Friday, July 15, 2022

 Friday, July 15, 2022

   

   Today would have been my father's 119th birthday. Mind-boggling, especially since he died 66 years ago when I was fifteen. It's hard to remember him. When Sidney was here, he moved a picture of my parents with me at eighteen months to the dining room table. I never moved it back. I have been having dinner while looking at the picture. My mother was much younger than when I saw her last at 98. My dad looked somewhat the same. I worked to take in his features. It was hard to remember him. I remember moments with him and his impact on me, which was huge, but it was hard to remember how he looked. I have a theory about that. It is hard to remember how people we see daily because they always look different. I remember Meryl Steep's face because I usually see it posed in pictures designed to have her look the same, recognizable.  

   I saw Katie, my PT, for the second time this week. She took me outside and had me walk up a gentle hill in the parking lot. No problem. She proposed I add 250 steps daily until I build up to 10,000 again. I suggested only meeting once a week to spread the visits over a longer period. She agreed. When I got home, I felt sad about the loss. 

  At noon, I had an appointment with my new student with the mother I was finding difficult to work with harmoniously. I introduced myself to seven-year-old L, her given Hawaiian name. She said she liked to be called M, another Hawaiian name. I had her name letters in sequence in continuous text. She confused b and d; that's common. She also confused n and h, and f and t. I covered the distinguishing characteristics. They're small but significant. I didn't know if she just hadn't observed the differences or if she had visual processing problems. 

  I wanted the mother there. However, she kept on interjecting, telling L to sit up straight. I asked her repeatedly to let me deal with the situation. One problem was that L was sitting too low to be centered on the screen. L knelt in the chair to solve the problem. Her mom made her sit down. I was good with her kneeling if she wanted to do that. But not mom. I suspected I was going to have problems with this woman. We'd see how it would go. I was not optimistic. She considers herself a good mom. Compared to what? Someone who doesn't care about their child at all? That would make sense. 

   This mom cares too much. She homeschooled her daughter when she had no time to do it herself. She puts her at a computer and has her do reading programs. I didn't know why she chose to homeschool. I suspect her daughter didn't catch on quickly, and she pulled her out.

  When I asked L if she knew why her mom was having me work with her, she said," Because I have trouble reading." The mom immediately jumped in and corrected her. "You're not having trouble. You're just where you should be." Clearly, the child wasn't allowed to have any thoughts, feelings, or experiences her mom didn't oversee. 

  I pronounced the individual sounds in L's name and then worked with the first story in the Carpenter series. She often spoke too low for me to discern the difference between sounds. I would hear one when she said another. Her mother's interference there wasn't helpful. When it was clear L had as much as she could after 15 minutes of actual work, I told her I would model, and she could just listen. She did that for a few minutes, sitting straight in her chair. Then she lay her head down on the arm of the chair. A clear indication she had as much as she could take in. Mom didn't jump in and correct her. Yay! I look for signs like this to judge a student's learning readiness. I need information about the student's identity, not who their mom wants them to be.

   I took a nap. At 4 pm, I left for a medical appointment. My acupuncturist recommended someone who does laser treatment for toe fungus. I had one bad toe. The podiatrist prescribed a medicinal nail polish I had to apply every night. I was diligent for months. Then Yvette told me someone in town did the laser treatment. Kaiser does not cover the procedure. I lost interest in the nail polish route, which would take at least a year if I could get a laser treatment.

   The chiropractor's office was in the same complex where Yvette had her office. I missed the first turn to the parking lot. It was a good thing I turned at the second entrance because the office was right on the corner. The woman was a sixty-year-old chiropractor. Her office had a relaxed atmosphere. Mike would call it unprofessional, and he would have run for his life. The woman asked if I was allergic or afraid of dogs. Neither. She had a 10-year-old German shepherd mix, Flo—such a sweet animal. After filling out the information form, I spent the time petting Flo until it was my turn.

  The procedure wasn't a big deal. I lay on the chiropractic table while the doctor worked on my toes. She did two rounds of zapping. They were different. She did all ten toes because the fungus spread. While I had only one badly infected toe, there was likely some fungus under all of them by now.

   I watched Frantz tonight, the show Jean recommended. I now know why it dragged. You knew exactly why the mysterious stranger came into the family's lives in the story. There was no suspense, but the big reveal was delayed and delayed and delayed. It was torture. 

   In the first part of the movie, the characters all speak German. German was my first language, the one I heard my parents speak. Sadly, they stopped when I was about one and a half. It was 1942; the US had entered the war. There was a report in the newspaper of a child speaking German being attacked in the street. That was why my parents only spoke English to me until the war ended. That was a joke. I learned my English from them. I entered Kindergarten with a German accent you could have cut with a knife. Yeah, no one would have suspected I was German. Right! The good news is I was never attacked.

  Back to the movie: the actors spoke a high German I could understand. It was interesting reading the English subtitles and comparing them to the German. Sometimes a more direct translation of a word would have sufficed. What was interesting was feeling the two different but familiar grammatical patterns and word orders play bumper cars in my head. I planned to watch more German movies.