BLab

I am pretty good at answering this question by now, because Jeff and I have this conversation approximately once a week. "Which is easier to learn," he asks, "English or Japanese?" This question presumes, of course, that I could supply an answer from the standpoint of one who is not already fluent in English, and that is a tricky bit of objectivity to achieve for one who is. But I try.

"I am sure that English would be easier," I say, "for a speaker of most European languages, but perhaps for a speaker of Chinese, Japanese would be easier. At least one would have a starting familiarity with many of the characters used." Then I always add that for a Martian, previously unschooled in any human system of communication, I would have to recommend Japanese over English on the grounds that once you learn the grammatical rules of Nihongo, you can count on a reasonable degree of consistency, unlike modern English which incorporates such a hodgepodge of influences that almost all bets are off from one word to the next. Jeff thinks it's funny every time I mention the Martian, which is nice. I am not such a comedienne that I can come up with new material very often, and he's a brand new audience every time I say it.

I decided we would walk along Baltimore's Harbor Heritage Walk today. It's a mostly brick promenade which follows the contours of the various piers and commercial or residential frontages along several miles of harbor running through Federal Hill, Harbor East, Fells Point, and Canton. I almost said "we decided," but then I stopped myself and wrote "I decided" instead. Because I decided. I always decide, then I tell Jeff what we're going to do and he is pleased. Sometimes, just on principle, I ask him what he would like to do and he thinks earnestly, brow wrinkled for a few moments, before saying "I don't know...what would you like to do?" So I decide. The shape of today was partly determined by the fact that at Gabe's pre-college physical 2 weeks ago they did not give him a tb test. Then, his college health forms turned out to require one, so now we must squeeze in 2 quick trips to the doctor's office this week--one for the test and one for the nurse to decree it officially negative--and it can be tough to make it within doctor's office time parameters unless I pick him up myself, rather than leave it to carpool. Hence, driving into the city early made sense. But, despite the sunny outlook promised by my iPhone weather app, clouds and an aggravatingly insistent wind kept it brisker than would be ideal, and we were happy to take refuge for half an hour in a grittily bohemian Fell's Point coffee joint prior to heading north to the Baltimore Lab School.

And now we're parked at 23rd and North Lovegrove St (an alley, actually,) in a metered space which is too narrow for a real car. I don't know who painted the lines on this block of 23rd, and I don't suppose it really matters. The meters are painted blue, and are so old that they take nickels and dimes. No meters installed within the last 20 years take nickels and dimes. In fact, meters of any sort are largely obsolete. Earlier, for our harbor walk, we parked on Caroline Street, along a curb where parking coupon dispensers are situated at regular intervals. They take credit cards, and dispense small slips of paper showing an expiration time, which you place on your dashboard. I like this system, as I can't count on having enough quarters for a meter, and I no longer expect to be able to scrounge Chuck E Cheese tokens from under a car seat. Once, Jeff and I did that in Frederick Maryland when we were desperate and it was raining. It worked. I wonder now, how many parking meters contain Chuck E Cheese tokens?

in the morning

Bird feeders, hanging within viewing distance of my kitchen counter stool, are ridiculously pleasing. Better than fish, because you don’t have to clean the tank. Not better than fish, because the fish don’t exit stage right when you approach to pour another cup of coffee. Perhaps they’ll get used to our morning bustle. Whether they learn to accept Hazel the cat wiggling her hunting haunches at them from the countertop window is another thing.

I made Gabe drive to Quizno’s and back last night. It is easy to see that his confidence with vehicle operation is increasing as he willingly zips into turns and maintains a lively monologue on the Absurdist drama he penned in school while exceeding the speed limit at erratic intervals. It’s a little disconcerting actually, as his other mode is a style I’d call “Grandpappy’s monthly outing,” wherein he adheres stubbornly to exact speed limit, even when there’s not another car in view, and spends 5 stopped minutes preparing to consider possibly turning. I sincerely hope that the time he spends away at college, car-less, will be sufficient for his brain wiring to ripen such that his two modes can synthesize into placid but confident good judgment.

