The Marsh Project Week #35

It's been awhile since I've updated my project; a weekend trip and then a unexpected ER visit followed by a few days of recuperation interrupted my nature exploration, as did flooding in the marsh due to what seemed like endless rain.  However, I'm back on track (hopefully) and sunshine this weekend meant that I could get the mud boots on, grab the camera, and make my way back out to my favorite trail and observation point.  One aspect of cooler weather I really enjoy: almost no mosquitoes. 

The marsh had changed- a lot.  When I'd been out there three weeks ago, the lily pads covering the marsh were looking a little wilty and brown around the edges, but they were still mostly green and they were still covering the water surface.  Either the cold spells we've had or the flooding or both had rendered them shrunken and brown.  The green herons are gone for the winter; I'll be looking forward to seeing them next summer.  In their place, the northern flickers have arrived. 

The dragonflies are mostly gone, with the exception of the common green darners, which were still plentiful and active, and the variegated meadowhawks, which seem to be the first to come and the last to leave every year.  Even the Eastern pondhawks, usually everywhere on this trail, were nowhere to be seen.  In sunlight, the variegated meadowhaws' metallic coloration glimmers, making them seem like winged jewels of early spring and late fall. 

The butterflies, however, are making a late fall appearance with the monarch migration coming through.  This past spring I'd seen almost no monarchs, so I was glad to see multiple monarchs in a wildflower patch at the entrance to the nature preserve, along with the Gulf fritillaries, variegated fritillaries, and common buckeyes.  I also observed a goatweed leafwing perched on a branch with its bright orange wings open; when its wings are closed, it can easily be mistaken for a leaf.  

Earlier yesterday, I'd gotten a hot tip from another fan of nature that the pelicans were out on the river.  The water flow had been cut off from the dam and no water was coming out of the outlet work gates, but when I arrived several American white pelicans were standing around (literally- the water appeared to be only a few inches deep).  I don't know if they were waiting for the water to start flowing out of the dam so that they could commence fishing, or what they were doing, but I'm always excited to see the pelicans.  After I finished my hike, I noticed that they'd all left. 

Finally, a really interesting find as I came off the trail- a very large green caterpillar- possibly a Polyphemus moth, but I am not sure as to ID.  

A Note from 2010

A few weeks ago I made a weekend trip to visit the Grandpa and Grandma of No.  The Grandma of No is now in an assisted living center, and the Grandpa of No is adjusting to being home alone.  When The Son of Never Stops Eating found out about my plans, he tried to finagle an invitation to accompany me on my journey.  He reminded me that it had been a long time since he'd been on an airplane and informed me that it was unfair that his sister had been on an airplane twice this year and he was still at ZERO flights.  I reminded him that he had school. He said he needed a break from school.

It was a good try, kid.  Your time will come.

As I sat with my mom, one of the Alzheimer's caregivers came over and started talking with us- well, mostly to me. My mom doesn't have conversations anymore. The caregiver told me not to feel badly that Mom had no idea who I was, and I assured her that I hadn't expected her to- Mom hasn't known who I am for awhile now.  She doesn't know who anyone is.

She'll hold your hand while you walk, the caregiver told me.  Just touch her hand, and she'll grab yours.  She likes to hold hands.

So Mom and I walked for awhile around the assisted living center, holding hands.  When my daughter was born, I told another caregiver, Mom rocked her for hours while I rested.  She walked me through nursing, through changing a newborn's diaper (I was worried I'd hurt the baby; she seemed so fragile), through confounding bouts of newborn fussiness. The caregiver nodded.  I'm sure she'd heard stories just like that from other people. The assisted living center was full of Alzheimer's patients who had once held babies, cared for children, watched proudly at graduations, danced at weddings.  The place was full of stories that were lost to time and disease.  That daughter is now a college freshman, I told the woman. She's an adult just beginning to spread her wings, and the grandmother who rocked her to sleep at five days old has no memory of it.

Alzheimer's is a cruel disease.

And then I got back on the airplane and came home to the chaos of my own life.

A few days later I was feeling restless and decided to start decluttering the kitchen cabinet where we stash all the odds and ends.  Every now and then I go on this tear where I make a vow to remove five items a day from the house, the idea being that at the end of a year I will have effortlessly decluttered my life.  It hasn't worked out that way so far, but under the premise that next time I might get it right, I keep trying.  As I was going through old brochures, product guides for appliances I no longer own, numerous packages of address labels from charities (I have enough to last me the rest of my life) I'd stuck in there, I found a small notecard my mother had written back in 2010.  Her cursive was still even and flowing, the handwriting I remembered from my own childhood.  I saw no glimpse of what lay in wait just a few years away.  Maybe even then she was showing subtle signs; I don't remember.

"Sorry I've been so late in getting your "belated Easter basket" to you", she wrote, "so I am just sending you a check".  She mentions a recent bout of sinusitis that had started to clear up, and requested a permission slip as part of registering The College Student (who was then the Elementary School Student) for her church's Vacation Bible School that coming summer.  It seems like so long ago, that I had kids young enough to go to Vacation Bible School and that my mother could write a letter.  It was only eight years ago, but it might as well have been a century ago.

I wanted to write my mother back.  I wanted to tell her that the VBS student is now The College Student, and that she is in another state, adulting up, playing clarinet in a college marching band.  I wanted to tell her that the Son of Never Stops Eating is over six feet tall now, and desperately wants a job at a snow cone stand or a pet store. I wanted to tell her that I still make her peanut blossom cookies, and that when I'm not feeling well I curl up in the quilt she made me years ago and I feel like I'm getting a Mom hug.  I wanted to tell her that sometimes I walk out of Target, or the grocery store, and I can't remember where I parked my car, and although the Son of Never Stops Eating laughs at me, I wonder if it's a sign of worse things to come.  I wanted her to know that I miss her.

Maybe when she held my hand, some part of her brain still knew that I was someone who had been important to her.  Maybe not. Maybe we shouldn't wait to tell people what they mean to us. We don't know what eight years will bring.