Masked: Communication Fail for Those of Us Who Read Lips

Now that everyone in the world is wearing a face covering, I have become completely Deaf. Well, not everyone in the world. The selfish and ignorant people don’t bother with protection. But I don’t let those people come close enough to me to understand what they would say anyway because I have not the least desire to hear it. Already 80% Deaf, I depend on reading lips to help me make sense of what people say. When I can’t see a person’s lips, I find it extremely difficult to understand. I don’t have an 80% loss when I wear my hearing aids, but I still struggle. Hearing aids help but they also distort. For someone like me, with a severe hearing loss (including 100% loss in the upper range), hearing aids can only do so much. They don’t restore ordinary hearing and they certainly don’t bring my hearing back to 100%. In recent years, I have discovered how important it is for me to read lips to supplement the sounds that reach my brain. I hear a lot better when I can see a person’s face. It’s not just the lips. It’s also the expression. This is a fundamental element of Deaf culture that hearing people don’t readily understand.

American Sign Language (ASL) is about more than just making signs with the hands. It’s also about facial expression and body movement. It’s a beautifully demonstrative language through which Deaf and signing people say a great deal with their hands, faces, and bodies. Therefore, communicating in ASL while wearing a face mask is not as simple as it may seem. Seeing facial expressions gives communication essential nuance and context. For instance, the sign for “I understand” is the same as for “I don’t understand” and the way to tell the difference is the facial expression that goes along with it. Even when fluent signers wear face masks, they may find it challenging to correctly understand one another. And signed conversation loses a great deal of depth and meaning once half the face is no longer visible.

While I am not fluent in ASL, I can understand quite a bit of signing if the signer goes slowly and helps me out when I get lost. I’m an intermediate signer. I can make myself understood better than I can understand. I find this an interesting twist on learning a language. I have tried to learn French and Spanish, and at one time in my life I could converse adequately in both; but no longer, since I have not used these languages in years. I remember that when I was learning these languages I could understand others speaking them better than I could speak them myself. ASL is the opposite. I can make myself understood fairly well. And if I come up blank I can fingerspell a word and be shown the sign. On the other hand, when I watch others signing (particularly fluent signers), I don’t recognize all the signs and it goes by too quickly for me to understand. Most of my Deaf and fluently signing friends are wonderfully patient with me and I appreciate it.   

My point here is that not only do those of us with limited hearing who read lips find it challenging to understand people in face masks, but also Deaf people completely fluent in ASL find it challenging. We depend a great deal on visual cues to read the world.

My husband is very patient and very good about helping me understand, but he’s only human and does fall short. For instance, he sometimes sits down on the edge of the bed on his side and, as he prepares to retire for the night, taking off his slippers and such, he talks to me. I, of course, understand nothing since he is facing away from me. I remind him by saying, “You’re talking to a wall.” (Meaning the wall of the bedroom.) And he replies, “I sure am.” When I can’t see his face then I can’t understand him. But if he were to wear a face mask with a window in it then he could help interpret for me in the new crazy world in which we live. He interprets for me out in the world all the time with tremendous generosity. So I bought him a face mask with a window. It’s very cool.

Unfortunately for people like me, wearing face masks is here to stay for some time to come. So when I discovered that face masks with windows in them had become available, I searched suppliers, and I bought face masks with windows in them on Etsy for $7 each. I have seen them on sale for much more money elsewhere – someone is always out to make a buck on a good idea and consumer need. That’s capitalism. I go out once a week to buy food, so I don’t have much occasion to show off my windowed face mask. But I wore it to the store and the cashiers expressed interest in it and one of them even said she was going to buy one. I wear it in case I run into someone I know who is hard of hearing like me and also so that people will notice and hopefully ask me about it so I can educate them. All healthcare professionals should wear masks with windows. That would be the thoughtful and practical thing to do. In fact, I believe that even hearing people rely on lip reading and facial expression far more than they realize.

I have not seen anyone else in my community wearing a face mask with a window. When I am out and about I have two options. The first is to simply not understand. This happens more often than not. The other option is to tell people I can’t understand and then remove myself to at least five feet from them if they are willing to pull their mask down and repeat what they said. (While I still wear my mask.) I have no quarrel with them if they don’t feel comfortable unmasking. That is a completely valid choice. But I still can’t understand them if their mouth is covered.

