Cards
Training Clover
to be outside the fence and off-leash. The Girl's idea.
Step
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
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.
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.
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.
I can rarely listen to the whole song...
Afternoon Game
Cards
In the morning,
and in the afternoon.
Independence Day 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
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
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
A day of working, a bit of riding, some pressure washing.
Unremarkable Thursday.