Dancing Fingers

They say what goes up,
Must come down,
But don't let me fall.
I don't really know why I'm here,
I guess I'm just here for the ride
I swear, it feels like I'm dreaming
It's vividly defined

So call me whatever you like
Tie me to whatever you like
But don't let me fall.
-B.o.B  Don't Let Me Fall


I went to Thelma's yesterday, to do therapy on her arm and hand.  I enjoy doing it, and I think I will enjoy being an occupational therapist.  Her fingers are so tight; they grip without trying to, grab onto your finger like a baby's reflex would.  It takes all my strength to bend her arm out straight.  It's so odd, forcing the body to do what it was originally supposed to...trying to coerce the muscles and joints into moving again; doing what they are supposed to do.

Thelma is almost apologetic about the whole thing.  She's a single lady in her forties.  You can tell she had different plans for how her life was supposed to go, but these things happen.  When I was there yesterday, she was sitting under the open-air hut near her house, talking with her other relatives who were preparing pancit and vegetables and  cooking seafood over their little ceramic coal fire.  Yeng, a friend or relative of Thelma, invited me into her house next door for snacks.  It was tapioca porridge and coke, and as soon as I finished my bowl she ordered me to eat more.  She asked me why we don't eat pork, and wanted to know where in the Bible it was, so I promised I would bring my Bible next time.

Today after going to Thelma's again (Yeng wasn't there) I went to Central Elementary School to see Auntie Minnie, a church member and friend.  She is a second grade teacher there and has more than forty students in her classroom.  She is tired.  She smiled when she saw me, though, and especially when she saw the cookies I had made her.
"You love me very much!"  She exclaimed happily.
I laughed.  "Yes, I do!"
She has every type of student imaginable, and is constantly calling them "naughty, naughty children", which makes me laugh but she's kind of right.  She has a special needs boy in her class who is a handful enough on his own.  He was trying to beat up on the other kids.  Luckily he's a skinny little waif of a boy and can't do much damage.

I was teaching my piano students about correct hand position last evening.  Your palm should be curved, not flat.  Your fingers should dance across the keys, not walk.  Lively!
So tonight I printed off lots of piano music.  I tried to make my fingers dance across the keys, taking my own advice, but I couldn't.  They wouldn't dance.  They just tripped and fell and made mistakes.  I couldn't make the music sound like I wanted to.  The flats and sharps didn't cooperate and nothing else did either.  Finally, I gave up.

It's kind of like today.
Little girl in the clinic, crying and screaming and coughing.  She got hit by a bus a few months ago and still has to come into the clinic often to get bandages changed.  Today she was getting her ear canal hole re-opened.  
Pigs in the slaughterhouse on my bike ride; baby chick with one foot, couldn't keep up with his mama.  Dogs with so many diseases and bugs they have no fur.
Conversations with people that didn't go the way I wanted them to; anger and irritation that welled up inside me when it shouldn't have.
Thoughts that I wish I didn't have, problems that I wish could just go away, time that I wish was already spent, fingers that I wish would dance.
I guess all you can really do is go to bed and sleep tight and then try again in the morning.
Tomorrow I think I will have dancing fingers.