It’s the first day of the NFL season, I’m in Green Bay for the Bears’ opener, and I am thinking of my dad.

It is nearly 80 degrees today, which would have made him very happy. I can’t remember ever going to a Bears game with my father when it was warmer than 34.  And that was in September.

If you drew up a list of the top three things my father hated, the cold would have ranked somewhere between getting wet with his clothes on and Nazi Germany. That said, he loved the Bears and was a season-ticket holder for over 40 years.

I would go with him and my brothers often, almost every game with my brothers for many years during my childhood, and watching my dad shiver and curse at the cold was more fun than the game (particularly with the Bears teams we were watching).

Bundled up in longjohns, as he would call them, he would drink hot chocolate and sometimes a little something extra slipped in, and then lose his body heat sometime in the middle of the first quarter.  

We would watch the Bears’ angry round coach Abe Gibron stalk the sideline and their quarterback Bobby Douglass throw missiles off the hands of his receivers. And then, in 1975, a young running back from Jackson, Miss., named Walter Payton was recruited by the Bears and watching my father shiver lost all its appeal.

Eventually my dad would run out of patience and circulation needed to watch Bears’ games in person but football season never lost its appeal.

My brother Barry’s mood for the entire week was predicated on what the Bears did each Sunday.  My dad would watch on one TV with whoever wanted to join him, and my mom would watch on another, unable to tolerate my father’s pessimism.

Typically, as soon as the Bears lost the lead, he’d proclaim, “Well, that’s it.”
He was not basing this on any deep football analysis but more like a succession of losing seasons.  My mother had another interesting way of watching games, which was to run out of the room whenever the game was possibly nearing a dramatic conclusion.
This is where I came in handy, offering play-by-play updates to my mother in the bathroom or kitchen or wherever it was she took refuge.

And you wonder why I’m a touch neurotic.

Today when I left my house to drive to Green Bay, my son Alec asked me who I picked to win the game tonight, and I told him the Packers.

“Thank you,” he said dramatically. “You’re always wrong. No offense.”

None taken, of course. Picking against the Bears comes naturally to me. When I was younger and closer to my life as a fan, these media predictions that were required of me really threw me.

If I picked the Bears to win and they lost, I was fairly convinced that I was the reason. So I sub-consciously and superstitiously took the opposite tact and picked against them whenever I was unsure.

And to think fans might have taken these predictions seriously.
No offense taken.

For homework in my Visual Storytelling class this weekend, I had to shoot and edit a 30-second video sequence. Took me, oh, about 15 hours.

I know my husband Rick is reading this right now and going, “Uh, excuse me, it took you 15 hours?”

OK, so he helped. But I should point out that it still took 15 hours.

It is my belief that every family has at least one person (him) who knows how to handle all the photo- and video-taking duties (but is frankly a little overconfident). And there is one person (me) who is not allowed to go near the camera or video recorder.

As a result, whenever I am occasionally forced to photograph anything – still or otherwise – a Dramamine is required before viewing. I must admit I even make myself sick with the blurring and jiggling and then, as an added bonus, the video will apparently be over and viewers will be treated to a shot of my shoes as I walk around, talk to people, and maybe put the camera down someplace where the battery can die a peaceful death only to be discovered 15 minutes before some child’s graduation is scheduled to begin.
It’s not that I can’t appreciate the many benefits of having quality photos and videos in my life. We just don’t happen to have any.

I am always a little in awe of those people whose houses you walk into and are treated to 25-by-30-feet black and white stills of their children walking barefoot on the beach. I wish I had one of those houses and yes, I realize those photos are professionally taken, but those are also the people with a full library of their children walking barefoot on the beach that they shot themselves.

Rick and I typically accuse each other of purposely forgetting the camera at important events because neither one of us have the patience to take pictures or video.

Oh sure, when the kids were babies, we took the requisite 50 photos of them spitting out their first solid food. But soon, their birthday parties were captured with maybe 10 pictures (of other kids, not ours) and there was no video (because the battery was dead).

My sister-in-law Jodi is one of those people who videotapes an hour and a half straight of her daughter’s violin recital and takes 20 pictures of the food on the Thanksgiving table.  Holidays and vacations ceased being holidays and vacations with Jodi and instead became “the week I spent taking pictures in Florida.”

