"All in all it’s been an up and down year (with no mention of the constant anxiety caused by the global political situation), so we’re hoping for a much improved 2020!”
That’s how I ended my 2019 news update. Sadly, as we’re all aware, it was not to be.
2020 started off well enough. We had a wonderful vacation sailing in the BVI with our great friends Rick & Gitte. Most of a week on a boat in the sun, enjoying snorkeling, sailing, revisiting old favorites and discovering a few new bays. And ignoring the political news, which at that time included the Senate’s non-trial of the impeachment of the president.
On our return, though, we heard of this coronavirus thing, and it all got pretty ugly. The story is best told in multiple arcs instead of chronologically.
Martha
The shortest story arc from our point of view. Poor young cousin Martha, who had finally gotten a place near Northeastern’s campus after staying with us for the fall semester, was unceremoniously ejected in March due to the pandemic and finished out her “year abroad” working remotely from her living room in the UK. We miss her!
Carole Kerby
By mid-March Kathy and the Kerby kids decided that having their almost 87 year old mother, Carole, in her house in Virginia with different aides — all wonderful people, but coming from the broader community — was not a tenable situation. Kathy and Ben drove down from Boston in the mini-van, spent a long weekend finding and packing the “essentials” so that Carole could move in with daugter Karen and her husband, Jeff, to wait out the storm. We drove the van and Carole's Cadilliac, both crammed to the gills, up north and dropped her off in Saratoga, then high-tailed it back to Bedford.
By late July, Carole (not always the easiest person to get along with) in Saratoga was getting on Karen’s nerves. Carole was slated to go into her assisted living place on August 10, but on August 2nd Karen called to ask for assistance, as she and Carole had reached the ends of their ropes. Kathy and I were in Philly at that point (see the Ross and Hollie thread) and after a raft of phone calls back and forth it became evident that the "least worst” solution was for us to leave a day early, drop Kathy off at a rest stop near Albany to meet Karen, and for Kathy to cover Carole's last week at Karen’s house.
A month after she went into her assisted living apartment, Carole fell and broke her other hip, the first having broken in a fall back in 2019. So back to the hospital and rehab for several weeks, then returned her place to two weeks of quarantine. Subsequently another hospital visit for an infection, followed by more quarantine. Fun, fun, fun!
In parallel to all this, Kathy, who has been handling finances for Carole and for Kathy’s dad's estate, now had the unenviable tasks of remotely (1) getting furniture moved from Virginia to Saratoga so that Carole could move into assisted living, (2) arranging for the house to go on the market and get sold so that Carole could afford assisted living, (3) finalizing all the estate work from her dad, (4) working with insurance companies to be sure reimbursements were happening correctly. Oh and little things like convincing Carole to get rid of her car, and managing all the paperwork for that and for the boat that was given to a nephew. It sounds like a short list, but it was an awful lot of work, even with all the siblings pitching in. And now, with the cyber breaches that have hit the news recently, Kathy has been changing all the on-line access accounts to increase cybersecurity.
We had hoped for a quieter 2021 for the one remaining parent, but this week Carole is back in the hospital with heart issues.
Ross, Hollie, Noah, and Percy
Son Ross and daughter-in-law Hollie were living on the upper east side in Manhattan while Hollie was doing her fellowship at HSS and Ross was working in the ER at Cornell / NY Presbyterian. During the spring, Ross & Hollie began looking for jobs and housing in suburban Philly, where they chose to live. Jobs they found, but with the pandemic raging the suburban housing market went nuts. They ended up buying a lovely house, but one that needed a good deal of work. They managed this remotely, with a number of trips from NYC to Philly.
Ben and Kathy drove down in late July to help with the move, driving our van plus a rental truck full of furniture and boxes we’d been storing for Ross and Hollie. R & H dashed back to NYC to finish packing their apartment, leaving Noah and Percy with us. With Noah’s diabetes being quite unstable, perhaps because of the change of venue and caretakers, R&H had to spend a good deal of their attention helping Kathy regulate his blood sugars. Fortunately all the monitoring happens in the cloud, so remote assistance is possible.
Ben and Kathy returned to Philly on Labor Day to provide some day care for Noah while Ross & Hollie started their new jobs and their friend Cordelia came up to speed as interim nanny for Noah. Ross & Hollie had planned to have an au pair come from Austria to be their nanny, but visas got stopped so she was unable to come in August. It looks promising that she will be able to arrive in time to start in January, when Cordelia starts her own real career as a newly-minted lawyer.
Noah’s diabetes still requires all too much human intervention. His parents think that they may be getting better at dealing with the blood glucose swings by avoiding starting a pendulum effect. There is also some hope to get a “closed loop” system, where the glucose sensor talks directly to the insulin injector. The commercial launch of this system for two-year-olds was delayed by, you guessed it, covid.
Ariana
After 18 years out in Los Angeles, Ariana decided this summer that she would move back to the Boston area. She had always said that she planned to move back at some point, but we were skeptical since it’s so hard to leave a place once one has established a network. But with the isolation of the pandemic, plus one of her cats dying quite suddenly, not to mention the volatile political situation in this country, we all decided that now was the time. Logistics for this were quite something, as we needed a place for her to land near us before we would be able to sell the LA condo, and the residential market in suburban Boston is superheated. After having offers turned down on a couple of places, we landed a cute, small house near Nutting Lake in Billerica, just 10 minutes drive from our house.
