong,” he told me. “Like, you can’t give up so easily, no matter what life throws at you.”
2. It’s important to stay connected. I’ve mentioned previously how anxious I can get, jumping to worst-case scenarios. I did this pretty early, saying I was worried we’d grow apart with the time and miles separating us. We’d be away from each other much, much longer than we had originally planned. He listened intently and let me get everything off my chest before talking it through with me. To help with this, he was the one that came up with ways we could stay connected. Sometimes he’d send me episodes of a show he was watching and we’d watch it at the same time. Most recently, and my absolute favorite, is participating in discussion groups through the Hadley Institute. Hadley offers a variety of discussion groups, and the one we participate in together is called travel talk. These take place online via Zoom, but you can also dial in via telephone and enter the meeting ID. The Zoom app mutes all other notification sounds while a meeting is in progress, so the dial-in method is the one he and I prefer. Sometimes we text our commentary as we listen in so it feels more like we are doing this together — we want to make sure we don’t miss each other’s messages!
3. Consistency is so important. Having a routine (good morning messages, regular phone calls — some of them scheduled, others just random check-ins — throughout the day) helps so much. A common misconception of long-distance relationships is that they “aren’t real,” because there isn’t regular face-to-face contact. Having consistency makes us feel more connected and involved in each other’s day-to-day lives.
4. This one is just for me personally, I cannot speak on behalf of Juan, but I learned how important it is to be with someone who is good for your mental health. I wrote a previous post opening up about how I was doing during quarantine. Some days were really hard. This made for a lot of long phone calls, some of which were one-sided, as I was having a bad mental health day and I just needed to talk about it. This pandemic taught me what people really mean when they say “It’s okay not to be okay.” Things were so much different here than they were in Houston, and sometimes he’d forget that, until I’d bring it up and say I’m struggling. And so, we’d talk about that.
5. Lastly, while routines are important, it’s also important to include some spontaneity. Surprise each other. This is easy with technology. Send things to the house. Back in August, when I knew Juan had a particularly tough week, I used the Uber Eats app to send breakfast and coffee to his house.

This year has thrown so many things at all of us, and in those times when I become overwhelmed with everything that has happened this year, I remind myself of the good things that came out of it. Even though we won’t be seeing each other for the holidays, I’m still so grateful for our relationship. I’m happy to be with such a kind, caring, amazing person who’s a good listener, whose creativity has strengthened our relationship, and who cares about the people I love.

Trainers at the Seeing Eye school encourage us to talk to our dogs as they guide us. “Remind them you’re there,” they say. “It keeps them focused.” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzger’s Stay at Home Advisory starts here in Chicago today, but we are still allowed to go outside with our dogs. Since the pandemic hit, I’ve been taking one, and sometimes two, hour long walks with Luna every day, and when I run out of things to talk to her about? I sing to her instead. With Thanksgiving coming soon, I’ve narrowed my sing-along list to titles that express things I am grateful for in this difficult year. Most are songs I listened to as a child and in my young adulthood, and my focus here is on the title of the song, not the lyrics. Here goes:

