Facing the East

A story of caregiving

Photo credit: Marilyn Peterson Haus

Dear Friends –

My apologies for the lag in time since my last post. Lots has been going on. I’ve been working hard to complete a new project, but I recently hit a snag, so I’m taking a break from it and getting back to some of the things I’ve let go while working on it. My husband and I also just had our own adventure. We took our first solo trip since we returned from a wonderful trip to Barbados the week that the world closed down for the pandemic.

We spent eight wonderful days in Santa Fe. It’s not true to say that it was a solo trip – we were with friends and family – but we managed the eight hours of travel, changing planes, and all of that on our own. We have always loved traveling together, but after his accident in the spring of 2022, I didn’t think we’d ever be able to take a long trip for pleasure again.

But we did it! I’ll be writing more about that experience, but today I want to share something else.

Last night we went to the opening of a new play, called “The Best Medicine,” by Robin Gerber. At the age of sixty-two, Robin became, as she puts it in the play, “a reluctant caregiver” to her husband who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Ten years later, she writes in the playbill, “desperate to do something for myself,” she decided to take a stand-up comedy class.

“The Best Medicine” was about both of these experiences: being a long-term caregiver to a man she loved, and doing something completely new and off the beaten track for herself.

The play was at times touching, at times inspiring, and at times painful to watch. But it reminded me that caregiving is, for many of us, an unexpected and often unwanted part of aging without a map. It also reminded me that, while it’s often a lonely experience, we’re not alone in going through it. I started thinking about all the people I know who have become reluctant caregivers, not only of spouses, but also of grown children and aging parents.

This was not part of the plan, but we manage, each in our own way. Because I think it helps to know that we’re not alone, I’m going to start posting stories of how people have creatively managed being thrust into the caregiving role. If you have a story you’d like to share, please send it to me at fdbarth@substack.com. If you don’t hear back from me within a week, please let me know in the comment section of this post, so I can look for your email.

In that light, today’s post is another beautiful contribution from my friend Marilyn Haus, who is a longtime caregiver for her husband.

Warmly,

Diane

Facing the East

by Marilyn Peterson Haus

The tree swallows swoop in, darting and dipping and diving, in a battle to chase the bluebirds away. Their backs are as blue as those of the male bluebirds, but their breasts are bright white instead of rusty red. They zigzag and loop in arial acrobatics above the row of three birdhouses, determined to claim the one on the right. The bluebirds fight to defend the one in the middle, where the female is brooding five eggs, but the swallows consider that house to be part of their territory. By the time the turf war ends, the tree swallows have seized the house on the right, and the bluebirds, forced to abandon the eggs they were brooding, have moved to the house on the left.

Our daughter Naomi had given the house on the right to my husband, George, as his 2025 Christmas gift. She had met the bluebird requirements as she constructed it – a wooden box with drainage openings and ventilation gaps; an entry hole one-and-a-half inches in diameter; a slanted roof that overhangs the front and sides. She measured to be certain it was twenty feet away from the house in the middle and rotated the entry wall until it was facing the east.

“It’s amazing there are any bluebirds,” she had said as she sank the pole into the ground.

She had placed the three houses where George is able to see them from his reading chair, but he no longer remembers that they’re there. I can see them when I stand in front of our kitchen stove. During the frigid Berkshire winters, I watch the bluebirds fly in to sit on the perches for a brief time, as if to make certain the houses will still be available for their spring rentals. I watch them disappear into the holes with clumps of dry grass sticking out of the sides of their beaks; count the number of eggs as they appear; study the wide-open beaks too large for the scrawny, naked necks; and when spikes pop out of the tiny wings, I watch them grow into long, shiny, blue feathers, ready to lift the fledglings into a nearby tree.

Two weeks after the birds have ended their high-speed rivalry, I tap the side of the swallows’ house before sliding my phone’s camera above the deep nest. The female shoots out of the hole like a bullet. When I photograph the bluebird, she doesn’t move. She’s become accustomed to my weekly photoshoots. Soon my pictures reveal five blue eggs in the house on the left and six white ones in the house on the right.

Two-and-a-half weeks after the birds start brooding their eggs – more than enough time for both batches to hatch – I ready my camera to photograph the little featherless blobs with bulging eye buds.

But instead of hatchlings, I find chunks of wood on the grass where the swallows’ house had stood. The metal pole is bent into a sharp elbow, jutting up from where it had been cemented into the ground. The hinged wall has been ripped from the house. An empty nest lies beside it. No sign of newly hatched swallows. The pole for the house on the left lies flattened on the ground. The house, torn apart. There are no baby bluebirds to be found. Only the middle house remains, untouched, on its pole.

The metal baffles that Naomi had fastened to the poles kept squirrels, snakes, and racoons from climbing them and eating the contents in the house. But they did not deter a bear.

After I tell Georgs that a bear has smashed the houses, I show him the wreckage. We stare at the twisted poles, the pieces of shattered wood.

“Maybe it was the wind,” he says.

When I glance at the house in the middle, I notice a small beak protruding from the entry hole. I slide my camera above the nest.

The bluebird is sitting on her old eggs.

Two days later, she is still sitting on the nest. I wipe my eyes as I study my photograph of the tiny bird huddled inside the house. What comfort can a bird find by trying to hatch unhatchable eggs? Why am I so distraught over one bird’s tragedy when there are birds all around?

During the past several months, I’ve lost three cousins, a cousin’s husband, three friends, and the ongoing losses of my once vibrant husband as his dementia takes its relentless toll. A small bird’s seeming grief feels big to me.

Three days after the bear took down the houses, my photograph confirms that the bluebird is no longer sitting on the old eggs. I fling the nest and its contents far into the meadow. The little bird will no longer be able to try to find consolation by hatching non-viable eggs. I will no longer have to watch the sadness of her futile effort.

George and I have acted as caregivers for the bluebirds for more than two decades. It’s time for us to take the last house down. I can’t bear the heartbreak of watching them work so diligently to raise chicks and not be able to protect them from aggressive tree swallows and marauding bears.

I scrub the house out with soapy water to rid it of mites and lice and leave the hinged wall open so it can dry.

While I’m dumping the dirty water into the sink, George walks into the kitchen. “What are you doing?” he asks. I repeat the story of how the houses got smashed and that I’m cleaning out the last one so we can give it to someone else.

He looks out the window. “There’s a bird sitting on the house,” he says. “It looks like he’s trying to go in the hole.”

I rush to the window and see the male bluebird sitting on the open wall. I hurry out and slam it shut.

A few minutes later, I look out the window. The male is sitting on the perch atop the house, his shiny blue back as straight as a sentinel. The female, in her muted hues, flies in and perches beside him. He lifts off and she disappears into the entrance. He returns and pokes his head into the hole, his blue tail feathers sticking out of the house. In and out they go.

I wanted to remove the house because we’re not able to protect the bluebirds from disasters that we can’t control. But they don’t share my fears. How can we remove the house when they’re already beginning again?

While standing at my stove, I watch the bluebirds as they fly into the house with tufts of grass clasped in their beaks. I wonder at their resilience, at their capacity to move forward. At their innate awareness that life goes on.