So, here's an update
Friday, 10 June 2016 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"Why Don't You Just Dot The O, And Be Tim?"*
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My mother is making sounds and, very occasionally, words. It's disconcerting. She'll be muttering, saying, "Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh," no words, but with the cadence of a conversation. And then it will be, "Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh, but ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh," which, I have to tell you, is just freaky. The sounds-that-aren't-words is frustrating, but that occasional word thrown in is maddening. It's like a code I can't decipher.
Her eyes are bright. She's very engaged. She has a lot to say, but she can't make the words to say it. I have to keep telling her I can't understand her which frustrates her and leaves me feeling inadequate. I'm supposed take care of everything and how can I take care of things I don't understand?
She's doing speech therapy, and apparently—writing therapy? I don't know what you'd call it, but when I visited today she had a pen and paper and she's writing maiden name. The first few letters are good, readable, but the last few aren't. There were also a lot of loops and squiggles.
That was really odd for me. (And it is all about me.)
Before I learned to read, I was trying to learn to write. I wasn't trying to learn to read—I had no need to learn to read, people read to me. But nobody could write for me, and apparently I had things to say.
I knew what handwriting looked like, so I would make loops across a page—probably the only word I could have made from that would be "eel." I also understood about i's and t's—I knew you crossed some of them and dotted others. I would show this to my mother and ask if there were any words there.
I know now how bass-ackwards this was, not unlike saying nonsense syllables in the hopes of stumbling on language. But, to a very real extent, that's exactly how we learn to talk. A baby makes a "mmmmm" sound and the grownups go crazy and say claim they're saying mommy. Positive reinforcement makes the baby repeat that sound. Personally, I think that's how the words for mother came to be. M is a really easy sound to make.
That's probably enough digression.
I have no idea what's going on with my mother. She can't hear, she can't speak, and she can only see out of one eye. She's in kidney failure and she's in a-fib and she's not eating. But she's happy when I bring her sprigs of lavender and she has things to say, even if no-one can understand her.
*Steve Allen
-:- -:- -:- -:-
My mother is making sounds and, very occasionally, words. It's disconcerting. She'll be muttering, saying, "Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh," no words, but with the cadence of a conversation. And then it will be, "Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh, but ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh," which, I have to tell you, is just freaky. The sounds-that-aren't-words is frustrating, but that occasional word thrown in is maddening. It's like a code I can't decipher.
Her eyes are bright. She's very engaged. She has a lot to say, but she can't make the words to say it. I have to keep telling her I can't understand her which frustrates her and leaves me feeling inadequate. I'm supposed take care of everything and how can I take care of things I don't understand?
She's doing speech therapy, and apparently—writing therapy? I don't know what you'd call it, but when I visited today she had a pen and paper and she's writing maiden name. The first few letters are good, readable, but the last few aren't. There were also a lot of loops and squiggles.
That was really odd for me. (And it is all about me.)
Before I learned to read, I was trying to learn to write. I wasn't trying to learn to read—I had no need to learn to read, people read to me. But nobody could write for me, and apparently I had things to say.
I knew what handwriting looked like, so I would make loops across a page—probably the only word I could have made from that would be "eel." I also understood about i's and t's—I knew you crossed some of them and dotted others. I would show this to my mother and ask if there were any words there.
I know now how bass-ackwards this was, not unlike saying nonsense syllables in the hopes of stumbling on language. But, to a very real extent, that's exactly how we learn to talk. A baby makes a "mmmmm" sound and the grownups go crazy and say claim they're saying mommy. Positive reinforcement makes the baby repeat that sound. Personally, I think that's how the words for mother came to be. M is a really easy sound to make.
That's probably enough digression.
I have no idea what's going on with my mother. She can't hear, she can't speak, and she can only see out of one eye. She's in kidney failure and she's in a-fib and she's not eating. But she's happy when I bring her sprigs of lavender and she has things to say, even if no-one can understand her.
*Steve Allen