Last night Rachel videochatted me from Costa Rica. Her six weeks will have been a striking juxtaposition of beach-combing relaxation and an immersion in some of human society’s harsher realities--how a corrupt administrator in a poorly regulated school system robs children, how means of redress can be vastly less accessible than in this U.S. system about which we love to complain, and how the horror of opportunistic murder (in this case, a son-in-law of her host family,) can strike with jarring randomness. I will be glad to have her home, but will absolutely be unable to keep up with her Spanish.

a dash of pepper

Why, with cars, is there always something amiss with a solenoid valve? I think it's become one of those words like "consultant." If you don't know what you do for a living, but sometimes people give you money, you say "I'm a consultant." If you want to add an extra charge to a routine automobile service tab, you blame it on a solenoid valve. Jeff and I have once again braved the ped-unfriendly hoof-paths of West Annapolis while we await consultation on a Subaru's solenoid valve. And, by the way, drive belts.

Meanwhile...I've been having an interesting time exploring the topic of neurotypicality. As far as I know "neurotypical" is a term which exists only as a way to designate the counterpoint to brains with wiring that places them anywhere on the Asperger's/autism spectrum. This is a slowly developing interest of mine, which has accelerated recently in a quest to gain understanding of my kid and, by extension, myself.

I have only recently stumbled across the term BAP, or "broader autism phenotype," which is a term to describe people who may not be clinically on the autism spectrum (who may not, in other words, meet diagnostic criteria for even a nameable syndrome at the milder end of the spectrum, such as Asperger's,) but who have traits of behavior and personality that resemble, even if in a minor way, those of autism or Asperger's.

The thing is, I have exactly such a kid. So much so that every neuropsychological evaluator we've seen in the context of pursuing his alternative education--and there've been quite a few--has hastened, upon hearing of and witnessing his personality, to hand me an Asperger's parent questionnaire. He never scores in the diagnosible range. The tests are always fishing for an underfunctioning grasp of humor, which he does not have, and he loses quite a few points on the basis of having been a very tactile small child. But the fact remains that they always suspect it, and--to people who know Asperger's--his style of social interaction often seems suspiciously familiar.

I understand that the whole concept of the Broader Autistic Phenotype is controversial in some quarters. But logic and intuition lead me to believe that the extreme end of any neurological variation (especially one which is already established to exist on a spectrum--a continuum,) will be balanced by a minor end, where behaviors and characteristics may establish an individual as odd or quirky without imposing the functional handicap of autism, or the social handicap of Asperger's.

On that note, I recently took a quiz designed to score me relative to the BAP scale. Let me disclaim right up front that I am as wary as a person should be of granting too much credence to any "quiz" hosted by Helloquizzy or Cupid.com or whatever it was, but I still found the results striking. Here is what the summary of my results said: "You scored 102 aloof, 90 rigid and 82 pragmatic. You scored above the cutoff on all three scales. Clearly you are either autistic or on the broader autistic phenotype. You probably are not very social, and when you do interact with others, you come off as strange or rude without meaning to." Oops.

Oh, so now what is it Emily? Without a socially legitimized career label you're resorting to assigning yourself a social dysfunction label? No, no, I may be silly, but I'm not that silly. I don't require a label. But what I might appreciate is a means to cut myself some slack for having grown up feeling like such a weirdo-cum-alien who still doesn't seem to have the normal wiring where connecting with people on a social level is concerned. (A few people though. Jeff was extraordinary in his ability to grasp my wavelength which is why I miss that aspect so much.)

Here is another quote from the BAP analysis: "Given the low concordance of autism in siblings and fraternal twins compared to the concordance in identical twins, it is likely that autism results from the combination of a number of alleles, 3 to 15 or even more according to researchers." This makes sense. If you throw a handful of pepper in the soup, you get peppery soup. If you throw a pinch in it may be more palatable but it won't be unpeppered. My son Gabe is a little peppery. So is my brother Jim for that matter. Two people, each one degree of genetic separation from me, who would, I daresay, score higher than 102, 90, and 82.

