An Open Letter to the Sign Printers of the World

You are what people see when they walk past, drive past, and ride past.  You are the only thing that many people read on a given day, now that TV guide has been replaced by the On Demand screen, and people order food from picture menus by number.  I drive past myriad signs on the way to and from work — signs for hair-braiding, vacuum repairs, corner grocery stores, nail salons, child care facilities, Chinese restaurant holes-in-the-wall (that also sell steak sandwiches, seafood, and fried chicken), real estate offices, and private ambulance companies.  They all have thing in common — they are not immune from the pandemic profligacy of the apostrophe S for plural words:

• Michael’s Nail’s
• Little One’s of the Future
• EMT’s wanted
• STEAK’S, CHICKEN, FRIE’S
• Two Brother’s Market, selling soda’s, milk, candy, and cigarette’s
• Creative Corners hair braiding, specializing in weave’s, sew-in’s, and scalp treatment’s
• And a realtor, with a huge mural-style sign on the side of a row-home, selling “home’s”

You are the sign-printers.  True, you have no editors like the newspapers and magazines have.  True, you are operating out of your basement inhaling the sweet fumes of melting vinyl, and pounding grommet in by hand.  But you are role models for grammar.  No one reads newspapers anymore, no one regulates the garbage content of the internet (like my own blog), and schools aren’t teaching grammar anymore.  You have a job, when Haver Convience Store (actual spelling of a store I pass every day) calls you for a sign, to look up the fucking word, to make sure it’s spelled as best you can.  You have a responsibility to know how to make plural nouns.  I learned this in 3rd grade.  Now I shall review with you, in case you didn’t make it past 2nd:

To make a plural noun, add S.  If it ends in S or Z, or CH, add ES.  If it ends in Y, drop the Y and add IES, unless the letter before the Y is a vowel; then just add S.  Watch me pluralize:

nail –> nails

cigarette–> cigarettes

fry –> fries

Did you see an apostrophe anywhere?  Did you see a “hyphen,” as someone once called it, when instructing me how to spell her own child’s name?  NO! 

Now you try.  Lest I open some can’s of whoop-ass on your sign’s.

The Ivory Elephant

Today Mr. Apron wrote about the piano we are hopefully about to acquire, a relic from the days when people just had pianos as pieces of furniture.  Did they have them in hopes someone in the family would play, or because someone inevitably already did?  Were piano lessons a given, a rite of passage much as SAT tutoring is today?  Did Mr. Apron’s grandfather really buy the piano to match the window treatments?  We began to discuss these pressing issues after Mr. Apron let me read his blogpost.  I recalled an interview I heard on NPR about a singer-songwriter named Alice Peacock who has begun rescuing old pianos from Craiglist and homes where they are unwanted and housing them in her barn.  Where did this spate of unwanted pianos come from?  Well, we reasoned, people of our grandparents’ generation, if not already dead (as our 8 collective grandparents are), have downsized into condos and townhomes and have decidedly not taken their pianos with them, either into Shady Acres or to the grave.  And their children no longer view having a piano, or playing a piano, as a necessity, as they’re saving their money for SAT tutoring, or spending it on unlimited data plans for their family’s smartphones.  Those who do want pianos, and want a smaller, or cheaper alternative to the $50K it costs for a gently used living-room-sized 7′ Steinway, aren’t buying the spinet/upright/console pianos that Mr. Apron’s grandfather, and my paternal grandmother bought back in the heyday of such pianos.  The spinet we’re hopefully acquiring is from then as well.  No one wants to play the tinny sound that comes from a spinet piano, nor to move the 300lb weight, nor to tune the cramped innards.  People these days who want an affordable option for a child to learn on choose electronic keyboards. 

A few years ago, living on my own for the first time, I discovered I missed being able to sit down and play piano recreationally.  My brother had long surpassed me in technical ability, and I had no designs on going anywhere with it, but I found that, when I would go visit my family, I spent downtime between insanities in the living room, playing the familiar keys.  And so I made the mistake of asking for a keyboard.  I was, I think, specific.  I knew I wanted 88 keys, the same number as a real piano, and that I wanted the keys to be touch-sensitive, so that when you banged harder, you’d get a louder note, as on a real piano.  I forget what this feature is called in the world of keyboards, but it’s not important. 

