Mike's death; Betty's life...: 12/31/25

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

I worked on my overwhelming feeling of loneliness with Shelly today. Some of it is the loss of Mike. More accurately, the loss of Mike has exposed this feeling. I remember having it before the birth of my sister when I was four and a half. How could I possibly remember something like that? There was an incident that crystalized the memory for me. I didn't name it loneliness then. It was just disappointment and sadness.

I came home from a month with family friends to rejoin my parents and meet my new sister. I loved being away. I have fond memories of events from that visit. But most importantly, I felt like this was my contribution to the family. I so wanted to feel as if I could contribute. I was excited to see my new sister. I grabbed the slats to pull myself closer when I walked up to her crib. She started to cry. That part was okay. My parents whisked me away from the crib and showed me a toy they had bought me, a crib in which they had placed one of my dolls. They distracted me anxiously. I remember vividly kneeling but that doll's crib and rolling my eyes, realizing nothing would change.

What did I want to change? I wanted to feel like I was part of a family instead of an object to be cared for. My mother needed everything to be perfect. I wasn't allowed to touch anything. She also had an aversion to affection. I remember reaching up to kiss her cheek and being pushed away as if I had done something disgusting.

My sister does not remember my mother the way I do. For her, she was excitable. I think it is the burden of the oldest to take the full brunt of a parent's worst, much like the bow of a ship breaking the water. I think Mike had the same experience. The advantage of being the firstborn is that we get all our mother's intense attention; the disadvantage of being the firstborn is we get all of our mother's intense attention.

Traditionally, there was no such thing as a nuclear family; there was the extended family. If something went wrong with the mother, there was a good chance someone else in the family could compensate. It is no longer available in the nuclear family; it's even worse in single-parent homes.

I don't think my parents were bad. It was just not a good match. The other possibility is that I was one of the ones who were hyper-self-aware. As with all traits, this awareness is both my best friend and my worst enemy. I have spent a lifetime making the most of the best of it and finding ways to handle the worst. Maybe this hyperawareness allowed me to experience loneliness at such a young age. I don't know.

I asked Shelly if she always suspected the feeling of loneliness was there. She said no. Interesting. The sensation that accompanies this feeling is racking. I applied what I learned at a Buddhist retreat. I had gotten myself in a tither. I was overwhelmed. I spoke to one of the retreat leaders. He told me to do something I had never heard in the usual class instruction. He told me to lie down straight; the standard instructions are not to lie down but to sit with a straight spine. He then told me to only focus on the sensations in my hands and feet. The usual instructions are to focus on the sensations on the surface all over the body. For those of you who aren't familiar with the meditation process, it is downright brilliant. Brilliant Buddha. If you face unpleasant sensations with equanimity, they go away. And they do. It is truly amazing.

You might wonder what physical sensations have to do with emotional distress. All emotional feelings are felt in the body, every inch of the body, including the hands and the feet. The trick is not to valance those sensations, attributing t either positive or negative emotions. Stick to "They are just physical sensations," and calmly observe. Describe them: hot, cold, hard, soft, stabbing, pulling, pulsing, but never good or bad. It's an amazing process. It can take forever if the pain – or the joy- is deep enough, but it does work. Yes, I said joy. Buddha recognized that we could go off the deep end at both ends of the spectrum. He called it craving when we want to hang on to something and aversion when we want to get rid of something.

At any rate, I focused on my hands and feet. I got immediate relief. I knew that relief wasn't permanent. When I work with kids who release a spin that interferes with their reading, I never count on that one release taking care of the whole problem. I tell them to think of having a bathtub filled with these little tornados. They just got rid of one pitcher full. There were more. Every time they feel the interference of the spin, they should stop everything and do another release. I've had kids come back to me and tell me the spins that interfered with their reading were gone. When I asked what they did, they'd give me a look, "I did what you told me to do." Oh!

Before the session with Shelly started, I collected the garbage in my house and took it to the trash can. The can was still sitting in the yard. Usually, Josh takes it out to the curb on garbage day. I moved it to the curb. After the session, I did one of my short walks. I checked our trash can. On my early morning walk, I noticed that my neighbor's trash can was overflowing. Now, it looked closed. I went down there to check. Sure enough, it was empty while ours was still full. The trash pickup used to be in the late afternoon. Today it was before 8:30 am. I figured I'd take the trash to the transfer station tomorrow on my way into town. No worries.

I had a session with adolescent D. When I spoke to his mother yesterday, she said he hadn't been impressed with his ability to read the words in sequence with great speed and accuracy. He said he just had the story memorized. Today, After I had him reread the same paragraph in its entirety, I started pointing to individual words at random. The exercise was still supported. He could figure out the words using context clues. He did well.

I had an appointment with the acupuncturist later in the day. While lying flat on my back, she tried to bend my legs one at a time so my thighs were pressed into my body. No way that was going to happen with the left leg. The right leg is a little stiff from lack of movement, but she got it there. Again, she addressed the stiffness in the left side of my whole body. She put in the needles while lying flat on my back with my legs straight and left. I assumed she would be just outside in the waiting area making calls and taking care of business. Within five minutes, the muscles in my left thigh started spasming. Normally, I would just bend the leg and relieve the discomfort. I didn't feel I could do that because of the needles. I called her name. I was good; I didn't scream. On my fifth attempt, she came. She easily bent my leg, and I got immediate relief. I will have to ask her to stay within earshot in case I run into trouble.

I did another short walk when I came home. I passed Adam's house and noticed that he had the back of the truck loaded with what looked like junk. I asked him where he was heading. He was going to the town dump. Could he take our garbage with him? Sure, enough. Done.

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

After yoga, I had a session with K. We continued working on spelling his name and handwriting. He was easily distracted. He has five siblings in a small house. Plus, the house is on a busy street, so I hear the traffic in the background. K wanted to get out of the session as soon as possible to get back to his video games. I've been working with him on his handwriting. He also needed help writing his name with all the letters in the correct order. He is doing better. I asked him if it made him happy to make his mom happy. Yes, on that point. Then I asked him if it made him glad to see himself do better. He responded with silence and confusion. I don't think it had ever occurred to him to be pleased or disappointed with himself.

At 11, I had my first summer session with J in California through the Step Up Tutoring program. I hadn't figured out how to get into the Book Nook Learning site, so I used a passage from Barnell Loft's beginning 7th-grade level. It was way over his head. He was missing vocabulary as well as having trouble with the syntax. I wasn't sure if this level was still considered 7th grade. From the material I'm seeing, I think this might be regarded as high school material now.

