Trusting Calvin

by Sharon Peters

  Max didn’t throw his hat into that particular ring. He did, however, become something of an activist. From 1998 until 2001, he served on the board of Services for Independent Living, an advocacy group aiming for total acceptance of and adherence to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which had passed in 1990 but was not uniformly or universally applied.

  His volunteer work with the library grew, too. One Tuesday morning in August 1997, as he and Calvin headed for the sorting room, library director Barbara Mates intercepted them.

  “There are blind children who need more practice reading and writing in Braille,” she said. “The teachers don’t have the time, and most of their families don’t know Braille. Do you think we could organize a group of volunteers to help the kids?”

  “Yes, of course,” Max said, wholly unsure whether, in fact, such a group could be organized.

  There were many obstacles, most of them unanticipated, but eight months later, Braille Read-Together was launched, with volunteers and willing youngsters meeting every Saturday. Max worked one-on-one with a girl who was blind and had other disabilities.

  “By fifth grade, six years after she and I had started working together, that little girl read Braille faster than I did,” Max proudly told his friends years later. “It is hard work, the tutoring, but it is my greatest pleasure.”

  At about the same time, the library installed its first “talking” computer, equipped with software called Screen Reader, which translates text into speech. Mrs. Mates suggested Max be the first student/user, even though Max had never before indicated or demonstrated any particular interest in, or facility with, technology.

  William Reed, a librarian and computer expert, and, as Max later described him, “a man of much patience,” taught Max to send and receive e-mail, use word-processing programs, and access the Internet. When the bugs had been worked out and the equipment made available to library patrons, users sometimes complained that learning it was too hard for a blind person. Reed always responded: “If Max was able to do it at the age of seventy-nine, anyone can.”

  Calvin and Max took on all of these new challenges together, a team, as close as any. People from miles around knew them. Newspaper stories were written about them. They learned from each other and taught each other, Calvin regularly surprising Max with his amazing good sense.

  The two were out together on a summer afternoon when a quick-forming storm blew in with a blast of cold wind and an instant downpour. Max quickly reversed direction with Calvin, heading for the bus-stop shelter a block away, figuring they would wait out the rain there. Oddly, when they reached it and Max instructed Calvin to enter, the dog disregarded the command. It was so uncharacteristic that Max decided to see what his dog was up to.

  Calvin took a sharp turn into the driveway a few steps away, and Max, knowing precisely where they were, suspected that Calvin had felt the bus shelter wasn’t nearly as good a solution as the Jewish Community Center that they had visited several times in the past. Indeed, in less than a minute, Calvin and Max were standing in the lobby of the JCC, out of the rain and wind, much better protected, Max frequently told people, than they would have been if the two of them had done things Max’s way.

  Max by now had decided this was an animal unequaled. The trainers at the school had regarded Calvin as intelligent, though not necessarily, among his peers, exceptionally so. Max found him brilliant. Calvin’s food obsession never really abated; Max regarded it as an endearing quirk. Calvin could entice the grandkids into turning a nice, quiet afternoon into a cacophony of shrieking, laughing, and dog noises; Max found this delightful. Max liked everything about this animal: his eagerness, his streak of silliness, even his big, deep bark, which sounded threatening to most people, as it had to Max in their early days, but now seemed to Max a joyful, boisterous song.

  Happy in each other’s company and with the adventures each made possible for the other, Max and Calvin worked and walked and traveled together for nine years.

  At age eleven, Calvin developed arthritis. Medication helped, but the dog was moving much more slowly and had trouble climbing stairs or getting into and out of cars. A walk of only a couple of blocks left him limping.

  Keeping Calvin moving would help his joints, the vet said, but he couldn’t work as a guide dog any longer. More was required of him than he could provide, though he tried to hide his pain and act as if nothing could possibly stand in the way of getting Max where he needed to go.