Lately a new habit has crept into my behavior. When I am out and conversing with others in face masks, I catch myself signing while talking, even though the people to whom I am talking don’t know ASL. It’s the way my mind seems to process this situation. Do I subconsciously (and falsely) assume that if I sign while I speak then they will do the same back? My closest Deaf friend says that I am starting to feel ASL in my body when I communicate. I hope he’s right because that would be cool; like the ASL equivalent of dreaming in a foreign language as proficiency progresses. I used to be a fairly unintuitive person. But since going Deaf, I read body language and facial cues so much more that I seem to have strengthened my intuition muscle and I notice a great deal of unspoken communication.

Transitioning from a hearing person to a Deaf person this far into my life offers me a fascinating journey into a new land. These days, living in a world of masked people, that journey has taken some truly unanticipated turns. As ever, life happens. I guess until it doesn’t. I’m grateful it’s still happening to me so far, whether I can hear it or not.

Sheltered In Place

Like many other people confined to our homes at this time, I want to use my time wisely. So I decided to learn to play the bagpipes. I’m not musical, but how hard can bagpipes be? I’m taking lessons on YouTube. I don’t actually have any pipes to practice on so I’ve been practicing using the cat. My husband has gone back to learning the trombone after giving that a rest for several years. The police stopped by last night to see if we need to be tested for the virus since the neighbors reported that we sound like we’re in pain. On the contrary, our lungs are fine. You could scarcely think of an instrument that requires more lung power than a bagpipe or a trombone.

People have come up with creative if not productive uses for their time locked in the house. My neighbor planted her vegetable garden weeks too early so she has to continuously cover and uncover the tender plants as we keep having killing frosts, but it keeps her busy. My father is reading the Encyclopedia Britannica because he actually owns a full set and he can’t get out to the library. (I think his edition still says Pluto is a planet.) My husband is working his way through every movie Bogart ever made, including the 1955 comedy We’re No Angels and the 1938 hillbilly musical Swing Your Lady, purported to be the worst film Bogey ever acted in. My daughter and I made soup together on a screenchat and plan to do more cooking in the future. Many afternoons I read a story to my grandson before his nap, much to the apparent delight of his baby brother who hollers and waves his arms in excitement when I make silly voices and show the pictures.

I’m shipping care packages to my family. I have a FedEx account so they come right to my door to pick up outgoing boxes. I told my daughter in L.A. that I want to send her some magazines and a couple of books and she asked me to throw some toilet paper into the box. I sent the grandchildren books, beanbags, and Tinker toys. I’ll send pastries and thriller novels to Dad (the Encyclopedia Britannica is not particularly suspenseful). I plan to send pesto and olives to my children. I put this food up last summer thinking to share it and now it’s on me and my husband to consume it before the garden bursts forth again this summer. I wish I could FedEx frozen peaches but once they defrost they make for a rather sorry package. The peach trees in my yard are flowering and I haven’t made nearly enough of a dent in last year’s bounty. Oh well. I can think of a worse fate than an overabundance of peaches.

My younger son and his girlfriend built a fort out of furniture and blankets in their living room. They go inside to read, listen to music, and watch movies on the computer. They gave me a tour of it on Zoom. We used to build forts like that when he was a little boy. It looks so cozy that I wish I could go to his house and sleep in the fort. He is spending a lot of his corona-shut-in time making music, not the bagpipe or trombone variety; more like the synth variety. He describes his music as “house music,” which I imagine is exactly the best kind of music to make while shut inside the house. Two producers in Europe have put out vinyl albums of his work, so apparently he knows what he’s doing.

The lucky people who can do so are working from home. Lots of people, from doctors to late night comedy hosts, are going to work in their pajama bottoms. For the first time, Trevor Noah can appear in public in a hoodie without risking getting shot. Working from home is nothing new to me. I have worked from home writing a form of creative nonfiction (narrative is narrative) as a grant writer for twenty years. I’m a bit of a recluse to begin with so my life has changed little under lockdown. I used to go out once a week to the natural foods store, four times a week to the gym, and once a week to the library. So I skip the gym and the library and voila, I’m in lockdown. (I have been exercising at home with free weights.) But now everyone is living on online chat and wants me to participate. I’m not used to all this social activity. It’s exhausting. It’s stressful. I have to check my teeth for lettuce. I did a Zoom Passover Seder with family in five states and Canada. We do a weekly cost-to-coast family Zoom. I have a weekly Zoom movie group, monthly Zoom book group, and several Zoom synagogue services and events every month. A group of friends in my local Deaf and signing community are organizing a weekly ASL Zoom. Friends near and far keep coming out of the woodwork inviting me to reconnect through screenchat, which is particularly challenging since I have math anxiety and calculating the time differences makes me break out in a cold sweat, especially between here and, say, Thailand (what day is it there?). It’s like those scary logic problems from the SAT:  “If Calvin travels West from Bangkok at 50 miles per hour and Alvin travels East from Denver at 60 miles per hour then who will be in Scotland afore ye?”

