In A NutshellXXXI

In a Nutshell

A place set aside to answer 201 autobiographical questions from a mother for her daughter. This may take awhile...join us if you like.

31. I helped a friend greatly on this occasion.

I can think of lots of times other people, some friends and some their parents, helped me when I was young. But thinking of a time I helped a friend greatly brings me into adulthood.

I have a friend who I met in Fairbanks, Linda M. Linda was a high school drop out and when I first met her she was working as a secretary. Actually, Richard brought her into our lives -- she and her two year old daughter lived across the street, and Richard (about nine at the time) made friends.

About three years after we met, Linda moved to Juneau and my kids and I returned to California. About six months later, Linda called to tell me that the problems with her eyes had gotten worse. Her doctor was predicting that she was going blind and she was coming home from work with killer headaches. There was, at that time, no help for her in Alaska.

I called the Lighthouse for the Blind in Stockton, gathered information on help she could get there, including training in a job more in keeping with her vision, called and talked her into moving to Stockton. Linda and Jenny lived with us while she went to college. (And, by the bye, she had surgery on her eyes, and never did go blind.)

After she graduated, they returned to Fairbanks for a few years and then moved back to California to go to law school. Her first semester in law school was not going well -- she was having trouble shifting her approach from the kinds of exams you write in a social sciences class to what you need to write in law school. She came to Stockton to visit me for the weekend, and told me she was thinking of dropping out. I spent her visit talking her into giving it one more shot, and that worked. She graduated fairly high in her class from McGeorge.

Later, I helped her study for the California bar and the Alaska bar. The Missouri bar she passed without my help.

Actually, I'm impressed with us -- Linda went from high school drop out to attorney by dint of lots of hard work, and I helped. Remember Pogo? The Bun' Rabbit who used to run around behind the dog who was the fire fighter? And Bun' Rabbit would always be saying, "And me, carrying the hose" or "And I carried the hose." That's how I feel about Linda's law degree -- and I carried the hose.