Look Where I Was Today!

I have always wanted to go.  This was my first time and it was totally unexpected!  My daughter and I drove from Baltimore (where she is looking for an apartment for when she starts school next month) to Bethesday to visit my former sister in law.  We went to dinner then she drove us around town, to my total surprise and fascination!

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

The Capitol Building at dusk (this is the rear of the building)

The Washington Monument

I didn’t think I would ever get to go see any of these places and technically I have seen them but we didn’t do much more.  It was getting late on Sunday so everything was closed and it was just light enough to get a few pictures.  But i HAVE seen them now!

It Only Gets Harder

I remember the days when the kids and I would travel. They each had a backpack with their stuff and we used one or two suitcases for clothes for the four of us. I would plan the trip and get input from them.

When we drove from Los Angeles to the Texas gulf coast. We decided ahead of time where we might want to stop. The kids voted for stopping in Tombstone, Arizona so we could see the ghost town. I would drive from 9 am-ish and we’d make a longish stop for lunch so they could get out and run around a bit. Then we would pile back into the car and continue on the road, stopping when necessary for short breaks and then stopping for the night by 7 or so. We found out on earlier trips that if we waited much later than 7 to stop, we would not find vacancy at any of the reasonably priced motels. Also, most of the motels’ pools would close by 9 so if we got in by 7, the kids could go in for an hour or so then we could wander around town a bit and then sleep so we could get up early and head out again.

They were easy to get up and out of the motel in the morning. Even when they were sleepy, it was easy to grab them up in a bundle and get them into the car. Gathering their stuff was easy too. There wasn’t a whole lot of it to gather.

What a difference! I am currently on a trip with my daughter. We’re in Baltimore, Maryland, trying to find her an apartment to rent for when she moves here for college next month. It’s her trip. She has made all the contacts and appointments and I have done all of the driving. However, things are way different from what it was like to travel with her when she was young. First of all, she has all her stuff scattered all over the hotel room. ALL OVER the room. This is the second day she has not gotten up early enough to let housekeeping make up the room. I don’t know about others but if I’m paying $100 a night, I like to have the room made up fresh each day.

Then there’s the eating thing. I’m diabetic. I need to eat so I can take my medicines (they come back up if taken on an empty stomach. But with Susie sleeping all day and being up all night, I haven’t been able to eat until late in the day. Yesterday we ate at 4 pm. Today will be another late day to eat, too. She made reservations for a 1:30 brunch but then decided at noon that she wasn’t going to be hungry so she canceled.

It’s already after 2 and she’s sleeping. She only wakes up long enough to check emails and text messages in case there’s any info from any of the apartments we’ve looked at. Then she zonks again. So I am sitting here waiting. And waiting. I’m sure when she decides it’s time, she will be up and ready in a flash and expect me to be ready, too. I am but I’ll need to brush my hair again and put on shoes and go to the bathroom and get my things in my purse (phone, keys, the stuff I need to leave out ’til it’s time to go). Even if I wanted to bundle her up and carry her to the car, I couldn’t. She’s too big for that. And she has so much stuff that she’d be mad at me if I didn’t grab and put it in the car, like her camera and laptop and phone, etc.

So I am just sitting here waiting. Thinking. Remembering. Things were so much easier when the kids were little! Parenting only gets harder as they grow.

Xuan

A comment on a recent post of mine reminded me of a time in high school when something I did effected someone in a way in which I was not aware.  Until months later, I didn’t have a clue of what it had meant to one person in particular.

By the time I got to plan my classes for my senior year, I had already taken all of my required classes, with the exception of science and P.E.  I planned on continuing my electives but I still had room left in my schedule for another class and so I signed up to be a teacher aide for the ESL class which was housed in the social studies building.  The teachers were Mr. Dal Porto and Mr. Archer.  It was a two period class with about 25 students, most of which were fluent in English.  In those days, we didn’t really have a lot of non-English fluent students, however the ESL class provided the little bit of extra help in academic subjects.  In this class, the kids got the extra help which allowed them to function in the school.  Very often this was done through one-on-one tutoring and/or text books written in simplified language.

My friend, Jenny was the aide for the ESL class for first period and then I would come along and replace her at the start of second period.  It was easy but also fun and rewarding.  The year I was a teacher aide in that class, we had a ninth grade student name Xuan (pronounced “Swan”) who was fresh from Vietnam and spoke not one word of English.  She was in the ESL class for two periods a day then went to all of her other classes where she had no help.  All of her teachers were having a very difficult time trying to reach her because no one at the school spoke Vietnamese.  This was 1973 and Xuan was the only Vietnamese student in the school and there was no one on staff who spoke Vietnamese.  Basically, Xuan sat at her desk and quizzically looked at the teachers, completely lost and not knowing what to do.  She could not communicate with anyone and no one knew how to communicate with her.  So she sat and marked time.

