Category: Educating Julia

on one hand, the other hand, and something else

A week, not quite, most of a week of forced quiet. I took last Wednesday off feeling the beginnings of something like being sick. I missed a Shakespeare class at Harvard and a choir rehearsal in the evening.  I slept a good deal of the day, wrote emails, figured out a new drug insurance for myself and checked on Julia’s, and started the book club book for this month. And was quiet.

I stayed home on Thursday, not going to see Cheshire and the boys.  Honestly, if it were not for the drive —a good 45 minutes to an hour and always in traffic— I would have gone for a short time. I was on the cusp of feeling better but not completely there.

Writing this, I realize that my RSV bout in January is influencing my behavior. I am slightly fearful of the good health that I have enjoyed.  Last January showed me that I could get sick. Good and sick.

And so, I stayed home to take care of myself, again being quiet for the day, catching up on small tasks that have slipped through a life with cracks and working on housing for Julia. 

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vermont 2

It is Indigenous Peoples Day. We are in Vermont, ready to leave today to return home. Julia’s day center is closed today. It will rain for most of today and tomorrow. I hope to stop to do some food shopping on our way home and make butternut squash soup for tonight’s dinner.

There the scene is set. 

It disturbs me greatly that trump proclaimed today a celebration of “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth.” It goes on to say that “[u]pon his arrival, he planted a majestic cross in a mighty act of devotion, dedicating the land to God and setting in motion America’s proud birthright of faith.”

Why does he—or they because that man cannot speak a single coherent sentence. There are way too many grammatically correct sentences and way too much warped “history” to believe that trump had anything to do with the drafting of his proclamation.— but why does he need to lie ALL of the time?

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anime boston

We’ve been at the Hynes Convention Center at the anime convention for almost three hours and it is finally worth it. The registration process was not friendly—multiple lines, down long hallways. It took a long time to get a print out of the schedule for the day. They say we should be using an app, but I cannot download the app, I wanted Julia to have a paper schedule to choose from, and after being turned down by a few “officials”, I ask at the accessibility desk and insist.  Finally, someone admits that this is the first year they are not providing paper schedules.  I insist again, like the mother bear that I am, and a paper schedule is put in our hands but by that time, I am pissed off and grumbling and deliver a lecture on what accessibility means.  I’m not going to say it was not needed but I could have been nicer about it.  Not a proud moment.

But now . . . 

Julia is learning a dance in a k-pop dance workshop.  In a ballroom with at least 75 (maybe 100) other young men and women, mostly women. Two women teach on a slightly raised stage. They are clear and good at breaking the dance down into manageable chunks and repeating.  The actual singing group, Bebe performing Stay C, is projected on a large screen beside the two teachers. The dance is repeated at 50% and 75% of the speed of the song over and over. The dancers learn small chunks and dance. Every few learned chunks, the teachers review by going over everything that has been learned.   

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another mother’s day

I brought my laptop to Julia’s year end recital at Berklee. Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education.  I will not get much time to sit and type but I was pretty sure I would want to get it out as soon as I sat down. I do and we have some time until recitals begin. 

This year the musical step taken is that Julia will play her cello without me sitting with her. This is the step forward after a few taken back. Back in Madison, when Julia was playing with Martha Vallon, she always played without someone sitting with her; however, when Julia emerged from Covid shutdown, she was not willing to be on the stage alone, not willing to do her own counting or take full responsibility for what she was playing.  I see some change now.  It has been a long way back.

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truth and grace

I’ve been composing something in my head—about how Julia new placemet is going and how home is going and generally, although somewhat anxious about the world around us, I am feeling optimistic.  I thought that it might be the entry which would kick off the end of the  memoir that I’ve been working on off-and-on, although for the last few months it has been mostly off.

I hadn’t written this optimistic mostly-happily-ever-after post because I’ve been busy.  Feeling better means catching up and keeping up.  Tuesday night, I congratulated myself on getting my tax stuff together to give to the accountant.  Slowly, I’ve been feeling rather good and almost organized enough to do for myself.  

But you know, the shoes always drop. I’ve been waiting for them.

Monday night, Julia had an extremely runny nose. She had been coughing some a few days before. I gave her some decongestant Monday evening and she went to bed early. When I woke her up Tuesday morning, she didn’t want to get up.  A different kind of not wanting to wake up than usual. And so, I told her to go back to sleep and I called her van ride and her program. John, the program director, said she seemed off on Monday and asked if anything was wrong. He said she asked for quiet space. When I asked her about it later, she said she was not feeling that well on Monday.