Here is the classic case of confronting a situation where you don't know something, and you know you don't know it. The reaction to this moment separates the men from the boys.: Was his response going to be fear or curiosity? Underlying both those feelings is confusion—our heads spin. The good learner responds with excitement, "Oh, boy. I'm about to learn something new." The poor learner responds with negative messages, "I don't know this; I must be stupid." Or "I don't know this; I am in danger." "Danger!" you ask. You may be laughed at or ostracized if you live in a highly structured social group not knowing what others know. Remembered, ostracization a few million years ago was a death sentence. No one could survive out in the wild alone. I told J. this was the most important lesson I had to teach him. Once he had his fear under control and viewed 'not knowing' as exciting, nothing could stop him. He would become an amazing learner.

I left for town once I was finished with the session. I went to Textures to order the gravestones for Mike and me. I ordered two two-by-four granite slabs. I will either get Mike's stone engraved or order a poured brass sign plate. I might order a matching brass plate for myself—question: how to add on the death date later. I suppose I could add on now. Who cares what my actual death date is. I could make it for the year 2046; I'll be 106 then. My mom died two weeks before her 96th birthday; I'm in better shape than she was at my age by a long shot. If I die sooner, who cares? If I die later, who cares? My sign plate will say:

Elizabeth Susan D. R.

December 5, 1940- March 4, 2046

Mike's Beloved Betty

It's that last line that has the most meaning for me. I will have his love for me carved in stone so I never forget it. Who cares what someone else thinks of that rather unusual way of putting it.

I'm back into getting-rid-of-stuff mode. I found twenty books for the Notre dame seminary, and I packed an old carpet and a ceiling fan into the car for donation. Guess what? Habitat didn't want either of them. They don't accept used fans and the carpet's hole makes it a loser. I had to take everything home. Scott recommended I try the secondhand shop at the dump. I planned to do that. I'd post them on Craig's list for free if that was a no-go.

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Musings:

Dehaene went on a tear on the subject of discovery learning. He says experimentation is good, but there should be someone there to correct you immediately when you're wrong. I remember the church 'corrected' Copernicus and Galileo. Did Euclid learn Euclidian geometry from someone else who corrected him whenever he 'made an 'error" and came to a conclusion that was different than theirs?

Then in his chapter on Consolidation, he mentions the role of discovery over and over. There is discovering the conventional sense. Discovering the sound represented by the letter F by figuring out the first sound in the word fat. The learner can discover that on their own.

So we have two types of discovery: the small ones where we discover what everyone knows already, and the large ones when we see things as no one has before.

I have no idea why Dehaene is so bent out of shape about discovery learning. Has he been exposed to a learning situation where there was no direction, and every student was left to his own devices to rediscover the wheel? Good learning is a balance between imitating those who have gone before us and exploring new pathways, even in our own small worlds.

Monday, June 14, 2021

Before I was up, I got a text from Julia from Step Up Tutoring to tell me that no one had signed up for reading support today. Very disappointing. I get energy from trying to solve the tutors' problems with their kids. The problem is that I only have one hour with them. I try to cram all I know into that hour. I have had as many as three people to deal with at once. Sometimes the problems they present are similar, sometimes not.

I woke up early in the morning and wound-up obsessing again. I wondered why I did this. It doesn't help me resolve my problems with another person and makes me feel lousy. I asked myself that question; I got my answer. It deflects feelings of loneliness. Now I wondered if this pattern of mentally arguing with people started before or after my dad died.

Dorothy once said that after our dad died, she remembered feeling lonely in the school playground. I was surprised. I didn't remember feeling lonely. Given the problematic relationship with my mother, I suspect I just felt scared. I didn't have the emotional space to feel lonely. If I think about it, I remember feeling lonely even before my sister was born. My mother and I were never on the same wavelength. I always felt like she was a whirlwind; she never held still enough for me to grasp her and feel her presence. What a mismatch!

Facing loneliness now feels sad and painful, but the only way to go. Mike was a remedy for that feeling but not 100%. I always suffered from underlying feelings of anxiety. He once said to me, "Someday, you will start crying, and you won't be able to stop. Call me immediately." Guess this is what I'm going to have to deal with now. However, calling him is not an option. I do feel totally alone. When Mike was alive, I knew he always had me in mind. There was a chord connecting us; we continuously monitored each other's whereabouts and well-being. I have no one watching out for me anymore, well, not in the same way. Feeling lonely doesn't feel good but sticking with that feeling leaves me feeling calmer and less agitated than forcing connections through argument,

I have a half-hour session daily with adolescent D over the summer. I discovered he didn't know the names of the vowel letters. When I asked, he said, "O .. .E," He said, "I forgot," defensively, as if this should be okay. I told him that if he came out of anesthesia after surgery, and someone asked him what the vowel letters were, he should say, "A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y." It should be that embedded in his mind. The vowels are the cornerstones of every syllable. The vowel and the surrounding letters determine the phonics pattern. Readers must know the vowel letters and become vowel hunters.

I have him reading a paragraph from a graded text on a 7th-grade level over and over. He is reading the words with more confidence. He still gets stuck on some, like the word silence. And he still makes mistakes with words like they and then. After he had read the whole paragraph, I picked one word or even one syllable. I identify the pattern. Then I go through the alphabet, having him blend the consonants with the syllable pattern. Slowly he is getting better. The goal is fostering pattern recognition, not necessarily of any particular pattern. I want him to get to the point where he can say, "The pattern in his word is . . .," and then generate other words switching out the initial consonants himself.

I also started having him spell simple words. He dictates them, and I write them on the Zoom whiteboard. Pat, prat, etc. He has handwriting problems—one thing at a time.

Later in the day, I had a session with I. The school insisted she attend summer school. I. was in a costly, very academically challenging private school. Her teacher last year was brutal. I had been working on writing to promote verbal expression skills. She has a great imagination. We have been writing a book about a little girl who became a superhero's sidekick. However, she doesn't have the words to express these ideas. I think the school is concerned about her verbal expression. While she got many complaints from the teacher that she never spoke up, I don't think they understood the problem. I asked her if she didn't speak up because she was afraid she would say it wrong. She said yes. If she doesn't practice expressing herself, she will never learn.

Mom told me that the school had assigned Stuart Little for summer reading. I ordered it on Kindle. I loved this book when I was a child. It was one of my favorites. Reading it now, I realize the story makes it seem that Mrs. Little actually gave birth to Stuart. I. said he became part of the family through adoption. I helped her see what was really said. Later, I thought I doubted that I understood that when I first read it. Now, it seemed evident to me. I have to go back over this with her. The rest of the story seems obvious. It's just Stuart's adventures. I read the introduction to the book this time. Apparently, E.B. While was unusually small. I think this is a story about himself. It sounds like something he would do.