I had been absent for the first week that Xuan came to the school but the day I returned, I was assigned to work with her.  It was frustrating to not be able to communicate with her.  After the first day, I knew I had to find a way to reach her.  I thought about it and thought about it for the rest of the day and again at home.  Finally, it occurred to me that while I didn’t speak her language, perhaps she spoke French!  I was taking my fourth year of French and I thought this might be a way to reach Xuan.  The next day, I was very anxious to get to second period to see if I was right about reaching Xuan.  When I spoke to her in French, Xuan smiled and nodded.  She did speak French and soon we were blabbing away in French.   We smiled and giggled a lot that period and she helped me learn to pronounce her name correctly.  When I realized it was like “swan” I told her there was an English word that sounded the same and I showed her a picture of a swan.  She joked that she would have to walk around like a graceful swan.  I was so happy when I was able to call Mr. Dal Porto and Mr. Archer to Xuan’s desk so she could say to them, “My name is Xuan.”  Both the teachers were delighted and baffled until I told them the secret to getting through to Xuan…French!  I had found the door through which Xuan could be reached.

After that, I communicated with Xuan in French and the other teachers in the school realized that if they had a French student in the class, they could communicate with her, too.  It was still difficult to communicate with her but there was a way to do it.  It was not uncommon for a teacher to send a student to the French class to get someone to talk to Xuan.  With patience and a little creativity, Xuan was able to access the curriculum and within a few weeks, she was speaking enough Basic English to make herself understood.  By the end of the school year Xuan had made quite a few friends and was no longer the outcast she had been without English skills.

I didn’t think much about this.  I was glad I had been able to help her but I didn’t realize fully what I had done until months after I had graduated from high school and had entered college when, during a weekend trip home, my Uncle Joe came to visit.  He told me about having met one of the teachers at my former high school while they were both bowling.  My uncle had met Mr. Nelson, the choir teacher.  Of course I knew who Mr. Nelson was but I had never taken choir so I really didn’t know him.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that Mr. Nelson had told Uncle Joe that I had been a wonderfully helpful student.  Uncle Joe said he had told him a lot of “stuff” about me but one story in particular held Uncle Joe’s interest. Mr. Nelson had told my uncle about Xuan and how I had helped her to learn English by figuring out that she spoke French!  Apparently, the story had been the talk of the faculty lounge. All of Xuan’s teachers were grateful to me and it had led to them knowing how to approach a few more Vietnamese speaking students that entered the school the following year. It was only then that I began to realize what a difference I had made in Xuan’s life.  Now, after years of working with ESL students, I realize it even more.

So like David said, one never really knows what an impact we make on others, sometimes without meaning to.  The way we live extends to many people beyond our reach and our deeds live often long after us.

The Explosion

While I earned top grades in high school, my downfall has always been math with science taking a close second. It’s not that I did poorly in science classes, I just didn’t enjoy it like I did social studies, language arts, journalism, and foreign languages. Consequently, I found myself lacking a year of science for my college prep when I reached the end of my junior year. That meant that I had no choice, I would have to take a science class during my senior year.

Reluctantly, I showed up to my third period Biology class on the first day of school and found out that I was the only senior in a class full of sophomores. To top things off, I would be late for class every day of the school year because I was the person that read led the flag salute and read the announcements over the P.A. system for the whole school. It turned out not to be too bad because all the sophomores looked up to me and, mostly, because the teacher was really kind of cute. He wasn’t cute in the traditional teenage girl’s eyes. Mr. Gallo was just a normal every day kind of guy, balding even, but he had a gleam in his eyes and a cute smile and was very friendly and accessible.

I remember riding the Booster Bus to football games and making sure that I rode on the bus that Mr. Gallo was chaperoning. We would tease him and make up songs about him and make him blush. There was a whole group of us that had developed a crush on him. We weren’t really forward about it but he knew we were all kind of ga-ga over him.

Mr. Gallo was also a great science teacher. He made it entertaining and easy to understand. When we had to do labs, he was right there to help us get through anything gory. He didn’t make us do anything we really couldn’t stomach, yet he did make sure we learned the material that we were responsible for mastering.