She slept all of Tuesday, waking only when I asked about food.  She ate a late breakfast and an early supper, and after each she went back to bed and sleep.  When she woke up Wednesday morning, she seemed well and in a good mood. She got ready and got on the van without any difficulty.

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hope is a thing with feathers

Thursday morning somewhere around 10 am, I was at the Discovery Museum with Cheshire and the boys when Cheshire received a phone call from The Price Center.  The director of Julia’s program was looking for me. Cheshire handed her phone to me, I verified that he had the wrong phone number for me—one digit off—and then we got down to the content of the call.  

I braced myself. Out of habit. In my experience, calls from directors are rarely good news. Some behavior, some serious concern, or in the worst situation: “You need to come pick your daughter up immediately.” When Julia was in school, there might be an occasional call about not-so-bad news, but generally and since kindergarten, calls from the institution are not good news. 

Thursday was different.

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just a few thoughts and words

Once again, to begin again, to begin again and to wonder if it is possible to begin again, and to wonder what is possible in the long run other than the daily round.

I feel like I have been very far away.  Every so often during the last weeks, I’ve had the slight impulse to write something, a slight burst of energy. But all energy has been spent doing work for my UU church’s annual pledge drive (“APD”).  I am on the pledge drive team, such an unlikely position for me to take up. It is far out of my comfort level and the changes that have been made to the drive this year have pulled the work only further beyond my ken. However, I’ve had the chance to work on a few parties and thank goodness, parties are in my bailiwick. Two parties in two nights last weekend, and I admit I was quite flattened by exhaustion. The APD has one more big blow out of a party this weekend, and then the work shifts in nature.  There is at least another month to it but no more entertaining.  

And so, I start this way, writing about the pledge drive and the parties because it is where I can start.  At the moment, I am far from she who writes every day and sometimes comes up with something thoughtful.  I haven’t looked at the memoir in months and have only been working on a few thousand words of the novel at a month. I have not been keeping written tabs on daily life or Julia’s doings.  

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consequences

New Year’s Eve has always been a veguely uncomfortable holiday for me. I’ve never been to Times Square to watch the ball fall, I don’t favor loud parties, rarely have I gone out for diner and dancing. We never built any traditions for the evening which didn’t bother me at all until I was alone.

I think I was happiest when I was working in restaurants or when David and I (and one or the other of the girls) went to movies and maybe somewhat of a quick dinner out. The turning of the century was a good NYE—a bunch of friends gathered at David’s father’s house in Jersey. We were living in Indy then and we still had NYC friends, some with small children. We cooked a nice dinner—I don’t remember what. Wine and maybe champagne. We sat in the kind of dining room that I knew growing up and ate on Dad’s good china, lifting his best wine glasses. One friend didn’t accompany his family because he was a computer guy and needed to guard his hard and soft ware if the worst case of Y2K predictions came to pass. Another friend announced that she was adopting a baby from Vietnam—the baby who now has one year old twins of her own. 

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mood and transformation

Julia is not in a good mood today.  

I woke up late today, sleeping through the alarm that I never, ever sleep through. The clock suddenly said 8:36, and the social worker, who visits us every other month as part of a Medicaid program, was due at 8:45. I jumped out of bed, pulling on my jeans as I not-so-quietly urged Julia to get up and dressed. Julia hates rushing. No, she doesn’t hate rushing, she doesn’t rush. She complains that I am rushing her which I need to do often to get her on The Ride, or to my choir rehearsal, or to a dozen other things when ‘on-time’ is relevant. If only I could bestow an understanding of time on her—on time, late, soon, rush, hurry, scheduled, delayed, tardy. Oh, so many words! 

This time deficite is absolutely nothing new. We’ve been struggling with time for almost as long as I’ve known Julia. Possibly the toughest part of the challenge is my desire/need/obsession with being on-time. 

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enemy from within

Julia jacket this year.

The “enemy from within.” That’s what he has called us and I rather like that title today. And I am telling my disappointed daughter that she needs to be part of the change, part of the fight for what we as a family, as well as a community, want to see in our country.

We support and defend the rights of women and workers and immigrants and transgender people and unhomed people and people with disabilities and our elders. We believe in diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe in climate change and that our world and its environment needs protection.

Julia’s jacket in 2016

We stand for healthcare for all, for public schools, for an end to book banning, for the separation of church and state, for the rights of students and teachers to demonstrate against any and all wars, for strict gun control, for taxing the rich their fair share, for subsidized housing, social security, medicare. We fight against racism and sexism and homophobia and christian nationalism and facism.

In my gut I feel that the party of our choice did not strongly stand for what we believe in nor did it fight against what is abhorant to us. That needs to change. We all need to attend to the change to be worthy of the title “enemy from within.”

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