"I'm going to move to Alaska," I growled, sliding into the passenger seat of Cindy's car for the ride home from the University of Washington in Seattle. I slammed the door shut.
"Sure, sure and when might this happen?" Cindy chided as she turned the key in the ignition. Flicking on the windshield wipers she pulled out of the south parking lot onto Montlake Boulevard, and headed across the bridge to South Interstate Five.
"As soon as I can arrange it!" I snapped. Rain beat on the windshield. Cindy listened to my complaints about Susan, my one-on-one preceptor for the course in Evaluating the Young Child that Cindy and I were taking that fall semester of 1985 in the Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy Department at the U.
Susan had gone straight from her occupational therapy undergraduate degree to graduate school with only three months of pediatric clinical experience. Susan was twenty years my junior. She relied on theory and test mechanics. She was on the path I wanted to be on, going to school for a masters degree and then on for her doctorate so she could teach. I, on the other hand, had worked as a pediatric occupational therapist for almost ten years and had a nearly grown child of my own. I was all practical experience with a whatever-works attitude. I was jealous and I felt that since she had no real clinical experience there was not much she could teach me at this point in my career.
Then today I was evaluating a four-year-old whose mother would not leave the testing room. Even though I asked her nicely to go into the room with a one-way mirror where she could see everything we were doing, she insisted on staying with her child. She kept interfering with her son's performance on the test. The poor kid didn't have a chance to do well on the structured evaluation with his mother hovering over his every move. I wasn't supposed to change the wording or the order of the items on the test because that was against the test procedures. The evaluation ended up being my clinical observations which Susan found unacceptable.
"Occupational therapy is both art and science," I had said emphasizing the word art.
"Well, we can't have that," Susan had responded. Her reply set me on edge, but I kept quiet. After all, I was supposed to be the student. I felt trapped again by the circumstances of my life.
Now riding down I-5 with Cindy, I vented my frustration and watched the low clouds and constant rain that hid Mount Rainier.
"So how's your love life?" Cindy asked, trying to change the subject.
"Can we talk about something else? How's your preceptor? I noticed you were all smiles after meeting with her this afternoon."
"Oh, she's great." Cindy's instructor had many years of experience as a physical therapist and had also worked in foreign countries. She was a highly skilled, experienced therapist from whom Cindy could learn a lot.
In June I had changed jobs leaving colleagues at the Children's Therapy Unit (CTU) at Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup. I had left CTU for better pay and benefits to work at Francis Haddon Morgan Center in Bremerton. When I decided to make the change, I hadn't thought about the fact that for the first time in my career I would be the only occupational therapist at the facility. I felt isolated there.
So in August when Cindy called to say the Elks Club was sponsoring a course on Evaluating the Young Child at the University of Washington, I didn't hesitate to register for it. Since the Elks Club underwrote part of the tuition, I would be able to afford the course. As a single mom, I didn't have a lot of money to spend on continuing education which I needed to retain my therapy license. Cindy said we could meet in Fife at the Denny's and car pool from there. That would keep the cost of the forty-mile trip down for both of us. It also gave me a friend and colleague to talk with during the ride.
The class was taught all day on Mondays, one of my days off from work. I loved learning new things, and thought this would be a wonderful opportunity. It wasn't turning out that way.
Cindy dropped me off at the Denny's. "See you next week," she said as I gathered my bag and got out of the car. "Don't take it so hard, Margret."
"Right," I replied, shutting the door gently. I stood in the rain to watch as she drove out of the parking lot. Then I walked slowly to my Ford Escort and drove the rest of the way home to Tacoma.
Fritz, my son, and I lived one block from the University of Puget Sound (UPS) where I had graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor of Science degree in occupational therapy. After completing nine months of clinical training and passing the national certification examination to become an Occupational Therapist, Registered (OTR), I was offered a job at the Children's Therapy Unit. Fritz had wanted to stay in Tacoma where he had friends from grade school. I felt I had disrupted his life enough by divorcing his father in 1972, and then moving from Hoquiam to Tacoma in 1973 to attend UPS, so I accepted the offer.
When I inherited some money from my father's estate in 1975, I bought an old house near the campus so I wouldn't have to move Fritz again. With my job at the Children's Therapy Unit we could settle down for many years to come, or so I thought.
Fritz was now nineteen and a graduate from high school. He did not want to go to college or move out on his own yet. He worked at J. K. Gill Stationary store at the Tacoma Mall and lived at home. He had his friends and we had a dog, a golden retriever named Trooper. Fritz seemed content with his life. It was only I who was dissatisfied with life.
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