Matching Tracksuits

fun in fours

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Step

Thursday 08 July 2021

One of the countless tricky things about Parkinson’s, we’re learning, is its complete unpredictability. With other diseases, doctors can provide a sense of scale and timing: you are here now; the next step will likely be this; that step will happen most likely in x to y time. With Parkinson’s, the next challenge isn’t always defined. The next step is always in the dark. The time it all takes is always a mystery. And so when a Parkinson’s patient has a bad day, it’s tough to know whether it’s just that or the next step.

“But I thought Parkinson’s was a slow, degenerative disease without sudden declines.”

So did I, but that too is a variable. Mostly, if we’re talking about the termor dominant form, that’s likely the case; if they have the P.I.G.D. (Partial Instability Gait Difficulty) form, there can be, apparently, sudden declines. Papa, sadly, has the P.I.G.D. form. Each change, then, might be a significant change or just a bad day.

One of My Madeleines

Wednesday 07 July 2021

The older I get, the more madeleines I discover, most of them are musical, and at least one is tragic: Billy Joel's song, "Goodnight, My Angel."

I'd listened to this song just a few minutes earlier when, in 1999, I received the tragic news that two of my former students in Poland, Marcela and Natalia, had drowned a few days earlier while on an outing to the Baltic Sea. I was staying with my parents because I didn't yet have my own place, and when I got the call, I was sitting on the floor by the bed in the guest room that I'd taken over. It's a song to one's daughter, but the passage "the water's so dark and deep" -- so tragically ironic.

A beach on the Baltic Sea

The news was a kick in the gut.

Marcela had just finished her freshman year, and I really didn't know her that well. But I'd been Natalia's English teacher for three years, and I'd watched her go from a hesitant beginner to a confident speaker who absolutely demolished the required oral exam in English just a few months earlier. She was wise and mature for her age, a real leader in the class, and from the beginning, she always intimidated me a bit. A first-year teacher just out of college, I felt like I didn't know what I was doing, and Natalia always sat in the back of the room seeming to say with a slight smile on her countenance, "You don't have the slightest clue what you're doing, do you?" Later, I realized what she was probably saying was, "Whoa! Slow down! Slow down!" She smiled a lot, even when nervous -- we all do that, I think.

Natalia's class -- she is the girl in the very center

Every time I hear that song, I think of Natalia. I try not to imagine what her parents went through, learning their intelligent, beautiful daughter was gone because I'd start imagining what I'd do if some similar tragedy befell my own daughter. That's when the "my angel" hits me. I try not to imagine what kind of woman she'd be now, likely a mother in her late thirties, old enough to have a child that could be sitting in my own classroom now. I don't have, in fact, any really specific memory of her other than of her sitting in the back of the class, smiling slightly, making me feel I'd just done something incomprehensibly stupid, some rookie teacher mistake that even a kid could see.

On a field trip to Torbacz

I can rarely listen to the whole song...

Afternoon Game

Tuesday 06 July 2021

Cards

Monday 05 July 2021

In the morning,

and in the afternoon.

Independence Day 2021

Sunday 04 July 2021

Friends invited us to enjoy their neighborhood’s firework display tonight. It was impressive given one generous neighbor does all the work and pays for everything himself.

First Check

Saturday 03 July 2021

The Girl recently began working at Culver’s, which is a restaurant we’ve passed on a busy road a number of times but which we’ve never given a thought to. We really didn’t even know the type of food they serve. So we were in the dark as much as the Girl.

She’s worked a few short shifts now, and today, she picked up an extra shift through the app the company uses for scheduling employees. Workers can request coverage for unexpected time they want off, and others can pick up that coverage for extra hours. So she went in to work from 4:00 to 8:30 today.

Today, she got her first check.

First Friday

Friday 02 July 2021

The first Friday of this July — we began with a trip to the local pharmacy to get L’s second dose of the covid vaccine. We picked up a couple of suckers while we waited, returning home to find K and E playing Wojna in the kitchen. The Boy won.

In the afternoon, we went to the pool, which to our surprise was completely empty. When we went to Nana’s and Papa’s condo complex’s pool, this was often the case. The pool we joined this year, though, has been crowded every single time we went — except today.

The Girl originally went with the intention of just reading, so she didn’t take her swimsuit. Then she changed her mind. A fourteen-year-old can just tie a knot in her shirt and dive in.

After swimming, the Girl lost the call for shotgun. The Boy has only been able to ride in the front for a little while, and he’s still more comfortable in the back due to habit. But calling shotgun — what’s not to love about that?

 

Thursday

Thursday 01 July 2021

A day of working, a bit of riding, some pressure washing.

Unremarkable Thursday.

Busy Wednesday

Wednesday 30 June 2021

The morning was all about blueberries. We’re drowning in them. We’ve never had anything close to this amount of berries. The birds have left them alone, and although a heavy rainstorm knocked off a substantial number of young berries/blossoms a few weeks ago, we still have so many berries we don’t know what to do with them. We’ve eaten them by the handful, given them to friends, put them in cereal, frozen them, and today, made preserves. (What about cobblers? Well, our oven is currently out of commission — talk about bad timing.)

So while K and the Boy worked on preserves today, I went out and picked a few more berries.

We’re right back where we started from. Except that we have a few jars of preserves now.

 

Back to Normal

Tuesday 29 June 2021

“I miss Myrtle Beach” was a common refrain today from the Boy. Even though we had (as the kids called it) a crusty hotel, we all enjoyed our time there. Well, the kids enjoyed being there; I enjoyed being with the kids, watching the kids have fun.

Today, we went back to reality, though. Orthodontist appointment, volleyball, swim team. And we cleaned up one of the cars — mine, because it was the most immediately dirty. We’ll get K’s tomorrow.

In the meantime, while we had the pressure washer out, we left a little message in the driveway.