Same Song, New Verse
I don't know if I've ever talked about the Russian lady I'm helping learn English. Thursdays are usually our day to get together. Today ended up being a little different than usual...
Her name is Nina, and she's in her latter 70's. She's the mother of a friend of my daughter's, and she emigrated to the US to be with her daughter here and got her citizenship about six years ago. Her English is minimal at best, and I had taken it upon myself to meet with her at her house once a week for about an hour to help her learn English. She insisted, and I didn't argue at all, that she would at the same time teach me a little Russian. We've been at it for maybe three years now, and while her English is still broken, at least my Russian is at the cracked and crazed point. Good news: I'm learning to read the Cyrillic alphabet, so that helps a little.
If only I knew a native Sindarin speaker, I'd make a similar arrangement, and maybe be better at reading Tengwar!!!
AAAAaaaaaaanyhoo...
All of that is prologue. Many of you who have known me for a while know that I spent a good number of years being a caretaker for my elderly parents in their declining years. All of that was good practice when I got a rather frantic call from Nina today saying she was "down" and needed to go to the hospital. Mind, she's 76 and had a small stroke a number of years ago - so of course I was rushing to her house and hoping she was ambulatory at least.
She was. We went to the ER, I was with her as she was scanned, x-ray'ed and then given pain meds. Over time, I came to understand this poor lady had tripped and fallen while walking her dog - and then lay there trying to wave and catch somebody's attention to help her, to no avail. She finally made it home and called me. Can you imagine what that poor lady went through???
Chills my soul!!
Well, time & a half went by as she lay there in the ER. Finally she was diagnosed with a fractured wrist, put in a splint and sent home. As she moved about the house, she got paler and paler, sicker and sicker. I figured maybe it was the shock settling in, because not only had she been injured, but she was very clear that she would have been "very scary" if she'd been alone. No - I got a call from the bone doctor she'd been referred to, telling me they'd given her the wrong kind of splint and needed her back at the ER post-haste to correct the error, lest she be in a LOT of pain and chance needing surgery if the bones moved out of place.
Long story cut short (yea, I know, not really - sorry about that!) she now has the right kind of splint - from upper arm all the way to mid-fingers - and now a prescription for Vicodin for pain (and understands the dosage). She's home, promises she's gonna be okay, and I'm not too worried when I had to leave to come home. And it seems I'm back to taking care of an older person, for not only will I be taking her back to the hospital to be re-x-ray'ed next Thursday, but Tuesday to another doctor she needs to see. Seems her daughter simply doesn't have the time to take care of her mom - and I guess I'll be filling the gap.
I don't mind at all. Nina is as sweet as they come, a little five foot no inches dynamo under normal circumstance, and we have a ball between her cracked English and my broken Russian (provided at least one of us has our Russian<>English dictionaries at hand). We talk politics, current events, compare/contrast US-Russian culture and daily life. She's no dummy: she has an advanced degree in civil (I think) engineering from back home and is very intelligent. But here in the US she's isolated by language and the fact that her home is in kind of a back corner of a little rural village setting. There are other Russians there - it is an enclave of sorts - but most of them are busy with their lives and careers.
The point my blogging this tale is that you never know when Life™ will turn around and give you a similar situation all over again. I never imagined, when I knew my time caring for my parents was at an end (and I was through the grieving process that comes with losing both of them in the space of six months' time) that I would be shouldering a similar job for someone else's mom. Do I mind it? Not in the least. Nina takes care of her grand-daughter all the time, and I've seen how both daughter and grand-daughter treat her - and I don't like what I see at all. She's not a servant!!! So I get a chance to spoil her a little, and I think I'm the lucky one. What's more, she knows that if she needs help, I'm only a phone call away - and I can only hope that gives her just a little security in such a strange and difficult place far from her real home.
It's been a long day. I'll be calling Nina in the morning to make sure she's okay, and I've talked to others in the village and know that they'll be looking in & checking up on her too. Life™ is so interesting and unexpected.