So what does all this mean? Nothing. Well...something. It helps me look at my kid (as well as myself and my brother) in a kinder, more curious light. (not that the light was unkind before.) What is the significance of a differently-wired brain? What might be the advantages? Surely it's not a bad thing as long as one doesn't get too hung up on trying to grasp why one seems such an awkward fit with the "normal" coffee klatsch crowd. (Which I did. Get hung up, that is.) It's easier, though, to lose the hang-up if you realize it's not a character flaw, it's your wiring. The thing about Gabe is, he has no such hang-up. There's enough pepper in his soup that he doesn't even think about it. The thing about me is, I apparently live close enough to the cut-off point...I am, in other words, close enough to "normal" that I see across the fence and wonder if I oughtn't to be on the other side.

all aboard!

Trip planning is an area where I leave little to chance. Even when I don’t have reservations chiseled in, I will almost certainly have Googlemapped the locations of several Paneras and Chipotles along the route, allowing for some flexibility as to which address I’ll later tap into the GPS, depending on timing and traffic.

I’ll admit, there is an aspect of adventure that is lost when multiple channels of information become available, but I’m not sure I’d go back to the old way...Hungry adults, cranky toddlers, tooling in a southerly direction down a Virginia interstate...must stop! Blue sign, up ahead says (not promisingly) “Colonial Family Restaurant.” But, having passed miles of exits of nothingness, we decide to take our chances. Well, this was not the WORST overcooked pasta a la runny ketchup dished out in an ambience replete with burned out bulbs, sticky tabletops, and the happy patter of a fly family reunion...actually, yes, it probably was the worst. We may never have topped the Colonial Family in terms of abject disgust factor, but we’ve come close.

My first impulse, while planning our upcoming Fall railroad adventure, was to leave some loose room. Get on at point A. Get off at...point B, C, or D, depending on what I felt like. Get on again, when we’ve seen enough. But then I learned that Amtrak bedroom compartments book up months in advance, and sleeper trains were an important feature of my travel notion.

Consequently we are, more or less, planned to a fare-thee-well. Not a bad thing either, considering all thinking on the fly must be performed by one brain for two bodies, one of which tends to balk when asked to move too quickly. In October we will board the Capitol Limited, and chug from Washington D.C. to Chicago, through the battlefields of Harper’s Ferry West Virginia, and along the south edge of Lake Erie. In Chicago, we’ll change to the Southwest Chief and nearly complete a cross-country odyssey, traveling across expanses of the plains I’ve only ever flown over. We’ll get off in Santa Fe, and spend 2 days and nights testing to see whether the town really is as touristy as they say, before we return to the Chief, and travel several hours farther to Flagstaff. I have only ever seen the Grand Canyon by air. (Once, while flying from Baltimore to Denver, I changed planes in Las Vegas. I realize this makes no geographical sense whatever, but the sky was clear and the view of the Canyon was unparalleled.) So now, I will visit in person, and I hope that our Fall timing will keep us out of the worst of the mass-of-humanity crunch.

So now I have reservations of the booking kind, and a few of the emotional kind. How will Jeff do walking the jostling aisles of a locomotive? Will disorientation cost us too much sleep during our 2 nights aboard? (This, I hope, will be simplified by the tiny size of the bedroom compartment, and the convenient location of the potty an armstretch away. At least I won't have to get far out of bed to provide guidance.) And I predict that the adventure will be, all in all, well suited to his needs and current life preferences. Jeff likes to watch the world go by, ask strangers where they're from, eat, and sleep. A train trip, with meals and bed included, might be ideal.

Now excuse me. In the spirit of overplanning, I have The Rough Guide to the Grand Canyon, and a Moon Handbook guide to Santa Fe, and they want me to read them, highlighter poised and ready.

watching birds helps

I had high hopes for 2010, and I am finding that, in a small way, it is turning out to be a year of peace-making as far as my life and I are concerned.