Many of my friends and relatives have retired. Others are out of work until the lockdown ends. They have time on their hands. I’m still working here, people, and I’m up to my eyeballs writing a crop of brand new federal emergency relief grants for universities trying to help their students survive this debacle (thousands of students have been left homeless and food insecure when their college closed) and for healthcare providers to convert to telehealth. Why we aren’t further along with telehealth at this point in history staggers the imagination. The fact that someone would have to risk a coronavirus exposure event to take their baby to the doctor in person for antibiotics for an ear infection defies logic.

With the rise of screenchat, I have had to make adjustments to the fact that I’m now visible to my correspondents. This comes at a time when I can’t get a professional haircut and I’m improvising with a pair of scissors. Thank goodness I have curly hair because it doesn’t show so much if I do something foolish, it just makes me look more intellectual. Interestingly, I have noticed many women have started showing their gray hair now that they can’t get it colored. I think their gray hair looks terrific. I had to upgrade my attire. I don’t have to appear highly professional, but I do have to stop looking like a back-to-the-land commune escapee. I threw out two shmata dresses that I have crawled around the house in for years. I kept one to wear when I watch movies with Ron in the evening because my cat likes to sit on me and she sheds as if she thinks it’s an Olympic sport and she’s a gold medalist. (This detracts from her practical use as a substitute set of bagpipes.)

Last month when I wrote about the coronavirus, I considered the possibility that the virus is nature’s way of slowing the destruction of the planet perpetrated by humans with the climate chaos we have wrought. As human endeavor has slowed and stopped, CO2 emissions have dropped dramatically and the air is fit to breathe again. Now, a few days ago, Pope Francis said he wonders if the coronavirus is one of nature’s responses to humans ignoring the ecological crisis we face. He went further than calling this one of nature’s responses and even speculated that it could be “the revenge of nature.” Call me boastful, but you heard it here from me first. (Do you think the pope reads my blog?) This begs the question, should I be made pope? I’d be the first Jewish pope who plays the bagpipes. Extraordinary measures for extraordinary times. The thought I want to leave you with is this:  pay attention and make a note of the things that are different from the usual that you want to keep, to continue doing, when this moment passes and you can go out of your house again. Make use of this down time to imagine what could change for the future. These could be the first days of a better world. Stay well.

Coronavirus 1, Toilet Paper 0

Contemplating our predicament with the virus crisis takes me in two directions at once. On the one hand laughter is the best medicine, so I see the humor, and on the other I recognize the coronavirus as a grave threat and take the situation completely seriously. People are dying and our daily lives have altered dramatically because of this wee beastie hopping about in the world. If you think that joking about the coronavirus is in bad taste then read no further. For those of you like myself who vacillate between horror, surprise, and hilarity, then my words are for you. Laughter strengthens the immune system. This is a fact verified by studies published by the NIH and the Mayo Clinic, among other reputable sources. And I ask you, what do you recommend to get us through this debacle if not humor? The federal government ain’t gonna do it. That snake-oil salesman in the White House eliminated the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 and gutted the CDC budget by 80% so that it had to cut efforts to prevent and prepare for a global pandemic. His only real concerns are how to profit off this mess and whether the White House kitchen is well stocked with steak and ketchup. But I don’t really want to talk about that. I want to cultivate a positive attitude. And there’s a lot to laugh about in this situation. Forgive me.

So. What is it with the toilet paper? If this is the beginning of the apocalypse, or even just the beginning of a month shut inside the house (which, depending upon who is shut in with you, could be equivalent to the apocalypse), why is TP the one thing everyone desperately has to have? I read in the news that the police department in Newport, OR had to issue a statement telling people not to call 911 if they run out of TP. Lack of TP does not constitute an emergency. The run on TP reminds me how much Americans lack creativity. The last time I went to my local grocery store, the TP was gone but the shelves directly adjacent to the empty TP shelves were loaded with Kleenex. Go figure. Did I miss something? Did a dumbing-down virus already rampage through the country under the radar and silently turn everyone into an idiot? Please beam me up, Scottie. I could think of a lot of things I would like to have during a house lockdown. TP is not at the top of the list. I skipped the TP and bought a bottle of good Scotch whiskey. If this is the beginning of the apocalypse then I need a whiskey.