The move itself was another set of logistical issues, and the company we’d used successfully to move Carole's furniture did a very poor job, very expensively, on Ariana’s.
Then there was the fun problem of how to get Ariana and her two cats back here. She has a new-ish kitten since the spring, who she got after one of her two died in the spring. And she has another middle-aged cat who in the meantime had been diagnosed with leukemia. Turns out that airlines only allow one pet per passenger. In the end, Ariana’s great friend Mat volunteered to fly with the second cat, then turn around and fly back to LA. Thanks, Mat!
Now Ariana and the kitties are in their new home and are unpacking and moving in. All three are in a bit of shock at the snowstorms and cold…
Our Pets
Back in February our Edie doggie had begun to show signs that she was unwell: low energy, shedding tons of fur, and generally under the weather. We played “stump the vet” a few times before finding out in July that Edie had “atypical” Addison’s disease, where the adrenal gland no longer produces essential cortisols. Fortunately, a daily dose of prednisone set her back on her feet, and she recovered pretty completely. This month, though, she had to go in for a bunch of dental work, quite a few extractions. Her lower incisors were decaying from having been broken a couple of Christmases ago. She also has an underbite that the vet thought could cause problems if the upper incisors remained, so they had to go, too. She has recovered very well, but it was quite stressful for the poor mutt.
The Sunday of Memorial Day weekend our elder cat Casey was looking very peaked, so we took her to the emergency vet and waited for many hours while she was inside getting diagnosed with kidney failure. Fortunately she has responded well to first daily, and now every other day, doses of subcutaneous fluids. Still not as hale and hearty as she once was, but she is doing OK for a 15 year (or so) old kitty.
Then at the cats’ November annual vet visit, younger cat Artie (11 years) is diagnosed with, you guessed it, beginnings of kidney failure, so he’s also on fluids, and he’s a lot more difficult on the “operating table” than Casey is. She sits quietly for the fluid administration, while he struggles much of the time. But they’re both doing reasonably well now, so we’re hoping the situation stays stable. It might even improve as it did for our original cat, Ms. Kitty, who recovered to the point that she no longer needed fluids and lived to the ripe old age of 19 years.
So it’s been a rough year for all our pets, sadly.
BLKK
As you can see from all of the above, plus the global political and pandemic situation, Ben and Kathy have had quite a few stressors in our lives, but if we stick to our own lives, we’re actually doing OK.
We were thrilled to start the year off well with the sailing trip. There was also a sense of accomplishment, along with all the work and frustrations, of getting Carole installed in a safe, long-term living situation. Likewise, helping Ross & Hollie move and getting to spend some time with Noah was a high point. We also get to visit with Noah and his folks via video most weeks, and he’s super energetic and super cute. We don’t know how Ross and Hollie keep up with him.
Having Ariana back in the neighborhood and part of our “pandemic pod” is wonderful. We’re looking forward to getting to know her cats, as well as spending time with Ariana and doing movie nights.
Our health is better than it has been in years. We started a new diet in January before the pandemic hit. The lightly-supported thesis of this diet is that many plants cause disruption of the gut microbiome and this, in turn, allows more poisons into the system. Kathy has autoimmune issues, so we went on the diet after hearing good things from a couple of respected friends. This isn’t a controlled experiment, of course, but we’ve both lost an amazing amount of weight and Kathy is definitely feeling peppier. Ben has been enjoying discovering and inventing new meals that fit within the parameters of the diet, and Kathy has been enjoying the results. More on the recipes page.
The pandemic has also given us more free time to exercise regularly. Over much of the past year we’ve been biking around here — we take our mountain bikes because we feel we’re less likely to have a fall that ends up in the ER since we’re on fatter tires and moving at a slower pace. We take long walks — with Edie again now that her Addison’s is under control. We bought a foldable kayak that allowed us to hit the water without renting, and we did some socially distanced paddles with Pam, Mike, and Tim. We put our stationary bike and our rowing machine to good use when time or weather get in the way of outdoor activities. We also went cross country skiing around Bedford after the major snowstorm we had in mid-December.
Both of us miss the full engagement that work gave us. Ben is still mentoring companies, but awaits returns from existing investments before he spends more money. In addition, while he continues to do mentoring online, he misses the face to face contact with his colleagues and the entrepreneurs. Kathy’s time is still taken up with her parents’ finances, which is tedious and unrewarding. She continues to consider whether getting back into the workplace might be a good idea.
We are proud of our efforts this year protesting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, helping progressive candidates across the board, and fighting against voter suppression. We also arranged for PPE to be sent to some of our medical-front-line workers. And, of course, we voted in every election.
We’re deeply grateful for our family, friends, and neighbors who have made efforts to stay in contact online and at a social distance all through this crazy year. You’re all helping us to stay sane.
We’re hopeful that the new administration will begin to reverse some of the damage done over the last four years, that they will be able to get the pandemic under control, and that we can make strides towards eliminating the inequalities that have existed for centuries. Fingers crossed for a wonderful 2021!