This actually is not a day on which I should, in particular, feel a sense of peaceful resolve. Patti, the teacher who usually drives Gabe and a couple others to school, is sick again and it appears that tomorrow will be consumed by bookends of teen-shuttling, from here to Baltimore and back. With a doctor appointment in between. Woo hoo for sudden schedule lock-ins. Yes, my ever-so-slightly Aspergery tendencies feel rebellious, but my philosophical aspect is able to keep them in check. (Newsflash: I’m off the hook for the morning run--thanks Sarah!)

Well, I suppose it’s no new revelation that what bravery I felt in the realm of property ownership was completely undone with the demise of my partner’s mechanical abilities and general situational perception. That is part of why I admire condos--low maintenance, no yard, little to clean. The building is not my problem. But I also know, without a doubt, that an itch to pick up and leave is really--at a root level--nothing but an impulse to run away from a situation which is not escapable. When this house was in the throes of growing pains, and the roof leaked, and drywall dust was a component of the air we breathed, I remember thinking how--if we could just achieve basic inhabitability--that I could happily live here forever, diddling away at the minor things remaining.

I am, with minor fits of kicking and screaming from my inner runner, finding my way back to that sentiment. Only change live here forever to live here for a while, anyway. I am growing slightly more confident that I can keep it from falling apart. (If you opened the boggart cupboard in front of me, here’s what I’d see: A house in derelict condition that I’m responsible for selling!)

I’m turning from a component of Em & Jeff back into Emily the single person--at least from the standpoint of self-identity--and perhaps, after (what’s it been?) 6-7 years, I don’t hate it anymore.

pc-aroma

Why do non-Macintosh computers...such as my Toshiba netbook...such as the Gateway desktop Gabe is glued to...have an interesting and distinctive smell while warm and in operation that I've never detected from a Mac? I don't know. In a tiny way, it reminds me of the way my brother's electric racetrack set used to smell when you'd get the little vehicles fired up and zooming. Just before they fell off on the banked curve, that is.

It wasn't the dawn's early light, but it was good.

Advantage: Oldness. At age 62 you become eligible for a $10 lifetime Senior Pass which will admit you (and the other ≤ 3 people in your car) to National Parks and Federal wildlife areas all over the country

Yesterday's goal was to obtain one. National Park Service information online made it clear that such a thing could be obtained in person only, and--being of the get-it-done-now school of thought--I wanted to, well, get it done now.

I had not visited Fort McHenry, right down the road in Baltimore, since one of my kids formed a star, or a fraction of a stripe, or--I don't know--maybe a grommet, in the annual "human flag" event where they try to convince a couple hundred third-graders to sit still long enough for a picture to be snapped from a helicopter. It isn't easy. I don't remember this as a particularly fun field trip as these things go!

Wednesday was jacket weather, but the sun was a trooper. And for once I actually appreciated the informative video which described exactly why Francis Scott Key was aboard a ship in the harbor and thus excellently positioned to see the bombs bursting in air. (he was supposed to talk the British into releasing a prisoner--his friend Dr. Beanes--who was not, as far as I can tell, Rowan Atkinson. If he had been, no negotiator would have been required. It would have been The Ransom of Red Chief--at sea edition.)

This time I paid the kind of attention you can't pay when your companions are under 14...i.e. I read the descriptive plaques and stood still long enough to listen to the recorded commentary in places such as enlisted men's bunk room or officer's poorly lit, but better appointed, chamber. The voice of the recorded commentary, btw, was Alan Walden--a longtime WBAL radio voice--and Jeff named that tune, I mean voice, rather quickly. I couldn't come up with it, though I did concur. I could however walk in a hunched posture up and down the cramped steps into the "bomb-safe" chamber without bumping my head 3 times on the way up, and I could take pictures without the photographic subject having to guide me in pointing the camera in the right direction.

