Learning

The Journey to My First Bike: A Childhood Story

Despite not getting a one fot Christmas, I was obsessed with learning to ride a bike. In case you didn’t know, kids with bikes aren’t interested in sharing them. I couldn’t just borrow an hour of “bike time.” I felt sure that the hard part was getting my hands on a bike, not the learning part.

Finally, my hopes were realized. My dad decided to visit an old Navy buddy. Conveniently, the family had three boys in my age range, each with a bike. I was in heaven. There was a bike available to me at all times. I didn’t waste the opportunity. I’d push a bike alongside a fence, or porch and push off. In my frantic determination to learn, I could actually ride by to evening of the first day. I spent the remainder of that trip in non-stop riding.

My parents were impressed that I’d learned to ride. My success made me even more desperate. The following Christmas, I actually got a bike! It wasn’t the blue Schwinn Spitfire I’d been hoping for but a perfectly adequate used bike with a new paint job and new tires. I was ecstatic! It was a bike! I felt like I’d been given wings.

Sew and Sew Part 4

I went to a tiny high school. There were only nine in my graduating class. All the girls had to take four years of Home Economics, the boys four years of agriculture. I benefited from the sewing instruction. I was horrified to learn what my sewing project was to be my senior year. We were to make a fully-lined wool tailored suit with lapels, welt pockets, bound buttonholes, and set in sleeves. The skirt had side pockets and a set-in waistband. The other concern was the extreme cost of the fabric. I’d never sewn fabric that expensive, not to mention it would be an extreme stressor to my family’s budget. Somehow, they came up with enough money, forty-five dollars.

I was terrified to put scissors to the fabric. I measured, pinned, remeasured, and could finally could put off the cutting no longer. I had the teacher check every step. Each day, I folded every precious piece carefully and put it in my sewing box, terrified one would slip into the trash and doom my project.

My anxiety increased exponentially when my friend, Mary, folded her scissors inside her jacket pieces. She was devastated the next morning to unpack her project and found her scissors had cut a one inch slash in the right front portion of her jacket. Naturally, she was distraught. The whole class was traumatized, seeing her disaster. She had no extra fabric.

The teacher comforted her, assured Mary there was a solution, and showed us all the pattern could easily be altered to put a pocket with a flap on both sides of the jacket. The change actually was more attractive than the original design.

That lesson amazed me, increasing my confidence. I was able to go forward with less reassurance, competing my project with pride. I wore that suit with confidence. It was one of the nicer outfits I ever owned. Mary’s suit turned out beautifully as well.

From that point forward, I knew that if I didn’t have the skills I needed, I could research and get the information I needed. Sewing has served me well. I bought a sewing machine and made everything the children and I wore until peer pressure made them insist on name brand clothes.

This is the exact pattern I used.

Learning to Knit for a Total Beginner: starting with the Basics

I am teaching myself knitting

This is the first challenge I’m facing. My precious little lapdog is very needy. He’s just realized how much he always wanted to knit.

I went for a couple of sessions of knitting class just before the COVID shutdown. I managed to cast on and do a couple of rows in the first class. We were instructed to do a few more practice rows before the next class. I waited to continue until right before the next class. Everything I had struggled to learn in class abandoned me. Bud offered to help me after studying what I’d done. When I got back, the instructor was impressed. “You can help me teach this class.”

I had to fess up, Bud did the work I was showing. I plugged on through the class making no progress. COVID cancelled the class. I wasn’t sorry.

Anyway. I am giving it another shot. I gathered my supplies, found a Youtube tutor and set to it. So far, I did moderately fair with casting on. Time to go back and study the Tutorial so more.

I Am So Sorry, Rosie. I Didn’t Know.

black maidThis is updated post. Please excuse the offensive word used in context in this story.

Rosie was beautiful, the first black woman I ever knew.  She tolerated my stroking her creamy, caramel-colored legs as she washed dishes or ironed. Her crisply starched cotton housedresses smelled just like sunshine.  Normally, I trailed my mother, but on the days Rosie was there, she couldn’t stop suddenly without my bumping her.  Rosie ate standing up at the kitchen counter with her own special dishes while I ate at the kitchen table.  I wanted to eat standing at the counter with her but wasn’t tall enough.  One day as we ate, she told me she had a little girl.  Pearl was three years old, just my age,  Three years old.  I was enchanted.  “Is she a nigger girl?”  Rosie’s face fell.

“Don’t say ‘nigger.’  That’s a mean word. Say ‘colored’.”  I was surprised Rosie corrected me, not knowing I’d done anything wrong.   I was also surprised to hear “nigger” was a mean word.  I’d heard it many times.

Rosie said no more.  I was relieved when she seemed to have forgiven me, soon allowing me to hug her and stroke her beautiful, smooth legs as she worked along.

It was years before I realized how deeply I’d hurt her.  I am so, so sorry Rosie.  I wish I could unsay that awful thing.

Addendum; I was raised in the deep South, before the Civil Rights Struggle began. My home was as prejudiced as any. I went to a segregated school and knew a black child. Should we meet on the street on the street, we just stared open-mouthed at each other. I believed the lie until I went to college and made black friends. My eyes were opened! Why is is so hard to learn that people are just people?

Lessons From Michael

A few months into my first nursing job, I met Michael, the patient who put me on the road to true nursing. Still limping down the painful road from enjoying success in nursing school to putting it into practice, I drove home most days thinking, “I can’t go back tomorrow. I can’t go back tomorrow.” I lived in terror of getting caught alone with a patient whose survival depended on all that “nursing magic” that had so far eluded me.  Orienting on an acute dialysis unit, my only useful skills were a pretty good nursing vocabulary, understanding of aseptic technique, and the complete understanding that there was no question too stupid for me to ask. I would have never have made it if my supervisor had been one of those who “ate her young.” (terrorized new nurses)

I was assigned to care for Michael. Though I didn’t voice it, I thought Michael’s family ought to think twice before subjecting him to dialysis. He was thirty-six years old with Down’s Syndrome and its many cardiac complications, diabetic, had hepatitis B, and now needed dialysis. I worried about how he would deal with it at his three-year-old functional level.  Selfishly, I dreaded caring for him, thinking he would challenge my meager nursing skills.

I could have saved my worry. Michael stole every heart in the dialysis unit. He was smiling when his mother brought him in, did everything he was asked, dealt with his pain, and was the kindest patient I ever had the privilege of caring for. I loved him dearly, and treasured every moment I got to spend with him over the short three years I had the gift of being his nurse. Thanks to Michael, I learned compassion and humility. Every soul has value and something to share.

Things I Wish I’d Known in My Teens

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a person had the benefit of experience in their teens, but there’s only one way to have that view. I wish I really could have known these things  when I was struggling:

1.  Pimples don’t last forever.

2.  Don’t waste time trying to get in with the “cool” kids.  Real friends are accepting, not exclusionary.

3.  It’s okay not to have a boyfriend or girlfriend.  There’s plenty of time for that.  It’s not a contest.

4.  If you have a bad feeling about something, avoid it.  You have instincts for a reason.

5.  No need to make excuses for meanness.   Every person is responsible for himself.

5.  Don’t excuse cruelty.  People don’t hurt you because they love you.  They hurt you because they want to.

6.  People mean what they say in anger.  Anger is like alcohol.  It loosens inhibitions.

7.  My parents weren’t malicious.  They were just human with a houseful of kids and  many demands on their time and resources.  They were looking at the big picture.

8.  Work a little harder in school.