I referenced in my last post (“OMG”) the gifts my family often lavishes upon us.  I have also mentioned in my birthday posts the danger of asking for gifts from my family.  This was no exception.  What arrived (with beaming smiles on my father’s and brother’s faces [for it was the latter's idea]) can be accurately described as a MIDI-input device.  What arrived, in my mind is an ivory elephant.  This is a keyboard which must be plugged into a computer to work.  It is only keys, same as the keyboard I’m typing on now, and requires a computer to process and generate output from the information.  The computer of course needs software (something called Cakewalk, which they generously provided), a sound card, and speakers, to play.  The computer I had did not have the ability to make the monstrosity play.  So my parents bought me a brand-spanking new computer, from which I now type, which also did not possess the necessary requirements in the way of sound cards, patches, and all the other bullshit.  So they then delivered a computer hailing from circa 1995 which had succeeded at home in the initial test-run of the keyboard.  And left me, with 2 computers (my former computer had just bitten the dust), and a gigantic piece of inert plastic with black and white keys.  Mute.  For I, too, was speechless. 

We set it up in our last apartment, and all I needed to do to play my new keyboard was boot up the dinosaur, turn on the minute speakers, open the Cakewalk program, fiddle around to tell it I wanted piano, not violin, drum kit, or full orchestra.  And then play.  Why, oh why?  Why couldn’t I have a self-contained machine?   I assume the idea was that, with Cakewalk, I could compose music, play any instrument I wanted, save and playback my creations.  Ideally, I’d upgrade the sound with bigger speakers, and have a hoedown on my MIDI toy.  Whose dream do you suppose that was?  I’ll give you 3 guesses, the first 2 don’t count.  My brother is a born tinkerer, one who soups up cars, stereos, skateboards, even trashcans.  Once he fitted a shoebox to the top of his trashcan so it was at the same height as his bed and he could pitch his Mountain Dew cans and Dorito wrappers with minimal effort. 

His dream, my white elephant.  I’ve tried to sell it on Craigslist, but all I got for the keyboard were offers from the usual Craiglist whackos offering half of what I asked for, pressuring me into selling that night in a back-alley, paying in “genuwine” gems in exchange for my toy.  My $200 (retail) toy, which is now useless to us, as we donated the computer it used to work with when we moved.  I hadn’t played it in months anyway, having cannibalized the mouse from that computer when the optical mouse on our functional computer rolled over and died one day. 

Does anyone want a MIDI input keyboard?  Retail value $200.  Worked perfectly last time it was plugged into the only computer on the planet it’s compatible with.  I’ll even throw in the stool and a free music stand.  And if you act now, I’ll throw in a fresh plate of hot brownies to sweeten the deal.  Please?!?

OMG

“This town doesn’t have a one hour cleaner so I had to buy a new suit, except the only store you could buy a new suit in has got the flu. Got that? The whole store got the flu.”

–Vinny Gambini

I went to pick up our watches and the cuckoo clock today from the jeweler/horologist, and there was a sign on the door: “We have the flu.  Closed till November 11th.”  And if I were Vinny Gambini, I’d also say, “What?  The whole store has the flu?!” except that I know they do. 

Our jewelry store is run by OMG, as we call him, Old Man Gerlach, and his son, Robert.  We first found them back in 2005, when we were shopping for engagement and wedding rings.  We actually found my engagement ring at an antiques mall way down Route 1 towards Delaware, but it needed to be sized, as it was a little loose.  So we looked at the box it had come in, which bore the name of the jeweler who rented that case at the mall, and took it to Mr. Gerlach.  He was able to make the 1928 filigree ring fit my daintier finger, at no charge, it being his ring, and we walked away very satisfied customers.  Later, as we scoured the jewelery stores in Rhode Island, visiting my parents over Christmas time, we emerged very discouraged.  No one had in stock a ring that not only complemented the style of my vintage ring, but was also curved so as to fit around the bulbous diamond and filigree portion of my ring.  One store grudgingly said they’d order one from another engagement/wedding band set and that we could hope it would fit.  They weren’t going to go out of their way for a plain, unadorned white gold band.  Again, we left disappointed.  On a whim, we decided to go back to Gerlach’s, since they had a large selection of estate jewelry, and might have a ring we could at least try on.  When Mr. Gerlach heard we didn’t want diamonds or any such bling on the band itself, he retreated to a back room and brought out an entire tray of “plain” bands.  As I lamented how none were bent the way I needed, he rallied.  ”I’ll just bend it for you.”  And he did.  He bent an elegant band engraved with orange blossoms (a traditional Victorian wedding symbol) right around my engagement ring.  What’s more, Mr. Apron chose his own band then and there.  We had given up on the idea of their matching each other, since I needed something so specific, but the young Mr. Gerlach came to the rescue.  He painstakingly carved a matching motif onto Mr. Apron’s band.  On simple wedding bands, the flowers don’t look, well, floral; rather, the facets of the gold from the deep engraving catch the light and have a jeweled quality that has led more than one middle-aged nurse on Mr. Apron’s ambulance runs (He worked as an EMT for 17 months in 2005 through 2007) to grab his slender hand for a closer look.  People like mine, too, but I guess it’s more striking on a man. 

