Busy, busy day. Bikram has become a lovefest. I get hugs and kisses from any number of people. Jen made these organic sprays and gave me one as a Christmas present. Have I mentioned how much I value this community?
At the end of class, Maite, one of the students, asked, "Betty, with all your wisdom, what would you say is the most important thing in life?" or something of that order. After a few minutes of thought, I said, "Accepting the reality of the human condition." This does not mean that we accept ourselves at our worst, just that we accept we flawed beings- and get on with our lives. This lack of acceptance creates one of two disastrous conditions: denial of our humanity or crippling shame.
Maite said we suffer so because we are taught to hate ourselves. I disagree with that. Not that the acculturation process can't add to our misery, but I also believe the self-critical voice is part of the human condition and something to be accepted and worked with. It should be our servant, not our master. But that is something to be worked for, a distant goal.
After Bikram, I went to physical therapy. Again, I am blown away by how this woman works. I complimented her. She said I had no idea how much she questioned herself. I told her she did that because she was good. She doesn't work from a paint-by-numbers process. Each client is a new experience, something she has never seen or worked with before.
I'm like that. I have made my peace with it. I used to be terrified by people who were certain -about just about everything. I still don't enjoy their company, but my fear response is much more moderate. I have accepted the strength of the way my mind works. I have always had people tell me how bright I am. I never did, and still don't, understand what they hear me say that makes them think that. I have often been surprised. But I never felt so bright. Or let's say, whatever my intelligence was about, it didn't serve me well. I wasn't the best student in the class. I had to work hard to get good grades. I remember thinking of myself as a mentally retarded overachiever.
But now that I have been able to produce new ideas in education, I accept that I do have a certain type of intelligence. My guess is it is a rarer kind, not necessarily a greater kind. We all have jobs to do to hold our society together. This seems to be mine. And this young woman suffers similarly. She lives with insecurity because she realizes that what she has been taught is she is not enough. She will have to deal with each situation as unique. I believe we can only be excellent at an activity where we can not only tolerate confusion, uncertainty, and unknowing s but welcome those states of mind; they announce the possibility of discovering something totally new.
At the end of a 10-day silent meditation retreat, I was in a conversation with two women, both of whom were psychotherapists. One said, "Don't you hate it when your clients don't do what you tell them to do?" The other woman and I responded simultaneously, "No, it's an opportunity to develop something new." I have come to peace with my mind in my old age. But, boy, this uncertainty, confusion, and unknowing was not fun when I was younger. I suppose it was made considerably worse by having a mother who considered any difference of opinion from hers a threat to her well-being. Oh, we had fun.
After PT, I made two stops to drop off donations, one to Memory Lane. There I dropped off seven dress shirts neatly ironed and one still in its plastic bag, three pairs of closed shoes, two of which are leather, and 7 magazines.
At the Friendly Place, where they care for the homeless here in Kona, I dropped off 12 sweatshirts, two or three sweatpants, some additional polo shirts I found, and two pairs of Crocs.
I asked the woman who works there if they have any use for long-sleeved dress shirts. She said yes, they use them for folks who want to go to church or apply for a job. Okay, I have some more on the laundry line. I will have to iron them first.
Next was Costco; I picked up salad, almond milk, vinegar, pink salt in a shaker, and a bottle of BioAstin and lutein each. As I approached my car, I saw a man struggling to get what looked like the side of a house onto his truck bed. He had gotten it in a part way but was having trouble pushing it the rest of the way. Naturally, I offered to help. Who wouldn't want the help with something like that from a woman approaching 80? I did do some pushing, but more importantly, my action brought two others to help. So there were four of us pushing this thing on to his truck bed.
When I went to load my car, I asked that man to help me. While I can push, lifting something heavy can be a problem. He loaded a large box of almond milk and a box containing three gallons of vinegar into my car.
When I got home, I saw that the three young people staying in the house had cleared out the furniture from the guest room, readying it for the carpet installers on Friday. They did a fantastic job. My house still looks neat and organized instead of like a crowded furniture store.
It was already late, noon. I had to get going, so I had some time to do work in school. Winter vacation starts at the end of this week; we weren't returning to school until January 6. Of course, I had to play a few games of FreeCell before I took my shower and left.
When I got to school, I started with B. in Mrs. D.'s room. He seems to be better, but he still makes enough mistakes to prevent him from getting a good score on his spelling test. I have been seeing that he's better but not quite understanding the contradiction of his poor test results. I think I finally got it. He is spelling more letters in each word correctly but still misses a sound/letter relationship here and there that affects his score. I think the next time I work with him, I am going to have to count how many phonemes are correctly represented out of all the possible phonemes in the list of words. That way, we will have a more accurate sense of his progress. – for both of us.
Next, I worked with N. He had forgotten all about the book he took home on Friday. I told him, "No worries. It will show up." He didn't remember taking it. It says something about his episodic memory for real events. First, I asked him to give me anything he remembered about the story we read in that book. He gave me a great deal more than he had when we started working on his memory from what he heard and read. Then I asked for details about a story in his own life. He told me that he and his dad had body surfed at a beach on Thanksgiving Day while his mother and sister did all the cooking. As it wound up, he was at the beach with something like a dozen cousins too. He played with some of them but said the best part was bodysurfing with his dad.
As N. got up to leave, he said, "Do you want me to get R.?" Jeez Louise, I forgot all about her. She's a good kid, works hard, but boy, is her problem frustrating.
When she came out, she happily read Sassy the Cat. By this time, she loves that story. She didn't want to read any other story. I told her that while I appreciated her feeling, she would have to dig in if she wanted to get better. She did. She did pretty well on the second story as well. Then I turned to the third story, which she had never seen before. She remembered all the words from the first two stories that we included in the third one. Wow! I asked her if she could see how much better she was. She said no. She had been able to read that well before I started working with her. Okay. I Xeroxed copies of the stories for her to copy the words. She always tells me how many copies she wants.
Then I went to work with I. in Mrs. B's class. He said the right side of his head was still sending over those confusing messages to the left side of his head and messing up his reading. I asked if there was another message in the left side of his head that he could pay attention to and just ignore what was coming from the right. I told him to think of trying to listen to two people at the same time. He had to choose who to listen to. Could he choose to listen only to what the left side of his head told him the word was? He tried it. Bingo! It worked! I merely pointed to words that might be on the sight word list for first grade, but, man, he got most of them. Amazing! We high fived each other.
D. came out next. He said he just wanted to say the letters. He did a good job with that; he read them accurately at a good clip. Then I asked him to give me the phonemes in all the words. He also did a good job with that. I don't know if the activity actually helped move him along, but it wasn't frustrating, leaving us feeling like failures. I certainly don't want him feeling that way. That's a dead end.
I napped when I got home. When Elsa and I went out for our walk tonight, we stopped off at Darby and Patrick's. Wow! She has made incredible progress. She used to hold her left arm out while she articulated with her right. Now they moved together. She said she was using the MELT balls I gave her, and they were helping.
For dinner, I checked the ravioli Shivani had left. It would have been great if I hadn't waited until it was covered with mold. Into the trash, it went. I made two fried eggs, a few slices of a baguette, and a salad. I read more of The Master and his Emissary over dinner. After dinner, I worked on the blog. Do love writing!
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