We are REALLY looking forward to Tuesday, November 3rd. We are pretty certain it’s going to be a joyful day, the kind of day we have been looking forward to for many, many months.
What? Are you afraid I just jinxed things? Settle down. Relax. Deep breath. It has nothing to do with THAT. For this election, we can only hope. And while most of you will be glued to the news, we will be nowhere near a TV.
For us, Tuesday will be only the second visit of the kind we always had with Ben before covid messed everything up.
When the virus reared its hideous head and the country shut down in March, that included our Ben visits. For months, his provider, Monarch Lifeworks, cut off families from having face-to-face contact with their guys and gals who resided in Monarch’s group homes. The only way you could see your adult child was to take them home, and not return them until… well, who knows? But by definition, if your guy or gal needed to go into a group home, bringing them home to reside is usually not a workable option — for them, or for you.
And this lockdown was absolutely necessary. We fully supported it, and really, appreciated it, as did all of the families we know who were in the same boat. The only nightmare worse than not being able to see our Benny Boy was imagining our Benny Boy stricken with covid.
We did Facetimes, phone calls, care packages delivered weekly with the kind of treats and books he loves.
The Facetimes, as they always have, went like this:
“High Ben!”
“Hi Mom, hi Dad.”
“How are you!?!”
“I’m fine.”
“What have you been doing?!?”
“Bye Mom, bye Dad.”
He’s pithy.
As for how he was managing, the reports weren’t bad. He was actually pretty happy, a huge credit to his staff. Though his day program had shut down, they kept him busy with additional walks (which he likes), and additional van rides (which he loves — “Drive fast,” which means on the highway, is his mantra. Along with “Go to McDonald’s.” Oh, and “Go to Five Guys.” Um, and “Go to Wendy’s.” I guess Ben is a man of many mantras).
But we fared less well. Not being able to see Ben came with no such booby prizes.
But wow, was Monarch right. They were on top of the crisis from day one, and it showed. In their entire system, they had almost no infections. Illinois, from where we have fled, had many, and had deaths. Nauseatingly tragic.
We had hunkered down. After nine years of driving back and forth every-other-weekend, Karen had already relocated from Chicago to Cleveland full-time, and started a new job with a law firm in December. I was still trying to cobble together my own work picture before taking my retirement and cutting the cord from my job as director of the Chicago area court system’s divorce mediation, evaluation and education services.
And then came covid.
Karen’s new job became her former job. Her mother came up to Cleveland (instead of back to her house in Illinois) from wintering in Tucson to quarantine with us. The court, including our department, went remote, allowing me to work from Cleveland. And Jake also moved in with us when his job with a Chicago area mental health center went remote (and having a cheerful, always-helpful, and perfectly healthy 27-year-old guy around sure is nice when the combined age of the other three is 206 with a bucket-load of high risk factors).
So Karen and I were — are — now full-time Ohioans. And at the end of September, as my job became one that required the director to start going in to the department, I finally took my retirement, after 32 years, 6 months and 25 days. My staff and various others I had worked with and, in some cases, grown close to in a third of a century (when I started, Reagan was president), gave me a beautiful farewell party. Via Zoom. Not exactly what I had imagined my last days would be like, but whose life has been what we’d imagined before all of this?
To accommodate our three-generation commune, we immediately moved into a larger apartment in our building. But after six months, Karen’s mom and Jake went back to Illinois (his job was gearing back up, as was his rock band, and Florence had the rest of her life to tend to). Things were, by no means, returning to normal, but a new normal was settling in.
Monarch had started allowing some limited visits, but with extreme restrictions and safety precautions — and not off-site. We did some of those, but, as we expected, they did not work for Ben. For him, it was Drive Fast, Drive Through (McDonald’s), or nothing.
But finally — and we know it could change at any time, as the world changes — after seven-plus months, Monarch has begun loosening up. Our visits, our Drives Fast, and our Drive Throughs, were back on.
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday was the first one, and it was great. And it had one big novelty — our new apartment.
Ben is the nosiest person in the world. On the rare occasion when we visit somebody’s house with him, it has to be someone who “gets” Ben. He will look in every kitchen cabinet. He will look in every kitchen drawer. He will look in the fridge. He will look in the oven. He will go into every room. He will go through every bedroom dresser drawer. He will look in every closet.
We prepared him with a short social story, which he read with interest:
Mommy and Daddy live in a NEW APARTMENT.
Our new apartment number is 271.
We take the elevator up to floor number 2 and go right into the new apartment.
Ben is coming to the new apartment today for dinner.
We will have fun at the new apartment.
We were pretty sure he’d approve of the new digs. It’s bigger. It has more closets. It has more drawers. It even has a tiny balcony overlooking a busy street!
And we were right. He loved it. He spent a half hour scouring the place, several times. And he’ll do the same on Tuesday. And the next time. And probably the time after that. He will be at his full-nosiest.
And we will be at our full-happiest.
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