Contemplating Love and the R

I have been quiet here for a few weeks.  What can I say, but that I lead a boring life?  School with its endless 2nd grade spelling tests and high school essays has consumed us once again.   When I am checking math facts or doing all the crazy things we do for spelling, I have been worrying a few bones of my own.

I really feel that Bell needs a different speech therapist at school, but my attempts at getting her switched have hit a wall.  Apparently the other therapist only sees older students.  Never mind that the current therapist isn't helping.  There is a center in Lawton that does free therapy and I have called  at least twice a week for the past two weeks.  I leave messages.  No one calls back.  I suppose that means the door is shut.  There are other clinics, but they cost a fortune.  When Bell was little, we spent almost a thousand a month on therapy for the first while.  I imagine we wouldn't go as often now, but it would still be a hundred a week.  I don't know where that money would come from.  In the mean time, I wonder if I could deal with this at home if I just knew a little more about how to help her.  We do some practice at home, but I am limited in knowing technique.  Not pursuing this doesn't feel like an option.  People don't get to be president if they can't say their R's.  Bell doesn't yet know what she wants (she says the first job will be to build a machine to dig to the center of the earth to confirm what the core consists of, but then she will think about going to space), but I don't want language to be a barrier for whatever she pursues.   Next year, Bell will be old enough to see the other therapist, but will be it be in time?

Besides the dreaded R, I have spent a lot of time thinking about love and marriage.  Two weeks ago, I found out that an old friend was getting a divorce and then last week, I found out that someone near and dear was also divorcing, leaving some wreckage that will have a pretty serious impact on my family.    On the other end of the spectrum, Cindy has found someone to share her life with, someone she has committed to.  This love she has found makes my heart sing.

  I am reminded how wonderful and exciting love is, but how fragile it becomes if we don't nurture it.  At my brother's wedding in  the fall, Reggie, the preacher, talked about how if a marriage was going to work, people had to choose to walk in love every day.  If they weren't actively and consciously putting on love and fruits of the spirit, they would begin walking in selfishness, pursuing their own desires, choosing impatience . . . And eventually the couple would say "we just aren't in love any more."   Jack and I don't have the perfect marriage, and there were times early on when I thought I had probably ruined his life by marrying him.  However, we continue to practice walking in love, in putting each other and the idea of us above selfish desires.  We get better at this every year, and as we get better at it, it turns out that putting the needs of each other first is self serving.  If I am seeking what is best for him and he is seeking what is best for me, then we are making sure that each other's needs are met. There is no need to be selfish.   An old friend once told me that divorce is inevitable for all couples and that when things stopped being fun, you just move on.  I think that might have been the point when our friendship started to fizzle.  I just can't  be that casual about what I see as commitment.    I have spent a lot of time looking around me the past two weeks - I see a lot of joyful marriages and I see rubble where marriages that once were joyful have been cast aside.  I am so very happy for Cindy, but I am also sober, sad for the endings I also see.

Thursday, of my female students told one of the boys that he was a fool for not dating lots of girls and shopping around.  She suggested that he wouldn't know whether or not a better girl was out there unless he did.  He didn't say much, angered a little.  I rarely jump into my kids' conversations, but I did that day.  I said  the idea that someone else better was always out there contributed to people's dissatisfaction  with their spouses later on,  that this dating and dumping frenzy, rather than waiting and really getting to know someone and then committing if it was right,  was practice for divorce later on. The girl scoffed and said no one ever married their first love and stayed with them and were stupid if they did, staying only out of ignorance. I asked if she was calling my family stupid.  That ended the conversation.