Bluebirds

Right outside my window, in the little nest box that in past springs has sheltered families of wrens, a pair of bluebirds are building their nest.  Blue, orange, and white he perches, exuding authority, on the little apple tree whose leaves are barely unfurling, while his paler, browner wife thrusts beakfuls of stuff into the box.

(Photo:  Ed Cobb)


On the other side of the glass, I talk on the phone with my sister.  We are discussing whether to put an IV into the arm of our dying mother, to hydrate her.  I Google "hydration for late-stage dementia patients" in hopes of guidance, but that girl bird keeps stealing pieces of hay from the blueberry mulch and stuffing them into the nest hole, and I keep looking up from the screen to watch her.

I find the following and cut-and-paste it to my sister who, unlike me, is on the scene:

"Patients at this stage often refuse to eat or drink, even though they are offered food. This is due to the patient's sense of hunger and thirst diminishing as dementia advances. Once families realize that the patients with Alzheimer's Dementia (AD) often do not experience hunger or thirst, they may be able to remove the guilt they feel associated with "starving them to death" and accept the natural progression of end-stage AD. It is also important to explain that patients with poor food and fluid intake who become dehydrated typically do not express pain or discomfort. It is generally believed that dehydration in end-stage dementia is not painful."

Old Lexi limps into the room, dragging her hind legs, and laps at the water bowl.  At least she's not  dehydrated.

Bluebird of happiness, you ornithological cliche, could you have picked a worse time to visit?  Those little brown wrens in their modest clothes would have been far more appropriate for this season.

And yet, the breeze is cool, the air is clear, the evening light is bright.  For an instant, the bluebird is happiness. 

Old Ladies

One is ninety-four.  The other will soon be fourteen.  One is my mother;  the other, my dog Lexi.

Every time I step over Lexi's recumbent form on my way to or from the kitchen, I think of my mother.  And often, as I worry about and mourn my  mother, my thoughts return to Lexi, lying on her spot in the middle of the kitchen.  Both my mother and my dog amaze their doctors and vets, respectively.  "Her vitals are better than mine!"  the nurse practitioner at the nursing home exclaims about my mother.  "I can't believe she's still walking around," the vet said the last time she saw Lexi.

Both, at their advanced age, look forward to their next meal, and instead of shrinking are putting on weight.  For a long time I kept Lexi skinny because of her arthritic hips, but for the last several months I've let her have (almost) all the food she wants.  Why deprive her of her one remaining pleasure?  Since her bout of encephalitis almost two years ago, my mother has been immobile.  Lexi too is practically immobile, though she does still manage to get to her outdoor bathroom.  I used to think that lying down for months on end spelled doom for man and beast.  But apparently there are exceptions.

Their minds are fading, along with their sight and hearing.  For a while this meant that they gradually and gently withdrew from reality, my mother into a place that held her long-dead husband and parents, with whom she would have long chats, and Lexi into wherever old dogs go to remember.   For a long while, things were peaceful in our kitchen and in the room in the nursing home in Mobile, Alabama.  But that has changed.  Now we give Lexi Valium at night, so that she won't spend it in anguished, wheezy, endless barking.  My mother has become aggressive towards the people who take care of her, and is having to be sedated.

Sedatives seem to take the edge off mental misery.  They also keep my  mother's caretakers safe from her teeth and, I hope, more disposed to treat her kindly.  But sedatives are not good for the body, and the pace of her deterioration is increasing.  Are we, her family, by condoning the use of these drugs allowing a kind of gradual euthanasia?   If Lexi's dementia were to take an aggressive turn there would be no doubt as to the next step:  we would take her to the vet who would gently and quickly put an end to her distress.  But there is no such clarity where humans are concerned.

Through all this, some shreds of their former selves still cling to my mother and my dog.  In the last photo of my mother, her mouth looks oddly crooked, and I worried that she'd had a stroke.  "No, no," my sister, who took the picture, said.  "She told me that she didn't want to smile because she was afraid she had food between her teeth." 

On her part, Lexi still reigns over an invisible territory that the other dogs dare not cross.  If I call them and they don't immediately appear, or I hear them whining in the kitchen, I know that it's because they're stuck behind Lexi, and I have to go liberate them.  "Lexi, I'm watching you," I say, and they sprint past her.

But lately her domain has been shrinking, and Wolfie and Bisou can get past her almost any time they choose.