Somewhere between this and us is normal, I am sure.

Part of the reason I am not motivated to be a good photographer, I think, is because I am a terrible subject. I’m the one who makes everyone around me miserable trying to keep me out of pictures because I have bad hair or am sunburned.

One day, my great grandchildren are going to think their great grandmother, who was born in 1961, came from the old country because there will be no photographic evidence that I exist.

One year, Rick decided to make a project out of putting photos in albums (for those of you under the age of 35, these are books with sticky pages covered with clear plastic sheets that cover photographs).  He actually did a good job (though he probably could have tossed the doubles of blurry pictures of kids with food on their faces) and we congratulated ourselves on our nice little photo library.

But then Amanda entered school and each year had to dig up old family pictures for one project or another, and so much for our nice photo library.

Now we are a modern family with all of our photos taken digitally and stored in our computer.
You can come over and see all 12 of them any time.

I’d like to go on record as saying I love the Duggar’s.

I don’t think it will surprise anyone who has ever met me or read me that I have, on more than one occasion, tuned into their documentary TV series, “18 Kids and Counting” and like it. And every time they have a new baby, which occurs more often than I clean out my refrigerator, I eagerly read all about it and try to anticipate the baby’s name.

It’s not as hard as you might think if all you know about the Duggar’s is that they’re the family with 18 kids, soon 19, because all of the children’s names begin with the letter “J.”
Not to brag, but by age 11, our daughter Amanda had memorized the names of every member of the Duggar family. Her father and I were quite proud. Even with the demands of junior high, she kept up with each new child.

Even – and this is really impressive — when they appeared to run out of standard “J” names like Joshua and Jill and James and hit a streak of Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedidiah and Jeremiah.
I am totally serious when I say this. If I had 19 children – heck, I’ll go so far as to even say 12 – I absolutely could not remember all of their names. And when I say I could not remember, I don’t mean that I’d mistakenly call one child another child’s name. I do that now and I have two kids. No, I mean that I would forget several of my own children’s names and maybe even what they looked like and that I had them.

And so I marvel, I’m sure along with thousands, maybe even millions of other mothers around the country, at Michelle and Jim Bob and how they manage to keep it together.
Still, I have wondered as Jon and Kate have been dragged through the underbelly of journalism’s underbelly, and the Octamom has been relegated to freak status, how the Duggar’s have remained unscathed.

But even as I wondered, I knew. While Jon is gallivanting all over the world with much younger girlfriends before the divorce from the mother of his eight children is final, Michelle and Jim Bob are possibly the cutest couple I have ever seen.
I mean, watch the show sometimes. They actually look like they like each other (and no, that is not necessarily a requirement in making 18 children. Once again, re: Jon and Kate Plus Eight).

As for the Octamom, Nadya Suleman really didn’t need to call Katherine Jackson as she did recently to ask if she could come to Michael’s burial because she considered herself to be his “soulmate,” in order for us to question her judgment. That was just a bonus.

According to Bill Zwecker’s column in the Chicago Sun-Times, Suleman reportedly told Jackson’s mother that going to the funeral would provide her with closure. No word on whether using in-vitro fertilization to add eight babies to six others while unemployed, receiving public assistance with without a partner to help, has given her closure on parenting.

As for the Duggar’s, I am not passing judgment on anything they do, or – in the case of birth control — don’t do. From all appearances and camera angles, all the  children seem remarkably happy and exceptionally well-groomed. They all play musical instruments – though I have noticed no drums or tubas are included in the family band (cowards) – and they all help with various chores around the house (I believe the infants, however, are exempt from this rule).

They make their own clothes and are home-schooled, which, in the eyes of many and, OK, me until I educated myself, characterizes them as something akin to cult status.
They are, in fact, Southern Baptist. Both parents have their real estate licenses. Jim Bob served two terms in the Arkansas House of Representatives and was a candidate for the U.S.
Senate in 2002. They say they built their 7,000-square foot home by themselves and live off income made by renting commercial property they own debt-free.

When they were married, Michelle at 17 and Jim Bob at 19, Michelle took birth control pills. Four years later, they decided to start their family and had their first child. Michelle then went back on the Pill, became pregnant and miscarried.

