The Caregiver’s Tales: A Blog
The Caregiver's Tales (A Blog)
If you don’t have a songwriter, you should get one. Preferable one whose music speaks to you in magical ways that only you can divine. One whose songs you want to sing when they’re sung to you. We saw a show last night in Marathon with a songwriter whose songs spoke to his audience. He sang; they sang. It was fun. And it made for a lovely evening.
I took the road less traveled yesterday. On my way to Marathon, we drove down highway 90 from Del Rio. I should have some ancestral memory of this road. My father’s travels as a member of the US Navy took us back and forth between California and Virginia at least four times. I have one hazy memory of stopping in Langtry to visit Judge Roy Bean’s offices, but that’s it.
Summer days. Mostly I stay inside avoiding the heat. There were times when it would have been baseball all day. But that’s long gone. And there were times when I could have built a fence or deck. But those days are long gone, too. I don’t miss them much. They were just things I did when I was young and younger.
Crossword puzzles are humbling. I think I am skilled in problem solving until I run across a set of puzzle clues that make me feel as though I’m wandering in a desert. It happened this morning. The clues simply sat there on the screen and no matter how many times I read them aloud, they meant nothing. My brain was blank. Finally, and I have no idea how, a single answer popped up. From there I was able to unwind the puzzle as various letters appeared. It was a relief, but it was a hard morning.
I’ve heard it said before that so and so lives in their own world. It’s a way of identifying the outlier, the odd man. But I’m beginning to think we all live in our own worlds. We pop into existence, try to learn how things work, then pop back out. It brings to mind the fable of the blind men describing an elephant by touch. That’s us when we’re alive, trying to make sense of the world. Someone sings a song. One person loves it. The other person hates it. In your own universe, it’s to each his own.
Well, I surrendered. I hired someone to clean my gutters. It felt the prudent thing to do. Granted, I can still hoist and climb my ladder, but the younger man did it with considerably more ease than I’ve managed lately, and certainly with less trepidation. I fought back the temptation to stand outside and watch him. Instead, I sat inside and listened to the banging. When it was all done, he sent me pictures of my nice clean gutters.
A group of old friends gathered at the house yesterday. We knew each other young, now we know each other old. Where once we would have danced all night this time we drank in measured quantities and floated in a pool. Sedate with quite music in the background. Conversation filled the air and clocks were watched to ensure everyone got home before dark. Periodically a swallow would drop by for a drink. That’s how quietly we sat.
Just spent four days in Marathon Texas listening to music, making music, and watching stars (the celestial sort). It was possible to walk everywhere I needed to go. Although we rode on occasion for speed and convenience. The weather cooperated. Hot days were followed by cool nights. Desert weather, the sort I’ve come to love over the years from my youth in the desert around 29 Palms California to the Big Bend that I discovered late in life.