Here's the thing about Jeff--even with an increasingly bewildered and slightly askew expression as a regular feature of his face, he manages to not look his age. It has always been thus, and his recent boyish haircut reduced the unruly sticking-out grey-haired factor, so when we walked into the Fort McHenry visitors' center and I declared that we'd like a $10 lifetime pass please, the reaction of the two rangers on duty was a rapid but kindly protestation that it was only for those age 62 and up. At which point I grinned knowingly, pointed at Jeff, and said "That's why we brought his i.d."

Fortunately I had thought to ask Jeff if he had his wallet just after we walked out our front door. He did not. He hadn't seen it for a couple of days, he said, which left me two options: Get his passport from where it's safely stowed in a filing cabinet, or look for the wallet. I started with the latter and--after patting down several pairs of pants, awkwardly hanging in the closet--it paid off. Wallet recovered. And i.d. ready to move into my wallet, next to the National Park Senior Pass which will, by the way, get us into the Grand Canyon next October without the usual $25 entrance fee.

Atomic Clock

Freddi the dog smiles at me with a big doggie grin as I come in from dumping the overflowing trashcan of recyclable plastics and bottles into the big yellow bin outside. She was hoping she could come, but not this time. Dogs are very forgiving.

Outside, I’d noticed that a box had tumbled out of the yellow bin. “Atomic Wall Clock,” it said. The clock itself is now suspended on a screw on the wall, just above the bulletin board in the dining area. Exactly where, 3 days ago, the big-faced analog clock with day and date readout had been hanging. I’m thinking of putting the analog back and finding a new home for the atomic wonder clock. It’s dark, unlit, and too hard to read.

Besides--despite my scientifically precise probe of a couple months ago, which ascertained that Jeff can read a digital but not an analog clock--the Atomic Wall Clock has failed to deliver. Or Jeff’s brain has taken a step away from clock reading of any sort.

”What’s it say?” I questioned, pointing helpfully at the 3 inch tall numbers 9, 4, and 4. “Right here, in the big window.” Jeff scrutinizes it, clearly uninspired. “Wednesday,” he says. Oops. No, today is Saturday and I’m pretty sure I’ve corrected my initial a.m./p.m. time-setting error, so the smaller, lower window is reading “SAT.”

”Here,” I say. “Nine, four, four...nine forty-four.” “Oh yes, of course,” Jeff replies, “nine forty-four.”

Here’s why the clock is atomic: It’s supposed to periodically check its time against atomically transmitted signals and adjust accordingly. Here’s why it doesn’t: Our house is apparently too fortress-like to let even atomic signals pass through. This used to mean cell phones barely worked inside, but current performance suggests that both Verizon and AT&T are broadcasting with a little more gusto these days. But I doubt there’s any monetary incentive for the atomic clock radio waves to get stronger.

It is later, evening. I’m sitting here at my computer where I should have an absolutely clear shot, visually speaking, at the atomic clock. I can’t read it. Not at all. I see nothing but the glare of the kitchen lights firing back from its glass readout windows. (But if I get closer, it will tell me the date, day, time, and temperature, both indoor and out.) I think atomic clock esquire is moving to the front hall. Or somewhere. Here’s why I don’t care: We just had dinner--with Gordon, Tracy, and Helen--at the Stoney River Steakhouse. I don’t eat steak, but the mahi mahi was tasty, and I drank 1.5 glasses of a rather delicious and overpriced chardonnay. Also, I both purchased and mounted a lovely bird feeder today. It is hanging from the soffit of the back roof overhang, just outside a kitchen window. Perhaps, by tomorrow, the birds will have found it.

Pedestrian Crossing...please?