  Barbara had become very ill by this point, her emphysema so severe that she had to haul oxygen around in a wheeled canister. Max knew that he couldn’t care for Calvin along with a new guide dog. He was also sure that it would bother Calvin to see him walking out the door for the long morning walk or for speaking engagements with another guide at his side. So he wanted Calvin to have a new home.

  The dog had done his job and done it well. He had volunteered to take on additional responsibilities with the family and had performed them admirably. Now it was time for him to have the restful, happy retirement he deserved, Max told Barbara. These things happen. A dog doesn’t live forever, and a guide dog can’t perform for more than six or eight years. That’s just the way life goes.

  Max called Guiding Eyes for the Blind to say he needed another dog. Very businesslike. He asked if they would find a family to care for Calvin in his retirement. Max knew that this was what often happened when a guide dog couldn’t work anymore, and, for any number of reasons, his partner couldn’t continue to care for him.

  School officials said they would take care of everything.

  In May 1999, Max returned to the place where he and Calvin had first met. All the arrangements had been made. A family in Virginia had stepped forward to adopt Calvin; they were eager to have him finish out his final years with them, and they would love him.

  Trainers had picked out another dog for Max. He would meet that dog soon.

  The old man made his way slowly to the room he had been assigned for the time he would be on campus, Calvin moving at his side, guiding as he always had. Max sat on the edge of the bed and the dog moved against him, leaning against his leg as he had hundreds of times, thousands of times before, Max rubbing his ears.

  How many miles had they covered together? Max wondered. Thousands, certainly. Eating out regularly, making their way into schools and synagogues to give talks, meeting dozens of people, working at the library, Max always aware of Calvin’s willing presence.

  A gentle knock on the door roused him.

  “Max, you have thirty minutes to say good-bye to Calvin,” instructor Ellin Purcell said softly.

  As the minutes passed, Max sank into a sadness he hadn’t expected. He remembered the sounds of Hannah and Andy squealing happily as Calvin, young then, had gently grabbed the front of Hannah’s shirt and pulled her to the ground with a little thud, dog and kids rolling on the floor together, giggles and tail-thumping filling the room. He thought about all those evenings the dog had snuggled against Barbara on the couch, she humming softly, soothed and content.

  Calvin, always so jolly, seemed as melancholy as Max at this moment. The dog knew every posture, every mood of this man, and he knew the man was deeply unhappy.

  Ellin knocked again, entered the room, and silently attached a leash to Calvin’s collar to walk the dog away. Maybe Calvin turned to look at Max one last time when he reached the door.

  Max would never know.

  Eight

  Max received the “replacement” dog, as he had come to think of this new animal, the next day. He’d had to bring this new one into his life because, he now knew, he was a man who needed a guide dog. But this one would never be half the guide, half the funny companion Calvin had been. There was no point pretending otherwise.

  This dog’s name was Silas, and he was a big Lab like Calvin. This one was the color of cornstalks in a sun-splashed
autumn field, and he had soft brown eyes that seemed to plumb the soul of each person he met, finding the best of whatever resided there. Born two years earlier at the school’s breeding center, he was raised by gifted puppy raisers in Maryland, who had quickly seen an unusually gentle, giving spirit, even when he was a tiny thing, still clumsy and unfocused.

  “He’s an old soul—such inner wisdom,” Jan Abbott said to Max. “Trust me. You will come to love this dog.”

  Silas and Max would not have been a good match in earlier years, but the Max Jan saw before her now—more tranquil, more open, more affectionate—no longer needed a stoic dog that would have to try to muscle through Max’s peculiarities. These two, she felt, would get on very well together.

  Max wasn’t happy with the new dog at first, found things to complain about. This happens often when someone must give up a beloved guide dog and form a new relationship with a strange one. There’s even a phrase to describe it: The person is having difficulty with “switching loyalties.”

  Max grumbled about Silas’s walking pace. Jan assured him that he and Silas would make the tiny adjustments necessary to walk perfectly in step. Max complained mildly about other small matters. Jan reminded him that no two dogs are alike.

