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Monday Memories: My Hero?

4/25/2022

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I wasn't present for what I'm about to relate. Everything you read is from my imagination, so...I added a little drama...just for your enjoyment. (Or is it mine?)

When: Spring 1984
Where: A conference room at an elementary school
Who: A principal, a note-taker, my mother, and Mrs. Marshall (my teacher)

"We have the results of all the testing we did for your daughter," the note-taker announces. "While she is a smart young lady, she struggles to pay attention and complete tasks. She is more concerned with social things and has difficulty disciplining herself to learn."

"And what does this mean?" my mother asks.

The principal leans forward and links her hands as she sets them on the long, narrow table, "It means she is going to need more support in order to learn. She has a disability that is keeping her from rising to her full potential."

Mrs. Marshall refrains from sighing and instead smooths her bouffant. Her wrinkled face is carefully powdered, her eyebrows artfully brushed and plucked to create the perfect arch. Her turquoise silk blouse is neatly tucked into her beige slacks, and a gold necklace is clasped around her neck. She counts to ten in her head and waits.

"Disability?" my mother prods. "And that is?"

"All the testing shows your daughter has ADHD, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder." The note-taker busily scribbles all that is said as she continues. "It can be controlled with medicine, and you'll need to speak to your pediatrician. Learning is possible for her, but it will always be difficult for her to sustain the necessary attention required. There are supports we can put into place that will help her during class, but medicine will really provide the foundation."

My mother's brow furrows, and Mrs. Marshall takes note.

"What are the side affects of medicine?" The uncertainty in my mother's tone is simple to detect.

"Oh," the principal makes a dismissive gesture, "that depends on the type, but usually they are minimal and the help the drug can provide outweighs the cost."

My mother taps a thoughtful finger on the table. "I'm not sure I-"

"There is another issue to consider," the note-taker interjects. "Kara hasn't achieved the progress and growth necessary to move on to fourth grade."

My mother rears back. "She has passed all her subjects so far." She turns questioning eyes onto Mrs. Marshall.

Mrs. Marshall prepares herself for battle, squaring her shoulders. "Yes, she has demonstrated appropriate understanding of all academic areas. It's true she has difficulty attending, but somehow she manages to learn what is needed. Eventually."

My mother looks back at the note-taker whose gapes at Mrs. Marshall.

"I think what we're actually referring to is her social and emotional growth," the principal adds. "School is not Kara's forte. What usually hurts her are the demands learning puts on her. When you couple that with the complexities of forming friendships with her peers, all of it causes her emotional distress. You can see her sadness and confusion."

"Humph," Mrs. Marshall breaks in. "And forcing her to repeat third grade will make her happier?"

"It will give her the opportunity to mature, and perhaps she'll find friends more her style." The note-taker has paused in her scribbling.

Mrs. Marshall leans forward, raising her brow at the woman who has spent only a few days with the student. "Kara struggles with her peers because she doesn't tolerate meanness. She has an astounding imagination and creates perfectly beautiful stories. Math isn't her love, but she manages. She is a singer and a lover. She believes in flying and jumping in mud puddles." Mrs. Marshall turns to my mother. "If you agree to make Kara repeat third grade, you will crush her spirit. She won't understand and will take it too much to heart. She is a sensitive girl. It's true she needs to mature, but that will come. She will be fine. She's her own person and will get all her ducks in a row when she's good and ready."

My mother is staring at Mrs. Marshall. The principal and note-taker have gone quiet.

Pride swells inside Mrs. Marshall as she can still hear the air ringing with her passionate speech. After twenty-five years of teaching, she knew how to analyze a child. She wasn't wrong.

After a few tense and silent moments, my mother turns to the other ladies. "Thank you for your hard work, but I'll not agree to retention, nor will I agree to the results of the testing. I prefer to wait, to see how she does."



And that was that.

Mrs. Marshall, my third grade teacher, saved me from repeating a grade and spending an extra year in school. She was the hero I never knew I always wanted.

I can't believe it. A teacher. A hero.

Appalling!

But, it really did happen. Not quite that way, of course, but she did say that retention would crush my spirit. Even if everyone else had agreed with her -- and they must have -- that's drama I never expected from someone like Mrs. Marshall. She was so concerned with Math. Yuck.

