Labor Day 2020

TERRY

Terry continues to take life one day at a time.  IF there is progress it is very slow but she is a trooper.  She keeps her head high and tries her best to make progress.  There are some tiny things that she is doing that make life a bit more normal but I need not write about them!  I am hoping that we can start, this week, getting her off the feeding tube but that is MY desire and am not sure it will happen.  I do think that IF we could disconnect the tube and start the healing process after it is removed that would be a big step forward but of course we do not want to do it TOO soon as she needs nourishment to recover.  To remove the tube a doctor has to do that and it is a surgery as it needs to be sewed up.  As of this Thursday it will be 10 weeks.  So far we have been able to keep it clean and there has been NO infection but the doctor said that it would be great to get it out whenever possible as that is a situation waiting to start trouble.  Anyway we will see.  Terry has gotten some of her appetite back so that is very good.

Here we are at Labor Day 2020.  This is supposed to be the end of summer and I have heard that after Labor Day one is not to wear white pants!  I am not sure that makes any sense but I THINK I have heard that!  For 38 Labor Days I spent some of the day thinking about the new students I would meet for the first time tomorrow.  Now, for the last 14 Labor Days, I have thought about the fall work that needs to be done!  Not a word about students have I had.  For many years I thought about when to get the wooden screens off and the wooden storm windows on.  I have thought about what to do for the lawn before the first snow falls.  Etc Etc.  Now I have no thoughts like that either.  Putting storms and screens on is a thing of the past and as for the lawn--I am about 2000 miles away.  For today my only thoughts are how/when will Terry get better.  It is an all consuming mind set.  

Labor Day 1969

My mind was not on the day at all.  Here Gail and I were settled into our spartan like apartment on the second floor of Old Main at the North Dakota School for the Deaf.  We had NO kitchen but could use the one in the basement of the new building.  There was old furniture and for a bed we tied two singles together with rope!  We were a step above my farm life as we did have a toilet.  Anyway my mind was far from any of that.  Tomorrow, September 2nd, I would walk into my very first classroom of deaf students, a fourth grade class.  I knew all of them as I had spent 6 of the 9 months of my senior year of college at the school.  The class I was getting was a class no other teachers wanted.  There was Loren a red head with a temper to go with it.  There was another Loren who as a fourth grader already had the reputation of being one of the more ornery kids at school.  He later ended up in prison for a while.  There was Diana who had poor eye sight, NO ears and a deformed face.  There was Jim who at the age of 11 probably could not add 10 + 10.  There was Cheryl who was pretty much in Jim's corner and then there was Mary Ann who already was the flirt of the school!  There also was Roger who was my favorite student.  He came from a farm north of Devils Lake and  and he did not have the best memory but he just was a fun kid to have in class.  All year long I tried to get him to use the correct tense of verbs but for the most part I failed.  Then towards the end of the school year his dad came to pick him up early on a Friday so he came to the classroom.  He talked just like Roger!!!  End of case.   Remember I was supposed to teach these kids each day and after a year have them on their way to learning!!!  I had my ideas for discipline and I also had my ideas about how to control and teach these kids.  I am not sure how successful I was but much to my dismay the superintendent decided I should teach 5th grade the next year with the SAME kids!!!  

So one can see that Labor Day actually has it's name correctly as I pretty much labored all day for the opening of school the next day.  I made it through that first year with sweat, actually some blood, and many long long days and nights.  I always made it a point of getting home kind of early on Friday to be with family and this first year I lived for Fridays.  That is Friday at 3:30!  I did not follow all the kids over the years but I do know that the Loren with red hair actually went to college.

So here I am on Labor Day with few thoughts on my mind.  I want to take a walk with Terry and I want to see her feel better and have as good a day as possible when one can not walk.  Yes, it is one day at a time.

My FP is gone and the day has begun.