Her name is Nina, and she's in her latter 70's. She's the mother of a friend of my daughter's, and she emigrated to the US to be with her daughter here and got her citizenship about six years ago. Her English is minimal at best, and I had taken it upon myself to meet with her at her house once a week for about an hour to help her learn English. She insisted, and I didn't argue at all, that she would at the same time teach me a little Russian. We've been at it for maybe three years now, and while her English is still broken, at least my Russian is at the cracked and crazed point. Good news: I'm learning to read the Cyrillic alphabet, so that helps a little.
If only I knew a native Sindarin speaker, I'd make a similar arrangement, and maybe be better at reading Tengwar!!!
AAAAaaaaaaanyhoo...
All of that is prologue. Many of you who have known me for a while know that I spent a good number of years being a caretaker for my elderly parents in their declining years. All of that was good practice when I got a rather frantic call from Nina today saying she was "down" and needed to go to the hospital. Mind, she's 76 and had a small stroke a number of years ago - so of course I was rushing to her house and hoping she was ambulatory at least.
She was. We went to the ER, I was with her as she was scanned, x-ray'ed and then given pain meds. Over time, I came to understand this poor lady had tripped and fallen while walking her dog - and then lay there trying to wave and catch somebody's attention to help her, to no avail. She finally made it home and called me. Can you imagine what that poor lady went through???
Chills my soul!!
Well, time & a half went by as she lay there in the ER. Finally she was diagnosed with a fractured wrist, put in a splint and sent home. As she moved about the house, she got paler and paler, sicker and sicker. I figured maybe it was the shock settling in, because not only had she been injured, but she was very clear that she would have been "very scary" if she'd been alone. No - I got a call from the bone doctor she'd been referred to, telling me they'd given her the wrong kind of splint and needed her back at the ER post-haste to correct the error, lest she be in a LOT of pain and chance needing surgery if the bones moved out of place.
Long story cut short (yea, I know, not really - sorry about that!) she now has the right kind of splint - from upper arm all the way to mid-fingers - and now a prescription for Vicodin for pain (and understands the dosage). She's home, promises she's gonna be okay, and I'm not too worried when I had to leave to come home. And it seems I'm back to taking care of an older person, for not only will I be taking her back to the hospital to be re-x-ray'ed next Thursday, but Tuesday to another doctor she needs to see. Seems her daughter simply doesn't have the time to take care of her mom - and I guess I'll be filling the gap.
I don't mind at all. Nina is as sweet as they come, a little five foot no inches dynamo under normal circumstance, and we have a ball between her cracked English and my broken Russian (provided at least one of us has our Russian<>English dictionaries at hand). We talk politics, current events, compare/contrast US-Russian culture and daily life. She's no dummy: she has an advanced degree in civil (I think) engineering from back home and is very intelligent. But here in the US she's isolated by language and the fact that her home is in kind of a back corner of a little rural village setting. There are other Russians there - it is an enclave of sorts - but most of them are busy with their lives and careers.
The point my blogging this tale is that you never know when Life™ will turn around and give you a similar situation all over again. I never imagined, when I knew my time caring for my parents was at an end (and I was through the grieving process that comes with losing both of them in the space of six months' time) that I would be shouldering a similar job for someone else's mom. Do I mind it? Not in the least. Nina takes care of her grand-daughter all the time, and I've seen how both daughter and grand-daughter treat her - and I don't like what I see at all. She's not a servant!!! So I get a chance to spoil her a little, and I think I'm the lucky one. What's more, she knows that if she needs help, I'm only a phone call away - and I can only hope that gives her just a little security in such a strange and difficult place far from her real home.
It's been a long day. I'll be calling Nina in the morning to make sure she's okay, and I've talked to others in the village and know that they'll be looking in & checking up on her too. Life™ is so interesting and unexpected.