Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #17 - Memorial Service pt. 6 - school

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #17 - Memorial Service pt. 6 - school

Hi Mom,

I wish I had a picture of you studying or at school. As far as I know, we do not have such a picture, but then, I am not done going through all the pictures.

Nevertheless, this is a great picture, don't you think?

Your smile is caught halfway between neutral and a smile. Kind of a "neutile." Or a "smeutral." Okay, I am reaching, I know. Still, it was the best photo I had for this entry that seemed distantly school related.

I also like the severe lighting from the camera flash.

Here's the next part of the Memorial Service talk, following from the previous #5:

As you can see the nicknames inter-relate. She was frantically trying to do everything, much too much, and her other mode was being intense. She was intense about everything.

In the early 1990s, she decided to go back to school and finish her college degree, and we observed the collision of both nicknames on a nearly daily basis. My mother was not much for computer use (and this was in the very early days back when we used big floppy disks), and so she wrote all her papers long hand, and I edited and typed them for her. She would go over and over the papers. If one had even a smudge, it had to be printed again. I think we printed one a dozen times. I had always known my mother was particular, but her return to school showed me how much of a perfectionist she could be.
She was very intense about her studies. She would recopy notes multiple times. She would recopy from the recording she made of class periods. She would re-listen, often multiple times, to her recordings while ironing or doing other tasks. She would shut herself in a window-less bathroom with the fan on to provide white noise and study for hours and hours while sitting on a pillow on the toilet. Flash cards, notes, the text book, all the review exercises, the workbooks. Everything and more. She achieved perfect scores nearly all the time on everything as she set the class performance bar for excellence very high. Then again, she only ever took one class at a time.

I was so proud of you for going back to school, Mom. I thought I was a good student when I wanted to be, but watching you study, how hard you worked, it was an inspiration. No normal person with other obligations, like a job, or other classes, could possibly do all that you did in your intensity for school. You are such a perfectionist.

I like that you trusted me to select an English teacher for you when you wanted to take English 105 -- Sherry Dykstra, who was the perfect choice for the kind of student you were. BTW, I tried to find Sherry via Facebook to tell her that you passed away, but I can't find her. She may have a different last name now.

Though I did not show it at the time, and though I was frequently a jerk about how annoyed I seemed with you, it meant so much me that you relied on me to help you with your school work.

For my readers, I was never an unrelenting jerk, and I would apologize and lovingly help you, right Mom?

I would not trade those times for anything.

I think of you often at both WMU and KVCC, and all the good times you had there.

But I will never be able to live up to your example.

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- Days ago = 18 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1507.22 - 17:53