Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

 

            I woke to find a text from Dorothy telling me that Nancy, Dorothy’s daughter’s mother-in-law, had died at 7 am. It was expected. It was just a question of when. Sunday, her middle child got married in her backyard. They spent eight days putting together flowers, caterers, etc. A lovely gift to his mom, her children all settled in marriages. She had only one grandchild—my niece’s two-year-old son. Nancy’s husband caught a shot of her looking at Sam and smiling.  

       I ran into one of my neighborhood contacts, Mike, with his dog Sweet Pea on my morning walk. We had a long talk today. He told me a story about his sister-in-law, who died of heatstroke. She and her husband were driving through Nevada. Their air conditioning gave out. They continued driving with the windows open. She seemed to be sleeping. At one point, her husband tried to wake her. When she didn’t respond, he called 911. The EMT workers felt how hot she was and took her temperature- 1090. I didn’t know that was even possible. They tried to revive her. I imagine her brain had been fried, and it wasn’t worth being brought back to life. She died. That body temperature of 1090 gets me! Can that be accurate?

            Scott led the yoga class this morning. Joe showed up to participate too. I was concerned that no one would. Scott did a wonderful job. He followed the basic format that Yvette uses. He promised us some stuff that he was learning in his Kundalini training.

            I had K’s crew at 8:30. Twin A still has trouble consistently identifying some letters in the alphabet. Today, I started talking about the name of the letter versus the sound it makes. She already has most of that under her belt from what she learned at school. The big problem is having her read from left to right instead of whatever direction suits her fancy at any time. 

            With Twin E, I started working on the -ap family in contrast to the -at family. While she can pronounce the sounds individually, she can’t blend the words correctly. The sounds seem to slip and slide around for her. How am I going to solve this problem?

            With K, I continued working on handwriting. I reviewed the vertical alignment of the downies, g, g, p, q, and y. He wrote his first and last names and the words the fox jumps over. We’re heading for the complete sentence. His handwriting looks gorgeous. If you didn’t count the lowercase j and s is. He did more sounding out of the words as he wrote them. 

            I was very down today, feeling very alone and lonely. My mother always told me that no one liked me. When I get down, that’s what I dwell on. Otherwise, I focus more on how much I like others, not how much people please me, but on how I allow myself to be pleased and delighted by them.  

            I do find liking others somewhat more difficult now. When Mike was here, he was my go-to human. Everyone else was just gravy. Now I find myself looking for characteristics in others that can make them a Mike substitute. They don’t hold up well. I suspect Mike wouldn’t either if I just met him now. The solidity and safety of our relationship resulted from forty-five years of perfecting the system, honing the relationship. We were better and better for each other as the years progressed. How do you find a substitute for that? 

            Adolescent D’s mom texted me to ask if I could see him at 5:30 instead of 1 pm. Sure. I had the day to get myself together and video the final slide for the reading instruction video. I have been putting it off for days. I finally asked Dorothy if she had any ideas of what to say. She had the perfect words. They just rolled off her tongue. 

            I had plans to shower and dress appropriately to do the Zoom video with that last slide. I was walking toward the bathroom when my phone rang. A friend who was down needed a little solace. She’s in the middle of clearing out the house she’s lived in for over thirty-five years and moving into a retirement community. I try to tell her how tough this move is; any move is.   She was dealing with it on a strictly material level- so much junk to take care of. She didn’t appreciate that her soul and her husband’s soul had seeped into the walls of that house. They were moving to a newly renovated apartment where the walls didn’t even know what they smelled. It’s a huge change. 

            Once I was off the phone with her, my friend Darby from down the street called. I saw her husband out in the yard trimming a tree yesterday. I told him I wanted to call her. I’m reluctant to because they are generally out working in the yard and don’t use their cell phone; yes, just one cell phone for the two of them. How do you get hold of people like that? At 3:20, my alarm went off, and I had gotten in the shower yet. I texted J in California, telling him I was running late. 

            I was in and out of that shower and ready for my session with J shortly after 3:30. I spent the weekend preparing work for him. I noticed that he couldn’t make generalizations or categorize things. We worked on the Getting the Main Idea series of Barnell Loft on the 3rd and 4th-grade level and started the fifth. He had some problems yesterday on the third-grade level, but then he got it and sailed through to the 5th. That’s where we started today. 

       I asked J if he saw a difference in his reading. It was the first time he gave a clear, unambiguous yes. He said it was a big difference. Again, he sailed through the material I had prepared. He went right through to the end of the sixth-grade material. In the last unit, some questions about vocabulary came up. It was quickly resolved. We moved on to the seventh grade. Here he got stuck. The sentence structures were more complex, and the vocabulary unfamiliar:  

     I was pushing for longer sessions with J making sure he got sessions completed the StepUp Program requirements so he could get a restaurant gift card to take his family out for dinner. I prefer doing shorter sessions with J. The Step Up program requires each session to be at least 45 minutes. I would rather do several twenty-minute sessions, but they won’t count those. Working with J as long as I do is too much for us.

     At 5:30, adolescent D signed on to our zoom session. His reading seemed to go back to what it was before our breakout yesterday. I was disappointed, back to the drawing board. Then he announced he was nauseous. I asked if he always got nauseous when he read. No, he was reading in the car. Oh, boy. He has enough trouble reading when the image isn’t moving around and the world around him isn’t whizzing past him. I told him to call me when he got home.

       He canceled because a friend asked him if he wanted to go to the movies. He had a play date. Love it! I’m a great supporter of playdates. Once he was settled, I asked him, as I always do, if he saw a difference in his reading today in the summer school program. First, he said no, and then he said a little bit. It was the first time he had acknowledged any improvement. It was huge. I was concerned about his working with the teacher in the school. Rewiring takes attention, careful attention, and not rushing. How would he do that with this teacher working for reading fluency? Somehow, he got something in. Again, he was able to go back to the process we started the other day. See the word on the ‘blanket,’ visual working memory, ask your ‘mind’ for the word, and wait until you can ‘hear’ what it has to say. He could do the work he did yesterday in his familiar home environment.