Our relationship with Messieurs Gerlach did not cease after our wedding.  We have returned many times for clock and watch repairs, some purchases (chains and balast for pocket watches), necklace adjustments, and batteries.  Mr. Apron bought me a beautiful tri-color gold lapel watch recently that makes me wish I wore more lapels, and less child snot. 

My mother gave us, ostensibly for our wedding, but in actuality for our housewarming, yet still 6 months late, and 2.5 years in the making, a cuckoo clock.  Mr. Apron has written already about his complex relationship with the cuckoo clock.  My mother apparently spent 2 years getting it fixed.  Rather, the clock guy did.  And though we received it in August, and listened in joy to its melodious chimes each hour since then, it has stopped working.  Already.  My family’s gifts are often like this — things missing a part, requiring some work, coupons you can only redeem at one store in the Tri-state area between 8:43am and 1:14pm, or clothing yet to be hemmed.  A pattern for a dog coat, a picture already falling out of its frame, shoes needing laces (ah, but they were on sale).  Gifts requiring work.  And the clock has gone the way of these gifts.  The hour and minute weights were still functioning, as was the “cuckoo” and the pendulum.  But the sing-song happy chime which sounded on the hour and caused a little drummer boy to come out and serenade us jammed.  The weight did not descend in the proper way, so we packed it off to Gerlach.

OMG flipped it over and announced cuckoo clocks usually had a lifespan of 5 years.  Ours was probably 30 years old and had spent the last 2 years of its post-morbid state in some dude’s repair shop.  Some dude, who wasn’t up front enough with my mother to tell her it was not worth fixing, for the 2 months it would work.  But we left it anyway, along with 2 watches that needed batteries and a third watch that decided when wound, only to run for an hour or so. 

I raced home from work today, dodging morons who are behind the wheel instead of on their buses and trolleys because of the transit strike, let the dog out of the kitchen, walked the dog, fed the dog, shut the dog back in the kitchen, dodged more morons trying to kill me on the way to Gerlach’s, and arrived.  I thought I was too late when I saw neither the Volvo wagon nor the Lexus SUV (Yes, I know what cars my jewelers drive.  So what?) parked by the shop.  And I was greeted by the sign stating they were closed due to flu. 

So, yes, Vinny, an entire store can be closed due to the flu.  Especially a family jewelry store in a quiet suburb of Philly.  I hope OMG and his son will bounce back soon.  It’s all well and good to joke about, as Mr. Apron calls it, “Piggy Sickie”, but when it’s close to home, it’s a little scary. 

Get well soon, Messieurs Gerlach.  We miss you.  And don’t get my cuckoo bird or the drummer boy sick from the flu.

 

Job Hazards

I have to work up close and personal with kids.  The kids I work with are rather small, even by my standards of height.  I view my world from a solidly 5′0″ tall vantage, and these kids are shorter yet.  And when they’re sitting down?  Forget it.  This is a job to do when one has young knees and has not yet developed vertigo. 

I have to get in their faces for many reasons.  The ones I work on articulation with need to see my face.  Not to sound boastful or anything, but my face has cues they need to see.  Little kids struggling to acknowledge that our language has final consonants need to see my lips come together at the end of “cup” or they’ll be asking for a “kuh” forever.  Another reason is that kids understand better.  And kids who understand just fine, listen better.  “He won’t listen,” I hear people tell me.  Well, if you’re yelling at him from across the room, he may not even know you’re shouting at him, let alone detect the message you’re hollering.  If there was one “technique”, strategy, or trick I could offer to many of the teachers I work with, one simple action they could do to increase interactions with their students, it would be to Get up.  Go over to him.  Talk to his face.  On his level.  And to stop asking him why he hit the kid.  Kids can’t answer “why” questions at that age anyway, but they might be more likely not to hit again, if you get up from your chair and go tell him to stop hitting.  I’m not asking you to give him a discourse on “friendly hands” or use a “problem-solving suitcase” or even change your words from “share” to “let’s take turns”.  But  please.  Get up off your ass and give the child the privilege of your immediate presence.  Adults don’t often have conversations standing more than 3 feet away from each other; why do we expect kids to listen to us when we’re halfway across the gym?

