So proud of her

Bobbi gave me permission to brag to all of you about how proud we are of the work she did at the high school this past semester!

I can't remember (and am not going to take the time to read through past posts to check) if I said anything about her decision in January to take a few classes at the public high school instead of just being home schooled. We'd always left the decision up to her, though had been hoping for a variety of reasons that she would choose to try it. She ended up taking three classes - an Intro to Foods, an English Language Learner's class, and one called "On Your Own" which went over many independent living skills - budgeting, finding and renting an apartment, goal setting, debt avoidance, buying a car, planning a vacation, etc, etc.

We started the year with a 504 plan which was the simplest way to allow for some adaptations to meet her needs. This meant she would have a paraprofessional to help her get between classes and access the things she needed because of her physical limitations. It took a good month or more before they found a permanent person, which meant every day we didn't know who was going to be there, if they were going to be a good fit or not, or if there was no one and the school nurse would help her get where she needed to go. The other significant piece of the plan was that she was allowed exemptions from some assignments in the two gen-ed classes because of her English limitations, knowing that it would take her a notably longer amount of time to get through material because of the language gap in addition to her physical limitations (typing and writing are very tedious and slow for her), and she was also allowed to re-take tests, or opt to take them at home with me, again so I could read the questions for her and "translate" them into the English that she knows.

It was only three classes, but this semester was HARD WORK. Not just for Bobbi, but also for me and Matt in supporting her. Partly because she had never been given the opportunity to develop self-study skills, and even more so because she just couldn't handle the level of English that the material was delivered at, almost every single piece of homework that she had was something that she needed to do with one of us. Our home school curriculum for the first half of the year pretty much went to the wayside, and we worked on the new set of skills that these classes presented to her.

The semester had a somewhat rocky beginning, but as she got a few weeks underway and realized that she wasn't doomed to fail (a big fear of hers), her confidence slowly began to improve, and she worked hard at the tasks set before her. One of my favorite parts of this was her frequent marveling at herself: "I didn't used to care at all about school, and now I really want to learn and understand and not just know it like a poem." (Not her exact words, but gets the idea across.)

The year was going well, with her grades being mostly A's and B's on the various assignments, coming up to finals week. She only had one actual "final" in exam format - the other two classes had projects that were prepared in advance. But the final for her foods class came with a nineteen page review packet!!! I have to admit I was even a bit nervous looking at it before we started together, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much about each topic she was able to volunteer with me simply introducing the topic - she had learned so much about nutrition, safety, cooking methods - it was beautiful!

Before the test, her teacher sent an email with details of the time (since she doesn't do a full day at school, the final exam week was a little outside of her normal school hours), she also reiterated that Bobbi was going to be allowed to retake the test at home if she so desired.

She was nervous, but cautiously optimistic as Daddy wheeled her up to school on the day of her exam.

She came home afterwards in what appeared to be a decent mood, but I soon learned that she was so disappointed with her score on the test that she left the final exam crying.

Because I haven't shared very much personally about Bobbi over the last year and a half, I don't know how many of you who don't see us on a weekly basis know about Bobbi and crying. Bobbi doesn't cry. She's told us that she doesn't cry, and we've seen that she doesn't cry. She has other ways of expressing strong emotions, but crying isn't one of them. In fact, until this final exam, we had only once before seen Bobbi cry in the almost one and a half years that she's been with us. [I will recount that story at the end of this post - it's a good one!]

Turns out she had gotten a score that rounded up to 52% on the exam. That's an F. For a girl who's been terrified of failing - almost so terrified of it that she has for a long time been afraid to even try because to not succeed when you haven't tried isn't nearly as hard as failing after giving it all you've got - this was a really tough blow. And she cried about it! I told her later that night that as odd as it sounded, I was so very proud of her. So what if she got a failing grade, *I* knew that she had learned an incredible amount of material (and English language to go with it along the way), and more importantly, I was so proud of my girl who really cared about trying hard and doing well and what that showed me about how she's changing and growing and maturing.

So, with that behind us, we settled in the next morning to do the retake. It was a timed test, and was a combination of multiple choice, multi-answer multiple choice, and some matching. It was a hard test covering a very large amount of material. We used every single minute we had, and still left a few unanswered. I was very careful to only help her with understanding the language without giving away answers (with some answers ones that I didn't know for sure myself, even after studying with her all semester!) Three times we had to leave the test (with the time still ticking!) to de-stress. We'd had a number of conversations over the week leading up to this about the negative impact adrenaline has on our ability to think clearly! Managing to find something to laugh about, even if it's just a ridiculous possible answer to the "how long should you wash your hands" question, was mostly successful in bringing her back to a place where she could focus.

The test finished up with her scoring 72.78%, a score which I believed to be a much better representation of what she actually knew. Still not a great score, but better, and appropriate to what she had learned.

