Archive: June 4th, 2008 (1)

looking back...to May 22nd

I got my first good night of sleep in awhile last night and am currently as caught up as I can be with my Vista-cursed computer at a coffee shop between sessions. So finally I'm going to start the process of blogging the events of Memorial Day weekend. I think this blog will just be of the 22nd.
There was nothing normal about May 22nd, 2008. First of all, the weather was ridiculous. It was actually cold when I left my house, which is absolutely unheard of in Phoenix in May. More on that later.
I started with a new child in the morning. His family is Spanish-speaking, and typically my company asks these families to come to the clinic for services so that our bilingual secretaries can do any translating necessary. But because an in-home session with him fit perfectly into my schedule and he lives really close to me, I agreed to see him at his house and get by with my limited Spanish and his family's limited English. I basically loved every second of it. When I got there, the child was confused and kind of scared I think. He kept running from the room, his mom kept just saying "sorry, sorry," and I kept playing my guitar quietly in the background. He eventually came out to the living room (after having lost a tooth!) and sat down near me. As soon as this child had a drum in front of him, everything changed. He played tentatively at first, then lit up when he heard his playing reflected in mine. This kid is an improvisational music therapist's dream come true! I could see him unfolding in front of me, I could feel this connection instantly forming, and it was truly incredible. And my limited conversation afterwards with the mom was wonderful. She spoke in Spanish, I spoke in English, and we both more or less understood each other. I repeatedly stopped myself from responding to her in Romanian (a common tendency when I try to speak Spanish), but I was overjoyed that she pronounced my name the same way Romanian people do (Kreesta with a rolled r). And her son's big eyes and dark complexion took me instantly back to orphans in Romania. As I left she just kept telling me that I was beautiful, that my voice was beautiful, or that what had just happened was beautiful, I'm not sure which.
Ok, I can't give so much detail on the rest of my day or I'll never finish. But the rest of my sessions were not exactly normal either - most of them were really great, one was sad because it was my last with that kid, and by the end of the day I was just really distracted. The weather continued to get less and less Phoenix-like and by late afternoon there was a downpour and it had to be in the 50s or 60s. A perfect background to my abnormal day.
After work, I went to dinner with friends. I mentioned in my last blog that one of those friends was one I once talked about marriage with...and I don't want to get into details there except to say that I was really nervous to see him because I always think it will be awkward, but then it never really is and I always feel like I was blessed to have had that time. But again, far from normal. And after dinner, we all walked through the pouring rain to the mall, only to come out afterwards to a downpour. My friend Amber offered to run to her car, so she literally did just that - took off her shoes, gave us her bags, and sprinted across the huge parking lot to her car. We joked that security would stop her, thinking she was insane.
Anyway, shortly after I got home from that adventure, it was time to pick up Vasi. It mostly seemed surreal that he was even coming. Our friendship is far different from any I've ever had. I met him 3 years ago in Romania, spent two weeks with him and a huge team of other people, and then only talked online to him once in awhile after that. But he moved to the US in 2006, and while he was living in Florida and I in New York, he called me up one night out of the blue. For a few months, we talked every night. This actually made him the only non-NY person besides my mom that I had that kind of regular contact with while I lived there. Anyway, all that being said, I hadn't actually SEEN the guy since 2005. So picking him up and having him suddenly in my world here was so strange. Especially considering the last setting I saw him in was an orphanage in a quaint Romanian village.
So as I said, there was NOTHING normal about that day...and it wasn't going to get any more normal the next few days...but that will have to wait for another blog