1. Every Breath You Take (The Police) Before 2020, I took breathing for granted. Not anymore.
2. Fever (written by Otis Blackwell and Eddie Cooley, performed by everyone from Peggy Lee to Beyoncé) High fevers are a common symptom of COVID, and when my husband Mike took sick on March 17, his fever spiked at 103 ° and stayed there. No breathing issues, however, and for that I am grateful.
3. I Can’t Get Next to you (The Temptations) Doctors told us to stay home and assume Mike had COVID, he and I separated into what he referred to as our “two kingdoms” at home for a week before he collapsed from fever and was taken to the ER. Grateful they still had rooms at the hospital, and that we have health insurance.
4. Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones) Sheltering in place became the norm, and I feel fortunate to have a roof over my head.
5. We’re All Alone (Boz Scaggs) Mike tested positive for COVID in the hospital, and new Seeing Eye dog Luna and I were at home alone for ten days.
6. Puppy Love (Donny Osmond) See above.
7. And I Miss You (Everything but the Girl) I missed Mike, but was comforted and grateful to dedicated medical workers taking care of him.
8. Telephone Line (Electric Light Orchestra) I worked on my skills with VoiceOver (the speech synthesizer that comes with every iPhone) to text and answer the phone when Mike called, or when caring doctors, social workers, friends and family contacted me to see how Mike was doing. Three cheers for assistive technology!
9. Don’t Stand So Close to me (The Police) Determining just how far away six feet is without being able to see is not easy. I give it my best guess when out alone with Luna., and others we come across seem to understand my predicament.
10. Signed, Sealed Delivered (Stevie Wonder) With Mike still in the hospital, friends and family members signed me up for gift cards at small local establishments, restaurants sealed hot meals into to-go bags, nearby friends picked them up and delivered them to the lobby of our apartment building.
11. I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends (The Beatles)See above.
12. Makes Me Wanna Holler (Marvin Gaye) columnist Heidi Stevens quoted Mike in a column she wrote for the Chicago Tribune when he was still hospitalized and I was waiting to be approved for a COVID test. Early on in the pandemic, COVID tests were hard to come by (even for someone like me, with a significant disability, Type 1 diabetes, and exposure to someone diagnosed positive). Very frustrating, and I admired journalists and reporters covering stories like ours to help readers better understand a disease none of us had encountered before.
13. Here We Are (James Taylor) I finally get tested, Mike gets released from hospital, he spends three nights at a COVID Hotel, and finally comes home COVID-free.
14. Dizzy (Tommy Roe) COVID-free doesn’t necessarily mean symptom-free. A “long hauler” now, Mike still gets dizzy while taking walks, but we both are thankful he’s home and improving.
15. We’re Gonna Zoom, Zoom Zoom The theme song from a 1970s PBS children’s show becomes my theme song for the memoir-writing classes I lead. Not the same as being face-to-face, but glad for this safe way of keeping up with my writers “of a certain age” every week now. Also grateful to Easterseals for encouraging me to work from home.
16. Long Ago and Far Away (Joni Mitchell) Running into old friends out and about, giving them hugs, traveling to visit out-of-town family and friends, having people in for dinner, visiting elementary schools to give presentations…Seems like decades ago now.
17. Happy Together (The Turtles). Over the summer, neighbors started bringing chairs down to our local park, and on especially hot days little kids brought sprinklers, too. While wearing masks and social distancing we were able to catch up with each other. Now, if everyone follows the stay-at-home advisory long enough for numbers to start going down, maybe next year we’ll be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends inside again.

In Part Two of Alicia Krage’s four-part series about long-distance relationships during COVID, she told readers how assistive technology played a role in growing their casual friendship into something bigger. Today, she describes how their bond continued to progress. 

The week that Juan had to cancel his trip to Chicago was tough. My mindset that entire week centered on “he was supposed to be here.” However, the two of us managed to keep ourselves occupied.with phone calls!

One thing I loved about our conversations (and still love to this day) is that they get very in-depth very quickly. I distracted myself from life in quarantine by focusing on his life in Texas instead. I asked him what he’s been doing, where he’s been. He said he was being cautious, and wasn’t going out a whole lot. We have some very deep conversations about blindness, too.
Not the topic of blindness itself, but our lives as blind people.

We talked about what it’s like to date as a blind person (I’m the first totally blind person Juan has ever dated). And when we were discussing getting out of the house, blindness did come up. “When you do go out, will Uber drivers still get out of the car and help you to the vehicle?” I asked. He said yes. Some other things we talked about:

• Traveling. Where would we love to travel one day? We have big
  dreams! We wondered how COVID might affect travel. How much assistance can we count on — or not count on — at an airport now?
• Assistive Technology. We compared notes on accessible certain
  platforms and web sites are.
• Our parents. His parents remind me so much of my own.
• Growing up. We swapped childhood stories.

Through all that, because of COVID, we knew we couldn’t visit each other in person. We kept in close contact by texting pretty regularly and making looooong phone calls instead. But were we dating?

That question was answered on a memorable day in May – Juan’s dad’s birthday, actually. Juan called me when he found out his brother would be coming in from Fort Hood Army Base in Killeen, Texas to Houston that day to surprise their dad. He wondered if it’d be okay to call when his brother arrived so he could introduce the two of us over the phone.

Then a silence stretched between us as we wordlessly recognized this silly little dilemma: what is he supposed to say? As if reading my mind, Juan nervously asked, “How do I introduce you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, even though I kind of knew what he was getting at.

“Like, do I…do I introduce you as my girlfriend?”

“Sure!” I exclaimed. “You can do that.”

The words flew out of my mouth before I realized what I had just agreed to. He laughed, sounded a bit confused, and I explained my answer. “I appreciate you wanting to meet my parents before we make it official and everything, I really do, but we don’t know how long this pandemic is going to last and it kind of somehow already feels like we’re together,” I said. “So I’m not really sure what we’re waiting for.”