But I'll let her like it since she literally saved me.

I wish I'd gotten to thank her.

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Monday Memories: Patterns and Pictures

4/18/2022

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An odd thing happened one day at school. This lady with a Dorothy Hamil haircut came to get me from class. I had never seen her before.

She apparently wasn't a stranger because Mrs. Marshall knew her, so I didn't put up a fuss or ask her to tell me the password.

(Due to my sharp fear of one of my siblings being kidnapped, we'd developed a password in case a stranger tried to pick us up from school. I used to narrow my eyes at passing cars and silently dare them to try to take one of us.)

Anyway, I went with this Dorothy lady willingly. She took me to a square room where she showed me all these flashcards of patterns and pictures. I had to answer a bunch of questions and recreate some of the patterns.

She had her own paper and was marking stuff on it. Her mouth moved a lot. When she would write, her lips would press into each other, then purse, then press into each other, then purse. It was weird.

But she was nice. When I finished, she told me I would have to come back for more, and I didn't mind. The work she gave me was fun. I had to put blocks together, complete sentences, add up simple problems. It was no big deal.

Or so I thought....

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Wednesday Words: Claims of the Heart by Alina K. Field

4/13/2022

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One of my most favorite authors is back! Alina K. Field is here to share her new release, CLAIMS OF THE HEART! This is a Regency Romance and continues the story of Lucie Macbeth who we got to meet in Fated Hearts. I've been looking forward to this story and already have my copy. So, please, let me introduce to the talented, Alina K. Field....

Love seems impossible, but when danger strikes, there’s no ignoring the claims of the heart.
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CLAIMS OF THE HEART
Regency Romance

Since a perilous fall, Lucie Macbeth has been seeing more than a settled future as the heiress to a Scottish barony. The visions plaguing her include a man—one far above her class and breeding, and English to boot. He’s engaged to a duke’s granddaughter as well, and thus wholly inappropriate. Though she can’t marry him, and she won’t become any man’s leman, when the Sight warns her of danger to him, her conscience, and her heart tell her she can’t walk away.

​Since his return from Waterloo, Major Lord Rudgwick has been rusticating in the country teaching himself how to live as a man with only one hand and pondering how to end the engagement he contracted before his world turned upside down. But then a letter arrives from an old army comrade, requesting Rudgwick’s aid for his daughter, Lucie Macbeth, the woman he met one year earlier, the woman whose claims on his heart he can’t deny.
CLAIMS OF THE HEART: AN EXCERPT

Across the theater from Lucie, a braw, dark-haired man, as tall and straight as the duke, stood in his grace’s box, a young lady upon his arm.

Drawn like a giddy moth, she lifted her chin and met his gaze, bridging the yawning space, watching his mouth soften into the quizzical half-grin he displayed to such advantage.

Tristan Hamilton Howton, Major Lord Rudgwick, was, in fact, in London, in the flesh. He was here and looked ready and willing to annoy her. He looked hearty, healthy and well too; not at all impaired. As fully recovered from his injury as a man who’d lost a hand might be.

She let out a breath. She’d wondered how he’d fared after she and her parents left him in Brussels. Mother parsed the news she received in letters from Lady Rudgwick, and Lucie was too proud to ask after him.
She was glad to see him looking so well. Now she must simply keep the chasm between them as wide as the pit of this theater. Easy enough to do, given their different social circles.

He wasn’t in uniform tonight, yet he’d still make hearts flutter, and the cocky smile said he knew it. Wide shoulders filled out the elegant dark coat, and strong thighs the legs of his trousers. He was, after all, a horseman, a cavalry officer with a stable of the finest horses.

With a quiet breath she attempted to quell her pounding heart, to blot out the seductive smile that she saw over and over in stirring visions of a future that could not be, that must not be.

​She mustered a bored, how-annoying tone. “Rudgwick is here.”


PURCHASE CLAIMS OF THE HEART

​
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Alina K. Field

USA Today bestselling author Alina K. Field earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and German literature but prefers the happier world of romance fiction. Her roots are in the Midwestern U.S., but after six very, very, very cold years in Chicago, she moved to Southern California where she shares a midcentury home with a gold-eyed terrier and only occasionally misses snow.

