Chapter 1  The Sticky Wicket, pages 9-14

            An extraordinary thing happened to me the other day; I received a gift, an ordinary gift.  I received the gift of being able to hear and see God.  Sounds crazy doesn't it, but I assure you I'm not crazy.  I am just an ordinary person.  If you need a quick stereotype to understand me try "soccer Mom," but please do not dismiss what I have to say.  It happens to everyone, everyday.  Once you recognize that these ordinary experiences are God you will have the gift as well. After all, if this spiritual experience can happen to ordinary me, it can happen to you.

            The best way to understand fully my gift is to hear how it came about.  My gift came at the end of a very bizarre uncomfortable situation.  As many people in this situation do, I needed to turn to God for help.  

             By profession, I am a special education teacher.  Balancing a career and being a Mom is a well-known challenge. My family's needs are my first priority. I had given birth to twin girls the previous spring, and was on a child rearing leave of absence from my teaching position.  In the coming September, I would be returning to work with increased parental responsibilities. After Christmas, I decided to begin preparing my family, as well as my self, for my return to work.  A way I could do this was working as a tutor.

            The advantages of tutoring were many.  The hours were flexible. The class work would be prepared and graded by the student's teachers reducing my work.  Most tutoring jobs last only a few weeks.  When the weather turned nice in the spring, there was the opportunity not to decline any new cases, and enjoy the remainder of my leave.  All in all, it looked like a good move.

            The student I was assigned was a 13 year old boy, who was on home tutoring while his mother, I'll call her Cheryl, was involved in a suit against the district.  Cheryl claimed that her son was disabled and needed special services to succeed in school.  The district disagreed.  In response Cheryl filed a suit against the district, and refused to send her son to school, claiming an inappropriate placement was causing him emotional trauma. 

            The confrontation between Cheryl and the district escalated. To reduce some of the confrontation, the district agreed to home tutoring until the case was resolved. Cheryl demanded a special education certified teacher.  Unable to provide tutors that met Cheryl's requirements, the district contracted with my employer, a special services provider for the school districts in the area.

            Cheryl was known to be difficult to work with but the student, I'll call him Joe, was said to be a delight.  I had worked with difficult parents before, and was proud of my success.  My boss thought I was perfect for the job.  I compared it to a few other cases that were open and it sounded the best.  Feeling confident I could handle it, I took the job. 

            From the start I decided the best strategy would be to stay neutral in the case.  My first day of tutoring proved to be a challenge to my resolve.  Instead of tutoring I spent an hour and a half with Cheryl, sitting at the kitchen table, as she went over every report she had on Joe since birth.  I spent only five minutes with Joe.  

            Most of the information Cheryl gave me was her own account of Joe's educational and medical experiences over the years and her opinion of his disability.  She quoted professionals she had met in the past, but I was surprised at how unprofessional their statements were in her rendition. 

            Joe had suffered a traumatic birth.  She showed me pictures of Joe in one of those plastic hospital infant beds with tubes and monitors hooked up to him. She recalled how her pediatrician told her the other doctors wanted to leave Joe to die, but her doctor insisted they take him to a neonatal hospital.

            The only facts presented, however, were that he was a two week late, ten-pound baby, that had swallowed meconium and had resulting breathing problems.  The situation is serious but usually has a happy outcome.  She was also concerned with a hearing loss that was well documented in reports since preschool.   She claimed it was getting worse. 

            I wasn't easily going to side with the district either.  I have known districts that were delinquent in providing needed services. Cheryl's behavior seemed over protective and controlling, but this did not mean what she was saying wasn't true.  If anything she meant to persuade me to see things her way, a trait of a good mother.  As a professional I prefer to make judgments based on my own experiences.  I deferred judgment on Joe's disabilities until there was time to get to know him.  Cheryl asked me to keep weekly notes about what I was doing with Joe.  Thinking this was part of her concern to see that her son was being appropriately cared for, I agreed.

