GREETINGS, EVERYONE!

I’m back! Here we are at the end of August, already a full year since my last newsletter. Yikes! I’ve missed communicating with you and send a hearty hello and welcome.

No doubt much has happened in your lives in the interim, hopefully mostly good. As we know, the world at large is in constant flux, with daily twists and turns.

Here on my own turf, I’ve had my own twists and turns. At the very end of last summer, I was stunned to learn that I needed open heart surgery. What?! Moi?! Yes. Three bypasses, two valve repairs, one A-Fib ring, (and a “partridge in a pear tree”) were to be the ultimate scenario. Do you know the feeling when you wake up from a bad dream and you’re relieved it was just a dream? Well, not so this time. Family genes had the upper hand in this case and so did fear. One coping mechanism (forget denial): fortify myself with information. Ha, ha, that proved an exercise in frustration. With info and answers and lack thereof running the gamut, almost a whole month of high anxiety went by before the scheduled surgery. Enough of that. After a comprehensive consultation with a different surgeon and a more responsive team, the original date was cancelled and my new date for surgery was set for a month later. Finally, I felt in good hands and could breathe more assuredly.

Who’da thunk I’d be trick-or-treating in a hospital? Didn’t even need a Halloween costume; following successful surgery, my octopus entwinement of tubes, cords, and wires were frightful enough. Just to get me from bed to chair for “lung expansion time” required a systematic process of obstacle removal, cord management, and monitor adjustment. Two additional monitors that hung heavily from my neck further tested my tethered endurance. Whenever I needed to be moved, so did my costume of tangled tentacles…each and every time. It was a delicate choreography, necessitating spatial awareness and step-by-step precision. I admired the practiced ease and patience of all involved.

Once out of the ICU I could appreciate the perk of a private room. The absence of another patient next to me made a huge difference in my state of mind. My room overlooked Central Park during the height of the Fall foliage season. Of course, during my two-day pre-op period on the seventh floor, I had scoped out which private rooms had the Park view, committed the room numbers to memory, and requested one prior to surgery. How thrilling it was to have the extra benefit of my own ringside seat for the New York Marathon, right below me on Fifth Avenue! And to think simultaneously what a major achievement it was for me to simply walk laps around the hospital floor. The staff would cheer me on as my laps increased, and I’d tell them I was getting prepped for the next marathon. Though medals elude me, I was informed by a friend that I’ve acquired the distinction of being inducted into the Zipper Club. It’s that rarified community of individuals who have been opened up for heart surgery and sport the corresponding scar (mine has healed nicely, thank you).

Throughout my hospital experience I constantly felt relief and gratitude for having made it through the ordeal. There’s always that little twinge of angst that you might not. The extensive and intricate procedures boggle my mind. Frankly, it seemed miraculous. When your surgeon tells you the day after surgery, “your heart was a ticking time bomb,” that is a revelatory moment when time stands still. The dedication and care of all who were there for me, in one way or another, continues to touch me deeply. I have received a new lease on life and am now living the bonus round. With my ticker repaired, rebooted, and recovered, it’s a gift to get back on the bicycle of life.

Home two weeks after surgery

Hurray, I’m still here, still on the bike! Oh, the simple glory of waking up each day. May pesky annoyances, unpredictable challenges, and the pervasive Murphy’s Law not impede the path forward.

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"Yoga Chick" photo art 
by Lucia Heffernan

Though daily to-do lists quickly crept in once back home, regenerating basic physical and mental wellbeing won as primary task. Following a dizzying month of visiting nurse, physical therapist, and home aid appointments, it was time to launch back into my own schedule, albeit gradually. As for travel, the first priority was to connect with longtime friends still remaining in the circle. To that end, my summer jaunt to California was memorable and special (even the flights went smoothly!). It reinforced the sense that as we venture further into our later chapters, the bonds we forge become ever more meaningful and poignant.