One day, he told us we were going to watch him do a lab in front of the class. We would not be doing it ourselves because it involved using acid and a Bunsen burner and it was dangerous to have 30+ students with a potential explosive device at each table. We all pulled our chairs to the front of the room and arranged them so we could see what he was doing at his work table in the front of the room. Mr. Gallo made sure that we could all see. He had the shorter students sit up front for unobstructed views, which meant I was in the first row. Mr. Gallo began the experiment by showing us everything he was doing and asking us questions about what he should do next and what we might expect, etc. Suddenly, without warning, there was an explosion that shattered the glass tube (is it called a beaker?) on the Bunsen burner and sent acid flying all over the place! Mr. Gallo’s first concern was for us, his students. He immediately yelled for us to get back and asked if we were all okay. He instructed one student at the back of the room to run to the class next door and get the teacher to come immediately and asked another student to get on the intercom and tell the office we needed the nurse with her emergency bag in the room right away. He started calling each of us by name and making sure we were okay and instructed us to go to the sinks at the back of the room and wash off any exposed skin, especially on our faces. It was only when there was another adult in the room and when he made sure we were all moving to wash off any acid that gotten on us that he walked to a sink and began to wash the acid off of himself. He had gotten it on his shirt and on his arms (he was wearing a short sleeved shirt) and on his hands.

In the end, it was all okay. None of the students had been injured. Some of us had our clothing burned by the acid (including my most prized piece of clothing, a dark green brushed corduroy blazer) but we were all spared any physical injury, largely due to Mr. Gallo’s quick thinking and command during an emergency. Mr. Gallo, however, did end up getting acid burns on his forearms and on his hands. He was okay but he did sustain those burns, mostly because he took care of his students before washing the acid off of himself. We were his priority and thanks to him, we were all safe.

I learned a lot in Biology that year. A lot of it was not about Biology but about priorities and taking care of one’s charges before taking care of oneself and I still remember Mr. Gallo several times a week.

Stubborness

While commenting on a blog post the other week, I was reminded of the time my daughter would not cooperate with the dentist.  She was about five.  It was the year she began kindergarten.  I had taken her and her brother, who was about 8, to the dentist for a check up.  Tony cooperated beautifully.  Tina not so much.  It took a second then a third visit to get the x-ray film in her mouth.  On the third visit, I was the one that held the film in her mouth.  The technician gave me the little button to depress to take the picture because by then we had all figured out that she would only let me anywhere near her mouth.

The x-ray revealed that Tina had two cavities.  Her brother had one cavity and did a great job of letting the dentist work on his mouth.  We figured that would help to get Tina to cooperate.  We all made a big deal about Tony being so brave and he got a special treat (a trip to the toy store to pick out a much wanted toy) after the visit.

Then it came time for Tina’s appointment.  She went.  We sat in the waiting room and then were ushered back to the treatment room.  As soon as the dentist walked in, Tina curled up, sticking her head deep against her chest.  Nothing either then dentist or I did could get her to uncurl so he could work on her mouth.  The dentist let her play with his instruments and ask questions and brought toys in to the room for her.  Nothing worked.  Thirty minutes later, we left with no work having been done.  I made another appointment.  This time, the dentist gave me a prescription for a sedative to give to Tina when we left the house for the dentist’s office.  This sedative would take effect by the time of her appointment and the doctor would be able to fill her two cavities. Perfect plan.

The morning arrived.  Tina was very cooperative.  She took the cherry flavored sedative and we left the house for the dentist’s office.  When we got there, she was so sedated that she could not walk.  I had to carry her in, which was no easy feat.  Although she was only five, she weighed  about 65 pounds!  The doctor was ready and they took her in right away.  She was so out of it that it was funny.   She was half asleep.  The doctor and I looked at each other, relieved.  She would finally get her fillings done.  Tina was all sleepy and then smiley and happy and sleepy again.  As soon as the doctor pulled her cheek and raised the hypodermic to put her mouth to sleep, Tina slapped his hand and he ended up injecting his own hand, instantly numbing it.  So much for that visit.  He couldn’t do anything with a numb hand and was forced to cancel his next appointment, too.

Once at home, Tina’s dad and I had a long talk with her.  She promised she would let the dentist work on her mouth.    So we tried again.  This time, before we even left for the appointment, she refused to get in the car.  I didn’t want to waste the doctor’s time again so I called and rescheduled.  Then I issued an ultimatum.  Either she cooperated with the dentist to get her cavities filled or she would not be allowed to go trick-or-treating the following week.  She agreed.  When we got to the dentist for the next appointment, again she refused to open her mouth.  I reminded her about the trick-or-treating.  She said she would open her mouth.  She did but only long enough to bite down hard on the dentist’s hand!