My cousin sent me an article about how Dems and Republicans are experiencing two different pandemics. It claimed that the Dems take it seriously and the GOP does not take it seriously, but think it is an evil Dem plot designed to undermine the Republican administration. (Biological partisan warfare?) I have to disagree with this assessment. Perhaps the Republican leaders refuse to take it seriously, but ordinary Republican people take it quite seriously. The Republican friends I have (and I must disclose that I don’t have many) take it completely seriously. My Republican neighbor kindly called me to check up on us and see if we are OK at our house. Even though we have a Bernie sign in our front yard, she told me they have plenty of TP and offered to share it with us if we need it. So, wow, we are good. My neighbor is a sweetheart and we refuse to be divided by partisan politics. No corn cobs needed in the bathroom at my house.

I suggested to my children that they subscribe to a newspaper if they are worried about running out of TP. (They read the news online while we get the New York Times Sunday paper delivered.) My husband discourages me from suggesting that anyone use newspaper because it will clog the sewage system. I’m not advocating for flushing it. That would clog the pipes. One would have to put it into a paper bag after use and put the bag in the trash eventually. Perhaps I should buy stock in roto-rooter because other people will get the idea but apply it indiscriminately because they are idiots. I heard a rumor that many newspapers are printing four blank pages in every edition for use in the bathroom. (I did not check this one out on Snopes.) Cool. I have a box of tissues on my desk, and when my husband swiped one to blow his nose, I asked him to let me have the tissue when he was done with it. (I could use the reverse side, right?) Remember Wimpy asking Popeye “Can I have that hamburger when you’re done with it?” If you’re not a Baby Boomer that joke means nothing to you. Go back to Instagram.

Because I keep joking around about all this, my daughter is worried that I’m not taking adequate precautions. She made me promise not to go out except to buy food, not even to the gym, to use hand sanitizer, and she made me promise not to eat off the floor. That seemed like a no-brainer at the time when I made the promise, but to my surprise I soon discovered that I actually do eat off the floor rather often. For instance if I drop a piece of cheese or a slice of zucchini and it doesn’t have cat hair on it then, well. Hmm. But I promised. Last night I dropped a piece of popcorn on the floor and without thinking picked it up and ate it. Now my husband is blackmailing me, threatening to tell my daughter. Mercy.

Said daughter lives in L.A., where things are getting pretty weird. Not only have people bought up all the TP and hand sanitizer, but now they are hoarding dry food (such as rice, nuts, and beans). The grocery store shelves are empty. After watching with amusement while a woman at the store attempted to ask a clerk to help her find Echinacea, which the woman could not pronounce and had to spell (reading from a computer printout), my daughter pointed out to me that a lot of people who previously had no clue what herbal and “alternative” remedies even were will now begin to learn about these helpful health resources. (Circumventing Big Pharma.) Exciting. Will humans actually evolve as a result of this debacle? One can only hope. I think the Echinacea anecdote provides evidence that everything has changed and the “old normal” has permanently disappeared in the rearview.

My daughter’s employer closed the office and sent everyone home to work remotely, so I suggested that she drive to our house in NorCal. I’ll have food growing in the garden in a couple of months and until then we can eat acorns if the food supply collapses. I’ve eaten acorns before. Not my favorite, but I know how to leach the acid out and make them into functional flour. We have TP for the time being (and our generous neighbor), but perhaps I should get started figuring out how to make TP out of acorns. That’s the kind of pioneering innovative spirit that has died out in America, I’m afraid. My fairly progressive rural community is home to many people who appreciate the benefits and joys of high-quality food. In our town, there has been a run on kombucha at the natural foods store (big bummer) and our local Grocery Outlet is sold out of organic kale chips (no big deal, I make my own). But we’ll never run out of goat cheese around here.

Speaking of goats. Last weekend we visited friends who live so far out in the country that they are still fighting off the virus that caused the great influenza pandemic of 1918. The coronavirus would need a helicopter, ESP, and night vision goggles to find them. We could barely find them with detailed directions, semaphore, an astrolabe, and a car. While walking from said car to their house (I use the term “house” loosely to describe the structure in which they live), I was hog-swaddled by a herd of goats hoping to eat my basket full of treats and I turned my ankle. Just my luck that the apocalypse is beginning and I can’t run. Not that I could run before I sprained my ankle, but I could at least walk faster. The swelling has gone down in the past week and the ankle doesn’t hurt, but I feel I should stay off it. It has turned several impressive shades of yellow, chartreuse, blue, and purple. Perhaps I should capitulate and buy that laser acupressure pen that I keep getting advertisements about in my email. It supposedly cures whatever ails you.