And so, just like that, there it was. And then it was our responsibility to figure out this long distance thing together, and how we’d stay connected through this pandemic.

Stay tuned for Part Four, where Alicia spells out the things she and Juan have learned to keep a long-distance relationship going during extraordinary times like these.

Veterans Day was started in 1919 to honor those who fought in World War 1, and as a hope for future peace in the world. Sadly, the world has not been at peace for the following hundred years, but, thankfully, there have been people willing to offer their service to the cause of freedom. Now is the time to think about those soldiers and the sacrifices they have made.

Growing up, I always knew I wanted to serve in some way. My father, Chaplain J.C. Williams and mother, Eleather Williams, instilled in me a sense of purpose and belief in inclusion for all Americans. My dad was commissioned as the 5th Black chaplain in the history of the U.S. Navy, prior to that having served as the Executive Director of the NAACP South Carolina chapter and worked with great Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luthor King Jr. to fight for civil rights. Duty called for me, and I joined the U.S. Air Force as a 2nd Lieutenant. This allowed me to become a lawyer and a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corp (JAG). This experience, when few Black women served in the JAG Corps, was foundational to my commitment to service.

As a JAG, I realized that soldiers are people with frailties and needs, despite their strengths and undeniable work ethics. This makes their service and their sacrifices all the more important to acknowledge; knowing their limitations, they still signed up for dangerous work that often has long-term consequences.

Sometimes it is easy to see the scars that Veterans carry, when they’re missing a limb or an eye, or use a wheelchair to move around. Sometimes it is more difficult to see those injuries, like those dealing with PTSD or other mental illnesses caused by their time in service. The truth is, no one emerges from the battlefield the way they were when they entered it. War is a painful experience, no matter where or how you serve.

Our country and society should not forget to honor and care for its Veterans. Transitioning to civilian life can be difficult, leading to feelings of isolation, struggles with PTSD, and other concerns. At Easterseals, we offer mental health counseling, job training and placement, and respite care for families. We must show up for them to ensure they get the help they need to thrive in the community.

As you celebrate Veterans Day this year, remember the cost that freedom carries, and the importance of those who paid that cost most dearly. In service and with pride, I express my gratitude to my fellow soldiers and carry with them a hope for a brighter future.

In Part One of Alicia Krage’s four-part series about long-distance relationships during COVID, she told readers about how she and her friend Juan met. Today she describes how assistive technology played a role in growing their casual friendship into something bigger.

Three cheers for assistive technology! After coming home from my January visit with Juan in Houston, we used our smart phones to talk all the time — more than we’d been doing before. We both have iPhones and use VoiceOver (the speech synthesizer that comes with iPhones at no extra charge) to announce unread text messages we have. My usual routine is to swipe through my messages until I hear the voice announce Juan’s name, then type out a brief text message to him.

VoiceOver calls out each letter as I touch them, and when my finger finds the letter I’m looking for, I use “direct touch typing,” which essentially means all I have to do is tap on the screen where the letter is, just like a sighted person would text. In this option of typing, my phone says the word after I hit “space” so I can hear errors and fix them before sending.

There were good morning messages and goodnight phone calls. There were questions about my family: Juan regularly sent “How’s everyone doing?” messages before he even knew my parents or my sisters. He wanted to meet them!

So we came up with a plan. Juan would fly here in April so we could see each other again and he could meet my parents. It was important to him that he met them before we got together, since he was far away and he wanted my parents to be able to put a face to the name, to know just who I had visited for a week, to assure them his intentions with their daughter were good, true and genuine.

And then COVID happened.

Oddly enough, I took the cancelation pretty well. Maybe that isn’t the right wording. I mean, I wasn’t jumping for joy! After all, everything I was looking forward to was no longer happening.

Through phone calls and text messages, I was instantly reassured that this wasn’t a reflection on him or his character. This was out of our hands.

So, that week he was supposed to be here was substituted with lots of phone calls. We’d talk for two-and-a-half hours at a time and laugh about the number of times I called a Texas area code. “Can you imagine our phone bill back in the days when out-of-state calls would cost money?!”

That’s when the dynamic seemed to shift. It’s hard to explain a dynamic shift when communication is limited to just calls and texts. It just didn’t feel like I was talking to a friend. It felt like I was talking to my boyfriend. I knew my feelings were real and genuine. I knew his intentions were real and genuine. We talked through this whole long-distance thing and laid it out all on the table, everything we were afraid of or worried about. We talked through it like adults.

Stay tuned for Part Three to find out what resulted from all those long talks…