Rare moment chillaxing with the fam. Got some Whitney Houston playing on the phone. I must have died and gone to heaven.

So much of the run up to this week has been led by sweat and uncertainty. Trying to fit things around the schedule of classes and homework. Now we’re up here on the home run, sitting in the cockpit. Not having to tell Lu to get off her phone. Not injecting motivation into Delphine. They are both doing it.

Lu is revising for chemistry. Her penultimate exam for tomorrow. She had a bit of a shock on Tuesday, when she started her Biology paper without revising for it the day before. In fact, she got her mark and ended up doing did really well – which in turn had a funny effect on her. It’s made her study more, but more calmly this time. Oh my.

Meanwhile, Delph has to write a portfolio piece for English. A funny story which encompasses her knowledge of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They did Shakespeare this term, and Delphine got into it. She gave me – a Shakespearean ignoramus – a run through it all. Drew up a storyboard weeks ago which covered days of drawings. Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius. It was straight out of an Elizabethan telenovela. Delph didn’t miss a trick.

I realised this week, during Delph’s English, that she hasn’t yet grasped the difference between an adjective and an adverb though. Perhaps that’s sweating the small stuff. Still. I get to different points of Delphine’s education where I realise we have fundamental gaps. And the gaps are there not because they were left out in teaching.

Delphine understands stuff, but she forgets it too. And it is hard to gauge because her understanding seems good enough at the time. Sometimes it can only be a week and the information is lost. Sometimes hours. Today for example, she wrote the word petal and an hour later needed to write it again, but couldn’t remember how. This is not stupidity. This child is not stupid. This is something else.

I’ve joined enough dyslexic groups by now that I read and recognise a very similar narrative. Quickly forgetting. Seeming to understand one minute but losing that comprehension the next. Being brilliant in visual terms though. Delph reads moments and people with a maturity beyond her years. And who really cares if it’s an adverb when you’re deciding if someone can be trusted? This point is repeatedly brought home.

The summer holiday is coming. We can work on gaps in knowledge. We can go back to basics. I can reinforce until we all want to puke up an adjective or two. Even Shakespeare might want to throttle me with a sonnet. For now, let’s live in peace. Let’s enjoy our moment in the cockpit. A flicker. Just a flicker.