The Cattle Tyrant

Finding our way to the future

My husband had his hip replaced two weeks ago, and it’s been rough. Not really the healing, but the mental toll. The man is immensely stoic. He’s saddled a lot of sadness in his life on behalf of other people and always hits the dismount with perfection. Earlier this year, he had a knee replacement and bounced back nearly instantly, so to see him dragging with this one has been challenging. He is not a complainer, but I think with all the life changes going on—me going to school, his impending retirement, and the onslaught of age—he’s reflecting more than usual on what’s to come. Too much thinking and not enough doing.

Getting old sucks. It’s having a clock slung round your neck counting down the days, hours, minutes to your demise. Even with the 16-year-age difference between us, a fog of life-change is swirling around us both. My husband is a help giver, and he does not feel comfortable receiving it. The natural push and pull of taking time to get better is causing friction. It doesn’t help that graduate school is unknown at this point, and his comfort zone of preplanning is on indefinite hold until we know the next steps our life will take. Staying here. Moving on. At least in the short term, our path is unknown, and I know that frustrates him.

Over the summer, our son changed his major from biology to art. There have been two things pulling at his life since day one, animals and art, and I knew eventually one would win out over the other. The hope is that someday, the two will meet in the middle and find a way to coexist, but for now, the art wins. Having grown up in a family of artists, I’ve always felt comfortable with our son taking this path, but I know my husband wonders what his future will look like. In the shadow of the struggling-artist trope and all the other upheaval in the world, he worries about how our son will support himself. He wants him to be happy. I tell him not to worry. I have faith. You never know where people end up in regard to where they begin.

The first thing my son ever drew were birds. And he drew tons of them, over and over and everywhere. As a young adult, he’s more likely to draw something different, but his obsession with the birds remains. Now, he’s prone to photographing them and cataloging his finds on iNaturalist. So, this holiday, we took a road trip to the coast in search of whooping cranes. We’ve seen them before as they migrate to Texas each winter, but it’s been years since we saw one outside of the zoo. The tallest birds in America, the five footers have been listed as an endangered species since the 1970s. Under 200 exist in the wild—that’s up from only 18 in the 1930s due to a ton of conservation work on the bird's behalf. To see them, you need to take a four-hour boat out to the edge of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge near Rockport. These gorgeous birds with their white plumage, red heads, and black-tipped wings mate for life, so to see them coupling on the shoreline is a true wonder. Watching my 19-year-old son watch these birds is even better. He doesn’t have a crazy expensive zoom like the other birders on the boat, and he’s most definitely the youngest by at least 30 or 40 years. But the love is there, and it’s a joy to be a part of.

On the way home, he asked to take a detour to a parking lot in Corpus Christi. We wandered around for a while and eventually spotted the prize he’d come to see. There, perched on a dumpster, was a little yellow bird called a ‘cattle tyrant.’ It showed up last November and returned this winter, much to the delight of birders everywhere. Before last year, a cattle tyrant had never before been seen north of Panama, so how this little guy not only got to Texas—almost 3,000 miles north of where he’s supposed to be—and then managed to return to this unlikely vacation spot a year later is anyone’s guess. But shit happens. I’m sure he was initially headed somewhere else. A fog cover or a hurricane, sometimes it only takes a slight change in the wind to push us off course. It doesn’t mean we are in the wrong place; it just means we are somewhere we didn’t think we’d be.

What you don’t understand about life when you are young is that it’s short. Too short. And the thing you don’t remember when you’re old is those micro-decisions you make at the moment that set your path in motion and shift it on a new course. And it’s OK not to realize how those decisions change your future. How boring would life be if it did? Life is life, and you only have one. But still… getting older makes you think about all these things. It makes you wonder. It makes you worry. But the truth is, the future is already happening. There is nothing we can do to stop it. We can give advice. We can try and make plans, but in the end, it will be what it’s going to be. My husband’s leg will heal. I’ll go to school, or I won’t. We’ll stay, or we’ll go. My son will find a way to earn a living doing something, and we’ll be amazed at the path he took to get there, just like that little yellow bird. Life will happen.

Without a road map, all three of us will find our way, even if it’s not where we planned.