My blog numbers have dropped from over one hundred to less than ten, and no one is from Turkey. It is more evidence that my blog has become a class assignment; I assume from some teacher teaching the English language in Turkey. Glad I'm doing someone some good. While my numbers have dropped precipitously, and I even had zero readers one day, they are frequently between two and seven. The first year the blog was public, they ran between zero and two, with more zeroes.

On writing these updates and entering them a year later to the public blog: Sometimes, it seems like a burden I'd like to put down, but I know it gives my life shape and some meaning. Putting it down would be the worst thing I could do for myself.

Sunday, June 13, 2021

I've been agitated, obsessively arguing with others in my head. I used to do that a lot before I met Mike. Being ready for the fight was my default mode. That's how I lived with my mom. I was constantly working on getting her to see my point of view; mind you not agree with it, just see it. I didn't understand that she saw that as a threat to her wellbeing. Any difference from hers was considered a put-down. Huh? Mike relieved me of this burden. He both became my protector and my refuge.

The first time I brought him to my mom's house for dinner, he did something amazing. I was exhausted from the long drive to her house and the stress of the situation. I needed a nap. I went to my old bedroom to lie down. Mike came up with me, pulled out my desk chair, turned it so it faced the head of the bed, sat there, and read while I slept. If he hadn't done that, my mother would have screamed at me for being rude to our guest. Mike's behavior was so impressive that it dampened her anger besides just inhibiting her from acting it out. While he never had occasion to do something so gallant again, the image of him quietly protecting me remained with me.

Besides protecting me, he was a refuge from myself as well as others. He helped by not tolerating my complaints about others. Early in our relationship, I was in conflict with a commune-mate. I went on and on and on. One day he said to me, "I love you dearly. You have till Friday to fix it. I don't want to hear about it after that." I remember feeling relief. "You mean I don't have to talk about it?" It was a verbal habit. So is this internal mental one. Unfortunately, thinking about something compulsively has proven fruitful now and then. I have come up with something to say that improved the situation. Sometimes, those arguments in my head helped me see the other person's point of view.

Mike was also a source of pure comfort. I would say I needed a hug and got one, no questions asked.

I called Dorothy to wish her a happy birthday. She is 76 today. She consented to my happy birthday song. She actually complimented it. I started singing that way to accommodate Mike's tin ear. He couldn't carry a tune to save himself. We made a virtue out of failing a developed a whole new tradition.

I have known Dorothy since she was two weeks old. I was sent to friends in Massachusetts for two weeks before my mother gave birth. No, I didn't feel bad. I was proud as punch to contribute to the family. I also had a great time. I have vivid memories of the month I spent there.

Dorothy and I talked about the Great American Songbook. What songs are in it? Who decides which songs make it onto the list? The latest ones are from the early 60s, so songs are added. Why not some more recent songs on the list? Burt Bacharach's songs? I'm sure there are others.

I planned to make another copy of the video today. But instead, I spent most of my time reading and napping. That's good too.

hile was unusually small. I think this is a story about himself. It sounds like something he would do.

Saturday, June 12, 2021

I did some deep cleaning today. I got up on a step ladder and cleaned the ceiling fans, including hard-to-reach spots that hadn't been touched since we moved in. I also moved furniture to do a thorough vacuuming.

Tommy instructed me to write a blurb for the various videos I would be posting on YouTube. I thought the one I had written for the audio file with the phonemic breakdown was too long. I sent it to Dorothy to edit. I didn't tell her; I thought it was too wordy. She sent one back of a similar length but more straightforward. I sent it to Tommy. He said, "Good." I'm too scared or unsure of myself to have any opinion on what would be best. I went with what I had.

I was supposed to have a make-up session with I, but she had several other engagements today. I started on the library again, looking for books requested by seminary librarians.

Mike left me with 3,700 books and 1,000 CDs. His instructions were to give the whole lot, as a package, to his old seminary. In his last moments, I told him I was in contact with the seminary's rector, arranging for them to take his books. Ha! They didn't want one, not one of them. I suspect Mike had made every effort to assure that their library was fully stocked when he was there. As a result, they didn't want anymore- unless I was prepared to build the Ross wing to their library. I did the best I could to fulfill his dreams. I offered the books to seminaries around the country. Sandor, who was in Mike's deacon training class and assigned to St. Michael's in Kona as Mike was, took many of the classic books.

Notre Dame in New Orleans was the first seminary to request books. After I sent them all the books I had on the list and those on the St. Patrick's seminary list, I still had at least 2,000 books. The St. Patrick's librarian said he thought he requested every book that was on religion or philosophy. Not even close. I downloaded the request list from Notre Dame. I found parts of the list I hadn't seen before.

I asked the Notre Dame seminary librarian to send me a list of all the books I had sent him. It took until last week before I received that list, a good six months. I started looking for the books that hadn't been checked off as received. I found ten books already, and I've just looked in four library bays out of the twenty-five bays.

Judy called several times to see if I was all right. I am going through a tough time. I don't know how much is from the loss of Mike, from difficulties with other relationships, and how much is old grief that I can recall from before my sister's birthday when I was four and a half.

As I checked my calendar for tomorrow's appointments, I saw Dorothy's 10th birthday in the box for tomorrow. I was puzzled. Dorothy's birthday was in June. Why was it posted here? It took me several seconds to put it together correctly. Ah, tomorrow is June 13, her birth date. I don't know how much of this confusion is age-related, Covid-related, or how much is seasonal confusion. Living in Hawaii, I have none of the environmental cues I was raised with. It's summer here all the time. It's a good thing my calendar let me know. I'll call her tomorrow and treat her to the Ross version of the birthday song – with her permission. Dorothy is a wonderful singer; she may not be able to tolerate my caterwauling.

Friday, June 11, 2021

Boy, do I miss Mike's hugs. Their impact on my stress was incomparable. Meditation helps but not as much. I don't meditate as much as I should, either.

When I posted my blog from last year to the public site this morning, I saw Turkey was no longer on the list. I was down to seven visits yesterday. There must be some English teacher assigning the blog to his Turkish students. So weird.

One of the 7-year-old twins I started working with has a memory problem. Her teachers and her mother have tried to teach her the letters of the alphabet without success. She couldn't remember the name of a letter from one minute to the next in the half-hour I worked with her. Her twin sister does much better. Her reading may be delayed, but she can name the letters rapidly. The focus has to switch from teaching information to teaching her how to remember. Below are the instructions I sent to her mother.

-Post A's name around the house.

-In passing, several times a day, whenever possible, point to a letter and SAY the letter name. Have her repeat the letter name while tracing the letter with her finger.