That was the year that Tina missed trick-or-treating.  I tried and tried to give her another chance before Halloween.  The dentist even helped out saying that he would squeeze her in for an appointment if she agreed so she could get the work done before trick-or-treating.  Tina didn’t budge.   In the end, she just flat out refused and we were pretty tired of the whole thing so I followed through and she did not go trick-or-treating when her brother went.  She stayed home.

Eventually, once she turned 6 in January, she sort of grew up and agreed to let the dentist work on her mouth and she got the cavities filled.

Keeping her from trick-or-treating was one of the most difficult things I had done as a parent, to that point, but it had to be done.

The Paint Job

My daughter has a boyfriend who has been out of a job since January when he was laid off from his in-house tech technician at Portland Gas & Electric.  I had a lot of things that needed doing.  He offered to do some of them for me in exchange for meals while he was working.  I told him I would feed him and pay him because I would be paying someone else to do the work.  He agreed and we came up with a list of things he would do for me.

He means well.  He works well.  However, he is not prompt.

The latest job was painting my kitchen.  The paint sat in my kitchen, along with the roller, pan, brushes, drop cloths, tape, etc., for FOUR months.  Finally, he started doing it and said he’d have it done in one day.  He worked on it for one day then didn’t come back for three days then worked for one day then didn’t come back for a week and a half.  Last night, he was here at 8 PM to start painting.  He discovered that when he stacked the cabinet doors, they weren’t quite dry yet and so they will have to be sanded down and re-painted.  The five cabinet doors that he painted last night sat on my pack porch, with the light on, and got bugs all over them so they will have to be sanded down and painted all over again, too.  He has at least another day left of painting.  He was supposed to come today but didn’t.  Now my daughter says she will come and finish the job tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, I have my kitchen stuff all over the dining room, living room, and stuffed in closets.  I have no doors on my cabinets.  The blue tape he put up for the detail work has come off several times because we’ve had 90 degree temperatures.

Oh, and the best part…my kitchen was supposed to be yellow walls with the cabinet doors and drawers painted red.  However, he started when I was not here so I have yellow on one wall and red all over the kitchen with yellow cabinet doors and drawers.

If it ever gets finished, I’ll post a picture.  Of course, it might be in a different decade so be sure to come back!

Astoria

While my sister was visiting, my daughter took us to Astoria, OR, which is the furthest north one can travel on the coast side of Oregon before crossing into Washington state.  The picture below was taken from the parking lot of the Astoria Column.  The bridge you see takes one from Oregon to Washington.

Sometimes Life Sucks

Just when we think things are going well, life throws us a curve ball.

I spent the day sick in bed and very worried about my own health.  I woke up extremely dizzy and unable to get around the house without hanging on to the walls.  It became apparent to me that it was, most likely, a blood sugar problem.  While my sister was visiting me, I didn’t take care of myself and didn’t monitor my blood sugar like I should have.  She left Sunday and today things came to a screeching halt.  I was so ill that I couldn’t even stay out of bed long enough to find my medicine and my glucometer.  I was in pretty bad shape.

I was eventually able to, through sheer will power, get to my medicine and my meter.  Sure enough, my blood sugar was at 364…way too high.  I managed to take my medicine after I made myself drink some juice and eat a piece of toast so my stomach would tolerate the glucophage and glyburide.  The whole process of taking a reading of my blood sugar level and eating something so I could take my medicine, took about an hour because of the poor shape I was in.

Luckily, I was able to contact the neighbor across the street and she spent theday checking on me and running to the store to get me some 7 Up and some soup.  By the time she came over, I had progressed to the “barfs” and a low grade fever.  So I think that I must have picked up a bit of a bug and it was aggravated by my diabetes which in turn was aggravated by the bug.

Not a fun day.  I am feeling better now but am still weak.  I’m heading for bed as soon as I take my medicines (diabetes meds).  The neighbor has the key and will be checking on me.  I hate to be a burden on anyone but I think this time it is/was necessary.

Anyway, just checking in and urging you all to take care of yourselves.  Life has a way of knocking us off our feet once in a while.  Be prepared with neighbor’s phone numbers, etc.

Look Mom, No Slip!

In a recent post, I told about a picture that I used for a collage at my brother’s memorial service and how my mom had hated it because her slip was showing in the picture.   I was encouraged to “fix it” and post it.  I did.  Below you’ll find the picture of a much younger mom, holding my brother Richard, and my brother Carlos next to them.  I used Paint Shop Pro to remove the white slip and I’m sharing it here.