  Silas would work and keep Max safe as a guide dog should, but he wouldn’t be Calvin, and, in fact, he shouldn’t be Calvin, Jan said. Every relationship is different, and establishing the right footing, the right emotional framework and the right communication shorthand with each one takes time, and a willingness to embrace the new dog’s personality and traits.

  “Remember: Patience is the glue that most effectively binds two creatures together,” Jan said to Max again and again.

  By the end of the training session, Max hadn’t reached the comfort level with Silas that he’d achieved with Calvin, that remarkable feeling of a perfectly fitting glove, and he certainly felt no special attachment to this animal. But he left for the airport confident in Silas’s reliability and work ethic. This was a gift from Calvin, Max knew—the ability to trust this new dog without empirical evidence or any shared history with him.

  Watching Max walk away with the gentle golden dog, the man more erect and purposeful than when she had first met him, more open to the dogs in this session than the last, and also to the students and instructors, relaxed enough that his wry humor regularly had spilled forth, Jan thought of Calvin and smiled. You did a great job, big boy, she thought. You were much more than a guide to Max. You took him to a new, good place.

  It wasn’t the first time she had seen a dog-assisted transformation of a person. They are quite common in the world she inhabits. But this one, she thought, this one was especially big and special.

  Back home in Cleveland, sweet-natured Silas slid competently into his work with barely a hitch, even in their earliest days together, reliable as the spinning of the planet, polite and attentive. In no time at all, the dog and the man, now in his eighties, were asserting themselves around the city, attending to business, visiting the barbershop, coffee shops, and library.

  Silas learned the word mailbox very quickly, and made his way there, just as Calvin had, so Max could post the growing number of editorials and articles he was writing about the Holocaust and about the community of the blind, many of them much more personal and emotional, much less distant now than the earlier ones had been.

  Silas was the name the dog had come with, but it didn’t last long. The man who had been afraid of dogs, the man who had sought to have a dog only out of necessity, and had taken this one because it was the only way to preserve his newfound freedoms, bestowed upon this new dog a new name: Boychick, a Yiddish endearment meaning “nice little boy.”

  It wasn’t a nickname; this was the dog’s name. Few in Max’s circle ever knew he’d had a different one.

  Just a few months after coming home with Max, Boychick made his first appearance at a formal event. In October 1999, Max was honored as one of Cleveland’s twenty most successful disabled people. Max and his dog, accompanied by Rich and Sue, spent the evening at Tower City for the inevitable speeches and picture taking—more of Max and Boychick than anyone else.

  But long before that, Boychick had insinuated himself seamlessly into the Edelman household, having assessed the situation in minutes, just as Calvin had, and decided he would be assuming two very different roles here. His focus and behaviors shifted instantly and completely, depending on who needed him.

  He spent hours beside Barbara on the sofa, always careful to avoid the plastic lines carrying oxygen from the tank to her lungs, especially mindful, anyone could see, when her arthritis was flaring, positioning himself as gently and exactingly as a woodland bird.

  “How does he know, Max?” Barbara asked one pain-riddled afternoon after Boychick had fused against her side, almost as if he had no bones and no weight, a big blob of soothing warmth.

  Max and Silas/Boychick

  COURTESY OF THE EDELMAN FAMILY

  Max couldn’t explain it, and he told her so. But the dog’s intuition and instincts impressed him.

  By now Barbara was inching closer to being housebound, but she encouraged Max and his dog to go about their business as usual. She was content at home, she said, or, if not exactly content—because her hands hurt too much to knit or crochet as often as she’d like—she was fine. It wouldn’t help anything for Max to stay at home with her when he was itching to do more, meet more people.

  Max saw no point in arguing with her, staying underfoot, when she had her own patterns and routines. He and Boychick continued to visit the library every Tuesday; they did their volunteer tutoring with children, the dog so brimming with love that he made the kids feel even more supported and confident. The pair went to schools and synagogues regularly, and they walked, miles and miles, week after week.