-You can do just one of the letters at a time. Don't think you have to do her full name every time. You can pick any letter. You are working on her memory, NOT letter identification. When she feels she can, she will volunteer to name a letter. Yes, perhaps just a single letter.

-Always compliment her.

Don't compliment her on something she hasn't done.

If she repeats the letters correctly, you compliment her on that. "You did a good job saying the letters after I did."

"You did a good job tracing the letter."

-The first time she volunteers a letter name on her own, break out the champagne. However, don't expect her to repeat that in the immediate future. Start again with you naming the letters and her repeating what you say. You can say, "Would you like to try it yourself?" Don't push her if she says no. Leave that to me. Your disappointment will be devastating. a)I won't be as disappointed, and b) she won't care as much about my feelings.

-She is not "retarded." She was able to tell me that she has memory problems. No one who is retarded is capable of that degree of self-awareness.

DO NOT PUSH HER. Let me do that. You only do supportive work. Everyone in the family can do it with her. If she refuses to cooperate with anyone, let me know.

If she does it with you, but not her siblings, have them just model. "A, This is an O." and not require anything of her.

HANDLE WITH GREAT CARE!

Remember, make four positive comments before you make one negative one. A good teacher does NOT correct every mistake. Knowing when to correct rather than praise is a teaching skill.

On one of my short walks during the day, a neighbor passed me and stopped to talk. He sued one of our neighbors for having a dozen roosters on his property. He managed to force the guy to get rid of those birds. He tried to get the police involved, but that did nothing. People who breed roosters like that do it for cockfighting. While it's illegal to have cock fights, raising them for that purpose is not unlawful. While there are noise ordinances about people, there are none about animals waking us up in the middle of the night. The annoyed neighbor brought a civil suit against the guy. The man owning the cocks gave up because he feared the lawyer would have cost him a fortune, and he wasn't sure he could win. Now, the annoyed neighbor reported his wife wakes up at 4 am because she hears a rooster. He asked me to help him figure out where it was coming from. It may be a wild one. One of my nieces says I live in a nature preserve: wild chickens, wild turkeys, wild pheasants, wild goats, and wild pigs. All these animals were released when people moved away. There's a flock of wild peacocks in one of the neighborhoods.

I missed my session with I. yesterday because she had other activities. We rescheduled for today. However, she couldn't hear me. My mute wasn't on; I didn't know what the problem was. I exited the Zoom session and sent another. That didn't work. I tried to go through a second computer. That didn't work. It finally dawned on me to tell her to check her sound setting. Her computer was on mute. I had fifteen minutes left before I had to leave for an appointment with my acupuncturist. I just canceled the class for the day.

No sooner was I off the Zoom meeting with I, than I got a text from my acupuncturist. Could we cancel for the day? Her family dog had died that morning. It was the third dog to die over a short period of time. Judy and Howard had to put down their dog Beau; Yvette had to put down her dog, Izzy, and now this. It was what happened right before Mike died. I was hearing about people dying almost daily. I remembered feeling fear; how could death knock on so many doors and not mine? However, when Mike collapsed, I remained blissfully unaware that his likelihood of surviving was close to zero. Dorothy told me afterward she looked it up and realized how serious it was.

Jean, my hanai sister, and Mike's first wife, called. When I call her, it is often inconvenient. She's either working, eating, or napping. As two old people do, we exchanged information about our medical conditions. I'm in reasonably good health and have few complaints. My hip is an ongoing problem, but I am rarely in pain and often quite comfortable in my body. My big news is my plan to get Botox injected into my forehead to lift my brow. Kaiser is covering it because it is a medical necessity. My biggest problem is on my left side. My brow hangs over my eye, obscuring some of my vision. I hope they do both sides so I look somewhat normal. Fortunately, vanity is not one of my strong suits. If I look weird, I'll find it funny.

I also told Jean about an interpersonal problem I was having. I didn't remember something the way this other person did; they immediately said they were concerned about my inability to remember it. It was something serious. My mom always did that to me. If I didn't remember something the way she did, she declared something wrong with me. I know I am more sensitive to this treatment than others, but I also know that I can't be around someone who responds that way to differences in perception or memory. I cannot go through this again.

Judy was reading Hidden Valley Road about a family of twelve with six of the boys becoming schizophrenics. OMG! Judy found the book fascinating and wanted to discuss it with me. I got it on Kindle. I'm not finding it fascinating. Or maybe I'm just finding the tragedy too stressful.

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I'm back on writing about co-creation. Mike and I saw ourselves as working that way, ideally. In other words, it happened more times than it did not, but neither of us had reached a state of perfection.

In the process of co-creation, arguments occur. However, the objective in arguing is as much to get the other person to convince you of their point of view as to impress them with our own. When I'm 'arguing," You might ask, well then, what are you yelling about? The answer: you want the other person to address your objections to your point of view.

Thursday, June 10, 2021

During morning driveway yoga today, I deeply relaxed the muscles in my upper back. My muscles just let go as I lay on my back with my arms above my head. I remained in that position, giving my muscles a chance to get used to that state. Then, I couldn't get out of the position. I couldn't activate my muscles. They didn't know who they were anymore. I asked Yvette to come over and help me. She moved the chair that was above my head. I sit in a chair where others in the class sit on the ground or on yoga blocks. The chair is at my head at the top of my mat when I lie down. When I stretch my arms above my head, they go under the chair. That's where I was when Yvette moved it.

I still couldn't move my arms. There was no neurological connection. I needed Yvette's help. She came over and very, very gently moved each arm individually so they were resting at the side of my body. Should there be any question in anyone's mind, she is a spectacular yoga teacher, and massage therapist, her sensitivity to the body is impressive.

When I checked my email after class, I had one from Tom Bender, the librarian for the Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. I had donated books to his library. When that was through, I started on the next list for the St. Patrick's seminary in Menlo Park, CA. Despite sending many boxes of books to both seminaries, I still had about 2,000 books left. The librarian at St. Patrick's said he thought he ordered every book related to religion or philosophy that remained on the list. I guess not. Was it possible I had missed giving books to Notre Dame? I asked Tom to provide me with a list of all the books he received. He kept putting me off because he was too busy. I emailed him again. It would be most helpful to know which books I had already sent to him. I got his list today. I checked off his list of books received against the list he requested. OMG! Not even close. I suspected there was a problem at his end. There were books on there I have no memory of ever seeing. I got very familiar with authors' names as I combed the shelves. I think I am going to have to catalog the books from scratch at some point. John Coughlin, or the diocese, is paying for the subscription for the catalog app. I should cancel the old one that John Coughlin set up and take it over myself.

