Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

  I went to bed at 10 last night and slept through to 5:30 am.  This is unheard of at my age. Good for me!   I was still tired, crept back into bed, and had a remarkable experience.  I felt heartache about my dad’s death, real sadness.  I never felt that.  I didn’t have the luxury.  I had to survive my life with my mother. Without my dad, her attacks would be unrestrained.

   I noticed that I was exhausted after my morning 3,500-step walk. I need at least a half-hour nap before getting on with my day, sometimes before I have breakfast. However, I never felt that way after my evening walk on the same route. When I was a kid, I had to deal with my mom and school.  My dad came home every evening promptly at 6 pm.  When I heard the theme song to the 6 pm program on WQXR, I knew he would walk through the door.

   I recall the orchestral arrangement of Tea for Two because when I was four, he didn’t come home at that time. During that period, he studied for his American law degree at Fordham University. He already had one in Germany. I remember resting my elbows on the desk where the radio sat, feeling so sad.

  Today was the fifth of eight Grief Recovery Workshop sessions.  We didn't have an active homework assignment for this session, only to read two chapters.  We were preparing to work on our Relationship Graphs. This program emphasizes healing from unreconciled relationships, whether they be major players in our lives, as parents or children, or causal encounters, like that traffic cop I had a run-in with twelve years ago when  I crossed a street at the airport without her permission at 9 pm. There was almost no traffic. Our airport closed for the night around that time.

 The emphasis is on the relationship, not the injuries, nor concern for future injuries from current relationships.  I felt I had to deal with despair.  I must say that when I heard the stories from some of the other participants, I concluded that I had come off lightly.  Fortunately, my uncle's words remind me that every man's sorrow is in relation to his own experience. Never judge another's grief. This program teaches that too. I feel the warmth of the group I'm in.

 We have to choose one person to work on in our relationship graph.  It's either going to be my father or my mother. My mother's treatment of me haunts me and weighs me down more than my father's.  He offered me enough comfort and support so that I could forgive everything he did.  My mother only provided me comfort when I was sick. She was actually tender then. She considered showing tenderness and affection to children a form of sexual abuse. How do I know that?   When Damon was still in elementary school, Mike and he would watch TV together. Damon would lean on Mike one way and then another. My mother came into the room and was clearly upset with this behavior. By that time, I was the one in power. When I assured her this was not an 'inappropriate' relationship, she took my word for it and backed off.

 I recently found a picture of my mom with my five—or six-year-old sister demonstrating 'normal' affection between a mother and child. I never saw her express that affection for her grandchildren. It was a rare moment.

 As I left the class, a parishioner approached me.  He asked if Mike had kidney disease or diabetes. His kidneys have been declining over the last thirty years. He is already on a kidney transplant list.  I told him about Mike's experience. I told him he had the option of peritoneal dialysis, which can be done at home instead of at a clinic.  Mike had to travel to a dialysis center three days a week. It was hell. I told the man of a friend and church member whose husband used the peritoneal option. She could provide details of their experience. 

 I had an early session with fourth-grade GV. His mom participated in the first half. She told me she had located his reading teacher's email address and was making an appointment to meet with him. She was going in first to see if her gentle approach worked. If not, her husband was prepared to go speak to him. The man made fun of GV's spelling with each assignment. This was out.

 I asked GV why he hadn't told his parents. He said no one had asked. I assured him no one would expect a teacher to do that to a student. It was that inappropriate. He had to tell his parents if something was going wrong. I told him I couldn't speak to the man. I would want to punch him in the stomach and wind up in jail. That made GV smile.

 It didn't feel right to work on his shifting letters now. It is almost conclusive that he 'did this to himself,' as no one punished him for not immediately learning to read at age four in preschool. It was traumatic for him because "everything had been easy up to that point." He was shocked when confronted by something that required effort.  I meant to tell him this was a typical response for those who initially found things easy. Finding things either too easy or too hard creates problems down the road.

 I had GV read to me today, and then he read another passage so his mom could hear it. She said nothing, so I didn't know what her reaction was. He sounded good. It was still third-grade material, and he was in fourth grade. He still encountered problems reading syllable words accurately. Again, I saw that it is harder to identify the sound of individual syllables than individual phonemes.

 The last session of the day was with fourth-grade LG. We continued with the comprehension work, examining one sentence at a time. I had him form the questions in the IN THE BOOK section. I provided the question word, and he had to use the rest of the sentence to form the question. This is the first student I have ever done this with. I don't know if he is particularly good at it or if I never asked students to do it before.

 Something in the work caused LG confusion. He responded badly, froze, and went brain-dead. He's a bright child but cannot cope with not knowing. I spoke directly about the need for him to learn to cope with uncertainty and confusion so he can become a good learner in classroom situations.

 I got into listening to mysteries through Audible.  They have a plus catalog with lots of free selections.  I found some fun to listen to.  The stories drowned out my obsessing mind. Yay!  Then I came across some that didn't have that effect.  The stories were silly. I thought maybe my old mental habits overcame the distraction of the story. Today, I discovered what the problem was.  I had found a selection of books that were badly written. The author violated the rule of three over and over and over and over. Grrr! I listened to a new one with a silly premise over the past few days, but it was well-written.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.