  When Barbara’s condition deteriorated even more and Max insisted upon spending more time at home, writing more editorials and articles, Boychick was almost always at Barbara’s side, providing a sort of comfort that no one else could. She and the dog sat quietly, happy just to be in each other’s presence. When Barbara napped, Boychick watched her, worried, one paw always reaching out to make contact as if that would somehow make her breathing a little less labored.

  Barbara was most serene, even as her condition worsened, with Boychick curled against her, pressing as many inches of himself against as many inches of her as he could manage. Boychick didn’t expect her to pet him or talk just because he was there beside her, and she didn’t feel the need to pretend she was happy or upbeat.

  Max marveled at how Calvin, and now Boychick, each chosen specially for Max’s own requirements and personality, very different dogs at the core, had both recognized his wife also had some needs, and had tended to them as well.

  As 2003 drew to a close, Boychick, who had lived for more than four years with this woman, seemed to know, as Max did, as the whole family did, that Barbara would not live much longer. The dog’s expression mirrored the humans’ who arrived to surround her, all of them concerned, all of them respectful of Boychick’s place at her side.

  The day after Christmas, Barbara was rushed to the hospital. Ten days later, after around-the-clock vigils and hushed conversations at her bedside, Barbara Edelman, Max’s wife of fifty-two years, died.

  Max was flattened, and Boychick’s misery seemed to match his own. Even in this awful state, Max could sense that. The house reeked of sadness, heavy and bleak. They both, man and dog, wandered apathetically from room to room, one no less despairing than the other.

  Max, never able to reach out for comfort from others, didn’t want people around. His sons, brothers, and friends tried to abide by that wish, and they mostly kept the distance he demanded.

  Boychick did not. The dog hovered every moment, never more than a foot away from the man, lying with his big muzzle on Max’s foot, leaping to
his feet and following close when Max hoisted himself out of his chair to go to the kitchen for water or a sandwich. And Boychick’s insistent closeness gave Max an unfamiliar sense of peace.

  Still, surges of sadness sometimes slammed into Max so forcefully he was swept under, lost. Boychick seemed to know when Max had been hauled down, and he would nudge the old man, demanding his attention, insisting that the two of them leave for a walk around the neighborhood. They developed a habit of walking a mile or so to a doughnut shop every morning for coffee. Max didn’t talk much to people there, but he was edging closer to the world again, and he knew that this was better than staying alone in the silent house that had once buzzed with the sounds of Barbara frying potato pancakes or cooing with one of the grandchildren.

  When Max was finally able to mobilize himself into doing things other than those tasks he could handle almost by rote, he donated large-print and Braille prayer books to the temple they had joined in 1972, in Barbara’s memory. A few months later, Rabbi Matt Eisenberg—aiming to demonstrate to the congregation that a blind person, using Braille, can participate fully in worship service—asked Max to read to the congregation at the Yom Kippur service.

  With Boychick at his side, Max stood before the assemblage and read from the book of Isaiah. He did so every year for several more years, making the point that the rabbi and he agreed needed to be made about people with disabilities, and he was proud to do it.

  One year during his recitation, Max’s finger slipped, causing him to lose his place. He halted.

  “Is there a problem, Max?” the rabbi asked.

  “Yes; I lost the line.” Then this man, always discomfited when his blindness caused attention or disruption, added: “You guys have it easy; you read black on white. I have to read white on white.”

  The congregation erupted in laughter.

  Life was emptier without Barbara than it had been. But he could manage. He had to. People were counting on him. He resumed his schedule of writing and walking and volunteering, marking the years with his grandchildren’s bar and bat mitzvahs and graduations, and holiday gatherings with family. He kept up connections, through phone calls and e-mails, with friends he had made at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, or through speaking engagements, volunteer work, and his walkabouts. His days were full.