My struggling learner was different from birth.  She has, this mystifying and mysterious form of eye contact.  It is nearly its own language.  She’d spend hours talking to me without words.  She studied everything from the comfort of my lap, snuggled and sedate.  She smiled and twinkled, as her brother performed for her infant eyes. When she did begin to speak, she talked in an accent and often flipped syllables in her words.  Turing words like magazine into mazageen.  She’d work for long minutes, explaining and describing simple objects, like broccoli, instead of using their names because you could not remember what to call them.  Friends at church or at…