There is Annapolis, and then there is Annapolis. The first is a 350 or so year old town whose narrow streets and cozy harbor are frequently pictured in promotional material designed to highlight the colonial allure of Maryland’s “sailing capitol.” And a charming town it is, with housing prices reflecting the fact that the historic district is as big as it’s ever going to get, so folks pay dearly to live within walking distance of brick-paved streets, with easy access to boat shows, holiday fireworks, and exciting Spring flyovers by the Blue Angels stunt planes during Naval Academy graduation week. What they don’t get is a guarantee that they can park the car within blocks of the house, or a serviceable grocer, since downtown--with the exception of a wine merchant, a pharmacy, and a mini-mart--is devoid of merchants that actually serve the needs of residents as opposed to visitors.

But make no mistake--it's a great place to visit, eat, and walk. (Please though, don't forget to check the ground now and then while walking, as 200 year old trees do a number on what might at one time have been dependably level brickwork!)

As for the other Annapolis--the greater surrounding parts still within Annapolis postal code range--you can about flipflop the list of convenient and inconvenient features. Can you park? Yes. Can you walk? Well...

Rachel, daughter #1, is on a 6 week internship (which looks an awful lot like a vacation) in Costa Rica. Which meant it was time for the battery in her car (which isn't yet technically hers) to take its own sabbatical. And also die. Well, almost die. The AAA guy got it fired up just long enough for me to get the car to Annapolis Subaru for service. (and a new battery.)

Annapolis Subaru even shares downtown's 21401 zipcode. But it's on the west edge, separated from historic by a mile or so of industry, gas pumps, junk food, and "Walking Lester," a local guy who ambles with an unmistakable trebuchet-style gait up and down West St, sometimes picking up trash. Between Annapolis Subaru and a couple of decent shopping centers runs Maryland Route 2, a main conduit connecting southern Maryland to Baltimore. What does not run between Annapolis Subaru and those shopping centers are any officially planned means to travel on foot.

But, did we want to spend 3 hours in the dealer’s waiting room listening to Judge Stern-Lady on tv, giving the litigants in a petty lawsuit a good talking to, or did we want to take our chances with Route 2 and its environs? Plan B, of course, as daytime tv turns my brain into rice pudding, and across the highway at Whole Foods Market were blueberry muffins and coffee.

So right about here I want to thank the less-rich residents of the surrounding neighborhoods who are more likely to work in the stores than shop there, because they have trod footpaths through a man-made landscape which was designed on the assumption that humans cannot move 20 yards without a motor vehicle.

Wending our way along a slightly quieter backroad, Jeff and I maneuvered along the edges of yards and businesses before getting to a genuine, fully-functioning pedestrian crosswalk with lights, from which we finally achieved access to the grocery store and our reward. The trip from that shopping center--Annapolis Towne Center--to its nearest competitor, the Harbor Center (nowhere near the harbor, note,) was trickier. My opening thought was that we could travel via the “inside passage” of Home Depot, Outback Steakhouse, and Chevy’s Tex-Mex Grill parking lots, thus avoiding too much intimacy with Route 2. No dice. Each individual enterprise--be it a solitary restaurant or a U-shaped shopping plaza--appears to exist on its own bluff, with the space in between carved into impassible, impossibly steep county-owned trenches, often peppered along the edges with fences and/or no-trespassing signs. Hence, we were left with little choice but to follow the, fortunately, well-worn path of the local foot-commuters, right alongside the highway.

There was a stretch that made me uncomfortable, where the the curb gave way for drainage and we had to wait for a truck or two to rumble by so we could step momentarily into the road. Not comfy when your companion is inclined to trail by 10 feet, and has been known to lose his footing and stumble off a path now and then.

Nevertheless, we made it to Barnes & Noble, where I bought one book called America by Rail and another on Japanese grammar.

I have no argument with Dwight D. Eisenhower and his interstate highway system, but when did humans forget that they had legs, and consider only the needs of wheels? It was a silly decades-long habit ranking right up there with forgetting we come equipped with the means to feed infants, or thinking that we should synthesize food and color it bright orange and blue.