            The first few weeks were rather enjoyable getting to use my talent as a teacher again.   Joe was a lot of fun to work with.  Their home felt cozy on some beautiful winter days, when the snow was white outside and the bright sun came in through the kitchen windows.  I enjoyed sitting there with their cat, supposedly a known people hater, curled up on my lap. Sometimes Cheryl had started dinner and good smells would fill the house. Cheryl would offer me ice tea and we would talk.  We had a lot in common; we were close in age, we were both mothers, we loved to garden.   She was a twin and I had twins.  There was many a day where she was one of the only people I spoke to besides my own children and my parents. We had some good conversations and laughs.

             I enjoyed my sessions with Joe. He was bright, polite, eager to learn and was getting A's and B's on all his work.  There was no need to do anything special to help him with the work.  We read the assignments together, alternating turns to make the lessons interesting, and then he did the work.  He liked science and had a good imagination for science fiction. We often had discussions expanding on the subject matter. 

            Joe didn't mind not going to regular school.  Cheryl and Joe seemed to have a good relationship.  She would get stern with him from time to time about his chores, but she also would joke with him like a normal parent.  Joe seemed slightly protective of his Mom.  He told me once, "My Mom tends to exaggerate."  Remembering her comment about the doctors at his birth, I smiled.

            There were also no signs of a significant hearing disability.  One time, I asked him a question while he was across the room.  He was getting a drink from the refrigerator with his back turned to me.  I spoke in a normal tone of voice and he responded appropriately.  I was not hired to make an assessment of Joe's disability, and no one asked, so I kept my opinions to myself. 

            A situation arose where I tried to act as a medium between Cheryl and the district.  Before I started, Joe had spent two weeks without a tutor.  He was behind on work.  February break was coming up. Cheryl wanted Joe tutored over break to help him catch up.  Cheryl knew I would be unavailable since my own children would be off from school. Three days before vacation she wrote a letter to the district requesting a tutor.  

            In one day of receiving Cheryl's letter, the district found a special education teacher who was willing to tutor.  They asked me to contact her and make the necessary arrangements with Cheryl.  I even agreed to go on the first day to ease the transition.  I told all this to Cheryl the next day, one day before break.  She was immediately angry.  It was not possible!  The district did not give Joe enough time to adjust to a stranger. I was to call and cancel the tutor.  Cheryl than wrote a letter complaining about the inadequacies of the district in this matter. 

            The problems began when Cheryl kept asking me to change what I was writing in my reports. Cheryl confided she shared the reports with her lawyer.  Her lawyer noted that the reports did not give enough detail about a disability.  She wanted more specifics.  If Joe asked me to slow down, she wanted me to write that in the reports.  I was not comfortable with my reports being used by her lawyer.  I politely told her that I would not be writing her notes anymore. I was required to submit a weekly summary to my boss. She could have copies of those.  She seemed to take the news well and tutoring continued. 

            After a few weeks Cheryl came to me with new requests.  Each one, if carried out, would do something to sabotage the success Joe was having.  One request was to not hand in a report Joe had done.  Withholding the report, he would get an F in English for the quarter.  Since the report was on her computer, ignoring her order was impossible. She claimed that writing the report was causing Joe too much emotional stress. She stated he would burst out in tears after I left, or before I came, or at night when he was trying to work on the paper on his own.  Cheryl stated that these directions were from her son's doctor and counselor. She now claimed that the reports were really for the doctor and the counselor.  The counselor, and not the lawyer, had made the comments about my reports.  She now was keeping her own log.

            It would be both highly unprofessional and unethical for me to comply with these requests without proper verification.  It was illegal for me to contact the doctor or counselor for clarification without her permission.   I asked for verification from the doctor and counselor, through a letter or phone call.  Cheryl refused, saying neither wanted to be involved in the case with the district, and this would draw them in. 

            I was becoming more and more unsettled everyday.  Staying neutral in the situation was becoming impossible.  I had developed some very strong feelings that what this woman was doing was wrong.   Her suit against the school district appeared not to be based on a true problem that her son had, but more of a personal mission to have power.  She actually seemed to enjoy watching people try to accommodate her demands, including me.   Any success Joe was having worked against her case.  This meant her demands might not end.  She could continue to try and thwart my work and make unethical demands on me. The rewards for me staying did not seem worth the agony.  I considered quitting.  Being reassigned to another student would be easy, but I decided to stick this assignment out because, I knew in my heart, God was asking me to do this for several reasons.