What I'm Thankful For This Thanksgiving

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published, November 25, 2024]  ©2024

My long-deceased parents were their own flawed people and certainly products of their times. My mother, a smoker, died at 54 from lung cancer. She never knew her grandchildren which was a huge loss for everyone, including and especially her.

My father, an ad executive in New York City (think "Mad Men"  although not Don Draper) probably would have lived longer were it not for the nightly dry martinis that were the norm in our commuter town as I was growing up. (There was a saying in the neighborhood: "The vermouth is just a formality.")

But as I have gotten older and had children and grandchildren of my own, I have had the opportunity to appreciate some of the incredible gifts my parents gave us. Top among them: they didn't hate. Whatever their prejudices might have been, we never heard them. They never referred to anyone by race or religion, and to this day, when I hear gratuitous (or even flat-out biased) references to people like this, it immediately stands out to me in a very sad way.

My father was a conservative Republican Catholic, my mother a third-generation feminist Protestant and a Democrat. (They met in an Honors Shakespeare class in college.) It made for a lot of lively dinner table conversation. It was up to you to make your case.

Interestingly, I am a fourth-generation feminist and Democrat married to a life-long Republican, although Olof and I have both voted across party lines on many occasions. My husband is still fervently hoping the Republican party will return to what he thinks of as its former glory. I, of course, think it never had one. But conversations are pretty lively at our dinner table too.

Both of my parents were avid community volunteers. My father ran the United Fund campaign in our area and we referred to ourselves as "United Fund orphans"  during the major fundraising season.

My mother s occupations, meanwhile, included teaching convicts at an area penitentiary, substitute teaching junior high (is there a parallel there?) and leading Brownies and Girl Scouts. But the one she was most passionate about was not only teaching ESL (English as a second language) but tutoring, on her own time, many of her students to pass the written driver s exam which in that era had to be taken in English. Given the lack of public transit in our area, a driver's license was essential to getting any kind of good job. Her efforts included teaching them to drive in our car. I think my mother could yell STOP! in eight languages.

Having immigrants regularly in our house meant that we kids got to learn about other cultures, and how differently, for example, other nationalities celebrated even the same holidays that we celebrated, never mind ones that we didn't. As thanks from her students, we were often gifted with delectable food from other lands.

It was largely from this immigrant influence that I was inspired to apply for a student exchange program to spend my senior year of high school in a foreign country which is, in fact, where I met my now-husband, Olof, who was a fellow student on the same program in Brazil.

Both Olof and I married people from different backgrounds the first time around, and while neither of those marriages lasted, he still misses his Indonesian wife s amazing cooking (except for kimchee, a word he doesn't want to hear out loud). I, meanwhile, can counsel people on how to make a Seder dinner for 20 and I still know all the holiday blessings by heart in Hebrew. Many favorite memories are associated with both.

In the early 1950s when my siblings and I were children, the second biggest fear in the U.S. after nuclear war was polio and with good reason. My siblings and I all contracted it in August of 1955, four months after the Salk vaccine was announced. (It took a year for the vaccine to get to our small town.) I can still remember my parents absolute terror during this time, especially after the little boy in the hospital bed next to my sister suddenly ended up in an iron lung. (This is a cylindrical prison that simulates breathing when polio has affected respiratory muscles.) I wish everyone could take a brief trip back in time to the jammed polio wards of that era.

As one who has dealt with the repercussions of polio, I feel entitled to say that if you are an anti-vaxxer, you are a moron. There is no reason for one single child to ever contract polio again.

Even what people now like to think of as normal (in that there was no way to prevent them then) childhood illnesses like measles, mumps, rubella ("German measles") and chicken pox are not without potentially permanent consequences. Like most of my generation, I had all of these illnesses. Even when there aren't long-term effects, these diseases inflict a lot of suffering.

And would it be OK to mention that while my mouth is more fillings than actual teeth, my kids have never had a cavity? My mother ended up with painful dentures, not even having the benefit of all the dentistry I had.

It s going to be a different world going forward. As the song goes, "You can t always get what you want."  The process is the process but I am often reminded of my own parents' philosophy, best summed up as: What you accept, you teach, not just regarding treatment toward yourself but toward the greater world.

So thanks, Mom and Dad. On this Thanksgiving Day, I'm truly grateful to you.

                                    My siblings and I all had polio in the 1950's. 