​Website: 
https://alinakfield.com/
 Amazon Author Page https://www.amazon.com/Alina-K.-Field/e/B00DZHWOKY
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alinakfield
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlinaKField
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/alina-k-field
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alinak.field/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7173518.Alina_K_Field
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/alinakf/
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Monday Memories: Multiplication

4/11/2022

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So my friends left. They moved to farthest reaches of the world. I'm devastated.

There's a knife in my heart and it's twisting and twisting and twisting, and so guess what else?

My teacher decides we need to learn multiplication.

Oh. My. God.

It's torture. It's mind-numbing. And everyone gets it but me.

I have to memorize numbers. Numbers.


​
What is the point? Why must she make us go through this agony of patterns that hold no meaning?

I sit at my desk, staring daggers at a succession of multiplication problems, while everyone's pencils are scraping busily on their papers.

Well, I choose not to do them, and instead I pretend to work and draw pictures along the side. Mrs. Marshall stands at the board, writing out the plans for the next subject, and she never notices. She trusts we're all obediently multiplying.

See how sneaky I am? See how smart? I managed to avoid Math. I think I'll try it again tomorrow!

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Monday Memories: A Great Tragedy

4/4/2022

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As a third grader, there were things that frightened me.

Teachers.
School.
Grades.
A lost ball.
Brussel sprouts.
Stewed tomatoes.
Pink.
Sharks.
Kidnappings.

But the absolute worst, the one that kept me up nights and made me all kinds of sad was a $5 dollar word of which most third graders had never heard.

Transfer.

Yep, that's the word. The awful, horrific, life-altering terror that ruined everything.



​
It was a plague that accosted me, wrapped its cold fingers around my heart, ripped it out and crushed it into a powder.

My friends -- Liam, Grace, Georgie, Phillip, and Andrew -- were MOVING.

Because of a "transfer". Liam's job was making him move to Seattle. Half-way across the world where they didn't have Blue Bell or anything else good.

We lost our friends, our confidantes, our partners.

We took them to the airport. There were tears and hugs and I had hope that someone would come running at the last second to say they didn't have to go.

But that didn't happen. They boarded and left, and it was one of the saddest moments of my life.

My fellow redhead, Miss Grace, was gone. And her boys were gone. I cannot tell you how it hurt.

When we got home, my mom started a campaign. She stuck an envelope on the avocado green refrigerator door with the words "Seattle Fund" on the front.

I raced to my room and took every last cent out of my electric blue E.T. vinyl wallet and put it in the envelope.

I prayed and prayed and prayed we'd visit.

But...we never got there.

A life lesson that sometimes God says no.

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    Kara O'Neal

    An author who has too much to say is dangerous.

    The subjects on this blog:


    Monday Memories -- My Childhood

    Wednesday Words -- Books!

    To be a guest on my blog:

    Contact: kara@karaoneal.com

    Monday Memories: Cast

    Kara -- Me
    Maria -- sister
    Wendy -- sister
    Bill -- brother

    M'Lynn -- mother
    Drummond -- father

    Grace -- mother's redheaded friend
    Liam -- Grace's husband
    Gorgeous (Georgie) -- oldest son and friend
    Phillip -- middle son and friend
    Andrew -- last child and friend

    Jo -- mother's "big idea" friend
    Noah -- Jo's husband who builds things
    Jack -- oldest son and friend
    Roxi -- middle daughter and friend
    Lela -- last child and friend

    Alex -- friend who travels the country and lives in Dallas
    Blossom -- friend who lives in Dallas and sells houses

    Miss Holly -- next door neighbor
    Kirk -- middle son
    Scotty -- youngest son

    Lou -- uncle on my dad's side who likes baseball
    Evaline -- my dad's sister who's crazy funny
    Luke -- oldest son and my cousin
    Han -- younger son and my cousin

    Clark -- my mother's brother who bleeds maroon

    Alexander -- my eldest cousin on my dad's side

    Dawn -- cousin on my dad's side that is the same age as Maria

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