If you are the pet parent to multiple pets, be it dogs or cats or any combination of any kind, you know that your biggest crisis is trying to get a good picture of everybody so you can post it to Facebook or Instagram or both. Certainly, health issues, peeing at the Apple store at the Grove, squirrel obsession, not getting along with other dogs, lunging at runners on the sidewalk, etc. make pet parenting no walk in the dog park but, getting the perfect picture is the Machu Picchu that makes the occasional “who peed here?” mystery look like an ant hill.

  Yesterday, I overheard a conversation between my little jewels. Millie told Ricky that he was the reason their last picture only got 33 hearts on Instagram and 55 likes and 11 loves on Facebook. Oh, it was the cutest picture, I wish you could see it. Ricky was resting his head on Millie’s back as they both stared at the camera. Maybe I can figure out a way that I can post a few pictures of them on this blog, if only to illustrate my point.

In truth, Millie might be right. Her Instagram and Facebook pictures are legendary, just ask anyone who lives in our household or even my Mother. Millie has the biggest, most expressive brown eyes, legs for days, ears that perk up or rest gracefully, depending on her mercurial disposition. All day and night long, Eric and I sit around telling Millie how beautiful she is.

We also spend some time telling Ricky that, he too, is very attractive.

  In our private moments, Eric and I worry that Ricky might get a little depressed about the extra attention Millie gets. Does he know that we post 4 Millie pictures to every 1 Ricky picture to Instagram and Facebook? He might, because we’ve told him a few times.

I don’t want you to think we are awful. We do tell him that, in an informal, international poll, he was voted 2nd best looking dog in the history of the world. No small feat. And that he should not be too sad about losing to his sister. It always happened to Jan Brady, too, and she turned out fine. A little bitter, but okay.

A few months ago, we put Millie on a medicine that we have to administer, at the same time, every 12 hours. I thought it would be a burden, to make sure one of us is home every day at both 7:45’s. I wasn’t so worried about the morning one, but the evening dose, I thought surely, would cut into my bustling, glittery, surging social schedule. And to be honest, it has a little. Going to dinner or seeing a show or meeting friends for a drink all has to be negotiated around Millie.

But it’s also turned into this unexpected gift. Because we wrap her pill inside a delicious canned food meatball, Millie loves her medicine. Around 7:20 a.m. and p.m., she knows her treat is coming. And not just because every two minutes I announce, “It’s almost TREAT time!” And when the dogs hear the refrigerator opening and the foil being lifted off the can, they run to their places. Ricky stands outside the kitchen door and Millie mounts her post on top of the couch. Millie’s special meatball is first and then they both get a little extra food that they eat out of my hand. In their glee, do they sometimes chomp into a finger? Truthfully, yes. But they are babies, and babies can’t help themselves.

  Giving Millie her medicine and Ricky his treat has become one, or I guess, two, of the highlights of my day. Part of it is the tail wagging, the exuberance that I get to witness. It’s a privilege to bring them such happiness. But I think it’s something more too. It’s like every 12 hours, I am forced to remember how much I love them. They are the priority. All else falls away and in these increments, I am keeping them alive, and protected, and healthy, and cherished. 

So while they may not ever give me a perfectly posed picture, they give me so much more. And the pictures, well, you have the evidence, they aren’t so bad. I’m not objective, wouldn’t begin to claim such a thing, but you can see for yourself. Pretty cute.

  I was in New York for a few days recently. I saw one play, called The Humans, written by Stephen Karam and directed by Joe Mantello.  I’ll say this for it, it was the perfect length.  The older I get, the more I appreciate a 90 minute play, or movie.  I don’t remember the last time I saw a 3 hour Oscar nominated movie.  I think it was The Last Emperor,  which I did like, but really, think how amazing that movie would have been if it had been 90 brisk, gilded minutes.