I received a letter in the mail thanking me for my stories. They helped with this man's grief. It freaked me out. How did he get my name and address from the public blog, Mike's Death; Betty's Life? I was thinking of writing him to find out. Ah! Then it occurred to me. He was part of the grief group I worked with through Yoga Farms Ithaca. That's how he got my name. That group has been over for two weeks. I was glad to participate. Aside from getting me to use the Ho'oponopono differently, I didn't get much out of it, but I was glad for the company.

K's mother has a set of twin girls with learning problems. She asked me to work with them once a week. I worked with them separately. I thought I could work with them together, but I see that will be impossible. They are going into second grade. One cannot remember the name of a single letter in the alphabet, even the names of the letters in her name. As she said, she has memory problems. Oh, boy, does she ever! I know this little one fell out of a second-story window when she was two. She landed on her tush. There were only scratches in that area of her body. However, if she landed on her tailbone, that impact would have traveled right up to her brain. Whatever, she's young enough. We should be able to help her rewire.

The twins' names are almost identical. There is only one letter difference between them. They were named that way deliberately. Someone said that's what you're supposed to do with twins. I can't remember which cultural tradition this comes from. So, the one with the memory problems is A; the other one is E. E knows most of the letters in the alphabet. I had her name all the letters in continuous text in sequence. In just a short time, I could hear a difference in the speed of her letter recognition and rate of word recall. I will have her reading by the end of the summer.

Beth from Hawaiian Solar called to say that workmen would be over in the early afternoon. She called a week ago, realizing that my monitoring system hadn't been functioning since December. Someone came over immediately to reconnect the monitoring app to the Internet. Uploading all the missed months would take a week. The week was up; the defective panels were identified.

I received a faulty batch of solar panels for the installation. They're guaranteed. The company has been good about replacing them, even covering the labor costs. When the men were through, they said they had moved nine panels. The company insists that they be moved around to check their low performance wasn't due to shading. The monitoring system showed that they were functioning the same as before.

While the men were here today, I trimmed some shrubs along the driveway. I have been looking at them day after day. It took all of fifteen minutes to make a sizeable dent. It feels so much better seeing it done. I am a master procrastinator. However, it gives me so much pleasure to complete a chore, to even make a dent. Every time I see the result of my handiwork, I smile in satisfaction.

I am working with adolescent D four days a week over the summer. In today's session, he read the paragraph we've been working on with greater speed. He made some small errors. They will have to be cleaned up at some point, but not now. I had him work with the -ain word family today. He did a better job holding on to the sound and blending an initial sound with the chunk.

I am using more traditional teaching methods with adolescent D, but still not traditional Orton-Gillingham. That approach presents each letter/sound relationship one at a time and only uses prepared material. There is no way they would do -ap one day and -ain the next. I'm banking on the idea of teaching adolescent D that there are patterns, patterns he has to search out himself. So far, I'm showing him patterns. After a few more sessions like this, I will ask him to identify the word family pattern in a word. The idea is to teach him to search out patterns on his own and apply that knowledge.

Today I asked him if I emailed him the paragraph we've been working on would he read it on his own. He said, "No," without hesitancy. I don't think he thought of himself as being lazy or uncooperative. I don't think he gave what he said any thought; he just reacted. I have been slowly introducing the idea of his agency in the learning process. We have a way to go. I'm not sure why he is so passive. Is it his personality, or is this learned helplessness?

When I asked him to evaluate our session yesterday on a one to ten scale, he said, "A four, I guess." Well, that was an amazing change. He started at a 1, then moved up to a 1.5. I told his mom. She said, "That's interesting. Whenever I remind him to sign into the Zoom session, he sends me a sad emoji." I spoke to him about it today. I told him, "No mother is ever happier than her most unhappy child." I said stop sending her a said emoji. Send her an okay sign. I will have to tell him this does not mean he can't sit down with her and vent his frustration with his situation. He just can't dump it on her casually.

I got a call from Kaiser to schedule my Botox treatment. Yep. I have a dropping left brow which is interfering with my vision. I saw a plastic surgeon to consider a brow lift. But then I realized that would give me a shorter forehead. I have a world-class little one; I'm close to Neanderthal. The plastic surgeon said I could go with Botox. He was going to check if Kaiser would cover it for medical purposes. I hadn't heard from him in over a month, so I sent him a message. Today, his nurse called me to set up an appointment. Let's see if the treatment helps. Let's see how weird I'll look. Whatever! The effect of the treatment fades between one to six months.

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

I am distressed by a conflict I'm having with a dear friend. Her response to a difference in understanding was to say that something must be wrong with me. "It concerns me when you ask about something this serious, that we have already settled." I hear that she thinks something's wrong with my mind because I remember something differently than she does. That is a serious accusation to make against an 80-year-old woman. I can think of several reasons why we see this situation differently. This person is not open to reconciling differences in perception. I have to keep my distance. Sad.

Distance is one solution, but there is the inner turmoil her comment caused in me. Then I had another minor misunderstanding with someone else. People always say or don't say things that they think should be clear to others when they're not. People also frequently misunderstand what has been said. I'm okay when I'm with someone who understands the vulnerability of human communication. Mike taught me: that it's a problem to be solved. Unfortunately, he also had problems with this glitch in human communication. He would jump on me if I referred to something without giving a clear antecedent. You know, you have a clear image of someone in your mind, and you say "she" instead of the person's name. The fix for this is just asking someone to clarify. Mike thought no one should make this error. He was as hard on himself as he was on me. At least he wasn't a hypocrite.

The conflicts are causing me agita. I thought of Mike, of me coming home to Mike. He was always a safe harbor for me, whatever problems we may have had. If I felt battered, I curled up in his arms for a few minutes and felt better. Now I have to figure out how to do this on my own. Dismissing the other person as being totally in the wrong is not an avenue I'm prepared to take. I believe it is immoral- not to mention delusional -to assume that I'm the only one who has right on my side.

Why am I so distressed if I believe that communication errors are normal? I have to meditate more. I panic when dealing with someone who insists that I'm not merely wrong, but something is wrong with me when someone jumps on me if I don't see it their way. What is that panic about? When I meditated, I got in touch with hatred. That brought calm, which for me means truth; I realized the hatred was for myself, not the other person. I had heard somewhere that all arguments are with ourselves. That's what helped me look at that possibility

I think self-hatred is a normal response to differences. The difference comes in the degree of self-hatred or hatred of the other. It's hatred in either case; the question is which way that hose of bile is directed. But, again, I don't know if my reaction is greater than others.

I learned through Buddhism that there are two wings to a peaceful mind, freeing a loving heart: awareness and equanimity. Most people lean one way or the other; we all need to work for balance. Unfortunately, I erred on the side of awareness. I was trained to be self-aware without being taught equanimity.