Gothic Fantasy

Among the countless delights of my daily existence, one of the latest is my rediscovery of needlepoint. 

I was skeptical when the urge first hit me.  O.k., I said to myself, I'll get back into needlepoint, but I won't go whole hog.  I know all about my sudden urges, many of which--such as the one to carve wooden spoons--fade as quickly as the morning dew.  Others, like the desire to keep goats, come and go through the years.  The urge to write, that moaning continuo of my life, is one of the few that have stuck around.

By not going whole hog, I meant not investing major moneys on exquisite needlepoint kits reproducing entire medieval tapestries.  Instead, I went to a local shop, bought a harmless flowery pillow design, and went to work.  Or rather, play.  Or, perhaps, meditation.

But I found that struggling with the stiff canvas in my hands distracted me from my bliss, so I returned to the shop and bought a stretcher frame, and tacked the canvas onto it.  That was somewhat better, but not really what I wanted.  My heart's desire was a needlepoint stand, a contraption that sits on the floor and holds up your work so you can sit and embroider and feel...what?  Medieval, that's what.

The root of this desire probably lies in children's book illustrations of ladies in in wimples and long garments embroidering by Gothic windows, a troubadour at their feet, strumming his lute.  The embroidery stand by the broken-arch window, the lady and the troubadour, have been staples of my imagination ever since I can remember.

I went searching on the web, where the usual Aladdin's cave awaited me.  There are needlepoint stands out there that are works of art in themselves, mostly early-American and Victorian reproductions in walnut and cherry, and selling for thousands of dollars.  But as usual, if you look diligently, you find dark corners in the digital cave where even the humblest needs are met.  And so was mine, for well under $100.

Yesterday afternoon I set my needlepoint stand by the (non-ogival) porch windows and sat in an old straight-backed walnut chair, the basket of wools by my side.  It was raining, a gift in this odd, dry spring.  While the dogs napped on the floor around me, I threaded the needle with white for the background that would set off the central bouquet.

I put on Bach's Saint Matthew Passion, it being Palm Sunday, and embroidered my way through the whole thing, listening, in my barely-there German, for the words (the kiss, the cock's crow, the vinegar-soaked sponge) that elicited the old story.  Listening to Bach's dissonant chords, which seem to me the very sound of sorrow.
When it was over, I stood up and stretched, put the frame against the wall, and, feeling sorry for the house-bound dogs, took Wolfie and Bisou for a walk.  Even in the drizzle, a bird was singing, and I saw that the front field is almost completely green.

I Think I Saved The Apple Crop!

I'm not sure what happened in the rest of the country after last week's apocalyptic heat, but here in Vermont the all-time highs were succeeded by two nights of hard frost, which was made worse by howling northwest winds.  We had plenty of warning that the cold was coming, so I asked my spouse to help me save the 2012 apple harvest by covering Freedom and Liberty, my two little apple trees, which had been lured by the hot days to impending bloom.

Fortunately for us, at the moment the trees were even smaller than usual, having just undergone my annual enthusiastic pruning.  Even so, when you walk right up to it, a tree always turns out to be much bigger than you expected.  We flung a large plastic tarp over Liberty, taking care not to damage the spindly end branches.  But we had only one tarp, and when I unfolded the twin-bed sheet I had brought for Freedom, my spouse let out a derisive cackle.

"O.k., I'll get a bigger sheet," I said, and went to the linen closet and came out with a queen-size sheet.  But that wasn't big enough either.  We ended up standing on the patio, being buffeted by arctic gusts as we struggled to attach two big sheets together with binder clips.  This required many binder clips, and some kept coming off because our fingers were clumsy with cold, but finally we hoisted the enlarged sheet over Freedom and fastened the bottom edges together as best we could with some more binder clips.  The wind was so strong that it kept inflating both tarp and sheets like balloons, and I expressed a concern that the trees would be uprooted and carried off over the Green Mountains into New Hampshire.

I didn't have much hope, what with the wind and the freezing rain and the two nights of temperatures in the teens, that the buds would make it, but at least my conscience was clear.  I kept looking out, making sure that the covers were still on, wondering if they were doing any good.  Their skinny trunks swaying in the gale, the trees looked like two enormous lollipops.

This morning, having checked that the forecast lows would not drop below 30F, I removed the tarp and the sheets.  The buds, as far as I could tell,  had survived. 

