I had never finished college and I finally decided that I had better put some credibility behind my words. I squeaked through the prerequisites by taking a guitar class and a couple weekend workshops on psychology and enrolled in Chiropractic college, the discipline from which all that I knew about the body arose. I later had a nightmare about turning into a doctor in a blue suit, seeing myself as a man at the end of a long hallway of doors to little treatment rooms.
A year before I was to graduate, Joe was run over by a farm tractor outside of Eureka where they lived. He and his little brother had an after school job riding around and picking up the stakes that held up the branches of the peach trees. They were not supervised and in hindsight had no business being there, not even big enough to operate the controls properly. I left school one week into the Fall semester and spent the next 3 months sitting beside his silent, nearly lifeless body.
Just before Christmas, he began to come out of the coma. Talk about the best Christmas present ever....
We spent the whole next year getting him through rehabilitation and therapy, to where Joe could walk (sort of), talk (slowly, if you could understand him), and start to handle basic functions on his own like eating, breathing, dressing, and all the things we take for granted. The second year he spent in the public school for 'special' kids, usually transported in a wheel chair. And I finally finished school, including my internship at school's Chiropractic clinic in El Monte.
The year after that, Joe was welcomed into the Pacific Oaks Mini School where every day he climbed upstairs to the high school classroom over one of the nursery school groups. It was a wonderful place for us.
I took my Chiropractic boards, first in New Mexico, twice in California, missed getting to take Arizona's by one day and finally got that one too. Joe moved back up with Keith, and Alice and I moved to Phoenix, where I worked with a doctor at his office for a while. But he didn't like my leaving to go teach, which I was still trying to do, so we parted ways
Keith and I traded kids back and forth as we all saw fit, kids included in the choice. But I couldn't quite make a living in Arizona so I put my tail between my legs and came back to Southern California. Joe finally graduated from high school, having been given a lot of leeway on courses but nevertheless getting A's in English, in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho. That summer he traveled through Europe with a companion, the trip a gift from his dad who would have wanted to go in his stead.
After that first experience trying to be a 'real' (if chiropractic counts for that) doctor, I settled into just having a part-time office out of my house. I could greet casual patients in my stocking feet, wash dishes when there wasn't much activity, and be home for whatever kids were in and out. It kinda worked. When that wasn't enough, I did the stint at the Eames office as a fill-in, satisfying another side of my creative self. Alice finished at Pasadena Alternative School (see, none of us really fit the conventional mold) just as she turned 15. But that's where we came in.
Whew. Made it through all that. But I left out the whole thing about computers! That fit in when the boys were little, and then again when I was doing the TFH Foundation's newsletters, Alice typing the school plays for English credit. At the Eames office I created listings all the boxes of slides on the computer as part of the Library of Congress records of the materials they were taking over. I linked the image dates and subjects to their 30-year chronology which became a reference for the production of a beautiful big Abrams book on their work. Those were fun times. See? Now was that so hard?
I worked in Alice's office after a year of doing diet counseling for Nutri-System (I needed a job reee-eaall bad!) and automated their office records and processes onto computers. It was one of my biggest technical accomplishments. When my back went out while I was filing, rehab agreed to get my programming skills updated so I could earn a living easier. After taking a whole bunch of courses, I got hired to help teach them and further honed my programming skills. Did a little consulting job that was supposed to last 2 weeks but ended up 6 months, and then went to work for Spelling Entertainment, seated not far from the man I had taken all my classes from (he had recommended they hire me). Now, that's most of it.
I lost a friend to cervical cancer--she was in denial about having it, till it was too late. It was the growth around her kidney that was so painful, got her attention and eventually took her life.
A year before I was to graduate, Joe was run over by a farm tractor outside of Eureka where they lived. He and his little brother had an after school job riding around and picking up the stakes that held up the branches of the peach trees. They were not supervised and in hindsight had no business being there, not even big enough to operate the controls properly. I left school one week into the Fall semester and spent the next 3 months sitting beside his silent, nearly lifeless body.
Just before Christmas, he began to come out of the coma. Talk about the best Christmas present ever....
We spent the whole next year getting him through rehabilitation and therapy, to where Joe could walk (sort of), talk (slowly, if you could understand him), and start to handle basic functions on his own like eating, breathing, dressing, and all the things we take for granted. The second year he spent in the public school for 'special' kids, usually transported in a wheel chair. And I finally finished school, including my internship at school's Chiropractic clinic in El Monte.
The year after that, Joe was welcomed into the Pacific Oaks Mini School where every day he climbed upstairs to the high school classroom over one of the nursery school groups. It was a wonderful place for us.
I took my Chiropractic boards, first in New Mexico, twice in California, missed getting to take Arizona's by one day and finally got that one too. Joe moved back up with Keith, and Alice and I moved to Phoenix, where I worked with a doctor at his office for a while. But he didn't like my leaving to go teach, which I was still trying to do, so we parted ways
Keith and I traded kids back and forth as we all saw fit, kids included in the choice. But I couldn't quite make a living in Arizona so I put my tail between my legs and came back to Southern California. Joe finally graduated from high school, having been given a lot of leeway on courses but nevertheless getting A's in English, in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho. That summer he traveled through Europe with a companion, the trip a gift from his dad who would have wanted to go in his stead.
After that first experience trying to be a 'real' (if chiropractic counts for that) doctor, I settled into just having a part-time office out of my house. I could greet casual patients in my stocking feet, wash dishes when there wasn't much activity, and be home for whatever kids were in and out. It kinda worked. When that wasn't enough, I did the stint at the Eames office as a fill-in, satisfying another side of my creative self. Alice finished at Pasadena Alternative School (see, none of us really fit the conventional mold) just as she turned 15. But that's where we came in.
Whew. Made it through all that. But I left out the whole thing about computers! That fit in when the boys were little, and then again when I was doing the TFH Foundation's newsletters, Alice typing the school plays for English credit. At the Eames office I created listings all the boxes of slides on the computer as part of the Library of Congress records of the materials they were taking over. I linked the image dates and subjects to their 30-year chronology which became a reference for the production of a beautiful big Abrams book on their work. Those were fun times. See? Now was that so hard?
I worked in Alice's office after a year of doing diet counseling for Nutri-System (I needed a job reee-eaall bad!) and automated their office records and processes onto computers. It was one of my biggest technical accomplishments. When my back went out while I was filing, rehab agreed to get my programming skills updated so I could earn a living easier. After taking a whole bunch of courses, I got hired to help teach them and further honed my programming skills. Did a little consulting job that was supposed to last 2 weeks but ended up 6 months, and then went to work for Spelling Entertainment, seated not far from the man I had taken all my classes from (he had recommended they hire me). Now, that's most of it.
I lost a friend to cervical cancer--she was in denial about having it, till it was too late. It was the growth around her kidney that was so painful, got her attention and eventually took her life.
posted by Mary Smith at 9:59 AM
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