Since my aged father is cooped up in his apartment in the senior community where he lives, my brother initiated a weekly Zoom conference with all the close family so Dad can visit with everyone. That’s only for one hour out of the week, however. My son asked me if Grandpa was getting bored at home. Grandpa has never gotten bored a day in his life. He’s a brilliant mathematician. He’s creative and resourceful. He lived through the Depression. He doesn’t need a handheld electronic device to entertain himself. I told my son that while confined to his apartment, Grandpa will likely invent a new branch of mathematics (not for the first time in his life). But when I spoke to said Grandpa on Friday he informed me that he’s spending his time reading trashy thriller novels and taking long walks. Whatever. He has earned the right to stop producing. Meanwhile, my other son, the musician, and his girlfriend, who is a graphic artist, are on lockdown in their house in Oakland. Forbidden to go to work at their day jobs, they’re busy as bees. They will likely emerge with enough new musical compositions to fill a vinyl album, a gallery’s worth of art work, and several pounds of handmade paper. As for me, I’m going to start writing that sci-fi novel that has been on my mind lately. Maybe I’ll put a virus in it.

My husband sent an email to my daughter the other day to reassure her that he is complying with health recommendations. Our children are particularly worried about him because he’s a diabetic. He wrote to my daughter “We have stayed at home, though I had to go to a couple doctor appointments. I did sneak a couple of trips to the hardware store, but I didn’t lick anyone and I used hand sanitizer when I got back in the car. I even ducked when someone waved at me. Mom is really trying hard not to eat off the floor.” I appreciate him for putting in a good word for me. (That was before he saw me eat the stray piece of popcorn.)

This whole crisis gives me pause in light of climate chaos and the continued arrogant conviction by people that humans are the most important species. Humans like to think we are entitled to exploit the planet, exterminate other living beings, and disrupt the natural order without a second thought, and that Nature will not fight back. Think again, people. The coronavirus is Nature fighting back. Behold that this tiny living creature sends us the message that we are not the top species we imagine ourselves to be. We can easily be toppled. I’m beginning to think toppling humans is a clever idea and that it might be an efficient way to protect Planet Earth. But must we lose so many beautiful living human souls in the process?

It was peaceful driving to the natural foods store through empty streets in the early morning fog the other day to beat the rush. I wanted to shop when no one was about. It felt like a day of rest. Like the Sabbath. As the world slows down and comes to a near stop, we are giving Earth a rest. A cosmic Sabbath. We have reduced the carbon footprint dramatically by not flying and not driving. One has to wonder at the intelligence of this virus for finding a way to slow the destruction to the planet wrought by humans. I am beginning to think that a great many humans have less intelligence than a virus. What looks bad to humans might look good to other species. I hope Nature forgives us our trespasses and that we come out of this pandemic wiser and more aware. We have much to gain if we pay attention. Stay well.

And now you know why I chose an image of goats to go with this narrative.

Algodones, Zircon, Asparagus

Last month, Ron and I traveled to Algodones in Mexico for low-budget dental care because it costs far less to fly to Mexico to have any number of procedures (all expenses considered) than to do it in the U.S. with no insurance. We found out about the Sani Clinic in Algodones from several friends who have gone there for dental work. Algodones is just over the border from Yuma, Arizona. It’s a small town filled with little other than dental clinics, other health providers, pharmacies, and street vendors aggressively accosting American visitors and convincing them to buy all manner of frivolous tchotchkes while they’re high on Novocain and don’t have the best judgement.

I want to say up front that the Sani Clinic is terrific. The staff is knowledgeable, professional, helpful, kind, and extremely good at what they do. If you think that the U.S. provides the best medical and dental care in the world, think again. Not only can you access high-quality care from excellent healthcare providers in countries all over the world, but you can get it at a much more reasonable cost than jacked-up American prices. We went for Ron to get extensive work done that we could not afford in the States. While we were there, I took advantage of their services and got a crown for a cracked molar that my American dentist had urged me to get fixed. Worried about having a reaction (my body is woefully sensitive) to a foreign material embedded in my mouth, I had been reluctant to get a crown. If I got a platinum crown, would my immune system break down? Would I develop a mysterious rash? Crave food cooked in foil? Go cross-eyed? (No, wait, that already happened without a crown.) The dentist at the Sani suggested I get a zirconia crown since people with sensitivities rarely react to zircon. Zircon crowns are the most expensive kind, costing between $1500 and $2500 in the U.S. At the Sani the cost was $450. So I now own a zircon tooth. I wonder if my zircon tooth will give me superpowers. Invisibility? Teleporting? Understanding the language of whales? Figuring out what on Earth goes on in my husband’s head?