This lack of face-time I have observed has led me to name another phenomenon I have seen in daycares, head starts, church basements and the like: Daycare Butt.  A close cousin to Dispatch Butt, which 911 operators and EMS dispatchers get from a steady diet of inactivity and fast food, Daycare Butt evolves from perching an adult-sized body on a child-size chair, stationing oneself at a viewpoint from which one can see most of the children, so one does not have to move, and, accordingly, not moving.  All day long.  And you thought you had to be fit, flexible, and fleet of foot to work with small children!

However, all is not hunky-dorey when I’m face-to-face with a small child.  While I am increasing the likelihood they will be able to listen better, follow directions better, and imitate my speech sounds better, I accordingly increasing the likelihood of other, less than desirable possibilities.  There is risk of a drive-by hair brushing, using the hairbrush that’s been in the dress-up area for 16 years, and has brushed the hair of 275 children and countless dolls.  With lice.  There is the risk of the subsequent beauty parlour treatment,  which may or may not include curlers, a broken blow drier, a curling iron, and a shower cap.  With lice.  There is the risk of other numerous dress up crowns, tiaras, construction hats, hair nets, and headbands.  With lice. 

If you are down at a child’s level, working face-to-face with a child, you will get sneezed on.  Coughed on.  Spit on.  In the face.  Not just on your arm, in your vicinity, in your general direction — in the face.  And you will feel that puff of air germs come your way, and you will go home and check your last paystub for your sick leave, because you will be needing it.  You will blow noses.   You will touch sleeves that were used as tissues.  And used tissues that were curteously put back into the tissue box.  And you will use your sick leave.

Mealtime contains endless hazards.  Food that was previously in a child’s mouth will be in your mouth, on your glasses, your cheese, your chin, your hair, and most definitely your clothing.  Today, I am wearing oranges, guacamole, peaches, pasta, sauce from meatballs, green beans, and milk.  I am only responsible for contributing the oranges and guac.  Positioning can help to avoid some larger issues.  Angling oneself away from the spill-prone child, and having lightning reflexes can help one avoid having an entire quart of milk dumped on one’s lap and shoes.  Usually.  Ask me how I know.

Then there are the wardrobe malfunctions.  I’ve become very instinctive when I sense a glasses-grab or a hair-pull on the horizon.  And I’ve even learned a maneuver which can help to free those items from a child’s deathgrip.  I don’t wear earrings, and I’d be afraid to. Kids seem fascinated by my watch, grabbing and pulling at it without regard to the arm it is attached to.  When they start wrangling my arm, I’ve taken to chiding, “That’s my body!”  

And there are still other dangers.  Errant art supplies have left me covered in marker (Why do they even make non-washable markers for kids?  Does anyone know this?), pen (usually my own), pencil, paint (same question), play-doh, shaving cream, glue, and sand, dirt, and dust from the “messy table”.   And as the well meaning adults are cleaning off the tables from the children’s latest artistic endeavour, bleach from the diluted cleaning solution will find its way to my favorite shirt before the table has completely dried, leaving festive dots or streaks.  This will all happen.  All this and more.

I’m finally understanding why people who work with small children in non-healthcare settings feel they’re entitled to wear scrubs.  It has nothing to do with their desire to dress up in unicorns, pastels, and polyester fabric.  It has a lot to do with the elastic waistbands and loose-fitting tops.  It must have at least something to do with the disgusting, germy messes that end up on my clothing after a day’s work.  But I can’t do it yet.  I can’t give up.  I can’t go to scrubs. 

The tipping point will come, and I’ll either be driven to wear a biohazard suit, or to work with a population who knows how to cover their coughs, and blow their noses on a tissue.  Wouldn’t that be refreshing?

Food Jags

We had a meeting for the therapists this past week, the topic of which was picky eaters and problem feeders.  In speech pathology, our practices often cover a wide range of seemingly disparate disorders and conditions, from post-stroke adults with impairments in language to children who are picky eaters.  Because the mouth, tongue, teeth, palate, and lips are used not only for speech but also for eating, we enter the realm of feeding and dysphagia (difficulty swallowing). 

