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…

With so many elementary school children learning at home these days, my Seeing Eye dog and I haven’t made a school visit in months. I miss being with the kids, but time off gives me a chance to reminisce about visits we’d done in the past. Learning that today, October 15, is National White Cane Safety Day made me think back on a day I especially enjoyed at Eastview Elementary School in Algonquin, IL long before the pandemic hit.

When I found out that three students at Eastview were blind, I arranged to have Braille copies of my children’s book, Safe & Sound sent there before our visit. I’d use one myself to show the kids at different grade levels what Braille looks like and how it works, and the other three copies would be given to Miguel, age 10, and Seth and Ethan, both age 8. I didn’t expect that these three little blind kids would be able to read the Braille books on their own, I just thought that if the other kids at Eastview might be getting books, these three should get a copy they’d be able to read someday, too.

The Braille version of Safe & Sound was produced in contracted Braille, a form of Braille I’ve never been able to master. Contracted Braille has a bunch of shorthand symbols (contractions) for commonly used words and parts of words: there’s a cell for the word “and,” another for the word “the,” and so on. Most of the letters of the alphabet are also used as shorthand for common words, such as “c” for “can” and “l” for “like.” Kind of like texting, only you can’t make as many mistakes!

When I met the vision teacher at Eastview, I apologized that my book was only available in contracted Braille. “No problem,” she said. “That’s the only Braille these guys read!” Sure enough, the little buggers were Braille experts.

Really, all the Eastview kids seemed to have a strong interest in reading. The school’s principal, Jim Zursin, emphasized reading with all the students, and with the help of his staff and the PTO, they were making sure reading wouldn’t end when summer began. Every child who participated in Eastview’s summer reading program and reached their goal would be marching in the Founders Day Parade that summer, each star reader wearing a sandwich board with a drawing of the cover of his or her favorite book on the front. “There’ll be hundreds of books marching down the street,” Mr. Zursin exclaimed. You didn’t have to be able to see to know there were stars in his eyes, just thinking about it. Kids who read that summer would be invited to a community pool party, too, where Mr. Zursin promised to jump off the high dive – with his clothes on!

That’s Miguel on the left and one of the twins in the center. Photo by Andi Butler, www.mrsbillustrations.com.

I’m pretty confident Seth, Ethan and Miguel marched in the parade that year. They’d be swimming at that pool party, too. They love to read, and turns out they can write in contracted Braille, too. Seth, Ethan and Miguel each wrote a poem for me, and they had to work hard to hold back their laughter as I stumbled through some of the contractions when I tried reading their work out loud. They were happy to help me through, and in the half hour the four of us were able to spend together in their vision resource room we became fast friends. Miguel showed me how his talking watch worked, and Ethan and Seth, twin brothers, counted off their favorite rides at Disney World. We all laughed at how other kids find Space Mountain so scary. It’s in the dark” we said. Big deal.

The boys had lots of questions about my Seeing Eye dog, and I told them that in order to train with a Seeing Eye dog you have to learn good orientation and mobility (white cane) skills first. “Knowing where you are by what you hear, how the ground feels, which way the wind is blowing – you’ll need those skills when you get a Seeing Eye dog, too,” I told them. You can’t train with a Seeing Eye dog until you’re 16 years old, so they had a lot of time to perfect their white cane skills before then. “The Seeing Eye wants you to get good with your white cane before you train with a dog. People who know orientation and mobility and can get around with a white cane are the ones who do best with Seeing Eye dogs.”

Later on one of their teachers expressed how glad she was that I’d said that. Apparently the boys hadn’t been using their white canes as much as they should. “Now they’ll have an incentive.”

Before I left their room, each boy proudly presented me with a special collar he had made for my Seeing Eye dog. “We strung the beads ourselves,” Seth said, proud of their work. The collars were made of ribbon, and in addition to the beads, each ribbon had a big bell on it, too. “That’s so you’ll always know where your dog is,” Miguel explained.

The three of them came up after the all-school assembly at the end of the day to say goodbye. When I reached out to shake Seth’s – or was it Ethan’s? – hand, I felt a rubber handle. He was using his white cane!