Wednesday, January 19, 2022

 Wednesday, January 19, 2022  

      Adolescent D will have a tutor provided by the public school system. This has been in the works for a while. Initially, I was going to be hired by the school. After a lengthy period of misunderstanding and mishaps, I was told I wasn’t going to be hired; ‘They were going to use someone on their staff.”  The head of the Special Ed. Department knew nothing about this. Eventually, it came out. The DOE had contracted a tutoring company. I looked up that company. They were advertising tutors for $10 an hour. Given the company had to take its cut, the tutor couldn’t be making more than $8 an hour. I couldn’t imagine a trained teacher working for that money. The woman assigned to D spoke to his mom sometime before Christmas. She contacted her again recently to set up the schedule. She is a trained teacher with special ed credentials. Fantastic! D’s mom forwarded the tutor’s email to me. I sent the new tutor an email offering her my report. She responded this morning by asking an intelligent question. 

  I had an appointment with Shelly today. I was in full-blown grief. This feeling was very familiar. I remember feeling this way before my sister was born. There was something wrong in my family that left me feeling that way. I have always attributed it to my mother, who not only did not show affection but brutally rejected my attempts to show her affection. I have a clear image of reaching up to kiss her cheek and her throwing me off in disgust. As far as I can make out, all forms of physical contact were sexual for her. 

   There was a second issue with my mother. She wouldn’t allow me to do anything. I recently saw a video of my 2½-year-old grandnephew vacuuming the Christmas tree needles. Did he do a perfect job? Was he yelled at for doing a perfect job? I assure you not. His parents allow him to explore, try new things, and do the best his 2 ½-year-old self can do. They know they can finish the job. When allowing him to try, they are doing their job as parents, not as housekeepers delegating work. My mother wouldn’t allow me to participate because I couldn’t do a good job. 

    I hoped the situation would change when my sister was born. I hoped they would allow me to participate since I was older. Forget it. It was clear from day one that it was not going to happen. I was an object to care for, not a human being.

    I was feeling sorry for myself. Shelly said we’ve done a lot of work on it. This should be pretty well resolved. I get images to represent my feelings.   My image was of a two-story house representing this sorrow. I told Shelly only the roofing shingles were gone; the rest of the structure was intact. Then the image was revised. The whole roof was gone.

     I saw what I have come to learn is shiplap siding. I started with the plank at the upper left of the front of the house, in tribute to The Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance. I pulled on the plank. The nails were somewhat rusted and deeply embedded. I could feel the effect in my chest. I didn’t feel pain comparable to having nails pulled out of my chest. That would not be good. The pulling created sensation but not actual pain. One particularly long ‘nail’ passed to the left of my heart and hooked around my spine. I associated it with the grasp my father had on me. I was ambivalent about disengaging. It was a secure relationship. I think you can say I have daddy issues. I persuaded him to undo the hook. The part that curled around my spine had to be straightened out. As he and I allowed it, the hook unfurled. Once it was straight, the handle end moved to the left, so the hook no longer wrapped around the spine, and the whole thing could be removed. It was pulled out from a spot under my left arm that is a constant source of pain. We’ll see how this plays out.  

    The use of images, as described above, is something I use with clients in my healing work. Sometimes the client generates the images; more often, I do. They only work if the image resonates with them. As the image is transformed, something transforms within the person. If nothing else, it’s relaxing. Relaxation is a measure of the work. If it’s relaxing, we’re probably doing something right.

    I had Kea’s crew. Not one of the three had thought of something to write about. However, they enjoyed receiving the printed version of their stories in the mail, each in their own envelope addressed to them. Getting stories out of them was like pulling nails. (It was only as I was editing this entry that I caught the irony of this description of my work with them and my description of myself.)  I need a relatively easy client to work with, with whom improvement is somewhat consistent. 

    Today I also discovered that one of the twins is agrammatic. That doesn’t mean she speaks ungrammatically, speaking a local colloquial version of English. No, it means she puts sentences together as no English speaker does. English is her native language. Her mother speaks a perfectly good version of standard conversational English.

      I had an acupuncture appointment today. I went to the front of the house to help her open the heavy wooden gate before I heard from her. The acupuncturist was running later than I expected. Standing there caused pain in my leg. I leaned against the rock wall and cracked my back. That relieved the nerve pain in my leg. This suggests that my back may be the cause for any pain I have in my leg rather than my hip. Besides, the Achilles tendon is bothering me the most now. 

  I spoke to adolescent D’s mother at length today. I asked her when she first noticed he was having problems. She said, looking back at it, she recognized there were signs now. The school assured her that he would be fine by third grade. She said he would sit in class, lost in his own thoughts. She thinks they should have engaged him. I think she’s thinking about doing something he was interested in. I think he was so perceptually impaired that he couldn’t accurately perceive what was happening around him. While his eyes and ears are just fine, his perceptual system is so impaired it makes hearing and seeing the world accurately difficult. Because he couldn’t perceive what was going on,  he retreated into his mind, his reality. She gave me other information she hadn’t shared with me before. Alarming. I don’t know how this kid will ever function normally. 

   The other day, the mother asked me to switch to Tuesday and Thursday from Monday and Wednesday because he would be involved in another activity. The other activity wound up being the tutor the school assigned. One has to wonder why she didn’t tell me that. Perhaps she’s afraid I will feel jealous or hurt or insulted. Who knows!   I’m primarily glad we have someone else on board to help. I hope she will work with me instead of just using me for information. That’s my fate. Having to work alone. That makes me very sad. 

    I watched more of Midsomer Murders tonight. It’s not entirely satisfying, but it’s okay. Good drama might be satisfying, but I can’t stand anything stressful. So much for good drama.