Nothing is ever what it seems.....

My Spanish Teacher Elena is wonderful, I really enjoy her and when I first started going to school the one thing I told Jonathan after my first couple of classes was that I wanted to buy Elena a new pair of glasses. Why? well it seemed like she was always getting really close to words on a page or on the computer screen, like she needed bi-focals or something like that... and I thought that maybe because she was a teacher maybe she couldn't afford new glasses.

Today during an exercise we did in class, which was to have the class interview Elena, I learned that she has some type of "eye sickness". That is how Elena put it. That she will loose her sight at some point in the near future. I am sure there is something more descriptive she would have told us but with a classroom only speaking at level one in Spanish I think she was telling us what we could understand. I was devastated. It really hit me hard. You could tell she is devastated about it too. It was sad, enlightening and frustrating all at the same time. It explained her squinting and I felt ashamed that I thought she couldn't afford new glasses. I also felt confined that I wasn't able to offer any empathy about the situation due to my lack of Spanish skills. All I could do was listen.

Now that I think about it, maybe only being able to listen was a blessing, it may have pained her more to talk about it if we had been able to express our surprise and sadness. What gets me is how I fall into this trap regularly, I swear this is like the easiest "life rule" to remember..... and yet every time I think I understand a situation something shows up to tell me something different. It is humbling and a wonderful reminder that the stories we make up in our heads about the world around us are just that.... stories.