Those who err on the side of equanimity, or what they think is equanimity, overdo denial. They define detachment as ignoring their own feelings or the feelings of others. The term spiritual bypassing has come into the discourse. I always thought this was a problem. As someone who is psychic, I was aware of buried, ignored feelings in others. It was an unpleasant position to be in.

Equanimity, as I understand Buddhism defines it, means being aware of your negative feelings, maintaining your focus on them, AND remaining calm, even loving, but definitely accepting. We are not practicing equanimity when we dump our anger or hatred on others.

Detachment does not mean cutting bad feelings loose to float in the universe at large; it means not investing large quantities of emotion in a situation. The theory is that emotion blocks compassion. Emotion, as it is being defined here, focuses on our wounding and survival. Are we really in danger?

I had a session with adolescent D. I started working with him with word families, a cluster of letters with a vowel, and the letters which follow immediately. We started with -ap family, bap, cap, dap, etc. He struggled to blend those. He has trouble holding on to sounds. He will mispronounce /a-p/, even though it is being used in each word, just changing the initial letter/sound:

We accomplished a little more with the spelling today. D. continued to have trouble remembering how a word looks. His underlying problem may be his memory rather than either visual or auditory perception.

Noticing that he had problems distinguishing her from here, I composed sentences using those words. The exercise gave him repeated exposure while the sentence's meaning supported his word recognition. You can't read her for here or vice-versa and have the sentence make sense. He even had trouble with this. While he can infer the meaning of more complex words, he is unbothered by the nonsense of what he is saying when he misreads these high-frequency words.

I just heard that 90% of the people in the world don't have clean air to breathe. I just checked the air quality here in Hawaii. It is green with a rating of 4. That's almost perfect.

Judy watched my video on my reading method. She said she liked it, but she found a few errors. I found two; I want to leave them in. How can I mask mine if I expect others to be brave and risk making mistakes? I have to fix the ones that cause confusion. I think I have to add a comment acknowledging errors, maybe even naming them, and clarifying why I left them in.

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

As I walk Elsa, if she poops near the house, I will throw the poop-filled bag on the verge to be picked up on my way back home. Last night, as I walked with Kelly, Bailey’s human, I passed the spot where I had dropped a bag. I planned to pick it up in the morning. As I opened the side door to go out into the driveway for my morning walk, I saw something lying in the driveway. When I got out there, I saw it was one of my poopy bags. However, while this bag had no poop in it, it did have a poop smear. It had had poop in it. Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da.

As I continued on my walk, I ran into Kelly and Bailey again. I asked her if she had picked up my dropped poopy bag and delivered it into my driveway. No, she was looking for it as she was walking. Weird and then weirder. Was this Mike at work again? In this case, I think he was just having a good laugh.

I had an appointment with K this morning. The plan is for me to work with him once a week and his twin sisters on another day. I continued working with him on writing his name. He wrote his first name correctly. He remembered all the letters and wrote them in the correct order. He also recalled his last name and wrote that correctly. No, it wasn’t perfect. He miswrote the lower-case g. He got the curve in the right direction but put the tail up instead of down. Also, the t,s,o, and n in his name were all the same size. When I told him the problem, he erased the g he had written and rewrote it correctly.

Then I asked him what his birthday was. He didn’t have a clue. I cued the name by saying Oc; he got October from that. Then without my asking, he wrote the word. I was pretty impressed. I called his mom to come in and look. Her only comment was he was missing the e in October, not one positive comment. Excuse me. I have to talk with this woman.

When I worked with adolescent D, he read the whole paragraph we’ve been rereading in every session. He got stuck on the word silence again, and I had to lead him step by step in the decoding procedure. He struggles with his memory. He really can’t remember anything easily. This is an uncomfortable handicap. Mine is still good enough to joke about walking into a room and having no memory of why I went there. All my contemporaries are telling similar stories. We are assured that this is part of normal aging and not a sign of a more serious dementia problem.

Tommy, my techie, completed the audio file of the stories read with phonemic breakdown. He posted it on a private Facebook page before uploading it to YouTube. As I reviewed the slides, I saw I said nothing about this helping reading or English language learners. Oh, well. Maybe someone will find it on their own.

I told Tommy about the stats on my public blog. I sometimes have over a hundred people signing in on a single day. Often these large numbers are from folks in Turkey of all places. Tommy had the same thought I did; it sounded like some teacher in Turkey had assigned my blog for reading. It may be for an English language course. I cover a range of topics; it’s a good way to learn vocabulary. I remember working with a Somali seventh-grader. Her English was flawless, but she didn’t know what fog was. Well, she wouldn’t. Her family would discuss the weather in their native language in her home. What I didn’t cover in the blog was cooking, cleaning, and childcare.

Monday, June 7, 2021

After several days of missing them on my morning walk, I ran into Vince and Julie. I asked Vince for the name of the church whose pastor claimed that all the money collected went to the Bishop. Refusing to give more money, Vince contributed by buying a lawnmower for the church. I asked him if he had heard Fr. Lio’s response to the rumors he mentioned. He said no. He was sincere; I know Vince. If he were pulling my leg and egging me on, he would have giggled in glee that I was now going to give him the same information he already had. I told him everything that Susan told me: all churches were assessed according to their income, no additional money ever went to the Bishop, not a cent of the building fund ever left the parish, and the decision to help out the parochial school in Hilo was a parish decision and did not come down from the Bishop. While a panel decided to donate that money to the Hilo school of parishioners, the church was not a democratic institution. All parishioners did not get a chance to vote on decisions of the church.

At eleven a.m., I had my reading support zoom meeting. There were three participants today. Today I told them that I didn’t expect them to apply everything I told them immediately. I could expect them to try something I suggested and think, “This makes no sense.” Unfamiliar situations often don’t make sense to us. I told them to please think of contacting me if they made an effort and let me know how it went.

Today, when one of the participants asked me about the value of doing a particular activity, after I had spoken at great length about not doing it until other work had been done first. I didn’t snap at her. I had that experience in my first session when I did snap at the poor guy. “I just spent 45 minutes telling you not to do what you just described, and you are now asking me if you should do it?” It is hard for anyone to let go of their preferred or just familiar procedures. It means moving out of their comfort zone. It is interesting listening to people harken back to their basic beliefs. All I can do is put these ideas out. All the participants thanked me. Lord only knows what they made out of it. Lord only knows how they will apply what I taught them. I would love to know. There is a good chance they will use it in some way I never conceived of, and I will learn something new.