About The Humans, there were things that I liked about it and I must say, I did think about the play for days after, but, did I like it?  I don’t know that I did.  For the first hour, I sat there watching the talented actors act.  Reed Birney and Cassie Beck, I saw a couple years ago in a Broadway revival of Picnic.  I’ve been a fan of Sarah Steele since seeing her in Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give.  Jayne Houdyshell shines in everything she’s in.  So for the first hour, I sat in my seat, laughing in the right places, liking the actors, even liking the characters the actors were playing.  I felt the play building to something, or that it was supposed to be building to something, but, for whatever reason, the play was not exactly percolating for me.  I wasn’t connecting.

I’d had a little bit to drink before the play.  I even went so far as to sneak in my flask.  I had looked forward to 90 minutes of sneaking nips until right before curtain when one of the ushers sat in the seat in front of me.  My friendly friend Michael asked if this was his first chance to see the play and the usher replied that he was sitting there as a precaution.  It was his job to make sure no one took pictures of the play.  Also, sitting in the row of seats on the other side of the aisle, were two men with notebooks in their hands.  “It’s the director,” Michael knowingly and accurately informed me.

Like I said, for the first hour, I sat in my seat, paying close attention waiting for a dramatic moment to hook me and then, something happened.  That it happened at the moment where I had quietly unscrewed my flask and prepared to bring it to my mouth, well, I guess you could say it added to the drama.  On my right, I could see one of the men with notebooks, waving wildly at the usher in front of me.  Oh shit, he saw my flask, I thought.  The usher looked at the waving man, who pointed at him and then pointed at something or someone on the other side of the theater.  (Not me, thankfully.)  The usher did not respond appropriately so the director waved even more wildly, even more angrily, pointing more pointedly.  The usher sat in his seat looking in the direction the director pointed but, for whatever reason, stayed in his seat.

And in my seat, my heart pumped wildly.  Like a tennis match, I looked at the director, then to the usher, then to the other notetaker (the writer, I presumed), then back to the director.  I searched in the direction the director pointed but saw no patron of the arts raising his iPhone  to document the play’s actions.  Eventually, the director’s waves subsided, he sat quietly scowling.  I tried to return to the action on stage, tried to invest in the story.  But I had been taken out.

A few minutes later, the director was waving wildly again.  He waved at the usher who did nothing.  Infuriated, the director stood and stomped out of the theater.  Seconds later, another usher went to whatever it was that the director had been pointing at.  Slowly, an elderly couple, stood up and were escorted out of the theater.  As they hobbled, I wondered what they had done.  They didn’t exactly seem savvy enough to own a smartphone, I couldn’t imagine they had taken pictures.  What crime had this aged duo committed?  I hoped it wasn’t flask related.

I never did find out why the ejectees had been ejected.  When I looked at the Playbill, I did learn the angry director was Broadway legend, Joe Mantello.  (I don’t think I’ll ever be invited to brunch at his house.)

As it turned out, the play did build to big drama that unfolded and emitted in the final 10 or 20 minutes.  As I tried to focus on the life on the stage, I couldn’t stop thinking about all that had unfolded and emitted just off stage.  It was all the things I hope to see when I go to the theater or the movies: anger, comedy, exaggeration, sadness, cruelty, wonder, confrontation.

That my experience was colored so vividly by what happened around me is, perhaps, a credit to one of the themes of the play. If our lives contain an ongoing fragility, why shouldn’t a night at the theater?

  Maybe it’s an age thing. Sometimes a memory comes to you, a memory that perhaps you hadn’t thought about in decades, and then for some reason you find yourself thinking about that memory several times a week, over the course of months. And maybe, if you’re like me, you lay awake at night, trying to walk into that memory, and take it all in, dig up details that you’d forgotten or maybe identify components that you had not even noticed at the time. Also, you might ask yourself, why now? Why have I been flashing back to this memory so often of late?