Part of our discussion was centered on differentiating problem feeders from “ordinary” picky eaters.  Children are notoriously picky eaters, refusing vegetables, insisting on only McDonald’s chicken nuggets, and covering everything with ketchup.  But some of these behaviors are typical, and other signal a more troubling feeding disorder.  For example, a picky eater may seem like he has a restricted diet, but, when pressed to list everything he eats, a parent may come up with at least 25 different foods, in each category of the food pyramid.  Maybe it’s heavy on the bread/grain category, and light on the fruit/veg.  Maybe he only eats chicken or fish when it’s heavily breaded or fried.  But he still eats a variety of foods and textures (some puree, some soft, some crunchy, etc.).   A problem feeder, by contrast, may eat fewer than 15 different foods, may leave out entire textures or food groups, or only eat “white” foods. 

Another aspect of childhood eating we discussed was “food jags”.  Though the term was unfamiliar, the concept was not.  Kids get “stuck” on certain foods, and may insist on them for weeks or months at a time.  Strawberries, rice krispies, string cheese, peanut-butter-and-chocolate-chip granola bars.  It could be anything.  My own brother subsisted on a relatively limited diet in his childhood and until he went away to college.  He smothered ketchup or tomato sauce on everything and ate the aforementioned granola bars every day.  I myself went through a period where frosted flakes and chocolate milk were the only breakfast to be had.  And I poured exactly 6oz of milk over my cereal from my special pitcher.  For years.  Mr. Apron insisted on corned beef sandwiches (with mustard, on a challah roll) for lunch for two years.  Reese’s peanut butter cups, 8 at a sitting, arranged in a circle, for snack in middle school.  Doritos.  Kit Kat Big Kat (not the mini bars).  Bianca (the famous sister-in-law) ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch every morning for 3 years.  Then she switched to Frosted Shredded Wheat. 

Point is, most kids go though these “food phases”.  They mysteriously grow out of them and move onto other things.  With problem feeders, it may be to the exclusion of everything else.  It may be that their diets are not remotely nutritionally complete.  But typical kids go through it, too. 

What are your memories of “food jags”?  How about your kids’ food preferences?  What do they get stuck on?

What Did the Fruit Say to the Vegetable?

Spurred by a well meaning occupational therapy student working in the classrooms today who announced to the children that a pumpkin was a vegetable because, “you have to cook vegetables before you eat them,” I embarked on a journey to set straight for myself , once and for all, what differentiates fruits from veggies.  Because she (the student) sure didn’t.  Going from her definition, carrots, lettuce, spinach, peppers, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, and snowpeas aren’t vegetables.  Or maybe they are sometimes, like when you cook them.   But then, are apples cooked in a pie vegetables?  Right. 

So I went back to the office, having washed the pumpkin gook off my arm hair as best I could, we consulted Ye Olde Internet, which revealed at least three different definitions to help distinguish betwixt the two. 

1) Botanical. 

This is the argument I’ve long heard for the tomato’s being a fruit.  And I will agree with the scientists out there — the tomato is the fruit of its plant.  The product of the flower of the plant (i.e., the  ripened ovary — can you see why we don’t do this definition in preschool? or 7th grade?) is indeed the fruit of it.  And, having come from the flower, many of these fruit have seeds.  Hence that inconclusive definition that if it has seeds, it’s a fruit.  Because are there not fruit, pure and simple, which have no seeds?  Like our friend the banana, and all of the lovely seedless produce we’ve grown to love: grapes, clementines, watermelon.  If a child is taught this distinction, methinks he’ll be mightily confused. Especially when he learns about women’s anatomy. Conversely, if a specimen of produce comes from a different part of the plant — the stem, the leaf, the root, or the stalk — it is a vegetable.  So, spinach (leaves), celery (stalk), potato (root), carrot (root), lettuce (leaves), or dandelion (stem) are all veggies.  Are herbs veggies, too?  What’s their definition? 

So this means that strawberries, green beans, pumpkins, squash, melons, cauliflower, and tomatoes are all fruit.  Are you prepared for that?  Can you honestly think of a cauliflower as a fruit?  If you can’t, then stop calling the tomato one. Keep it consistent, folks.

2) Gustatory.