Iron lungs kept polio patients alive when the virus affected respiratory muscles.

Neighbors From Hell (And Heaven)

["Let Inga Tell You", La Jolla Light, published November 11, 2024] 2024

Every neighborhood seems to have its requisite nutcase. Over the years, I've done informal research on this subject by querying friends if they have at least one problem neighbor. I've never had anyone say no. In fact, I usually get a 20-minute diatribe on the wingnut who is terrorizing their particular block. Increasingly, ADUs and Airbnb party houses are mentioned as sources of conflict.

One of our highest priorities has always been getting along with the people who live around us. Fortunately, we've had nice neighbors over the years with the exception of two that we were really happy to see go. One died (but not soon enough) and the other moved (but not soon enough either). Two bad neighbors over several decades is actually pretty good. But even one difficult neighbor can wreak a lot of havoc. Sometimes it was hard to stick to our inviolable rule: No matter what, do not escalate. But we've entertained some very ugly fantasies about their cat.

The houses in my area are in close proximity so it doesn't take much noise for the entire block to hear it. Still, my husband and I consider most noise to be in the category of the music of life. Dogs, kids, parties, the occasional loud band. We often comment that not hearing these sounds would be the hardest part of ever moving to a retirement home in our old age.

Of course, even the music of life can occasionally get seriously out of tune. Chain saws on weekends. Or drums, ever. We also remind ourselves that for years, we were the noisiest family on the block. We had one of the few pools in the neighborhood then and multiple trees with tree forts, a veritable attractive nuisance. Everybody came to play.

But even so, our elderly retired school teacher neighbor next door never complained once in her 25 years there. We could never tell whether this was because she was just an incredibly sweet lady (she was) or because she was deaf. Actually, she was fairly deaf but we never wanted to explore whether our kids had contributed to it.

The first of our two terrible neighbors was one we encountered a year after we moved in. All of a sudden we were getting annoyingly regular notices from the La Jolla Town Council that a neighbor had complained we were not "maintaining our property."   We were puzzled as we took great pride in our place. Turns out that an elderly lady down the block felt our trees were blocking the breeze which she maintained her doctor had prescribed for her Raynaud's Syndrome. (My then-husband, a physician, said "WTF?") A minor detail was that we had no common property with this woman. But she felt that all trees from a five-house radius were blocking her breeze and if we wished to be good neighbors, my husband and I would cut down all the beautiful, mature trees on our property.

Anyway, we ultimately all formed a coalition against the nasty old bat, ironically bringing the neighbors together in heretofore unparalleled harmony. Ten years later when she died (see "not soon enough", above) there was a rousing chorus of "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead."

As for the second all-time terrible neighbor, she moved in while Olof and I were doing a two-year work assignment in Europe so we were mostly spared. But by the time we returned, the other neighbors were already trying to vote her off the island. Fortunately, sensing that people were sticking extra-sharp pins up the back sides of little effigies of her, she departed and is now allegedly making a new group of neighbors lives miserable.

I think it is only fair to point out that it is sometimes unclear who the resident lunatic on the block really is. Most of the jury duty cases I've been on involved neighbor disputes that could best be summarized as Lots of Adults Behaving Badly. That's been true on my own street as well, but fortunately with people who don't live on my end of the block.

Most recently, local social media has been commenting on whether it is legal to mount a motion-sensored camera with audio on a pole pointed directly into a neighbor's back yard and master bedroom window. I'm just so glad I don t live next door to the person who would do this. Even the mild-mannered Olof says he'd be tempted to disable this camera by whatever means necessary should someone decide to do this to us. Fortunately, they haven't.

In fact, after several decades in our current house, we are incredibly grateful that we've officially won the neighbor lottery. For many years now, we have been surrounded not only by good neighbors, but stupendously wonderful neighbors, people you can count on day or night who are the epitome of kindness and consideration and who, on top of that, are great friends. When Olof had his heart attack and head injury in 2018, my collective neighbors walked my dog four times a day and left me dinner and a bottle of wine in my fridge for when I came home from the hospital at night. If we wrote the perfect neighbor job description, we couldn't have done any better.

Just so they re clear: none of you should even think of moving.