The summer before my senior year in (Bible) college, I interned at a church in a suburb of Syracuse, New York.  I worked with the youth and preached a couple of sermons, helped out where needed. 

I stayed with the minister of the church. I’ll call him Tru. For that summer, he and his wife were my parental figures. He had spent a lifetime in ministry, had had one decades long ministry and had only recently started ministering to this suburban church. His wife was, to me, the perfect preacher’s wife. She was funny and kind, appeared to be a good judge of character, a good cook.  I think she even played the piano.

In the first few weeks of my internship, Tru’s wife went to stay with one of their daughters who’d just had a baby, so for two weeks, it was just Tru and me in the house. I missed her presence, I’ve always felt more comfortable around women than men, especially straight men.

This story isn’t so much about Tru. I’m just unpacking a memory here, and I’m not sure what parts of it I’m going to need.

One afternoon, Tru took me to the birthday party of one of the older ladies in the church.  The lady was a leader in the church. I’ll call her Lily. It seems to me that her husband had died not long before that summer. She was kind, welcoming  and encouraging.

As we drove there, Tru, who had a tendency to repeat himself, told me for what was probably the 4th or 5th time, that Lily’s brother who was welcoming us into his home was a homosexual. He told me that the brother had lived with another man for many years. As we drove to their house near a lake, he told me how that particular part of Syracuse was home to a growing number of homosexuals.

I was from Kansas, was now living, for the summer, in the suburbs, and this old, historical part of the city seemed to me another world. My frame of reference being limited, it reminded me of the neighborhoods of Georgetown that I’d seen in my favorite movie, St. Elmo’s Fire. But on a lake. It was an idyllic location. 

Of course, that entire summer, I feared that Tru and the entire congregation would discover my secret. 

As Tru talked about the men, I tried to imagine what they would look like. Would they be more like Michael Ontkean and his lover at the end of Making Love or like the couple in La Cage Aux Folles? Would they, could they, suspect my secret? 

We arrived at the house while the party was in full swing. The brother and his partner both looked like gay Dennis Farinas. They welcomed us into their home. There were antiques. There was a lot of food. Big plates and bowls of pasta and antipasto and salad and lasagna and Italian sausage and meatballs. Tru had predicted that the food was going to be very good, in part because these men were homosexuals, and that turned out to be true. 

How long were we even there? An hour? I remember eating at least two plates of food. Meeting people who were fascinated to learn I was from Kansas. (“You’re not in Kansas, Dorothy!”) It was a beautiful June Sunday afternoon in Syracuse by the lake. Does it get much better? I remember the sun spilling through the windows into the living room that contained so many people, so many antiques, so much food, so much life. 

And then we left. As we drove back to Liverpool, Tru pointed out that he’d predicted right. “The food was good, wasn’t it?” He talked about how the men were good men, just, you know, lost. 

I don’t think I thought once about that day in my thirties. I don’t know why. And I don’t know what made it pop into my head a few months ago.  Like a lot of memories, it comes with more questions than answers. 

Was it hard for Lily, in 1989 to be a deeply religious woman and have a close relationship with her gay brother? She seemed to adore him. Did she think her brother was going to hell? Did she pray for God to change him?

I don’t even know if Tru and his wife are still alive. We lost contact years ago. The last time I saw them I was living in New York City and visited for a weekend. I had come out to myself, all who knew me in NYC, knew I was gay, but I did not come out to Tru and his wife. I’d only come out to my real parents months earlier and it was hard enough. Would it have meant something to me if I had told them I was gay and they had had the chance to tell me they still loved me? Is that what they would have told me? I don’t know.

I do think I know why I keep thinking about it now. And I suspect it even goes back to that Rhinebeck fantasy of mine. The luxury of only knowing someone for an hour, is that there is a really good chance that that person, or those people, can end up seeming kind of perfect.