Yes, I’m breaking out the big words for yeh.  This is my favorite definition, because this is how I’ve always classified produce, by my own experience with it.  If it’s sweet, it’s a fruit; if it’s savory, it’s a vegetable.  If it’s even important for children to learn how to classify fruits and vege, then this is how they should learn to do so, by their own experiences.  Of course, we have our problems here.  Mr. Apron maintains that grape and cherry tomatoes are sweet, which is why he loves them so, yet all other varieties are not.  Durian, the dreaded stinky fruit, is reported to taste sweet, but I never got past the smell of decomposing chicken carcasses to find out.  Red peppers are sweet, but green ones are savory.  And they’re the same plant. 

3.  Culinary/grocery store/food pyramid

This is somewhat of a construct of preparation and use, and is how they’re categorized for dietary bullshit.  So, if a tomato is a “fruit” by definition #1 (why people chose to single out this poor berry, I have no idea), it is always prepared as a vegetable, or with vegetables — on a pizza, in a sauce, enrobing french fries, in chili, in stew, in ratatouille.  And that somehow makes it a vegetable, by association.  I think.  But, in strawberry rhubarb pie, does the strawberry make the rhubarb a fruit?  Or does the rhubarb make the strawberry a vegetable?  If rhubarb is able to maintain its vegetableness in pie, next to a strawberry, why does tomato lose its identity when cooked next to a pepper? (Which is actually “a fruit” according to definition #1.)  I’m still struggling to wrap my head around this one, but it seems to be based on marketing, cooking, and the USDA.  Which has conveniently bumped potatoes and other root veggies (by definition #1 and #2) into the starch/bread category.  Where does poor corn go?  It’s a starch, but it is totally a grain.  So by #1 it’s a grain, by #2 it’s a veggie, and by #3 it’s, um, sometimes a veggie and sometimes a starch, depending on its neighbors.  The USDA seems to lump produce by its nutritional value, so things high in carbs become starches, things high in sugar become fruit, and things, um, that are left over (and are often colorful and have whatever yummy antioxidants are hip right now), and which children do not like to eat, are all called vegetables. 

Which brings us to definition #4

4. What’s a vegetable?  Something a child won’t eat.  What’s a fruit?  Everything else. 

It’s all bullshit anyway.  One website I found said the entire construct of fruit vs. veggie was contrived, and that there probably isn’t any natural class called “vegetable” anyway.  Are we really trying to teach kids to distinguish fruits and vegetables when a) they can’t tell their play-doh from their peer’s, and b) we as adults can’t meaningfully tell the difference anyway, much less teach it?  That’s not what “nutrition” is at a preschool age; nutrition is eating a variety of healthy foods, trying new things, and using a tissue instead of your sleeve.  It’s not developmentally appropriate to address protein, starch, carbs, fat, and sugar yet — it’s just silly at that age.  And as we keep discovering new micronutrients that are supposedly essential, I question whether it’s appropriate at any age.

Alcoholism and Epilepsy

I came across a scrap of paper today at work, on which I had scrawled several ideas for essays/blogs about brain surgery. 

• musical intelligence — I have tackled this one
• the whomping stick (about my cane) — ditto
• “throwing up” on people (telling them about my surgery)
• PT and OT
• epilepsy vs. alcoholism

That last one I’ve never addressed in any form on this site.  I’ve tried to explain it to people, but without much success.  Here’s the idea: in alcoholism, a person will forever remain an alcoholic, even after years of sobriety.  Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, because he could go back so easily, slip up so easily, and send himself back down into addiction.

As for epilepsy, I recall Dr. Zager or Dr. Hart saying (I remember it so well, I can’t recall which doctor actually said it) that once the brain has learned to seize, there is always a risk that it will seize again.  The more time the passes seizure-free, the lower the risk of another seizure, the longer one is likely to stay seizure-free, but there remains a chance, a possibility of relapse into a seizure.

So here’s the connection: once the brain has learned that specific “behavior” — be it addiction to alcohol, or seizures – there is always a change it may relapse, especially if one does not avoid triggers, like alcohol, sleep deprivation, caffeine, and dehydration — for epilepsy, or well, alcohol, in the case of alcoholism.

And my question has been, if I had epilepsy once (or for 8 years), will I have epilepsy for the rest of my life?  Does my insurance company think so?  Do I?  Do my doctors?  Am I “cured” of the underlying physiology of the AVM — all indications say yes — yet do I still carry the label of epilepsy?  In the age of people- first language, I can certainly escape the designation of “epileptic”, but can I so easily leave behind the diagnosis, the condition, the lingering possibility of a seizure, and epilepsy itself?