Our daughter went with us to help me out just in case something took a turn for the worse at the clinic with Ron, which it didn’t. She was a good sport about being stranded in a town with no decent restaurants, no night life, populated only with aging American dental patients and sales-crazed Mexican vendors who grabbed people off the street and shoved jewelry, pottery, woven clothing, and metal sculptures of burros wearing sombreros in their face. Fortunately, Ron’s oral surgery went extremely well. Here in the USSSSA the dentist would probably have turned the work into a full-day affair complete with no eating ahead of time, anesthesia, complex efforts to keep his blood sugar stable, and on and on. At the Sani, they shot him up with Novocain and had him out of there in 90 minutes. The cost of doing everything Ron wanted to do would have been out of reach for us at home. In Mexico, it was about one-third as expensive and thus doable.

While I loved the Sani Clinic, I did not love the travel, hotel, food, or town. One can’t expect much from the cuisine in a town filled with foreigners unable to chew, I suppose. With my delicate digestion, it came as no surprise to me that I got sick from the food by my second day out. After spending hours tormented by stomach cramps, I no longer had any desire to try local cuisine. Fortunately, I brought a fair amount of food from home in my suitcase since I travel like a refugee (wandering-Jew historical trauma syndrome). I brought a lot of hummus (what wandering Jew can travel without it?), gluten-free crackers, and fruit. At least I seemed capable of digesting scrambled eggs for breakfast at the restaurant on the corner. While out and about fending off the vendors in order to admire their beautiful wares, I came upon a man on a street corner selling fresh asparagus. I bought two big bunches, to my daughter’s horror. She was convinced I would get salmonella. I washed the asparagus in my hotel room and ate it raw with hummus and it was delicious. Meanwhile, my daughter furiously texted her brothers and tried to enlist them to beg me to throw out the asparagus. Perhaps my super power is that I can eat any asparagus. One of Ron’s greatest disappointments of the trip was that while the menu at our corner restaurant teased him by listing horchata, whenever he ordered it they said they didn’t have it. It was kind of like being trapped in the Monty Python cheese shop sketch, only without the fun of John Cleese asserting there was no horchata (but it was on the menu!) in a hilariously bad Spanish accent.

The travel to and from Algodones was no fun. We flew on American Airlines (AA), which required us to change planes in Phoenix. On the way to Yuma, AA managed to tear a seam on my suitcase, but not to the point that it was unusable for the return trip. My daughter’s suitcase arrived in Yuma, however, appearing as if it had gone through the Civil War. All the zipper tabs were missing and it looked like someone had set it on fire. (She was later issued a generous check to replace her suitcase. AA in San Francisco sent my suitcase out to repair and returned it to me at my house within ten days.) AA delayed my daughter’s flight out of L.A. so that she missed her connection in Phoenix and arrived in Yuma so late that customs at the border had closed so she had to stay in a hotel by the airport and join us the next day. AA did the same thing to us on the way home – delayed the flight from Yuma so we missed our connection in Phoenix. We spent so much time in the Phoenix airport that I was able to find a gluten-free chocolate cookie (maybe my zircon super power is being able to find gluten-free chocolate cookies in airports), fell asleep, and nearly finished the 1400-page novel I was reading. When AA finally managed to get us on a flight back to California, they couldn’t get us to Oakland (where we flew out) but instead inconveniently sent us to San Francisco and we had to take a Lyft back to Oakland. Lucky for us, we have a friend who is a Lyft driver and we managed to find him and hire him to take us back across the Bay. He and Ron enjoyed a good catch-up chat in the front seat.