I was standing on the patio unfastening binder clips when two Canada geese flew honking overhead.  They must have come from the pond hidden back in the woods, and they were flying so low that I could hear the whoosh of their wing beats.  They disappeared behind the roof, but came back and flew over me again, and then again.  They were flying in circles around the house, and one of them was clearly chasing the other, though the one being chased didn't seem to mind.  They were scrawny geese, with extra-long necks, loud and raucous:  juvenile males, I guessed, feeling the season, letting off steam.

Of Frog And Pond

I had to spring-clean the little patio pond today.  Normally I aim for a sunny day after the ice has melted but before the frogs come loudly back to life.  But because of this apocalyptic weather, frog-song erupted on the patio two nights ago, about the same time the peepers started yelling in the big pond way down in the woods.  Our pair of pond frogs have clearly been doing more than singing, since this morning there was a substantial mass of frog eggs floating on the water.

At last year's spring cleaning, there were a number of frog cadavers to dispose of (my frog funerals consist of flipping the rubbery bodies over the fence into the chicken yard, for the hens to feast on).  I didn't want this year's tadpoles to hatch in water polluted by their relatives' remains.  Before things went any farther, I figured I should partially drain the pond, get the worst of the muck and the winter's frog casualties out of the bottom, fertilize the water lilies, and refill the pond with clean, cold well water for the tadpoles to grow in. 

When we built the pond, we made sure that one end of it was 3 1/2 feet deep.  This is supposed to be below the frost line, and to ensure that hibernating critters don't get killed by the encroaching ice.  After  last year's tragic spring, I learned that even if there is water below the ice, unless gases have a way to escape, frogs and salamanders and fish will suffocate.  The only way to prevent this is to keep an opening in the ice by electrical means, and since we don't (yet) have an outlet on the back wall of the house, despite the mild winter, the pond was solidly frozen for months.

I was expecting quite a frog holocaust today.  There had been dozens of frogs in the pond last summer.  In the fall, before the pond iced over, three or four of them had died, floated to the surface, and been skimmed off and fed to the hens.  Today, however, when my spouse-installed siphon started to lower the water level, a lot of dead leaves surfaced, and quite a few dead caterpillars, but not a single dead frog.

The two live frogs, alarmed by the receding waters, clung to the lily pots, their eyes popping with alarm.  I had previously scooped the mass of spawn into a bucket and put it out of harm's way in the shade.  As I skimmed the year's detritus, I brought up one very lively tadpole and three salamanders (two of whom were in flagrante).  When the water level got quite low I also saw, swimming in the murky depths...a fish!

I have documented in these pages my sad attempts to introduce fish into the pond.  For two summers I have decanted, first, shubunkin (the Japanese gold fish that look like koi), and then, when these perished, plain gold "feeder" fish into the pond.  Every single one--or so I thought--floated up or disappeared, victims of my pond's unsatisfactory ecology.  And yet today here was a fish, not gold but mud-colored, and definitely alive.  Had it dropped from the sky?  Had it emerged by spontaneous generation from the bottom muck?  Was it one of the originals that had somehow survived?  Was it a mirage spawned by my fevered brain?

When the pond was about a third empty, I started pouring in clean water from the hose, and decanted the frog spawn into it.  Both the mass of eggs and their parents disappeared into the depths.  As the pond filled and I installed the solar-powered fountain and bubbler, then poured in the barley straw pellets and the rotten-egg-scented solution intended to keep the water from turning into a fetid jelly, there was no sign of life on the surface.  I wondered if I by insisting on this belated cleaning I had murdered my pond pets.

But as soon as the sun went down somebody on the patio started playing the amphibian castanets with gusto again, and I feel reassured.  If we don't get a blizzard in the next few days, the frogs, the salamanders,  that ghostly fish and I will probably be o.k.

Some Catholic Reflections On An Early Spring

As many of you know, I am a former Catholic--or rather a lapsed Catholic,  since few people ever succeed in ridding themselves completely of Holy Mother Church's hold on their psyches.  I ceased practicing in my twenties, since I couldn't go along with the Church's position on birth control and had been taught that a cafeteria-style Catholicism was worse than no Catholicism at all.  But I can still chant the Credo in latin, and will do so at the drop of a hat.