Cousin Paul

My cousin Paul has died.  Paul was my grandmother’s first cousin.  He was 106 years old.  When I told people I had a cousin that old, they didn’t believe me.  Not that he wasn’t that old, but that he was my cousin.  Though my family isn’t gung-ho into genaeology, we do keep track of generations and know all the proper ways to call cousins and such.  I was never the type to grow up with thirteen women called “aunt”.  Not that we didn’t adopt people into the family; we just always knew who they were.  So Paul was my grandma’s first cousin.  His two daughters are my mother’s second cousins.  The next generation — my third cousins — are four men who are now in their 40s.  And they have, combined, 5 children, my first cousins once removed.  My children will be their fourth cousins.   And so Paul is my first cousin, twice removed. 

I love that we’ve kept track of these things, that I can feel almost as close to that branch of the family as I do to my own first cousins on either side.  I guess growing up geographically isolated from any family meant that I could appreciate and attach myself to family, no matter how distant — as the crow flies, or on the ancestor tree — they were.

When I think about Paul, I think of all he experienced in his 106 years.  He remembered, of course, the Titanic’s sinking.  He remembered all the wars of his lifetime.  More significantly, he remembered when my family came over from The Old Country.  Many many Eastern European Jews came through Ellis Island.  Two branches of my family we know for sure did not.  The branch of which I am speaking came through the port at Annapolis, and stayed with Paul and his family when they lived in Fels Point, a historic neighborhood of Baltimore.  Paul remained in Baltimore his entire life.  He remained independent his entire life. 

Last year, when I was mired in my hospital-based adult practicum for my speech pathology clinical work, Paul’s wife, Marian, died.  She was “only” 96 or so.  We’re not sure; at least, I’m not.  It’s easier to keep track of people once they reach 100.  Before that, the math is fuzzy.  They lived together in a condo of a predominantly Jewish suburb of Baltimore.  When my sister last went to go visit Paul and Marian, Marian was upset that her little sister, who lived across the hall, had been ill.  Seems there is longevity in that side of the family.  When Marian passed away, it tore me up inside.  I was facing death and disease on a daily basis at the hospital, and I was wrecked knowing that their partnership of nearly 80 years was finally over.  When I first met Paul and Marian (in my adult life, in recent memory), it was at Paul’s 100th birthday. He was unfortunately hospitalized, and Marian sat by his side, holding and stroking his hand, as we crowded into the hospital room to wish him a happy birthday.  Willard Scott did so on his broadcast on the Today show, and Paul mused that no one had seemed to care so much at his 99th birthday. 

Six years ago, as I sat there watching in that Baltimore hospital room, I was passing through on my way to Philly for a job interview.  Mr. Apron and I were just at the beginning of our relationship.  That job interview, and all subsequent happenings, have led to the last three years of our married happiness.  I remembered watching, and hoping that I will get to grow old with Mr. Apron, and still show as much kind, caring  affection towards each other as did my two elderly cousins.  When Marian passed away, I was upset for Paul. 

If I didn’t think about him for a while, I was sure he would live forever, the birthdays just clicking past till he was the world’s oldest human.  I figured, if he was alive and well, what mortal illness could possibly be his end?  But last spring Marian died, and I worried for Paul. 

I won’t be going to the funeral, but my mother is flying in.  I wonder what people are going to share of their memories.  I wonder how many facets of Paul’s 106 years will be represented, from his surgical career, to the 20 years he worked at the VA after he retired (finally retiring from full-time work at 85), to his family, his friends, the ghosts of his classmates, etc.  I wonder if they can remember half of what he remembered, half of what he witnessed and saw in his lifetime.  His immediate descendants all live in the Baltimore area, all are still close.  His daughters have each been married around 50 years each.  What a blessing to them it has been to have their anchors, their patriarch, their papa. 

In lieu of the trite RIP which I see emblazoned on car windshields and inked onto biceps, I much prefer to evoke the Jewish tradition of mourning and say, Let his memory be a blessing.  As his life was to all who knew him.

A Thousand Tiny Changes

Mr. Apron and I were discussing last night, or this week, how change comes so very slowly.  We were particularly discussing starting new projects, new careers, new businesses, and how “five year plans” may look very different indeed at the five-year mark from how they were initially projected. 

We then moved onto talk about one of my kiddos at work — I’ll call him Antoin — and how slow his progress is in speech therapy.  I’m pretty sure (110%) he has childhood apraxia of speech, which means he has difficulty sequencing the movements needed for speech.  His speech is enormously difficult to understand and I’ve taken to fretting more than I should about how arduous and painstaking slow his progress has been.  How slow any progress or positive change is. 