Imagine our surprise when the teacher emailed back later in the day telling us that the new score was high enough to gain her a Food and Nutrition I certificate!!! The final exam was not just a test the teacher had put together, but is part of a national standard exam that includes a certification that she can put into her resume! The cut off was 73%, and her score rounded up - by the very skin of her teeth (time for a lesson in English figures of speech!) she made it!!

And not only that, it finally made sense to me why the scoring rubric for the course had the final exam scored out of 73 - everyone who gained the certificate got an "A" for the class final (and the other scores were curved from that score, because this was a post-high school certification, so even her 52% wasn't really an F, but a C-).

That girl of ours worked so hard this semester, and her hard work paid off.

She's also learned that she's kind of become a late-blooming academic. The morning after that exam (her last one), she woke up and told me she was bored, and wondered when summer school started. ;) So she's taking an ESL class this summer (2.5 hours a day for five weeks), and then will go from there to the ESY (extended school year) morning program for the special program she'll be in for the fall that is going to be a mixture of electives like she took this year and practical classes (functional math, food prep and home maintenance topics in the full apartment built into the high school, and other skills directed at independence despite her physical disability and her lack of strong academic background).

We are so proud of our oldest daughter!!

***

And now, the crying story.

So, we have three cats. Two of them in particular are special to Bobbi - Bridget, the beautiful "old lady" cat that I've had since before Matt and I married - she'll be nineteen years old next month! and Noble Hunter, Owen's cat, who is just a plain old gray tabby, but lives up to his name, and spends much of his time outside prowling around...and yet will still come when Owen whistles for him - never quite seen a cat like that before!

One night last fall, Owen and I were driving home around 9pm after I picked him up from a friend's house, and just before we got to our driveway, we saw Noble there, lying motionless along the centerline of our road.

"Oh, Owen!" I cried.

Owen let out a yelp and leaped out of the (stopped) van and ran to his cat - the body was still limp and warm, and there was a slight heartbeat and a bit of movement, so he scooped him into his arms, sobbing over him, and we whipped a U-turn and drove right to the vet (late hours), while calling Matt to let him know what was up. They whisked the cat (and us) right into the operating room with a team of 4 or 5 people, but within a minute or two sadly told us there was nothing they could do. I called Matt, really worried about how Bobbi was going to react - anger is her typical response to strong emotions, and this was going to be a really tough one for her to take. Owen and I cried together over Noble, and then asked if we could take his body home so we could bury it in our yard as we did for our cat, Foo, who died on Thanksgiving Day the day after Reuben's epilepsy diagnosis almost eight years ago. They were able to do so, and the two of us sadly drove home with our poor tabby in the box, and the four of us all sat on Bobbi's bed stroking his fur, and, believe it or not, all four of us crying over him, our tears blurring our vision as our hearts broke for this dear cat, and for me and Matt, even more so for our heartbroken children.

Owen asked if he could sleep with the box in his room for the night one last time, and though I told him I didn't think we could wait that long to put the cat into the freezer until we were ready to bury him, I did tell him I'd call the vet to make sure. Their response was the same as mine - the body would start to smell within a few hours, and by morning would be pretty bad.

As we took just a few more minutes to say our last goodbyes, Bridget walked into the room with a really funny look on her face. She smells the scent of dead cat, we reasoned, as an animal with a better sense of smell than we have. We heard a cat walking down the stairs, starting the crying up again as it reminded all of us how it used to sound when Noble used to walk down the stairs. Soon after, Foozie (cat #3) came in as well and walked out, similarly disquieted.

Then Matt looked out of Bobbi's room with a really funny look on his face and we all stared as...Noble...walked into the room.

I can't even put words to the emotions that went around that room as we all tried to process what was happening. Here, we'd been sobbing and blubbering over this cat for at least two hours now, and then he walks in. Talk about internal confliction - our cat's not dead...but someone's cat is dead...and we've been crying and crying for a long time now...but our cat's not dead - he's sitting there in the doorway staring at us!!!

Bobbi whispered, "It's just like Jesus!"

And now we were all a mess of laughing and crying and hand-washing (because the real Noble didn't want anything to do with us while we all smelled like dead-some-other-cat), and phone calling BACK to the vet to ask what we should do now with this cat...

Phew. What a night. Both Owen and Bobbi were so weirded out by the whole thing (and it didn't help that it was nearly midnight by this time, either), that neither one of them was comfortable sleeping alone, so we piled some couch cushions on Bobbi's floor for Owen to sleep on!

Matt and I went to bed marveling - what a beautiful way for God to begin to break down some of the emotional barriers that Bobbi has built up over the years to protect herself. She cried!!! Not just a few little tears sneaking out, but the full out real deal. We got to cry together as a family: hugging, comforting, talking, crying some more...and then when it was all over, we got all the benefit of that closeness without losing our cat at all!!! Yes, someone did lose their cat that night, but as we all told each other, that cat didn't die alone - he died with Owen snuggling him and telling him what a great cat he was and how loved he was, and he got the full mourning any cat could hope for. And what a way to go.

So there's the crying story.