While the people at our hotel next door to the clinic were helpful and friendly, the accommodations were bare-bones and I found them uncomfortable. I shouldn’t complain because we did not pay for the hotel (if you spend more than $2000 at the Sani, they pay for your hotel room). We had a bed, a bathroom, and a mini-fridge. No way to boil water, though, so even though I brought coffee and equipment to brew it, we had no hot water. Ron suffered more from the lack of decent coffee than anything else during our dental escapade, because it turned out that no one in Algodones knew how to brew a decent cup of coffee. The pillows were the most uncomfortable pillows I have ever encountered. They were plastic. What else could one expect from a hotel that caters to people who drool blood all night after dental extractions? I always travel with my own pillow, but even though I had my pillow as a buffer, those giant Chiclets that the hotel tried to pass off as pillows destroyed my neck. The woman at the front desk was a sweetheart and I enjoyed chatting with her about our grandchildren (she has eleven!) when I passed through the lobby. On our last day in Algodones, she told us we could stay in our room after checkout time since we planned to catch a late shuttle to Yuma. But then her super-mean boss turned up and had a fit that we were still in our room and demanded that we clear out. Puffing out his chest like a rooster, he informed us that our friend at the front desk didn’t own the hotel, and he did, and he wanted us to leave by checkout time. Bad things happen when you try to get my husband to hurry up. He has only one speed and it’s slow. The more you rush him, the slower he gets. In his haste, he left all his pants in the dresser at the hotel. Fortunately he remembered to put a pair on before we left. Later he called the lovely woman at the front desk and she said she would set aside his pants for him until he goes back in July to finish his dental work. In the meantime, he has an excuse to buy new pants, which he has to do anyway since he has lost so much weight while recovering from oral surgery.

I brought my travel blender, nutrition powder, and yogurt to Mexico; and we bought fruit and juice from the restaurant on the corner. So I kept Ron fed. I would say my zircon super power is keeping people fed, but I had that one before I went to Mexico. I think the highpoint of Ron’s trip was clobbering me and my daughter at Scrabble (repeatedly). The only game I perhaps would have won came to an abrupt demise when I got my foot tangled trying to stand up and knocked the board over onto the floor. That game was not salvageable. Ron went on to win the subsequent game with some word worth like about 1400 points. Scrabble prowess is obviously not the zircon super power (unless the tooth is transmitting the super power to Ron).

We spent our last night in a hotel next to the Yuma Airport because I couldn’t handle one more night with the plastic pillows and because our flight was at a deeply uncivilized early hour. Our flight was delayed, so we could have slept in instead of racing to the airport to wait. But then I would never have found the gluten-free chocolate cookie when we missed our connection in Phoenix. When we checked out of the hotel in Yuma, I asked the clerk at the front desk for a receipt. He printed a receipt, showed it to me, and said he couldn’t give me a copy because he claimed I had paid for the room on Expedia and they don’t allow the hotel to share a copy of the receipt. Wait, what? In fact, I hadn’t booked the room on Expedia. As someone who makes my own rules, I picked the receipt up off the counter and said to the clerk, “I’ll just steal this receipt.” He blanched and clutched his chest. Fearing he might have a heart attack, I relinquished the receipt. I was not prepared to cause the death of a hotel clerk before I had my morning coffee. Ironically, when we got home, my daughter emailed me a copy of the receipt. She said that when she checked out later that morning, the clerk told her there was a mix-up with the receipt and it was OK for me to have a copy. With people dying every day because they can’t afford healthcare and don’t realize they might be able to afford it in Mexico (or Canada or France or Germany), democracy in America fading in the rearview, and our sweet Earth perishing before our very eyes, I don’t really care about a ridiculous hotel receipt.

Upon our return, a friend of mine told me she admires me for going to Mexico for the dental care. She said that most people who found out about that option simply wouldn’t follow up on it. Maybe so. It’s a good reminder to act on what we know, to step back from problems (don’t be daunted) and look for creative solutions, and to make efforts to broaden our thinking because we put ourselves in boxes that restrain us. Do not be so quick to dismiss magical thinking because you never know where it will take you. If you wander around an airport long enough you might just find the perfect gluten-free chocolate cookie.

Diplopia

I did not start out my 2020 with 20/20. I woke up a few days before Christmas with my right eye crossed, which caused me to see double, technically called diplopia. That fun occurrence was wildly random. In case I needed a reminder from the universe that life is fragile and precarious, and that all that I have, all that I am, can disappear in a heartbeat, so I should remember to cherish it, just in case all that, I received this stern reminder to keep me vigilant. To keep me grateful. Sheesh, even Job didn’t lose his eyesight. But he did lose his children. I’ll stick with the lost eyesight. I think I have accepted this absurd circumstance with admirable humor, if not outright courageous amusement. Sometimes one has to throw one’s hands in the air and say “oh well.” Other times the ridiculously high level of anxiety caused by a bizarre situation requires one to call Moscow Mitch’s office in DC every night after hours and leave desperate screaming voice messages that conclude with letting him know that every enlightened member of the species living in the USA is voting him off the planet. As Jane Fonda says, I hope I don’t outlive the planet. We’ll see, or, in my case, half-see.

