The Caregiver’s Tales: A Blog
The Caregiver's Tales (A Blog)
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.
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.
On our way to Marathon last week, we went via Del Rio. It wasn’t a straight-line trip, but there were sights to see, and we wanted to see them. First up was the Devil’s Sinkhole in Rocksprings followed by lunch in Del Rio. We didn’t actually see the sinkhole. But we picked up brochures at the visitor’s center. In Del Rio we ate lunch and checked out Lake Amistad. It’s big and low and needs a good flood to fill back up. Maybe the super El Niño will bring one. I’m sure the locals would be happy.