I can explain

Jeff’s family lived across the street. When I was 7, he was a 21 year old college student. When I was in high school, he was an adventurous but unrooted young man, hopscotching between driving a VW Beetle up the Alaska-Canadian Highway to see what he could see, stinting as a handyman on a Seattle college campus, and visiting folks in the most derelict of Baltimore subsidized housing venues as a social services caseworker. None of which had anything to do with his college major--Medieval History--but most people can say the same thing. As the parent of five kids--all with a very relaxed attitude toward the whole marriage and babies gestalt--Jeff’s mother was, shall we say, pleased when her oldest took an interest, at a Christmas Eve party, in the girl from across the street.

I, on the other hand--for all my lack of focus on the points of college major, or career goal--carried with me a certainty that the right partnership was a big missing piece in the bewildering puzzle of life, and it did not take me long, following our first date to a boring film followed by coffee and a donut, to recognize a kindred spirit who’d exactly fill the empty niche.

It is not difficult to recall why I wanted to marry Jeff. He became, in short order, the most extraordinary kind of best friend I’d ever had. We had fun from the get-go. I was hooked, like with coffee. Not because he possessed any glamorous traits which would earn him a slot on “The Bachelor,” but because my brain had found a nutrient of which it had heretofore been deprived, and there wasn’t any deciding...there was just knowing.

A Pavlovian serotonin spike in my brain preceded every dinner out with Jeff. Because we could talk. I could talk about whatever philosophical, religious or creative nonsense was tap-dancing through my cranium, and he'd fully engage, fully grasp, and return in kind. Once, following a physiology exam, I gave him a tediously detailed description of the metabolic processes cascading through a dog as it escaped in panic from a burning house. I don't know how many people would relish such an exposition...but Jeff did. I admired his woodwork, his architectural vision, his curiosity about the world, and he cared for me in all my unfocused randomness. You might say that neither one of us exactly knew what we wanted to do with our lives, so we both pretty much did whatever we wanted until we turned whatever we wanted into a team project.

Conversation could be silly, if you'd even call it conversing. Sometimes it was nothing but rhyming words we vollied like pingpong balls. I was young, awkward, and resolutely stubborn. He was patient, goofy, and open. For some reason, I was what he'd been waiting for, and he was a window of privilege that life granted me for 20 excellent years.

A student of architecture--especially that of F.L.Wright, H.H. Richardson, Stanford White and others with a taste for robust design--Jeff built shelving into any free nook, the better to fill with his growing library of books entitled The Old House, The Not So Big House, The Shingle House, The Small Smashing Shingle House. While I was too scattered to achieve purposefully, we both nonetheless pursued education for its own sake, though with rather different foci. Jeff explored drafting, business, and accounting. I forayed into art, language, creative writing (with a brief traipse through nursing.) And we bred a tribe of creative, fun and pleasant people. (Sadly without a mathematician or auto mechanic in the bunch.)

Not the most efficient yeoman on the job, Jeff trudged nonetheless with dedication toward his extra-career goals...a point of some frustration for me. He habitually underestimated the complexity of any remodeling endeavor, leaving me to raise children in a neglected, leaking house, while he spent half his work days steadfastly turning South Baltimore squalor into sturdy, attactive, rentable row-houses. In the final analysis, and despite his persistent vexation that he'd yet to achieve financial independence, this stood us in good stead when retirement became an unbidden necessity, as I was able to sell the houses for investable funds prior to real-estate crashing in value. (And hire a crew to put his unfinished project--the transformation of our own home from a small Cape Cod into a handsome bungalow--in order.)

The goodwill that family and community extend toward Jeff in his present state of impairment is a testament to the kind of person he's spent his life being. People like him. He's never been anything but honest, earnest, and ready to help, and people are inclined to nurture him in return.

As for me, I have nothing to say in summary. To even attempt to summarize the significance of what has been lost means to--at least momentarily--disengage the robotic force-field I have erected as an emotional buffer. I care for Jeff now with a sort of cantilevered love. He deserves the best attention only, and I provide it insofar as I am able without exposing that now empty niche where, for 20 years, a puzzle piece used to fit.