A heads-up about Saturday/Sunday travel out to Queens: the subway lines are almost always altered for weekend construction work. (But you already knew that.) Yesterday both the E and the R were affected. My advice is to check on-line for subway disruptions before you head out.
In my case I got on the E train, which was running on the F track in some sort of Super Express configuration. It shortened my trip by about 15 minutes, which was a nice surprise.
When I got off the Q23 bus I made a quick stop at an empanada shop on the corner of Van Doren Street. The place is tiny, but there were tons of people packed in, all speaking Spanish and enjoying lunch. The empanadas are really good and super cheap, so, if you needed any more incentive to make the trip out to Queens, now you have it.
When I got to Suzie's room she was watching TV, as usual, with her father.
"Hey Suzie how are you doing?" I asked.
"Well," she said, definitively.
Suzie's dad pulled out an envelope with a card in it.
"Did you send this?" he asked.
"No," I said, opening up the card. "Suzie this is from Doug Loftus, one of our co-workers from MJM."
"Oh," she said. "Doug Loftus."
I don't know if she remembers Doug, of course, or if she was just repeating what I had said. Suzie and I had worked together with Doug on a pharmaceutical meeting every spring for the last 3 or 4 years, but I've been trying to avoid talking about the past with her. I'm not sure what it achieves. She looked at the card and smiled.
"You want to work on some pictures?" I asked.
"Oh yes," Suzie answered.
The fabulous Miss Kay Hayward made the trek out to Park Terrace this week with another fine art sticker book in tow. The Matisee sticker book Kevin Corstange had brought a few weeks ago was a big hit with Suzie and successfully completing each picture gave her, I think, a good feeling of accomplishment.
The newest addition to the Suzie Moon Fine Art Sticker Book Library is an Alexander Calder book. It's filled with bright colors, odd patterns and geometric shapes and Suzie seemed really engaged by it. We moved over to the common room on her floor, commandeered a table and began working.
Our first project was a funky picture called Gouache. As with her Matisse book, this one provides a finished picture on the left page with a page featuring a partially raw "canvas" on the right. This particular "canvas" page featured a twisty snake at the bottom.
"What's that?" I asked, pointing to the snake.
Suzie looked at me blankly, so I began making an "ssssss" sound and sticking my tongue out at her.
"Ssssss........snake," I said.
"Snake," Suzie repeated.
"And what's your name?" I asked. Again, a blank look, so I began making a "suuuuu" sound.
"Suzie!" she said. "Suzie Moon."
Yes, she needed some prompting, but I was glad that she was able to say her name. Kay had reported after her visit that Suzie didn't respond to her name, which surprised me. I've heard her say it many times, and seen her respond to it just as often. There are so many reasons why Suzie may not respond at a given time: fatigue, medication, distraction. It's hard to get a benchmark with her. Her capabilities seem to vary wildly from visit to visit.
For example, when Suzie and I did a picture in the Matisse book, following her lengthy visit with Kevin, I was floored by her sharpness. Yesterday she took a bit of reminding, about how we were duplicating a picture, not placing stickers over the existing art. As time progressed, though, she seemed to re-get the hang of it.
That's the one consistent thing I've noticed, visit to visit. The longer I stay, interact with her, talk to her, prod her, whatever -- the sharper she gets. It's like warming up for a race. It takes a while to get loose but, once you're loose you're loose.
All the while we worked on the picture, I continued to drill her on the snake, her name, and mine. I also threw in a few repetitions of "shut the fuck up" and "awesome dude!" with high five's and thumbs up.
My goal was to get Suzie to multi-task as much as possible and to make sure that we got plenty of talking done during our little art class. By the time we finished our first picture she was able to answer me on cue: snake, Suzie and Will (or William, as she said more than once).
The right side started out with only the snake and the center swirl. After Suzie and I signed our artwork, I asked her if she was tired and she told me yes. Then I asked if she wanted to go back to her room.
"Oh no," she replied.
"Do you want to do another picture?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, and began flipping through the book. Suzie was much quicker and sharper on our second picture, although her dexterity with stickers is still limited by by her ability only to use her left hand. Even so, she did a great job.
Calder's "Untitled" - the right side started w/ only the orange and yellowI wrote the day and date under the picture. Before I added the year I asked Suzie what year it was.
"2006?" she said. I shook my head and pointed my thumb upward. "2007? 2008? 2009."
Interestingly, this happens every time I ask her the year. For some reason, she starts with 2006, and seems surprised when she realizes that it's actually 2009.
"Wow," she said.
"I know, 2009. It's crazy, right?" I replied.
"Crazy," she said.
I took her back to her room, said we showed her father the pictures.
"Suzie did this?" he asked, and she smiled a beautiful big smile. This was followed by high fives all around.
"Every time you come, after, Suzie is very tired," Mr. Moon said to me. "Very good. Very good. Thank you."
And then I headed out, fighting the urge to grab one more of those empanadas for the road.
2 comments:
That's great! When we visited last Friday at lunch time our girl had an amazing appetite. She was shoveling it in. She inquired "What's new"? And when Leona asked, "Are you Suzie Moon"? She responded immediately-ABSOLUTELY!
That's great news. I know she loves to see you and Miss Brown.
Interesting that every time I see her I ask her "What's new?" Hopefully her asking you guys that is an example of re-learning...
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