I continued with Dash’s new regime. He read the paragraph faster with more accuracy but again got stuck on the word silence. With support, he could figure it out but did not try it on his own. I have to take him through the procedure again and again. “Start with the vowel if there are consonants after it, blend those with the vowel. Then, and only then, blend the sounds before the vowel.” I’m not sure if he finds it hard to remember the steps or just wants to read the word from the first letter, and he can’t let go. I reviewed the short and long vowel patterns in the sentences we read. I had him ask, “What are the patterns?” When I asked him if he was looking for patterns, he said, “I don’t know.” I think having him mouth the words may have helped. I hate to be too optimistic. I had him sound out and spell the words we had read. OW! He confused a final /th/ with /z/ sound. He doesn’t have good phonemic awareness. Wait!

The sound /th/ in the final position sounds a lot like the /z/ in the final position—time for me to rethink this situation. I also discovered he didn’t know the vowels. He listed ‘r’ as a vowel letter. This was upsetting. It means neither he nor his mother worked to make sure he did the exercise I sent home. I will have to cover it. He did, however, ask about the beginning sound in amazing. /Uh/, for the a? Yes. The idea of statistical likelihood is an essential concept for readers of English. He understood the concept of the likelihood that a baseball player hit a home run or even a first.

Then I was off to town. My first stop was at T- Mobile. Again, I had a longish wait, but my Kindle was with me. It was an opportunity to read. I had a quick question. What do I have to do to bring up the apps I’ve used to swipe them away? The thing I used to do no longer works. I know when I have too many, it drains my battery. When I got the phone, the clerk showed me how to do it. I saw her wipe her hand across the screen. I tried swiping in every direction; nothing worked. The clerk showed me I had to be at the default screen. The swipe was up, and then a right-angle swipe to the right, an upside-down L. He also told me I could find all I needed to know on YouTube. Problem: I didn’t know what this was called.

I went to the Cemetery next. I wanted to remeasure the stones I saw there. I had decided upon one, but I couldn’t find where I had recorded the information. While there, I looked around to see any examples of gravestones with brass plate faceplates. I didn’t see one. I did see one with a plexiglass plate. I called the engraving company to see if I could use it for a gravestone marker. No, it became cloudy within three years when outdoors.

I stopped at the bank to cash a check. They couldn’t find my account. They said it was closed. “When was the last time I used it? “ I made a Venmo deposit the day before. No idea. After about five minutes, they found it.

As I drove to my next destination, the granite shop, I listened to Terry Gross interviewing Rita Moreno. She told a story about sexual abuse that was stunning. One of her agents raped her. When she ran into him many years later, he said, “I wanted to get you pregnant, so you would be beholding to me.” No apology, no regret for regrettable behavior. How did this man get away with his behavior and walk around free?

I barely made it to the granite shop on time. It was 3:30, and they closed at 4. The manager/owner remembered me. “Ah, you’re back.” Damon and I had already picked out a sample. There wasn’t much to do. I want it in a 12 x 24 x 3 granite slab. The plan is to rest it on an angled-cement pillow. The manager gave me the name of a stone engraver – if I could get hold of her. The person who had done it before had retired and sold the business to this woman.

I don’t know what prompted me, but I told him I was a tutor. He asked me of what? I was surprised by his interest. He had a daughter who had trouble with math. He was pretty pissed with her. He described her as lazy. His daughter has problems.

Damon called as I was leaving the granite shop. I love talking to that guy. I can talk about problems I’m having and what is going on in his life and the lives of his wife and child, who is about to head off to college. My alarm went off, and I didn’t know why.

Judy called while I was on the phone with Damon. I knew she was on her way home from the vet. I had to get off with Damon. As suspected, Xander is on his last legs. The vet said he had the most enlarged heart he had ever seen. His belly was distended because he was retaining liquid. The vet said he would probably drop dead of a heart attack or stroke. He also said he was amazed that Xander was still moving about, climbing the hill from Adam’s house to Judy’s and wanting to play. What a dog! It does seem as if the rapture for animals has arrived on Nehiwa Street. Beau was put down last week and Izzy today; Xander is on his last legs, as is Yvette’s cat, Brooklyn.

I remember a sudden rash of people dying right before Mike got sick. It sent a chill through me. Nonetheless, until the last moment, I held out hope that I would get him back as he was before this illness hit. I know now I would never have had that. People who were intubated from Covid were permanently damaged. It’s not the same as intubation during an operation. Mike and Covid patients have dealt with prolonged intubation, not a couple of hours. Oh, he suffered so. That’s my greatest sadness. It was all for naught.

When I got home, I checked my phone. Oops! I had a 4 pm appointment with I. That’s why my alarm went off when I was at the granite store. Now, it was almost 4:30. We started late. She wrote one whole chapter and started a third in her story about Charlotte and her affiliation with Captain Man.

Sunday, June 6, 2021

I woke up at 5:30 on my own. I didn’t need my alarm anymore. I spoke to Shivani on my morning walk. We talked about Sidney, her three-year-old son, and politics. We’re on the same page. I spoke about how hard it was for me to make the final draft of The Phonics Discovery System, where I explained the method. She said,” The last 10% is always the hardest to do.” It’s the scariest. Once that is done, whatever you’re working on goes out into the world.

Tommy, my techie, came over. He worked on the audio file and discovered he didn’t have all the stories on his computer. He only had my Uncle the Umpire and the Ugly Man, the story that wasn’t on iTunes. He was ready to load the slides with the audio file. He asked if he could instruct me on how to send him the files from iTunes. Ahhh! “Okay, I’ll be right over.”

Tommy lives a mile away. He hopped on his motorcycle and was at my door in minutes. He found the files and emailed them to himself.

I like the Sunday morning NPR shows as much as the Saturday shows. Justine Willis Toms had someone talking about the psychic phenomenon. She talked about using our intuition as well as knowledge from our five senses or someone else’s five senses. she said using our intuition more gives us access to additional sources of knowledge that are not polluted by the limitations of our senses. IF we used it, we would understand people better. Ha! Using our intuition does not free us from our biases. Since our conclusions are not anchored in objective reality, every man’s reality is true—no need to correlate it with anyone else’s.

On the subject of seeing people for who they really are, that’s a double-edged sword too. We see the worst of people as well as the best. No one gets to do just be the best they can. We will be judged for our deepest thoughts.

I think the speaker assumes that all intuition is pure and comes from God. Oh, boy. Even if it does come from God- well, let’s say that is true, the message still has to pass through the polluted medium of the human mind. There is no one solution. I say all this as someone who is considered to have psychic perception. I treat my perceptions with care. I have to be respectful of the perception of others. My perceptions don’t trump someone else’s because they come through psychically. Besides all other forms of perceptions, they have to be treated with a certain amount of skepticism.

