Of course, the minute I switched on the phone this morning, the madness started up again. The lying, pleading, wheedling, threatening and so on. “My babies, my sick mother, please, please…” followed by the self-serving version of his woes – the one in which he’s never raised his voice at anyone nor punched, kicked or otherwise attacked and wounded his so-called nearest and dearest.

So, back up the clock for a minute to the two hours spent yesterday with the slower learners. Often, the slowness has to do less with limited intellectual capabilities than with an overload of issues unrelated to proper verb tense or who’s the subject in the sentence.

Two hours during which I switch off the phone and concentrate on the do-able in a controlled environment. Yesterday’s do-ables included a boy drawing and coloring a birthday card for his mother and pulling together a complete sentence to wish her lots of love and the fulfillment of her dreams. By the end of the session, the card was ready and contained a bare minimum of almost-unavoidable spelling errors.

In other words: sometimes, a tree hiding the forest is a wonderful respite.

On the illustration, next to the message about the tree hiding the forest, the caption for the other set of drawings reads: without roots, no flowers  (that works best if the roots have some soil on which to grow.)

The whole thing brought to mind hexagram 46 in the I Ching. Hence, the title.

Allez? On to the next thing.