Watering the Plants

I am lying in one of the hammocks in the atrium and noticing that our two hanging plants are becoming wilted and dying. With 7 people living in the house I’m sure we have all thought that someone else is probably taking care of them. So, I am going to stop playing a part in this distributive responsibility mentality and do something about it. I am going to single-handedly save the lives of these plants. I get up, fill a pitcher with water, and nourish the moribund shrubs with a sense of self-righteousness. I am doing something good. I lie back down in the hammock to gaze upon my good deed. But, my feeling of self-righteousness quickly retreats with the lack of immediate satisfaction. I am still looking at two wilted, dying plants.

She is saying something to me, but I cannot understand her. I’m hearing the words but they are not making sense to me when I mentally reconstruct her sentence in English. This is the third person that I have had trouble understanding. What’s wrong with my Spanish today? I felt so good about it just three days earlier and was encouraged by my progress so far. Slowly, I am coming to the realization that this is not something that just clicks one day, like algebra, and I can now move on to calculus. No, it is a lifetime of slow progress. Little by little learning something new everyday. Language is like Math itself, not the subjects within it. It takes a PhD in Mathematical theory before the student can look back and say he understands how numbers work. Every day before, he was building his knowledge. Building and building.

Pamela is not concentrating. She keeps telling me that 9 minus 3 is 5. We have spent 5 minutes on this one problem and I am working hard to keep the muscles in my face from displaying bewilderment. I don’t want to make her feel stupid with my reaction. But, she is one of the smartest kids in our program. Being only 9, she can learn any new material quicker than most of the kids who are older than her. In addition, I work with her everyday on math and I know that she can do better than this. I have seen her breeze through 4 digit multiplication problems. She has risen from being one of the shyest kids in the program, lacking self-confidence, to one of the best and brightest. She may be the best example we have of what service can do for kids who are capable and just need a little extra attention. But today, we’re hung up on single digit subtraction. And Today, my patience is waning. With a look of indignation, I tell her she has 10 minutes to finish her 20 math problems. She gets wide-eyed, puts her head down, and plows through to end without making a single mistake, and she did it in just 7 minutes. That’s more like it.

Day after day, I continue to water the plants.