My daughter is taking Calculus at college. Two hours nightly she works through problem sets with her father; he in Concord, my daughter in Vermont. It is hard, hard work given her challenges with numerical sense; an outcome of trauma to her left lobe. I remember slogging through partial differentials with my father, face to face, as an engineering student. It was hard work and math was a strength. This tenacious purpose -- to make good in Calculus -- to enable her to go to vet school gives ME strength. It allows me to sleep at night, knowing that this purpose burns in her.
I am dreaming of having a purpose and I think it is about identifying all the digital appliances (soft and hard) that can automate the things that are hard but trivial. Isabel forgets where her phone is. There's an app for that. Her concept of time is completely different that the world around her. A shower can last for 60 minutes. Days and weeks seem to be inter-changable. Meals are often missed. There must be an app that corrects for this. Perhaps my instantaneous decision to go to engineering school, +30 years ago, was a preparation. Likewise, my husband's mathematical talent was a gift in preparation.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
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