Sharing passages again with Babu seemed to be the cure to what ailed me, and her.  We read some of August twice now and we haven’t yet got through.  She reads on the computer with really big font and I sit with her and scroll through.

Reading with her today was like being on the same groove in a record that keeps spinning.  She’d read a few lines back, the ones she already read, instead of reading the new passage my finger was pointing to.  And then she’d lift her head up, processing a though, the same thought, and say the same thing she just said to me.  With some loops, or grooves we got stuck in, she’d say the same thing five times.  More than that, she’d have the same revelations five times.  I’d play my part every time.  I knew my lines and I said them new each time.

Some people she didn’t remember but she remembers space much more easily.

When we read about Johnny Lech I asked her what she remembered about him and at first it was nothing, but she remembered where he lived.  She gave me detailed directions.

“When you enter Chicopee, the first left, all the way down the hill, at the very end.  It was near water.”  After a few times of telling me these same directions, new details added every time, she began to remember him and said:

“He was a nice guy.  I don’t know why I didn’t love him.”

Then the next time:

“He was almost a perfect guy, I don’t know why I didn’t love him.  No, I did, but not enough to marry him, I guess.”

Then the next time:

“He was almost the perfect guy, tall, blond, good looking…Never did anything…not nice for a young man…”

I didn’t have as much luck with getting her to remember to ladies who she worked with at Hitchcock and Company.  But she did tell me, in detail, the layout of the office.  The main area had the men’s desks and they would go out to meet with clients.  The Main boss has the corner office and he could see down street and down the side street.  The women had the office which looked out over main street and in the corner was a closet with a lot of information in it and the boys would often come in to go into the closet.

When she read the passage:

Sunday, August 14th, 1938
We three couples went to Misquamicut.  Stayed all day, ate, swam, took pictures, got burned.   We sang most of the way up and back.

She smiled at me and said:  That’s the kind of friends we were.  Lucky girl.

I’m guessing she meant the kind of friends who sing with each other.  Lucky girl.