The imprint goes much deeper than Gregorian chant and the smell of beeswax candles, however.  It is my suppressed Catholicism, for instance, that is responsible for my tendency to imbue everyday happenings with a religious significance.  Take, for instance, this early spring, which has caused maple sugaring to begin a full three weeks ahead of schedule. 

I know many people who glory in this sort of weather, who are grateful to be able to get outdoors and start raking the hay mulch off the flower beds--a task that in normal years they couldn't even begin to think about until April.  I, on the other hand, view this warmth with deep suspicion.  For one thing, we don't deserve it.  We don't deserve it because we haven't earned it by three good months of snow-shoveling, fire-stoking, and long-underwear-wearing.  There have been no blizzards, no cabin fever, and thus none of that bursting out of doors on the first day the thermometer hits 32F to fling spinach seeds on the still snow-covered garden.  The prizes that aren't sacrificed and waited for are hardly worth the winning.  It is by our sufferings in this vale of tears that we earn eternal life, no?

Furthermore, I think this early spring is the first stage of something we have earned:  a severe punishment, in the form of global warming, for our sins against the earth.  Hildegard of Bingen knew what she was talking about, back in the 12th century, when she said:  

Now in the people that were meant to be green there is no more life of any kind. There is only shriveled barrenness. The winds are burdened by the utterly awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on. Thunderstorms menace. The air belches out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples. The earth should not be injured! The earth must not be destroyed!

To distract myself from these dire thoughts, yesterday I pruned my two little apple trees.  I was shocked, when I took off the first "sucker," to see how much green there was under the bark.  The sap had certainly been running, and I hoped I was not too late with my shears.  But I finished the job anyway, sculpting the trees by cutting away the upright-growing branches and preserving the ones that came off the trunk at a wide angle, and snipping off the skinny little twigs that would get in the way of a thrown cat (if an apple tree has been properly pruned, you should be able to throw a cat through its branches).

And here again I found myself having Catholic thoughts--all this cutting and purifying and inflicting pain (I hope not much) in the hopes of a glorious future harvest reminded me of going to confession, where in exchange for the pain of telling your sins to a stranger you are left feeling cleansed and full of hope.

Speaking of which, as soon as it stops raining, I will plant my spinach, which mundane act will not fail to remind me that by doing my little bit to minimize the "shriveled barrenness" of the earth I will perhaps save my life, and possibly even my soul.

In Which I Explain

I've been writing here very little of late, and I feel I owe an explanation to those of you who have kindly clicked and read and kept me writing during the past couple of years.

The one thing I have been reluctant to write about is the principal fact in my life--that I have, and have had for two decades, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).  Why write about something that I am, literally and figuratively, sick of? 

One reason for my reluctance is that I find the few books that have been written about CFS very difficult to read.  Some are medical in orientation and, because there is no cure for the disease, necessarily depressing.  Others vent a mostly justified anger at the medical and political establishment's mismanagement of an illness that affects an estimated one million people in the U.S. alone.  And others are self-help texts advising one to curtail one's ambitions, avoid physical or mental exertion, and try to live in the moment.

I thought that there might be room for a different kind of book--a non-medical, non-didactic account of one person's experience of the illness that would not be devoid of humor and in which other sufferers might find themselves reflected and perhaps consoled.  And because CFS encapsulates many of the conditions--loss of energy, loss of power, isolation--with which everyone sooner or later must come to terms, I believe that such a book might find application beyond the CFS community.

So I've been writing this thing, and it's not been easy.  For one thing, most people who sit down to write their memoirs plan to tell about things that happened to them, or that they made happen--how they crossed the Atlantic in a raft, climbed the Himalayas, raised quintuplets.  In my case, I'm writing about an event that caused things to stop happening to me, and caused me to stop making anything happen.  I have lots of stories to tell about my life before CFS--but after CFS, not many.  And because of the mental fog that accompanies the disease, my memories of those nothing-happening years are few and far between.

Why then write about this at all?  Because, although I would never have chosen it, it is my adventure, my crossing of the Atlantic in a raft, my climb of the Himalayas.

I hope the story will not be too dour or dolorous.  There will be plenty of dogs and goats and chickens and gardening mishaps to lighten things along the way.  We'll see--I am yet at what is known in the trade as the "shitty first draft."

Meanwhile, I don't intend to abandon this blog, and I hope that you will not abandon me.  In the coming months I will be adding, to my stories of dog training and Vermont living, bits about my writerly struggles, defeats, and resurrections. Wish me luck.