Discoveries

I’ve been in Florida for two weeks of my three-month stay. I have laid out my goals about trying to use my time wisely. My social media newsfeed is suddenly filled with relevant wise advice as though I’m being watched.

I’m pleased with my progress.

As I have walked the beach and talked to myself and with God this week, one important thing has come into sharp focus and I’m willing to talk about it. Someone else might relate.

I have dyslexia. I have always known it. Now, when so many of my little descendants are being tested and diagnosed, it is crystal clear that it has always been my challenge too. I have done some research this week that has settled the matter.

Dyslexia is not rare. Ten to fifteen percent of the population is affected by dyslexia. Its severity varies. I’m finding that it worsens with age. Sixty percent are male. I was surprised to learn that Dyslexia was first diagnosed in 1896. It literally means “word blindness.” It is a language disorder that compromises the ability to learn how to read, write, and understand a text. I didn’t hear the word dyslexia until forty years ago when a friend’s child was diagnosed. Immediately the light bulbs started flashing for me because the symptoms she discribed sounded too familiar.

I have always been a very slow reader. I read more slowly silently than most people read aloud. And reading aloud is harder for me than reading silently. The words don’t always stay in their right order. I’m thankful God gave me a good memory, and I could recall the details of what I had read better than most. I have memories throughout grade school of the panic I experienced when the teacher announced that we would go down the aisle and read aloud. I would count the people ahead of me and the paragraphs, and frantically practice my designated paragraph, completely missing the passages read before me. Luckily I never felt like I was not smart. And I could recognize there were “others” like me who struggled with reading.

I rarely finished my long reading assignments. Especially when I was a senior in college and had to double up after receiving a failing grade in sculpture during summer school. My plan to graduate a semester early, in December, and get married in May, seemed like a plan that couldn’t go wrong. But my instructor, Virginia Bundy (maybe related to Ted) didn’t like my style of sculpting and she failed me. So I had to add another three credits to my already overloaded fall semester. Few classes were available by the time I failed my class and had to add another, so I had little choice but to add a ridiculous graduate-level Shakespeare class where I read (parts of) plays I had never heard of, taught by a man who reminded me of a soft-spoken Richard Nixon. I already had Late 18th Century British Literature class, which I didn’t want either, only because I wanted to finish an English minor. Boy, were Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding long-winded! I never missed a class and took copious notes from discussions. To this day I don’t know how I passed either of those classes. Thankfully, sculpture remained the only class I ever failed.

Friends have always said to me, “How do you remember such things?” I remembered because they happened. I wondered how they forgot so much of what had happened in their lives. I learned a new term this week too. “hy·​per·​thy·​me·​sia ˌhī-pər-ˌthī-ˈmē-zh(ē-)ə : the uncommon ability that allows a person to spontaneously recall with great accuracy and detail a vast number of personal events or experiences and their associated dates: highly superior autobiographical memory.” (Merriam-webster.com)

So maybe God gives one ability or gift in the place of another.

I have a picture memory of my first-grade teacher, kind Mrs. Loy, spending time with me outside the reading circle, while the other children were reading on their own. I was self-conscious. My efforts to memorize what they were reading quickly failed as Dick and Jane stories advanced. I caught up, and learned to read, but was always slow. I thought I would eventually catch up and read faster, but if I had been a good reader, perhaps I would have had my nose in a book all the time, become prideful about my acquired knowledge, and never resorted to drawing, or painting, sculpting, or writing and living inside my head where I have been so comfortable my whole life. When one is reading, there is no multitasking.

Another day in first grade, I remember Mrs Loy standing behind me, with the teacher from next door, Mrs. Hurt. I stood at an easel slopping three billy goats crossing a bridge with a hideously scary troll underneath with tempera paint on a large glossy paper. I was keenly aware of my careful observers, but I pretended not to notice. Later Mrs Loy sent a note home to my mother, telling her I was gifted in art and to encourage me. My loving mother proudly did that for the rest of her life.

The school selected two works of art that year from each grade to go to the county art exhibit. Out of the whole first grade, both selected drawings were mine. The Billy Goats Gruff illustration and a woman sitting in a rocking chair knitting with a white cat playing with her ball of pink yarn. I recall painting the strokes. When we were cleaning out my mother’s house after her passing in 2014 at the age of almost 86, I found the fragile fifty-plus-year-old paintings carefully preserved in the attic. I was thankful to Mrs. Loy for boosting my self-esteem and establishing an identity I could be proud of. I was an introverted child who needed the help. By the time I considered thanking her, I learned she had died at the age of ninety in 2012.

I detested spelling bees because I could not spell words aloud without writing them down and “seeing” them written. I also cannot read or copy even a short string of numbers without slow, deliberate care not to flip the numbers out of order. Before cell phones, I dialed a lot of wrong numbers.

When I was a teen in driver’s education my instructor said turn left, and I turned right. His verbal outburst as he grabbed the dashboard surprised and embarrassed both of us. I’m thankful for maps on screens now that have pictures and arrows.

I decline invitations to line dance because I have only a fifty-fifty chance of stepping in the correct direction when I hear “to the left this time.” What an unwelcome distraction on the dance floor I am.

Many of my friends think of me as a reader. Yes, I have read many books. But it took me longer to complete and nothing else got accomplished while I was reading. As I get older, it takes longer. A page full of writing intimidates me. Now I am interested in getting other activities accomplished. I used to believe I “love” to read, but I do not love the act of reading. It’s hard. And the older I get the more I struggle. But I love to learn. I felt a load lift this week when I acknowledged this fact about my aging brain. I don’t have to feel guilty that I cannot read all the suggestions for books and blogs friends send me.

I used to think that I was cheating if I didn’t “read” the book instead of listening to it. “Snap out of it” I have childed myself this week. My point of reading is to learn. In this modern era, I can have someone read to me while I am painting or sculpting or walking. I signed up for Audible books. For $15 a month, the price of one book that would take me a month to read, I can listen to many books read to me while I do other activities. It is such a freeing decision.

I always thought I would eventually “learn” my left from my right, and that my skills in reading would improve and speed up with practice. But there is no cure for Dyslexia. Thankfully there are now learning methods. My little descendants, who so obviously share my DNA, are exposed to learning strategies for their learning challenges. I don’t like to think of Dyslexia as a “handicap,” but as a way that God redirected me to use the kind of brain He has given me. I’m so thankful we are not all alike. As I often say, If everyone was like me, nothing important would ever get done, But if no one were like me, there would be less beauty for the pure sake of beauty in the world.

Mr West, a tall, thin engaging lecturer left us with a final assignment on the last day of class in my spring semester of my freshman year: Read Moby Dick again when you turn 40, he instructed us, to see if it has an enriched meaning. I wanted to please Mr. West who gave me all “A”s on my writing assignments. Now that I am twenty-eight years late on that assignment, maybe I’ll listen to the whole book “again,’ and finish it this time.

I took a few free dyslexia tests online. Here’s a quick one, fifteen questions. I wasn’t surprised by the immediately returned email giving me my score, eleven of fifteen, with the curt synopsis “It is highly likely that you are dyslexic.” It has given me permission to be the imperfect me the way God wired me.

I shared these rambling thoughts so others will learn and understand that any diagnosis isn’t a prediction of failure.