My mom (then 19) holding my brother Richard in her arm and my brother Carlos' hand.

No Hay Mal Que Por Bien No Venga~Part Three

One of the most exotic acquisitions during this time period was a Jaguar–not the kind that eats and prowls and growls–but the kind with four wheels that moved as sleek as a cat and purred like a kitten.  It was a beautiful car.  The cream colored beauty had matching leather interior with highly glossed wood paneling, inside and out.  The steering wheel was on the right hand side.  Of all the things he ever bought or bartered, this was the one we all hoped my dad would keep and the one we all missed when he sold it two days later.  He apologized to us explaining that he couldn’t resist the buyer’s offer of a cash 500% profit.

My personal favorite of my dad’s deals was a white Honda 90 motorcycle.  I loved it.  It became mine.  I was 15 and there was talk that when I turned 16 I would get my license on the Honda 90.  We lived on a cul-de-sac with very little traffic so I was allowed to drive it up and down the street.  I loved feeling the wind blowing through my long dark hair (even though I was only going about 35 or 40 mph).  Unfortunately, I never got my license on that motorcycle.  I ruined my chances of that one early summer evening, four months shy of turning 16.  I persuaded my sister, Irene (aka The Drama Queen) to go down the street on the motorcycle with me.  There were three boys who lived down the street.  They were all cute.  They were a few years older than us but they always smiled and flirted with us when we went by.  I had seen them in the window when I had driven by earlier so I knew they were there.  When Irene and I go to their house, I turned toward the window where they stood and smiled, tilting my head in a greeting.  When my eyes returned to the road, I realized that the STOP sign was much closser than I had thought.  I hit the brakes so hard that the motorcylce flipped and threw Irene and me  into the air.  Irene claimed not to be able to walk or even get up.  Although my legs and arms were cut and skinned, I picked her up and put her on the curb then I picked up the motorcycle but I couldn’t get it started so I ended up walking it up the hill (and it was a steep hill) to our house.  When I got home, my mom and dad were in the front yard and they asked what happened.  I told them we had flipped over and they asked where Irene was.  I told then she was on the curb because she couldn’t walk up the hill so they both panicked and jumped in my dad’s car to drive down and get her.  I was upset at my parents because they left me bleeding to go get T.D.Q.  And I was more upset at the boys we were trying to impress because they had seen us flip over and knew we were hurt and they didn’t even come to see if we were okay.  The Jerks.  Needless to say, my mother persuaded my father to get rid of the Honda before one of us got killed on it (her words, not mine).  Losing that motorcycle was one of the worst things that had happened to me in my almost 16 years.

Of course there were some deals that we all regretted.  One was a very expensive and beautiful red headed macaw parrot that got sick and died within 48 hours of coming home with my dad.  Then there was the piano my dad brought home.  Apparently, he had always dreamed of having a piano so he made a trade for an upright piano that wad in bad condition.  The wood needed to be refinished and it was out of tune.  Then there was the fact that no one in the house played the piano and none of  had any  intention of learning to play.   So it sat in the garage for the better part of a year and my dad eventually had to pay someone to come and take it away.  There were also some bad scenes and rude phone calls with disgruntled customers but my dad always seemed to be able to smooth things out without it becoming ugly.

Through his wheeling and dealing, we were able to enjoy and experience a lot of things that would not have been open to us if my dad had not been forced into this mode of supporting our family by his work injury.

These years also gave birth to a variety of hobbies which began as one of my dad’s deals.  After acquiring a hand gun through a trade, my father’s interest in guns and rifles grew to the point where he was actively seeking deals that involved weapons.  He ended up with at least a half a dozen hand guns and three or four rifles.  Dad got so involved with guns that he proudly showed off his collection to anyone who came to the house, including my sisters’ boyfriends who, while not having to listen to a lecture on how to treat his daughters, paid for it dearly by having to listen to him explain all about the history of each weapon, including how to care for it and how much damage it could do when used.  Most of the boys nevr came to the house more than once.  I was smart.  I never brought any boys home.  I was not about to put anyone through that show!

One of the benefits gained was that my father’s lack of income and the size of our family made it possible for me to get a full four year scholarship when I was accepted to Stanford University.  Now I call THAT a bonus!

We learned a lot during those hard years.  We learned that if we are resourceful we will always land on our feet.  We learned “si se puede” and we learned to stick together as a family.

And as my dad is so fond of saying, “no hay mal que por bien no venga.”