One of the NPR Sunday shows here in Hawaii is Kanika pila Sunday. They play Hawaiian music for a good part of the afternoon. Hawaiian popular music is a love song to the land, the ocean, the sky, and nature in general. Today I heard one to a plant in Maui called the silver sword.

Tommy called in the late afternoon. He discovered one of the tracks was missing from the Tommy the Tiger story. It had somehow been lost on iTunes, but I had made disks and saved them. Now, I had to find them. I searched my office and found them pretty quickly. When Tommy arrived, I handed him the disks. He reminded me he needed the external CD players as well. We went into my office to search for it. He remembered what the box looked like and spotted it right away. Ah!

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Confusion versus curiosity

Dahaene writes about the importance of curiosity in learning. He said curiosity is triggered when there is a disparity between what we know and what we want to know, which implies knowing what you don’t already know.(Dehaene, Stanislas, How We Learn, p. 193.)

Both confusion and curiosity cause mental spinning. They are just interpreted differently. Confusion is considered unpleasant, curiosity pleasant.

Dehaene says curiosity is dulled by lack of stimulation and dulled by too great a challenge. How do we help students respond with curiosity rather the confusion?

Saturday, June 5, 2021

Today was my half birthday, making me eighty and a half—time to start counting those six-month intervals. After 98, I’ll start counting the months, then the weeks, and then the days. My mom said the rate of decline increases at the end just as the growth rate was faster at the beginning of life.

I got up when I felt like it. I figured it to be 7 am when I did get up. Nah, it was still before six am. I always have something to get up for. I modified my walk again based on what I read in Exercised. Primitive people understand that sitting, walking, running, and even standing are learned activities. Instead of aiming for a concentrated heel strike, I placed my foot almost flat on the ground. My knee was bent, coiling my leg muscles for the push-off. My foot is under my knee instead of ahead of it. Then I push all the way up through my psoas muscle. Wow!

Liberman says tribal people who use walking and running as a primary means of transportation take 170 to 180 steps per minute. I figured mine would be fewer- age. I came up with an exact 100. Of course, I’m still struggling with my bad hip. Although it doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with the bone, it feels like the soft tissue is spasming. Is the nerve problem caused by a pinch in my hip joint, or is the nerve problem because of entrapped nerves in the soft tissue? When muscles are misused, they dehydrate and compress the nerves in those dry, hard tissues.

I only had a session with adolescent D today. We spent most of the time on BrainManagementSkills. He doesn’t remember patterns I have shown him repeatedly. He confuses her and here, and we covered that several times. It seems that he is processing auditory information through his visual system. It can be done; it is also possible to use your feet for writing and unrolling toilet paper when you don’t have arms. I’ve seen it done. It takes much more effort to learn and then perform these activities. D makes every effort to pay attention. It’s much harder if you don’t have a clear impression.

Today I heard someone read a story on NPR’s Selected Shorts using a poor recording system. I could hear the words but not clearly. I was much harder to follow. It was tiring. It must be like for folks who have compromised auditory perceptual systems.

I spoke to his mother afterward. She struggles with what to do with him next year; he should be a high school freshman. I don’t think he should be sent to the local public school if it can be avoided. He has a “kick me” sign on him, and it’s a tough school. She considered finding an online program that he could work on at home. I advised against it. D is a shy kid, very shy. He won’t show his image on Zoom. He prefers to hide. Oh, dear. I told his mom that people without his problems were having problems readjusting to social contact after being secluded for a year because of Covid. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to allow him to become more secluded than he is.

I told her that his reading problem was serious. I didn’t know if I could solve it. As it stands now, chances are he won’t become a good reader. He may become a labored reader who has to consciously think of the patterns he is looking at instead of processing them automatically. If we don’t open up his auditory working center, he will have a tough time. His weak auditory processing interferes with his understanding of what others say. I think all speech sounds are muted for him.

I drove to town to mail my damaged iPhone to the insurance company. I thought the woman at T-Mobile said I should drop it off at UPS. She may have, but the clerk there said the prepaid label was for the Postal system. I was tired and dreaded a long line at the post office, but I had to get this out before getting fined.

The line in the post office wasn’t bad. The clerk was this nice young man. He helped me pack up the phone. Being an auntie here in Hawaii is an absolute treat. I couldn’t have retired to a better place. I’m not invisible here.

I was going to stop at the cemetery to confirm the dimensions of the stone shape I had selected. I skipped that. I also skipped a stop at Costco. I just wanted to make it home safely. I was exhausted. Most of my current naps were half an hour long. Then I was up and ready to go. Today, I took a two-hour nap and felt like I could have used a few more hours. When I get tired like that, I get concerned. Is my heart failing? I felt like a deflated tire today.

One of the books I’m making my way through is Dehaene’s How We Learn. Love it! Love it! I have to read it slowly, so I give myself time to internalize what I’ve read. I’ve been reading about the role of curiosity in learning. He said curiosity is what makes it possible to learn. It was lacking in adolescent D. He wanted to learn so he’s ‘normal’ but not gain a skill or information. Why is he that way? Is his inability to take in information an emotional problem, from lack of exposure to the process, from misuse of the brain, or a neurological disorder? How do I stimulate curiosity in him? Setting a reasonable objective for the session is key. Dehaene on curiosity: it’s dulled by lack of stimulation and dulled by too great a challenge

Problem: I can set a goal for him, but if his unstated goal is to read something perfectly without help as if he never had a problem, how do I convince him to set an appropriate goal?

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Musings:

I heard this story on The Moth Radio Hour.

A young black woman wound up going to college in a small town where she was the only black student, and there was a maximum-security prison. There was a group of students that visited the prisoners regularly. One day our heroine made her trip out to the prison alone. She remembered a rock concert and knew her fellow workers had chosen to go there.

When she arrived at the prison, it was her and thirty men. Someone asked her where the others were. She explained they all went to the concert. She was asked if she didn’t like the band. She said yes, she did. “Then why didn’t you go to the concert?” She replied, “Because I love you and care about you.” Her response was met with dead silence.

After a while, she asked if she had said something wrong. One man stood up and, with tears in his eyes, said, “None one has ever said they loved me before.” As she looked around, she realized all the men had tears in their eyes. One man said, “Look, even the guard is crying.”

Can you imagine never having anyone say I love you and care about you? I started counting all the people in my life who thought I was important enough to care about. My parents weren’t perfect, but my sister and I were high on their list of priorities. I don’t know if they ever said I love you, but their emotional attachment to us was clear.

Besides my childhood, I am one of the lucky ones who had a partner in Mike, who made me feel loved and valued for forty-five years. How lucky am I?