At the heart of our home is a calendar. Not the kind that counts the days, but one that holds the rhythm of Mikelle’s life—steady, specific, and essential. It may look ordinary at first glance, but for us, it is the compass by which care is guided, stories are shared, and continuity is secured.
The calendar was never just a calendar. Not here, not in Mikelle’s condo, where sunlight drapes itself through wide Denver windows like a silken scarf, softening the sharp edges of city life. The downtown hum is always present—car horns sharp as brass instruments, ambulance sirens splitting the routine rhythm of stop and go traffic at the intersection of two one-way streets, footsteps striking the pavement below, and the low murmur of people moving toward some unseen destiny. But inside these walls, where art and tributes to Minnie Mouse sit like old friends, the scent of morning coffee lingers, and the calendar has become the steady drumbeat of life.
Paper or Digital?
For years, we wrestled with the question of time, examining various scheduling tools, including the most obvious, Google Calendar. But then, we consider that there is something about the tangible weight of paper, where the calendar/agenda gathered all our thoughts in one place that was just ours.
It reminds us that care is not a solo act but a symphony. The calendar is the baton for the conductor of Mikelle’s life symphony. Without it, the melodies can break down: a note forgotten, a shift untended, a vital detail lost between the shift change.
But we do live in the age of technology.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, we began to weave a new fabric of care. ConnectTeam arrived—not to replace the paper calendar, but to complement it. Maryann searched for a tool and found it. Scheduling the team is one of the more challenging tasks of caregiving. Balancing the team’s needs with the needs of Mikelle’s and my needs is a task that requires a particular ability for nuance.
The beauty of simplicity in this app lies in its ability to send reminders, display shifts, call attention to new iPad communication updates, and even announce birthday reminders to the team. It provides an avenue to check your shift even when you are miles from the condo. ConnectTeam is a way to stay tethered to the rhythm of care when life pulls you elsewhere.
But here, inside Mikelle’s home, the paper calendar and agenda still reign. Its pages carried the heart of the day—the shift notes, the small stories, the continuity that threads one caregiver to the next. And because it never leaves the condo, it also protects Mikelle’s privacy, keeping the most intimate details of her daily life where they belong: within the safe walls of her home.
When the front door clicks open at the start of a shift, the ritual begins. The first stop is a hug and hello to Mikelle and her team member, then a beeline to the kitchen table where the agenda/calendar lies open to the details of Mikelle’s week. The care team members lean into its pages, absorbing not only the tasks ahead but also the heart and soul, as well as the details of vacuuming, mopping, and showering, in the notes as the baton is passed. The pencil etchings capture the late-night laughter while watching Friends or the British Baking Show, the stubborn cough that kept her awake, and the small triumph of a bracelet finished, its beads catching the morning light.
The calendar is our memory, our witness, our connecting point. And ConnectTeam is the thread that stretches outward, keeping the whole team stitched together no matter where they stand in the city. One holds the stories and safeguards her privacy; the other has the structure and keeps us coordinated. Together, they maintain Mikelle’s care.
But calendars alone do not build community. That happens around Mikelle’s kitchen table, where the team gathers for what might look to others like a casual dinner but is, in truth, a meeting of the minds. A watermelon split open, its juice running sweet and sticky. A pizza balanced on a box, wine, and lemonade poured into mismatched glasses. And Mikelle at the center, her voice—sometimes slow, sometimes insistent—threading through the laughter and the long pauses, reminding us why we are here.
These meetings are less about logistics and more about listening and understanding. They are where frustrations soften into jokes, where new ideas spark, where Maryann, the team leader, takes the pulse not just of the work but of the people who do it. Around that table, everyone leans in—some elbows propped, some hands waving with passion—and decisions are made not by hierarchy but by community. It is here that Mikelle’s voice rises above the tempo of lively chatter, shaping her care in ways no calendar entry ever could.
And from that table, challenges are born. September, for instance, carries the decree of one such commitment: a week without daytime television. A small experiment in reclaiming time, in turning off the constant drone of other people’s stories so we might lean more fully into our own. For seven days, the condo becomes a laboratory of creativity—bracelet making, writing, music, and conversations filling the spaces once occupied by daytime reruns. The silence is not empty; it is alive with possibility.
Here in downtown Denver, where the city surges endlessly forward, our small home finds its rhythm not only in the squares of a paper calendar or the glow of a scheduling app, but in the laughter over shared pizza, in the messy sweetness of watermelon, in the quiet discipline of a self-imposed challenge.
Because care is not only about order—it is also about joy. It is about resilience, yes, but also about play. It is about ensuring that Mikelle’s life, framed by her condo’s expansive windows and lit by the sunlight above, is not just well-managed but well-lived.
The paper calendar stands as our lighthouse, protecting privacy and holding the narrative of care. ConnectTeam holds the map for the journey, linking us wherever we are. But the kitchen table is our concert, our gathering place, our reminder that we are not only building continuity of care but a community of love. And in the end, it is all three—the structure, the system, and the spirit—that keep us steady in the long march of time.
Reflection
As I write this, I am reminded that systems and tools will always matter—but what matters most is how we use them to keep each other close, to ensure Mikelle’s voice rises above the noise, and to shape not only continuity of care but continuity of love. The calendar, the app, the kitchen table—they are simply the scaffolding for something more profound. They hold us so that we, together, can hold Mikelle. And in that holding, we discover a kind of grace that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary, one shift, one story, one shared meal at a time.