The Caregiver’s Tales: A Blog

Sleep these days has become an exercise in pain management. My hips hurt, my shoulders hurt, my foot hurts, old hernia repairs hurt. I pulled something in my right arm moving a dresser. It now hurts. I’d like to think there’s a way out of it, but I’m pretty sure it’s just my lot in life. I occupy an old frame and even though I’ve tried to treat my body with respect things just happen.

Well, I’m a new grandpa. My daughter had a son yesterday. In days gone by my wife would have been there to help, but she’s gone. So, the job fell to her sister. There’s not much a dad can do in this situation, because it’s all about the experience of childbearing. Moms do it, not the dads. The girl needs a female compatriot, and she has one. My wife’s sister had two children of her own.

I saw a bird. Pyrrhuloxia. Actually, two. They flew from bush to bush right in front of me. They were too fast for me and my camera, but I saw them clear as day and so did my friends. I last spotted one at Falcon Lake State Park in 1987. The recent sighting was just outside Persidio. I guess I could have found one sooner, but I’m a birder in the same way as I’m a geologist or a plant lover or a dabbler in physics. Incidental. I like to know what I’m seeing or reading, so I try to figure it out.

On my most recent trip to Big Bend, we drove in to Presidio to look around and eat lunch. A big sign on El Patio, where we dined, welcomed the transmigrantes. At first, I thought it was all about the truckers hauling goods into the US from factories in Mexico, or vice versa, but the dictionary definition says the phrase describes people hauling used goods from the US to Latin America. The key word there is used goods and the destination isn’t Mexico.

I like hiking. It’s where my body tells my mind, “Look, I’ve got this. You’re just along for the ride, head boy. Take a break. Look around.” So, I do. As I trudge along, I watch the trail, the plants, the mountains, the sky, the hikers ahead. It’s one foot in front of the other. A walk. A long walk. A slow walk.

Big Bend drives me to silence. All I want to do, when I’m there, is to look at the landscapes as they stretch out around me and confront the enormity of time and think about all the lifetimes it took to get from there to here. After all, it’s a land that once sat at the bottom of a sea that first formed 100 million years ago, then became pocked marked with raging volcanoes 40 million years ago, then went quiet to let wind, rivers, and rain carve the landscape into its present form, one grain of sand at a time. It’s a lovely, slow-moving panorama.

My Mexican Plum is full of blooms, for the first time ever. We had a few single blooms last year. But this year is the real deal. There are flowers everywhere, from bottom to top. I’d like to think it’s happening because I took out one of the Turks Caps to give the tree more breathing room, but it’s more likely the tree has finally matured into it fruit bearing years.

To set the stage, I wear gloves when I work. Depending on the type of work I have three pair. Yesterday, to mow, I wore my thinnest, they come almost to my elbow, covering my forearm from sun and brush. At one point, something called me inside. While there, I saw I had a text. I removed one glove, answered the text, did something else in the house and something else again. When finished, I went to put on my glove. It was gone.