Thursday, Jan. 10

Today is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me!

We were up around 8 a.m. on this foggy gray day, and I skipped my exercises so I could get ready to go to the coffee house later in the morning to meet with my ESL student, at her request.

Hubbie accompanied Mother to our house around 9:30, and then he headed to his Master Gardener meeting, scheduled for 10 a.m. Mother and I chatted until it was time for me to leave just before 11 a.m.

By the time I arrived at the coffee house, my student was already there, along with her Spanish friend from Columbia. The friend works at the coffee house in the afternoons.

After we'd ordered cups of chai tea, we all made ourselves comfortable in a small area with couches and large coffee table. The friend speaks limited English, though she has lived in the U.S. for fourteen years, among family who speak the language fluently.

The thing is, she has only recently moved to our small town from Miami, Florida, where she lived in a part of the city occupied largely by hispanics. So she felt no need to learn English. Now, though, she sees that she needs to, so she has recently started attending study sessions. The Literacy Council director is her tutor.

In two or three months, though, she and her family will be moving to another part of the state, to a large city. She doesn't enjoy our small town, because of the lack of shopping malls, entertainment, etc.

Aside from giving a thumbs-down to our town, though, she's a very nice lady, who enthusiastically pulled out photos of her daughters and grandchildren to show me. She also showed me a shelf of paintings and costume jewelry she had made, and that is for sale at the coffee house.

The jewelry is made from colorful polished seeds (semilla) from plants and trees indiginous to South America. I found them to be fascinating and said so, whereupon she presented me with a keychain/purse charm, fashioned from several sizes, shapes, and colors of seeds, in honor of my birthday. It's very striking. If there's one thing I've learned about Spanish folks, it's that they are overwhelmingly generous.

My student is another example...today, she presented me with both a belated Christmas gift, and a birthday gift. For Christmas, she gave me a dressy blouse, and for my birthday, she gave me a knit shirt and a vest. The vest is in colors of pumpkin and brown, and the shirt is beige. The scoop necked blouse is a subtle pattern of brown, green, and dark red.

After a few minutes, the Colombian lady left, and my student and I spent quite a while chatting. I learned that she and her family are in transition. She and her husband have spent the last year caring for her husband's mother and father. The mother is suffering from alzheimer's.

This has meant that she and her husband have been pretty much confined to the home, or at least one or the other of them has to be there to attend to the mother. So they cannot make plans for their own lives.

At Christmas, a few days after the student had been ill with flu, her husband's sister suggested that the parents now need to be admitted to a nursing home, and their home needs to be sold to pay the expenses.

Now, the student feels she needs to find employment. To that end, she has developed a resume'. She asked if she could use me as a reference, and I agreed, of course.

She is interested in being an insurance agent, a job she held when she was in Venezuela, but she will need to study to become licensed, and before that, she'd need to become a U.S. citizen. In the meantime, she's interested in other ideas, like working with the elderly.

So I will help her find a nursing assistant job. I'm sure I can get the ball rolling by calling the home medical services agency for which I volunteer.

All of these new developments have overwhelmed my student, and in talking about them, she suddenly burst into tears. She is a person who is not comfortable with uncertainty. She wants her path to follow a straight line.

I consoled her, telling her that she should just take things one day at a time. Just do whatever needed to be done today, and then do whatever needs to be done tomorrow, but don't try to take the whole situation in one gulp.

She laughed when I said she should eat her elephant one bite at a time. I guess she'd never heard that one before. By the end of our visit, she said she felt much better. I'm glad.

It was 12:30 before I got back home. By then, Hubbie had returned from his meeting, and he and Mother had eaten lunch. He heated split pea soup for me.

After lunch, Mother returned to her jigsaw puzzle, Hubbie pursued his own activities, including reading a novel on the e-reader, and I enjoyed a nice long conversation with Daughter, who called to wish me a happy birthday.

Then I opened the box that contained my new e-reader/tablet, which arrived a couple of days ago, but which I was waiting until today to open. I registered it, connected to wi-fi, and started it downloading materials, including all the books that are on the old e-reader. Since both devices are on the same account, it automatically put the books on the new reader. They remain on the old reader, too, so Hubbie can enjoy them.

Later, Hubbie, Mother, and I joined forces to make a birthday supper for me. I hankered for fried chicken, mashed potatoes and white gravy, and fried green tomatoes. Hubbie peeled and quartered potatoes, Mother dredged the tomatoes in cornmeal, flour, spices, and egg, and the chicken in flour and spices, and I cooked everything.

It was really a comforting and delicious meal, which we followed with slices of angel food cake and strawberries. I then opened cards from Mother and Hubbie. The cards are beautiful, and the sentiments are, too. Mother's card included a gift card to the local book/movie/music store. I'll have fun using that.

After supper, Hubbie accompanied Mother to her house, and then he and I watched the first episode of this season's "Downton Abbey." Such a good show.

Of course, I also played with my new e-reader/tablet, setting up e-mail, my social network site, and downloading free games. So far, I've had no problem exploring the unit, but then I haven't tried everything yet.

Note: continuing the saga of the doctor who is in jail after being arrested for terroristic threatening and carrying a gun to the hospital...his daughter has gained full guardianship of her mother. Now her property and assets cannot be claimed by her husband. The daughter can use full discretion in the medical care of her mother, and in how often her father can visit her mother. This is a terrible way for an elderly couple to end their days...she with alzheimer's disease, and he in jail.

In the news tonight, too: a woman we know (her husband was my professor in college) had her purse snatched, while she was shopping at the WDCS. She didn't notice it until she arrived at the checkout. It must have been taken from the shopping cart while her back was turned. The purse was later found, but of course all her cash and credit cards were missing.

I never turn my back on my purse. I throw it over my shoulder when I need to turn away to browse the shelves. It's never open, either. I often see purses laying wide open in shopping carts, which is an invitation for a thief to walk by and remove wallets or other valuables.

I've learned my lesson, after having left my purse behind in shopping carts on the parking lot (I was fortunate to get them back, with no money or cards stolen), and after losing some money when I left a purse hanging on a hook in a department store dressing room.