Friday, September 13, 2024

 Friday, September 13, 2024

    I spent most of the day in a funk, despairing about my options.  The gardening I hoped to throw my energy into was officially out.  When I fell yesterday while getting out of rough terrain, I conceded that caring for the property alone was out.  I had been having nightmares about it already.  It is just not realistic for an 83-year-old woman with osteoporosis and metal replacement parts to risk falling. The metal replacement parts increase my risk of breaking bones. If I fall hard and catch myself with my left arm with its shoulder replacement and elbow reconstruction, every remaining bone in my arm will shatter. I would need a whole arm replacement. 

   The lack of interaction with other people and tutoring opportunities also weighs on me. My sense of safety has come from interacting with people outside my immediate family- just about anyone.  My mother was a source of endless negative feedback. When I interacted with others, I got immediate positive feedback.  My mother assured me they were just pretending, and they didn’t really like me, which made me all the more frantic to get that to prove the feedback was positive.  I was like Blanche DuBois; I always relied on the kindness of strangers. 

    The tutoring was doing poorly.  I have lost one client permanently, Adolescent D.  I’m semi-delighted for him.  Only semi-delight because I fear his reasoning.  It’s more than semi-delighted, but i do have some lingering reservations. His departure feels righter than it does wrong. He’s working 25 hours a week at Costco, which he loves doing, and is attending school full-time. He has made dramatic changes in his persona since starting work. He feels like an adult who doesn’t need childish things like tutoring anymore.  

   D is not entirely wrong.  He reads well enough now to get through life, as long as he doesn’t have a job that requires reading. I have two concerns.  Will he pass the written driver’s permit test to get a driver’s license? And, will he stay in school for the next two years to get a high school diploma- even if he hasn’t earned it because he hasn’t done enough of the work.  

   Should he decide to take up tutoring again, I’m not sure I would be good with that. I can handle passivity and passive aggressive behavior in a child, but my tolerance for it in an adult drops precipitously. 

    At Ulu Wini, I worked with first-grade PY again. In our last session, I discovered she had no recall for words or numbers and used her primary visual cortex to embed images into the nervous system instead of Visual Working Memory (VWM).  I showed her where VWM was and recommended she use that, only to discover turbulence in that area. I started to work on a spin release but thought better about doing it then. 

   When she returned today, she could use the VWM area to introduce images into the nervous system. I have no idea what she did, and it’s irrelevant, immaterial, and besides the point. The important thing is she did it and is doing it.  I showed her how to coordinate the visual image with auditory recall. Bingo! Within half an hour, she could identify all the letters in the alphabet and several numbers.  Some required clarification. She confused u and n, and n and h. I concentrated on letters rather than numbers but presented a few. She could identify 20 and 22 but not 15 or 30.  I left the numbers for another day. 

   After she identified the letters in the alphabet, I asked her if she wanted to start reading words. Yes. I started with THE.  She identified the letters, and I told her the sounds. Once she seemed secure, I had her do a word search for THE in books.  She had selected a picture book. She scanned every sentence, looking for the word.  When she completed the first book, I asked her if she wanted to stop or go on. She wanted to go on. She went through the process with two more books. She worked with me for an hour and a half without stopping except to fill up her water bottle twice.  I have never had a student like that, no less one so young.

   Not only did she work hard and long, but she also taught me something I had never considered before. The letters T-H-E are part of other words, like they, then, them, other, and together. As she searched for THE, she had to discriminate between the word in isolation and the words embedded with other letters. This would make an excellent drill for visual discrimination between all those words.

   The impact on my mood after this interaction was striking.  My love of interaction with others is both a strength and a weakness.  

     I read more of A  Man Called Ove and listened to Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. I didn’t clean the house or do a craft project—both options. I tried meditating, but my grief was so overwhelming that it was to be avoided. There’s only so much I can stand.  

   While there is reason for this grief in my current life, Mike’s gone. I’m alone, and I don’t have the type of social contact I need to feel lasting relief. Mind you, when I do have contact with the friends I have, my mood quickly shifts. I recognize this state of sadness and despair from my childhood, from before my sister was born. I’m sure my history just makes this moment worse. One strategy is to avoid situations that evoke this feeling. The other is to sit with it and resolve it.  

  When my mother moved in with me, one of my goals was to help her grow up so she wouldn’t have to live with the same problems again—in case reincarnation was the reality. I have the same goal for myself. I would like to resolve this issue in this lifetime if I can. Do I believe in reincarnation? Eh. I dismiss and accept all the theories of what happens to us after we die. Anything is possible.