How is beer feminine?

Well, OK, I’ve probably made some of my female friends angry with that statement, but let me explain . . .

I am diligently returning every other day to my Duolingo online account to learn basic French, and while I am picking up a few words and getting through some of the lessons, I am struggling to remember some of the rules, like biere being feminine (la bee-air-ech with that noise from the back of your throat) and sandwich being masculine, une sandwich. Or how the suffix of words changes depending on the noun—is it mange, manges, mangez, mangeons, mangent . . . depending on whether it’s tu, vous, l’homme, nous, ils . . . quel palabre!

All of this effort makes me fondly recall my wonderful literacy student, Moureen, when I worked for the Literacy Volunteers of America (LVA) while working in Passaic County, New Jersey. Moureen was a lovely, vibrant fifty-ish woman from Jamaica who had little proper schooling. Having been presented her first grandchild, she wanted to be able to read with her, help her with her homework, etc. I found Moureen’s willingness to go the the LVA to try to find her path to literacy courageous and admirable. She had to work hard to fit lessons and homework it into working, taking care of her home and her family (including as I recall a lazy husband) and babysitting her granddaughter.

We hit it off spectacularly. I had travelled to Jamaica many times in my life and so we had some common ground to start off the relationship. Moureen was also an extremely hard worker and appreciated my persistence with her pronunciation and spelling. She focused during our two hours each week, always attempted and often managed to complete the reading and writing assignments, and never, never gave up as exasperating as the English language can be!

Why is “oll” in doll and roll sound differently??  How can kernel and colonel sound the same and be spelled so differently? It’s just the rules, isn’t it? Silly rules that make adult learners tear their hair out trying to keep it all straight. We’d laugh at some of them, and she’d diligently write some notes down for reference in her book. And, occasionally, she’d slip up after a lesson or two when the word resurfaced.

I now feel her pain.

I haven’t thought about Moureen in a while, and it’s when I do that I feel sad that we lost touch a few years ago. I found it so hard to tell her that I was leaving New Jersey to come to England and so she’d need to find a new tutor after three and a half years of lessons with me. In those years we’d become friends, and we knew about our families and our ups and downs; we bought each other cards for birthdays and Christmas and Easter. We spent the first few minutes of most lessons catching up, but not too long because we both wanted to see Moureen improve. 

And she did. I was so proud of the essays she wrote and the fluency of the books we read together after years of study and practice. In fact, to this day one of my most proud moments of my life was being chosen as the Literacy Volunteer of the Year for Passaic County. It was an award that belonged to both of us—Moureen’s efforts to improve and my efforts and patience to get her there. The scores she received at each testing phase every six months always jumped a notch or two. I only recently came across the plaque I received; I had carried it with me from America to England because I was so damned proud of what it stood for. I did finally recycle it; I have the memories and no longer need the physical object.

Perhaps I’m also reminded a bit about Moureen because I am feeling that I will be challenged with my new primary school reading partner, a smiling, young girl in Year 3 called Isha. Some of her mannerisms remind me of when I first began reading with Joy—fidgety, unfocused—only she more so. We have for the first two weeks changed seats and books at least once in a 20-minute span, and while Isha prefers to sit near her classmates, it’s a huge distraction and I’m often trying to find ways to bring her eyes back to the page.

I will be patient. Isha does try, when she is focused, and will look at me after she takes some time to sort out a word, almost as though for acceptance, before moving on to the rest of the sentence. I nod and give a word of encouragement when she gets it right, or help her work through the sounds of the letters when she’s close but not quite correct.

The half hour goes quickly and she does give me a broad smile and a wave when she’s done—shades of Joy, who always had more energy than could fit in the room. With any luck I will be Isha’s reading partner for four years—enough time to see her improve and blossom into a strong reader. J'ai de grands espoirs!

Lessons, anyone?

I used to have a backhand. I suppose I still do, only it’s the wrong kind—the kind that gets more of its power from the right hand than from what should be the dominant left.

I am equally dismayed and challenged. I did take lessons a little over four years ago and for a couple of years, until it became too difficult to find a time when my coach and I could play and the skies would remain light enough. All of the courts he coached at in London were sans lights, so stretches of time in the year proved impossible to play. (Note to self: we’re approaching the season where, gasp, it is already dark at 3:30 pm BT.) I settled on keeping up my game without the weekly lesson, finding colleagues and more recently a regular partner to get in a game at least once a week. My current, slightly younger regular tennis mate and I are about equal in our skill level—when we keep score, it almost always ends within a game or two of each other. She knows my weakness; I’m not as fast as I’d like to be so the cross-court or drop shot are virtually always winners (though I do make a valiant sprint for it).

