Notes from Maine - 2020/07/24
The weather is beautiful here and I’m having a really hard time getting anything done. I have family visiting and Dad is staying here while he tries to get back on his feet. I can’t imagine how someone would recover if they were on their own. We have a parade of PT (physical therapists), OT (occupational therapists), and RN (registered nurses), but combined that only adds up to a few hours each week. If Dad didn’t have family on his side, helping him do exercises and encouraging him to not give up, I’m sure he would already be in a nursing home. That conclusion may be inevitable, but before he’s deemed unable to improve I want to make sure that he has every chance to make it.
So far, Dad’s recovery is going well. In three weeks he can nearly transfer from his bed to a wheelchair alone. He can push himself up to a standing position at will. He’s not spending twenty-one hours of every day in the bed. These are all major accomplishments. This may sound pretty dire—I’m not trying to sugar-coat anything—but it’s miles beyond where he was at the beginning of the month. Hopefully, there will be more to report in the future.
I’m working on a book for August. It’s the final book in the “Until…” series that began with Until the Sun Goes Down, and was continued with Until Dawn. I like this new book a lot and I hope you will too. When the time comes, I’ll send you another email.
Last week, my nephew was asking about the river that borders the back of my property. It’s about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) from the house and a good chunk of that distance is thick brush, tall grass, and marshy terrain. Nearly an hour later, we arrived, scratched and sweating profusely. It’s not a very big river, but it runs deep. The top layer of the water was warm from the sun. Underneath, the current was almost cold. We had a great time. I think the only thing that kept him willing to tromp through the brush was the fact that the excursion was his idea. He didn’t want to back down. That’s the kind of hike that I will never quit on. I love those types of situations where it seems impossible to reach the end of the journey. The path we took back was easier. I picked a better route and we only had a few dozen yards of climbing through bushes. Mostly we pushed through tall grass—as high as his head.
Perhaps next year I’ll get him to try that journey again, but I suspect it will be a tough sell. He learned his lesson about hiking around back there.