On their website, they say that after reading of the side effects caused when conceiving while on birth control, they believed “their selfish actions had taken the life of their child” and they prayed for God to teach them to love children as He did. Right after that, Michelle became pregnant with twins and they have not questioned anything that has happened since.

So why should we?

If I didn’t think I would lose all credibility as a responsible parent, I might have rousted my children from their beds last night and asked them to help me with my homework.

As it was, I seriously considered it.

I am a student again. For three days now, 12 hours in all, and I can say with certainty that I don’t remember ever concentrating so hard when I was an actual college student. I also don’t remember ever being so hungry in school.

I am currently taking a faculty class in preparation for teaching the type of multi-media techniques and technology now required of journalism students. Though I am pleased to report that I am picking up new skills and knowledge in “visual storytelling,” as the course is called, I am also quite confident that any students I may have in the future, possessed more technical ability when they were toddlers than I do now.

It’s the same with every generation. My parents marveled at my aptitude in operating a microwave oven; I watch my kids download their iPods and think they’re geniuses. My nephew Daniel is 16 and if he printed up a few business cards could quit school tomorrow and support the entire family by charging for the kind of video montages that put the pros to shame.

Like me heating up Stouffer’s Lean Cuisines all those years ago, it simply comes naturally to kids to perform complex computer tricks.  When our son Alec was two, he once toddled up to our computer, logged onto the Internet and was e-mailing Japan when we walked in.

OK, just kidding about Japan. But he was doing something neither his father nor I understood.
But the computer part is really only a fraction of the adjustment I have been undergoing this week.

Apparently, since I graduated from college, students are now allowed and even encouraged to eat in class. And not just eat. In my class which, remember, is for faculty, eating is part of the curriculum. For those of you in the Chicago area, I’ve seen less food at Ravinia.  All that’s missing are tablecloths and candlesticks. I’m waiting for the wine.

Today, we had a delightful spread of Cheezits, pretzels and cookies. I saw people with full meals. Salads, sandwiches, fruit, mysterious packages wrapped in aluminum foil and a wide assortment of breakfast bars.

As for me, I was hoarding peanuts, a banana and two strawberry Nutri-grain bars in my purse. I didn’t know it was family style.

On the first day, I brought nothing and couldn’t have been more humiliated. After class, I headed straight to Dominick’s to stock up on supplies for the next day. I am currently planning for next week’s classes and thinking hummus and pita chips, perhaps a nice fondue.
Am I the only one who remembers when gum was discouraged?

When I asked one of my classmates about this practice of chowing down in the classroom, she looked at me as if I was hauling around an electric typewriter and a hotpot. Evidently, students today cannot possibly be expected to make it through a three-hour class without nourishment. Our class is four hours long and I am currently still on our five-minute break.
I tried explaining this to my husband Rick with a certain righteousness about the whole thing, when he quietly pointed out that there are cultures all over the world in which people survive and even thrive for four hours at a time without snacks.

Hopefully, I will learn a lot from this course. I already feel smarter. And maybe by the time I face my first class next quarter, I will be able to button my pants again.

I had to look up her picture in our high school yearbook.
I remembered her name but had to remind myself what she looked like. I don’t think we were ever in the same classes, though maybe in grade school.

Not that I wasn’t happy to hear from her.
Since my 30th high school reunion, mostly through the power of Facebook, I had been in touch with several former classmates, some I had seen at the reunion, some who weren’t able to make it.

Merle wrote to me after my blog on the reunion, joking that she was sorry she missed the
mysterious guy in the burgundy sport coat whom I had written about. I don’t know how she had found me. I only know what connects us now.

I called up her second e-mail as I stood on the corner one morning last week, waiting to meet up with a friend and go walking. When I saw the word “Alzheimers” in the subject line, it did not particularly shock me.

I hope it doesn’t sound pompous when I say that I don’t think a single week has gone by since I wrote about my family’s experience with Alzheimer’s in the Tribune Sunday Magazine a year and a half ago, that I haven’t heard from someone about it.

At first, the response was shocking – both in volume and in the depth of emotion. In some cases, I had friends and colleagues who were going through much the same thing my family and I were going through and yet we had never talked about it, never knew. But I was just as touched by total strangers who wrote or approached me, and who continue to do so, saying they read the story, that they remembered it or that they related to it somehow.