Today, I had some blessed down time.  Many children were absent, and the children who were here, I had already seen this week.  I had a lovely lunch with Monet, where she requested for and consumed three bowls of mandarin orange segments, and then I came  back to the office.  I spent the next hour writing up an IEP for this afternoon, and making materials.

In grad school, making materials was a necessity.  There were premade flashcards and commercially available toys and such in the cabinets, but they were often being used by the other 59 student therapists at the clinic, or they were inappropriate for our clients’ needs.  I had one little guy who said so few consonants correctly I couldn’t find any word targets that focused on only one sound he was learning.  So I made my own.  I found and printed images from google image, cut and pasted them onto record jackets (excellent weight cardboard), and laminated them in the back room, inhaling the heady fumes of melting plastic.  At my school-age practicum, I continued to make materials when I grew tired of the materials in the cupboard, or when I was looking to tailor an activity specifically to a child’s targets.  One little boy was having difficulty answering questions and using pronouns correctly.  I don’t even think he knew what I wanted him to do.  I drew a boy and a girl, several props (jump-rope, skateboard, bicycle, book, snacks), and three backdrops (home, school, and playground).  I started by just placing a character on a background, and asking where the boy/girl was.  Since there were few distractions (compared some some I-Spy-style of other illustrations), they had more success.  I upped the ante and gave the boy/girl a prop.  “What is he doing?” I asked.  And they were able to do this.  I worked on “he” and “she”, and even “they”.  The interactive nature of the toy meant I had raptly attentive six-year-old boys, and because the materials were done thoughtfully, I was able to achieve my (and their) objectives.

Today I found myself again making materials.  This time it’s not because there are no commercially available tools, or the center doesn’t have money for educational materials.  The kids in room 6 are starting to get assigned daily “jobs”, such as feeding the fish, holding open the door, and, the perennial favorite, being the line leader.  On Monday I saw them struggling to tell the teacher which job they wanted, without any sort of visual hint.  They ended up asking for jobs that were already taken, or just telling the teacher where they wanted to play.

So today I made a job board.  I found images online, printed, laminated, and glued them to a recycled file folder.  Now the teachers can use clothespins with the kids’ names on them to select daily jobs. 

I presented my gift to the teacher this afternoon.  Why did I bother?  This is not in my job description, per se.  It will end up helping the children I support in that room, but it was not done with them specifically in mind.  I’m not particularly smitten with job boards, but I do love to see kids helping out in the classroom.  After seeing so many daycares where the teachers don’t know what to do with the kids while they, the adults, set the tables, it’s refreshing to see teachers who want a systematic way to involve the kids, and lighten their load. 

But I didn’t set out to that end, either.  There are so many changes I want to make here, so many ways I see I can enrich the experiences of all the children, but I am not their teacher.  Those are not my classrooms.  I do not run them, I do not make my own decisions about materials to go in them, the routines the kids do, or the objectives they learn.  I am part of a team.  If I want to stand a chance at introducing my knowledge and experience in music-based transitions, at brainstorming new ways to organize and stock the house corner, at rearranging the furniture to decrease running and facilitate ample room for circle time, at innovating new art materials, I have to build my rapport with the team.  I have to build relationships and trust with the teachers.

No one likes anyone new to come from “outside” and descend upon her and tell her how to do her job.  I’ve seen and heard the vitriol aimed at the program directors who mix and match lead teachers and associates, who dictate new bizarre mandates, and who change things from above without consulting the teams.  I have no need for those attitudes. 

Even though the changes I want to make are not huge, they are significant, and I need to make baby steps into the collaboration between teachers and therapists.  If change occurs in a thousand tiny moments, I need to seek out and seize those moments as they come by.

And that’s  why I was inhaling the fumes of melting plastic this afternoon — to start making the thousand tiny changes.

Because Jesus doesn’t drive a tow truck

Because I finally have a cell phone camera, I snapped up this piece of Irony, part deux, on my drive home from work:

You may not be able to fully read the bumper stick on the right.  It says “JESUS never fails”.  The one on the right (and, actually, also right beneath the Jesus sticker) is the iconic AAA rectangle.  Because you may trust in Jesus never to fail, but Jesus didn’t build your Lexus, and he sure doesn’t drive a tow truck or carry jumper cables and a spare gallon of gas.  That, my friends would be a useful Jesus.