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There’s no joy in Mudville. Rather, there’s no joy in Crudville, with the cold and snow and wind of January.
It snowed, and the snowblower was on the fritz, and it snowed twice more before I got it up and running, and then it was on the fritz again.
We are into a face cord of firewood now that got wet late in the fall, and it burns poorly and not hot.
Without much sun the solar panel doesn’t generate much power – the LED light sputtered out at 5:30 this evening. To make things worse, the propane lamp sputtered out at 6 o’clock. No light, no stove, no hot dinner.
I have previously written that I have come face-to-face with “the plague of polio” only twice. Now I remember a third instance.
In this dark, windy, cold January night, I want to say just a little of her. Because on a night like this I think about surviving versus thriving, fear and fatigue, solitude and self-pity.
For many years I taught English language in the evenings in Chinatown (District 5), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We used the classrooms of an elementary school, and for my English students I had the occasional child, some high-school students, one or two university students, and a lot of young adult and middle-aged workers and professionals. Even some seniors. Mostly Chinese, many Vietnamese, a couple Koreans, a couple Khmer or Laotians, one Muslim, one or two Montagnard’s.
One crippled (her word) Chinese student was named, in Vietnamese, Binh, which means “peace.” She was thirty-something and very frail – about 80 pounds. When I try to guess anyone’s weight, I go back to my old backpack that I used to hike with. It was the kind of long-haul backpack that you couldn’t lift with your arms and swing into place. No, you would have to take it off the ground, from your back. Set it down, sit down into it, strap it in, and stand up somehow. That was around 65 to 80 pounds depending on if it was the beginning of the week or the end of the week.
Every class – I think she studied Mondays- Wednesdays-Fridays at 5:30 – she wore a white Vietnamese formal long dress (“ao dai”) which was mandatory at her job. She came to class straight from work by cyclo. She was a secretary or accountant or office worker.
Her straight black hair was cut very short and her lipstick and light blue eyeshadow was always a little crooked. She only had one good hand; the other was useless, deformed, not so much a flipper as of a dog’s leg broken high on the leg and lacking control. A flapper rather.
Her English was quite good and to her credit she laughed very politely but good-naturedly at my goofing around and dancing around and making jokes in my broken Vietnamese, all of which together comprised most of my syllabus. She had a good sense of humor really. But was reserved and quiet and shy like all of them.
I remember my classes were always tucked away up on the top floor of the school because I attracted so much attention and young people loitering at the door watching. She had to limp up three flights of crowded and noisy stairs with only one good hand to steady herself, before (up) and after (down) class.
She was pretty proficient with stairs. I got her to try to teach me a little Chinese at my room-for-rent on Sunday evenings. My room was on the second floor (American style). I don’t think I learned a thing. She was a poor teacher. I didn’t even learn to count. Oh, I did learn to write my Vietnamese name, “Minh Nhat,” in Chinese characters (“Ming Ru”), which means “Bright Sun,” that being the name I was given over there. They had a lot of hope for me when I first got over there.
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