At Bikram, Heather told me that shaking machines help people overcome war-caused trauma. Rescue workers noticed that after an incident, children and animals were shaking while adults were not. They hypothesized that adults didn't shake because of learned control. They also thought that the shaking they observed was the body's way of shaking off the shock. They experimented with putting adults on shaking machines. When I was a child, they were machines with belts that went around a woman's rear end and vibrated them to lose weight. This process had some success. Sounds good to me. When I hear expressions in the language that have lasted forever, I suspect they endured because they carry a truth. When people are emotionally overcome, we say, "Shake it off." Think, if this will help people overcome PTSD, wouldn't that be wonderful?!!
When I got home, I called Progressive and Kaiser. I called Progressive. When we signed up with them after we moved here, our rates were higher because we had had accidents. The rates were supposed to drop after three years. The clerk told me that our three years would be up on November 22, 2020. After I hung up, I thought of another question. Was the drop from our last accident or from the day we signed up with Progressive? I will have to call back and follow up. I called Kaiser to get the total bill for Mike and me on our premium payments and get them to send me a cumulative statement for tax purposes.
I only was at school for 45 minutes today because I had to go to a funeral at 1 pm. I had R. read a story she had written a while ago. She sailed through it. I forgot to ask her if she had been reading it at home and had it memorized. I had prepared a StoryJigSawPuzzle exercise for this story. She had small pieces of paper with each word from the story on them. She had to find the words and lay them out to duplicate the story. She recognized the words with ease. I need to go back to having her write/dictate her own stories for reading exercises.
While R. work on the SJSP exercise, I worked with D. on a cursive sorting activity. This is an Orton-Gillingham exercise. The cursive letters are categorized by their approach stroke. The approach stroke is the one that is needed as you move from one letter to the next. There are four categories. I identify them by a key letter: c, l, i, and v. I can't show you what they look like in this format, but I can show what letters fall in what group.
c start stroke: a, c, d, g, o, q
l start stroke: b, e, f, h, k, l,
i start stroke(lower case): i, j, p, r, s, t, u, w
v start stroke: m, n. v, x, y, z
I just showed him a few examples, and he was able to take the cards I had prepared and classified most of them correctly. He did the exercise enthusiastically. He is going to be a fantastic student if he continues developing like this.
I had a few minutes before I left. One child was asking for help. I went over and asked him what the problem was. He was working on a multiplication facts drill on his computer. He wasn't clear about what the problem was. I asked him to come outside with me. He then said it was too hard. I got him to give a little more detail; it was too fast. I didn't know what that meant to him.
Not knowing what else to do, I asked him to name a multiplication fact he wanted to learn. He said 7 x 7. I wrote the problem on a piece of paper, 7 x 7=49. I started to show him how to encode the problem into his long-term memory. Before I had a chance, he gave the problem a deep stare. I could see he was encoding it. Now, I understood what he meant by "it was too fast." The computer program he was working with flashed the problems but didn't allow him that slow deep look in which he absorbed the fact into his brain.
When I spoke to Mrs. D. about him, she said C. was just lazy. He wouldn't work unless she was sitting by his side. He reminded me of myself. I was always scared to death that I wouldn't be able to do the assigned schoolwork. My dad had to sit by me every night, helping me. I was in 6th grade before I did a report on my own without my dad. A tenth-grade teacher told my mom that I was slow to learn, but I had a deep understanding when I finally did. I wasn't a good surface learner. I had to 'feel' the information in my body.
During my freshman year of college, the math teacher introduced the concept of infinity. We had a test shortly after. I called my uncle in hysteria, telling him that I was going to fail math because I 'couldn't feel infinity." When I was in graduate school, I was sitting in the student union with a group of friends. Someone explained something, and I said, "I can understand it with my head, but I don't feel it in my body." One of my friends said, "Finally!!" I had no idea that my way of learning was different than that of others. I thought there was something wrong with me. I called myself a mentally retarded overachiever because people who heard me talk frequently commented on how bright I was. I suspect some people understood what I was doing, but I didn't'. I hope I can spare C. some of the problems I faced in my life.
I don't know if this different way of learning qualifies as a learning difference or a learning disability. I suspect it's a learning difference because I am a bright bunny who learns things deeply. I never just learned for a test ( except for statistics); I learned for life. I learned because everything I learned had an impact on my life.
I suspect C. has similar problems and strengths. I hope that I can help him learn how to work with his learning style. The rhythm of the classroom teaching style is not appropriate for his learning style. He has to be the one to make the adaptations. I figured he would have all his multiplication facts mastered by the end of the spring break, which started the following week.
Before I left, I asked Mrs. D. to show me what N. had written earlier in the week. He hadn't wanted to work with me on his writing when I gave him an opportunity to. As I had taken him out, I noticed he had already written a fair amount. When she showed it to me, it was good, really good. This is a child who never wrote anything. Now he was writing coherent essays.