When I called up Merle’s e-mail while standing on the corner last week, the words, sadly, were not unfamiliar. And so, as I always do, I kept reading:

Dear Missy,
My father just died from dementia this summer.  We didn’t go to the reunion, because we couldn’t afford to go back to Chicago again after the funeral tapped us out.  I am married to xxxx. from high school, we have two children and we live in [California].
More to the point, my father was diagnosed in 2000 with Alzheimer’s.  At first he lost his short-term memory and our lives were like the movie, “Ground Hog Day.”  Every three minutes we would have the exact same conversation. 

“Dad, you have a doctor’s appointment in an hour, you have to get ready.”
“You didn’t tell me about the doctor’s appointment, what doctor?”
“Doctor Green.”
“Who is Doctor Green?  He is not my doctor, I am not going.”  (repeat for the next half hour)

The good part was that because my father could not remember, we just would make up answers until he would respond and do what we needed him to do.  He was angry, suspicious, and I assume – terrified.  He knew he was literally losing his mind.  I think in some ways the beginning of the disease was about the hardest, because of the anger and the personality change.

My mother died in 2001 and my father really deteriorated at that point.  We had moved my parents out to California in 2000 because they were both so sick and we needed to take care of them.  From 2000 to 2009, my father lived on his own with a caregiver who came in during the afternoons and evenings.  He never left his home, never tried to cook, and seemed to be safe on his own. 

He slowly forgot our names, our ages, his name, his age, his profession, and everything about his past life.  His personality totally changed.  He went from being the most gentle and most polite person I knew, to a person who was rude and threatening with strangers.  He went from a man who was obsessed with diet and exercise to a man who ate junk food and refused to leave his home.  But, he was always loving and kind to his family and his grandchildren (even though he did not know their names).

Education was always very important to my father.  He was always embarrassed that he was the only member of our family with only a baccalaureate degree.  Two years ago he asked me if he was in first grade. I told him that he had been in first grade 81 years earlier and that he was an accountant.  He seemed very happy for a minute or two, until he forgot and asked me again.  The only thing that my father remembered was that my siblings and I were very important to him and that he loved us.  When I would come over, he would often tell the caregiver that she could leave, because I was there.  He would sit with me and hold my hand while watching television.  He would hit strangers.

One morning this past May, my father refused to get out of bed and to eat or drink.  We took him to the hospital and were told that it was end-stage Alzheimer’s and that his brain had lost the ability to feel hunger or thirst.  We took him home to die and it was brutal.  He literally starved himself to death.  When we tried to feed him or give him something to drink, he would spit out the food or water, he couldn’t swallow and did not know how to eat.  He also went blind.  A friend of mine is a neuropsychologist and she told me that the parts of the brain that control appetite and thirst are close to one of the vision centers and that it made sense to her that he would lose his vision at the same time.  However, even in the last few days before he died, he would pull me, my brother and sister toward him in bed and hug and kiss us.

He couldn’t stand, talk, or really move, but he still knew who we were and he was saying good-bye.  When he died, my sister and I were lying beside him in bed and holding his hands, and his caregiver (who had taken care of him for seven and a half years) was holding his feet. He just stopped breathing.

When the dementia got severe, I felt like not only was my father dying, but that my childhood was dying with him.  A part of my childhood was also going, because those memories of me were gone.  The mourning process has been more difficult than I expected.  I have had to take care of my father for the past nine years and suddenly that responsibility is gone.  I miss going over to his house and seeing him sitting on the couch, watching television, and eating candy and potato chips.  I miss seeing his face light up when I walked in into the room.  Even with this horrible disease he was always my father and I will always miss him.

I am sorry that you are going through this too.
Merle 

I’m not sure why this one letter from this one old friend affected me the way that it did. Maybe because her words were so spare, her feelings so raw. Maybe it was because I happened to get her e-mail in the days following the two-year anniversary of my mom’s death. Or maybe, more likely, because as she described her final days with her father, I could not help but think of our final days with mine.

All I know is that the tears came when I least expected them, standing on a corner, alone with my Blackberry, connected to someone I barely remembered. And that they came hard.
With her permission, I am going to post Merle’s letter on the Alzheimer’s page of my website with hope that it will encourage others to tell their stories. Not to make each other sad, but to feel connected. She said it was cathartic writing about her dad, that she felt a little less isolated.

That’s how it works.