(I know her weakness, too, but in the event she reads this, I think I’ll keep it a secret.)

Where we play indoors we are often in the middle court watching others being coached. It’s what you might expect at 7 or 8 pm on a weeknight: the twenty-something men with big, powerful serves who grunt as loudly as any female pro or the lovely young things with all the gear and no idea, but hey, they’re giving it a go and looking good doing it.

After one recent session my regular partner suggested that we ask the coach instructing in the next court if he’d be willing to give us a lesson occasionally to improve our game. We’d both seen him coaching before, and I had a sense for his style—not aggressive, yet always gently pushing, pushing. We lingered, she asked, he agreed, and so this is where I find myself lacking at least one crucial stroke.

I have to say Kostas is lovely. He is small, compact, smooth in his game; quite good to watch as he has excellent form. He is equally generous with praise and evaluation (critique felt too sharp a term) on court, and friendly and conversational off the court. In the first lesson, which went by so quickly I was amazed, he analysed our grip, studied our main forehand and backhand strokes, provided some excellent tips, and at the end of the hour told us both we did well and should practice. And he smiled.

(To me that meant, well, OK, you weren’t rubbish and if you ask he’d agree to continue giving you lessons.)

Though slightly disappointed to find out that my backhand has been wrong for all this time, I buried the feeling and without hesitation suggested we do it all again in a few weeks’ time, after some practice. It was a few hours later that I wondered if I was throwing money at an impossible task unworthy of my dosh. There was so much new to remember—the correct “sweeping” motion of the backhand while learning to make my left hand the one that did most of the work; coming to the ball (as I have always had a tendency to be a bit behind, or too close to it), and the right time to not whack but swing through depending on the height and drop of the ball; the point, the pause, the follow-through.  I’m a bit tired just recalling it. And it’s not that I didn’t do some of that—perhaps not with consistency, or even noticing when I was not.

I couldn’t help but think that my first coach gave me a bit of a bum steer!  In hindsight I think that every coach has his or her own methods, and I know that I improved in the time I took lessons with him. That and he is a lovely Brit, a nice guy who always had funny stories and was quite genuine. Sometimes I miss that we haven’t stayed in touch but for the occasional exchange on Facebook (mostly me remembering his birthday or liking something he posts). He kept me interested in playing the game, and that counts for something.

My new sometimes coach, on the other hand, is a bit more formal, a former Davis Cup player for Cyprus. When he sees something he doesn’t like in my game, he stops, heads over to my side of the net, provides some feedback, and watches. Carefully. I try hard not to do that again.

At the end of the second lesson he was kind to say that he noticed we both had improved, and that it would take time for these were small but fundamental changes to become routine. I am heartened, so much so that I decide to book him for an entire hour for myself while my tennis partner is away on business. I know I will be exhausted and in a small way I dread the complete attention to my game—now, when he’s given my partner an assessment, I’m half listening and half trying out my own stroke, waiting for him to shout “next!” and know it’s my turn to step up to the T. I won’t get that opportunity when it’s just him and me. I am equally fearful of the time when I will have to show my serve. (Visible shudder.)

But I’ve decided you can teach an old dog new tricks, and I’m going to have a few more lessons and try to improve my game fundamentally. And while in the throes of that line of thinking (dog, tricks), I’ve also decided to dust off my extremely elementary French and practice that skill with a website called Duolingo, recommended by a colleague of mine who is also trying to get beyond the basic five phrases you use. I don’t know that I’ll stick with it—much like the tennis—but it feels like a good use of my spare time.

All this while I diligently study from my Life in the UK 2013 edition as I am just about three months’ shy of my visa expiring and will need to pass the test to stay in the country. That and complete the 35-page form and cough up £1346 should I be fortunate enough to land a premium appointment, otherwise only £1046 but then live without a passport for up to six months. I think I figured out how to “work” the online booking system to my advantage (thanks to some posts I’ve read and a bit of trial and error), so I’m ever so slightly more confident than I was previously that I may secure a date in Croydon in November or December ahead of having to go the postal route and say adieu to my passport and the ability to travel outside of Britain. (That said, I’ve never been to Wales so it’s on the table for a winter holiday possibility.)

Wish me luck . . . on all accounts!