 

Fighting The Good Fight For Your Itchy Dog

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published November 4, 2024] 2024

Both our beloved and much-missed English bulldog, Winston, and our current bichon-poodle mix, Lily, have battled non-stop allergies and skin issues. A neighbor whose dog suffered similar afflictions reported that when they moved to North County, their dog's constantly itchiness improved dramatically. Of course, they're now dealing with rattle snakes, but you can't have everything.

I wouldn't want to even calculate the hours I have spent dealing with itchy dogs.

Winston, in particular, was constantly fighting infections. The folds in his face, never mind the inside of his silky ears, needed to be cleaned daily. He had to stand in a medicated foot bath for ten minutes a day. I don't know if you (or certainly the vet who prescribed this insane regimen) ever tried this but dogs in general, and bulldogs in particular, are not inclined to stand still in a pool of water for even a tenth of that time.

English bulldogs, of course, are notorious for the myriad health problems that come with them from birth, particularly breathing problems but plenty of allergy problems as well. Our vet at the time said they had a slogan when she was doing her training: Buy a bulldog: Support a vet. For what we spent on Winston's care, we could have bought a whole new dog. Several new dogs, in fact. 

When Winston died suddenly of a heart attack in our living room at the age of eight, we were so bereft that we vowed we'd never get another dog. We made that clear to the rescue agency who begged us to do an emergency foster. One week max, they promised.

"I don't know,"  I said dubiously to the rescue lady on the phone. "How soon would you need us to take this dog?"   She replied: "Actually, I m in front of your house."

Lily had been relinquished to the County shelter ostensibly because of her thoroughly rotten teeth and infected gums. Seriously, this dog's breath was a 9 on the ickter scale. The County s medical in-take report was all of four words: "Nice dog. Terrible teeth."

We also discovered pretty quickly that Lily, like Winston, was allergic to our grass. A 7-year-old bichon-poodle mix, she was what Olof called a "foo-foo"  dog. Olof was absolutely not interested in a pet that required regular professional grooming. A chronically allergic, high-maintenance dog with bad teeth was definitely not the forever dog for us. Of course, we had no plans for another forever dog anyway.

In retrospect, that rescue agency recognized us for the mushballs that we were. We might as well have been wearing T-shirts that read "Will fall in love with any dog no matter how unsuitable."

And sure enough, Lily worked her way into our hearts almost immediately. This is what is known as a "failed foster."   The dog comes for a week and stays forever.

I informed our vet that we were adopting another allergy-afflicted dog that also had serious dental issues, so she could go ahead and put down the deposit on that Mercedes.

Lily's mouth cost us $1,500. She's had both knees replaced. There is no test or procedure for a human that you can't also do for a dog. In this case, minus any insurance. After the first ACL surgery, I looked into pet insurance. But it excluded ACL surgeries and pretty much all of the care she needed.

Like Winston, Lily's most chronic problem is constant itching. We've done all the treatments that have been advised, including Cytopoint shots (an immunological treatment), Apoquel (pricier than heroin), medicated shampoos, chlorhexadrine mousses, anti-flea treatments, pricey special diets at $6 per teeny weeny can, Chinese herbs, and even steroid sprays when she actually breaks the skin. I make all her totally organic food. A groomer gives her a full fluff every two weeks and we bathe her in between.

And yet, still she chews. Her feet and haunches are particularly favorite targets. Or maybe that's just because she can reach them.

Obviously, the summer season is worst when the warm humid air allows skin afflictions to flourish.

I bought special booties for her with Velcro ties but she manages to pull them off within minutes.

Making her wear a cone is a non-starter. She just goes berserk, even with the cloth ones.

Most recently, we heard about what are called "recovery suits:  for dogs that have just had surgery, or are constantly chewing on themselves, in lieu of the dreaded cones. Since we have already purchased everything else known to the doggy allergy world, we decided to try one. The one we got doesn't help with her feet but does cover the parts of her legs that she chews on. 

Hers is like a baby onesie, and in fact, when she's wearing it, you think you re looking at a baby with a dog's head. I don't dare let her be seen with it in public. You could just hear the whispers: "Do these people not realize that's a dog?" The suit is just one more desperate treatment in our anti-itch arsenal. There's only so much chlorhexadrine mousse you can put on a dog in one day.

Hopefully now that it's fall, her itching will abate somewhat. For our sakes as much as hers.

Lily manages to pull her booties off within minutes

Her expression says "I am totally embarrassed wearing this outfit!"