Does it matter that it isn’t always June in Syracuse?  Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. They were the first gay couple that I ever met. They were the age that Eric and I are now. What did I or do I know about the intricacies of their relationship? Very little. But in my hazy, gauzy, sun-spilled memory, it occurs to me now, and only now, the gay Dennis Farinas had everything I could hope for. A beautiful house filled with beautiful people on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day. 

  Several years ago, my Mom had a short stay at Mercy Hospital, the hospital in my hometown.  From half a continent away, I called her in her hospital room daily to check in. Obviously, I could picture her room because I spent many hours at Mercy Hospital growing up. If you grew up in Independence, you can’t think about Mercy Hospital without thinking of the milestones of your life, the happy and the sad, that are connected to her.

I dialed the hospital number and asked the operator to connect me to my Mom’s room. From the other end came a groggy, “Hello?!”

“Mom it’s me.”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine, how are you?”

“I’m okay, feeling a little out of it.”

I can’t remember what else we talked about but after a few more exchanges, I sensed something was awry.

“You don’t sound like yourself.”

“I don’t feel like myself.”

“Are you Theresa Barnhart?”

She replied that she wasn’t, the woman gave me her name, and I was relieved to  learn that the addled person I was talking to wasn’t my mother after all.  We said our goodbyes, polite Kansas folk that we were, and not long after, I was connected, by telephone, with my Mom.  

I guess the memory sticks in my memory because of the journey it took me on, worry to confusion, confusion to relief, and the relief with a hint of residual worry left behind.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mercy Hospital. You might know that it closed its doors this week, yesterday, I believe. Months ago, when I heard about the imminent demise, I could not wrap my brain around it. It seemed like an impossibility. 

What I have learned in the last few weeks, after reading article after article about Mercy Hospital’s last days is that small hospitals in small towns are closing all over the country.  The New York Times ran an article about Mercy Hospital this week. I read it with a mixture of sadness and pride, if that makes sense. On the one hand, I’m worried about what will happen to my little town and on the other hand, hey, we made The New York Times!

I won’t get into the politics of this. I’m no expert in government or healthcare in America. I just want to say that from 1500 miles away, I will miss Mercy Hospital. 

Like many others, I hope that something will happen that will turn the tide, that somehow, by some miracle, Mercy Hospital might reopen. The sooner the better. 

Someone, a friend of a friend, made a comment on my Facebook page, a reference to my last blog, where I ruminated on my fear that all of Independence hated me because of another blog I wrote. This woman told me not to worry about my town, that my town was fine. And I know she was talking about something else, but in the proximity of what was occurring in Independence this week, I couldn’t help but wonder, without a hospital, will my town be fine?

How do we progress into the 21st century while still valuing and retaining what has worked in the past? 

I worry about the high school friends I have who worked at Mercy Hospital, where will they go? I worry about the citizens of the town, what will happen when people fall at home or get into car accidents? 

I worry about all of it. But if you know me even a little, you know what I’m most worried about. 

My parents. 

And if you’re reading this and your parents still live in Independence or any of the other Independences out there, you understand my concern. I don’t have to tell you what you already know, that in an emergency, there can be a big difference between a 5 minute commute and 30 minute one.

If any good has come of this, I’ve been reminded how much I love Independence, how much I love this little hospital. Maybe someone else, someone with a lot more money than me, will be reminded of the same thing and find a way to save the day.

Also this week, also prompted by something I read on Facebook, I’ve pondered what it means to be Kansan. Is there a common thread that runs through all of us?

I think there is.  We Kansans, we persevere, we endure. I see all of us, living and the ones who came and lived before us, like characters in an episode of Little House of the Prairie. Corny, I know. But whatever it is that life throws into our path, be it droughts or floods, snow or ice, pestilence or Nellie Olesons, we persevere. We endure.

And so, in regards to the death of Mercy, and our little town’s future, I must offer the same stoic optimism. If you think you hear a catch in my voice, you would not be mistaken. But I do believe, I must believe, our town will be fine.