I found N. and told him how good his work was. He walked away. I started in on him, saying, "Thank you, Auntie Betty. Thank you for making a point of reading my paper. And thank you for telling me my work was so good. I appreciate you caring about me." He got this big smile on his face.
I left for Cynthia's at St. Michael's. She worked closely with Michael. Cynthia was deeply involved with the church and did all sorts of other community activities. Here she was, a little old frail lady of almost eighty, and one of her significant efforts was with organizations fighting human trafficking, apparently a big problem on the island. Young women are snatched off the street, drugged, and forced into prostitution. I don't know how she even had the stomach for dealing with this issue.
Before I went into the church for the service, I stopped by Mike's grave to take some measurements. It still wasn't clear how much space would be allotted for the headstone. Brenda wasn't clear either and told me to work this out with Fr. Lio directly.
When I entered the church, Sue had already started the eulogy. I ducked in and went to the back of the church. She did a great job telling about all the work she did for the church and the community and what a good friend she was. After the mass, there was lunch. I sat with Judy and some other people I know.
_____ ______-______
Musings; On marriage. New expectations. Maslow's Hierarchy. Personal fulfillment
I heard a NPR program about the history of marriage and how it reflects Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Initially, in the history of humanity, its purpose was physical survival. Now many couples see its function as self-actualization. This becomes a problem when people expect their partners to make it happen.
I think some people enter a marriage with an idea of who they will become in the other person's context. I entered it, knowing only that Mike was a safe person to explore who I might become if I worked to be my better self. I only knew that if I became a better person, I would be a calmer person, a more loving one. Those were my only goals. Other than that, I had no images of who I would become. I knew the circumstances of our lives together would help to form me.
When I decided to accept Mike as my life partner, my only thought was that I could live with him the way he was, even if he never changed. No, I did not think he was perfect or even perfect for me. I felt that he would not be damaging to me; it was a culture, in the sense of a petri dish, where I could grow and become. What I would become was a mystery.
I don't know how Mike viewed our relationship. I suspect he was never as happy as I was, not because I wasn't a good partner but because he was more damaged by his relationship with his mother than I was with mine. At least, I had healed more.
He would often be thrown into a rage, which he didn't vent- never, because of something trivial I did. My loud voice would trigger a reaction. He knew this was his problem and less an accurate evaluation of my behavior. Not that I couldn't slow down and speak more quietly, but the severity of his reaction was not appropriate.
During a couple's therapy session, he sobbed as he confessed that sometimes he wanted to push me in front of a moving car as we crossed a street. Knowing that he would never do such a thing, trusting him completely, my only reaction was sorrow for him. What a burden to have to live with such a rage. The person I hated was his mother for treating him as she did and putting this dear man under such stress. She resented him just because he was a male. She was determined to put him in his place.
My mother was also concerned with putting me in my place. Mike and I had similar backgrounds. However, he suffered some additional traumas that I did not have to carry. I don't think his mother actually loved him. I suspect she was actually incapable of love as I understand it. She loved her children because they were her crowning glory, not because they just were. Whatever problems my mom had, ego wasn't one of them. She suffered from PTSD and lived more at a basic survival level. But she could also delight in her children. She could be imbued with love. However, if we turned around to catch it in her eyes, she would quickly look away. She thought she was doing something harmful to us by loving us so much. Go figure.
I do have to agree loving someone is a selfish act. For me, it is the highest form of pure pleasure. This afternoon as I was lying down to nap, I thought of loving Mike. My heart filled with a delicious warmth and expanded. It felt great. I am so grateful that he allowed me to love him. Some people don't allow others to express their love to them or see it as a measure of their control over others. Mike both allowed it and never saw my love for him as evidence that he had power over me. For both of us, the lucky one was the one who felt more love.
Listening to this show tonight reminds me of what a good deal I had. As much as we were a source of nurturing for each other, we never expected the other to be the source of that fulfillment. I never did. It was my job to find my fulfillment. Mike just supported my efforts. God, I loved and still love that man.
At Cynthia Taylor's funeral today, the list of her activities to support the church and the community's needy went on and on. She was an amazing woman. It reminded me of how proud I was of Mike. I was ridiculously and somewhat stupidly proud of him. I had wanted the NY Times to publish his obit. I read the column every Sunday. I thought Mike was worthy of an entire article. I was surprised when Damon said something like it would cost $200, and no one would see it. It was only then that I realized that mike's death announcement would be one line among many other one-line announcements. I thought he was the cat's meow. I was always proud of him. There were two reasons: one, he was a man of great integrity, and two, he always did his best for the people he served. Some didn't agree with some of his actions. They considered him to have sold out, but that was because he didn't support their values. He always continued to support his own. I feel like a million bucks writing this about him.
No comments:
Post a Comment