Where to next? Having cancelled a Scandinavian/Baltic trip originally planned for summer, my imagination took over. Visions of ventures dance in my head. Desirable destinations, domestic and international, are in the offing. Such fun to think about! And having resumed Argentine tango after a long pandemic-plus pause, the combination of tango and travel beckons anew. A number of years ago I went to a tango festival in San Miguel de Allende. Wow, was that fabulous! Sky’s the limit.

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Presently I am proud to announce that our family name is being unveiled this summer on The American Immigrant Wall of Honor at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration.

It reads:

The Karola and William Schuette Family
Germany

I also have the ship manifest records of the arrival at Ellis Island of my father, his brother, sister, and mother in late October 1929 (just in time for the stock market crash!). Though the manifest indicates their arrival as October 27, a separate but included manifest lists their names on a document titled “Record of Detained Aliens.” There were only two other names on that list. As I had learned through diary inclusions of my father in Mom’s memoir, the story goes that my grandfather failed to pick them up on their actual arrival date. Being a Sunday, he didn’t think Ellis Island would be “open.” He collected his “aliens” the next day.

For my grandfather, the ship manifest states his arrival from Germany as four and a half months earlier, on June 10, 1929. He was picked up by a friend who came to America months prior and had found employment in his trade as cabinet maker. That encouraged my Opa to leave his destitute homeland to make a new life in that same profession for which he was also trained. How amazing to see these authentic records and hold them in my hands!

Though Karola landed not at Ellis Island but in Brooklyn by troop transport as a war bride, she knew she had truly arrived in America when she beheld in awe the Statue of Liberty. Upon her imminent arrival, she had a most unexpected trauma, even beyond her debilitating seasickness throughout. As recounted from her memoir, “…there was what they called a head tax to be paid in the amount of fifty dollars and I had no money! I feared I was a candidate for immediate deportation…My hopes to see my Bill fell to the bottom of the ocean. I could not hold back my tears…Miraculously, there was a representative of the American Red Cross aboard who told me they would lend me the money and I would be duly admitted to America.” A divine intervention. And yes, my father was there to sweep her up into his arms. It was Sunday, December 28, one day before my mother’s twenty-fifth birthday. It was also one day after the Great Blizzard of 1947, which dumped at least twenty-five inches of snow over twenty-four hours. In that polar whiteout condition, how would the two newlyweds make it to Mom’s in-laws’ Brooklyn apartment, where they would have to stay for the next two and a half months? Journey Between Two Worlds carries that saga forward.

Karola never forgot how the Red Cross had rescued her. About fifty years later, weighing the cons of continued car maintenance, she repaid the Red Cross by donating her vehicle to them.

Inspired by the personal and historic significance of that generous gesture, her local New Canaan newspaper wrote a full-page article, complete with photos, about her story. Another great moment in time.

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Central Park view from my apartment

For me, living in New York City has eliminated the need to drive or have a car. When I first moved to NYC after fifteen years in Los Angeles, I was astounded to discover that the monthly cost of a garage space was equivalent to the rent I was paying for my one-bedroom apartment in L.A.! Sure, that was quite some time ago, but still. Just how long ago marks another milestone. From the day I arrived in NY to this moment, I have been in the same apartment for…drum roll, please…FORTY YEARS! And I’m the one who moved frequently all my life, never in one place more than four years. It’s staggering to contemplate all that has transpired during those four decades. Many chapters of life have unfolded here and continue to do so, thankfully.

I see more and more that life is a moving target. It meanders through order, disorder, and reorder (a concept conceived by Richard Rohr) and never rests in one place for any predictable piece of time. Keeping up requires recognition and recalibration along the way; and beyond that, resilience, tenacity, and a zest for living.

I invite and encourage each and every one of you to share any comments, memories, reflections, or questions you may have. I love hearing from you.

To all of you, I wish you golden moments to savor in each day, however miniscule they may seem. They add up and feed the soul.

Be well and enjoy.

May 2024 Birthday

Cheers and love, 
Margaret

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