After waking to diplopia, I had to cover my right eye with a patch. Double vision is way too confusing and leads to stubbing of toes, falling down, and pouring liquids next to instead of inside of the glass. I went to the eye doctor, of course, only to learn that this problem is relatively common and generally benign in adults. Some muscles in my right eye have taken a hike for a while, probably because of a temporary inflammation around the optic nerve or some such peculiarity. The good news from the doc is that this condition usually resolves itself. The bad news is that it usually takes two or three months to do so. (Months?! Seriously?) There’s nothing to be done for it other than to wait until the eye returns to normal, as randomly as it became abnormal. In the meantime, I have to keep my right eye covered or I can’t see. My depth perception is off, of course, because of it and I have to wear my reading glasses to see my computer screen unless I magnify the words to the size of chocolate-covered almonds (is anyone else hungry?).

Ron got me an impressive black eye patch and when I wear it I look pretty badass. I only wear it to go out. It’s my formal eye patch. At home I tape a piece of fabric over the eye, which is far more comfortable. In addition to wearing an eye patch, I’m grouchy because I can’t see very well, so I’m well on my way to becoming a pirate, although I haven’t hijacked any ships yet. Yar. I could get a parrot and perhaps a peg leg, but pistols are out of the question. Who ever heard of a pacifist pirate? (Give me your ship or I’ll throw this gluten-free pancake at you.)

On the morning that my eye crapped out, I thought perhaps my eye was dry and that wetting it would improve my vision. I didn’t have any Visine. I asked Ron if he had any eye drops and he said he did but wasn’t sure where they were. His vision is generally not so hot because of ongoing changes in his eyes throughout the day caused by his diabetes. I’m sure there’s a good joke in here about the blind leading the blind but I’m not finding it right now because I’m grouchy. Ron proceeded to rummage through his side of the medicine cabinet looking for eye drops. I want to point out at this juncture that my side is about one-fourth of the cabinet and his side is about three-fourths. He keeps every damn health and beauty aid he ever acquires and hollers if I try to throw something out. Hence, we have foot powder purchased during the Eisenhower Administration, hair grease from companies that went out of business around the time that the original version of Shaft came out, and painkillers prescribed even before the opioid epidemic. God help me if I throw out an expired medication. After some rootling about, Ron passed me some drops. Luckily I read the bottle to the best of my ability before using because it said “ear drops.” Needless to say I didn’t put them in my eye. I thanked him for trying to help but declined further assistance in fear that with our combined vision impairments, I might wind up with a homeopathic elderberry cold remedy in my eye. Or worse.

I have had to think about what to tell people when they see the patch and ask me what happened. I tell children that my eye crossed, it doesn’t hurt me, and it doesn’t look bad, because I don’t want them to have nightmares imagining what is under the patch. (A devil doll? Alien lifeform?) Under the patch is a clown show wreaking havoc with my life while I do my best to take it in stride with a combination of stoic humor and Zen recognition that I am lucky nothing more serious has befallen me when so many other people must grapple with horrible health issues. (I have told a few close friends that Ron f---ed me blind, because I think that’s a hilarious explanation, but it’s also lewd, inappropriate, and quite possibly embarrassing. The fact that I even mention it here shows just how desperate I am to keep laughing.) My preferred explanation is that I pulled a muscle in my eye admiring my new grandson (born a few weeks ago).  

The lesson for me is once again that we never know what we will wake up to in the morning, especially as we age. Weird quirks of the body. Mind blips. A friend recently regaled us with his story about wanting to ask a question of his new voice-activated AI home device and forgetting its name. (It’s Alexa. Duh.) Hey Google. Hey Siri. Hey you. Hey technological wonder. Hey Hal – open the pod bay doors. If I had Alexa, would it take away my car keys until my eye goes back to normal? If it’s any consolation to me, at least I can still get out of bed in the morning. So far. I’m not sure if I’m consoled or not. (Alexa, am I consoled?) After the 2016 election, I had great difficulty finding anything funny and stopped trying to write humorous blog posts. Perhaps my light-hearted reflections here about going half-blind are indicative. Could it be that my sense of humor is returning with the new decade? I hope I’m still laughing in November.

How many fingers am I holding up?