The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

He runs his flattened hand over Wyoming and Colorado, as though it were a relief map, tilting his head curiously like a golden retriever confronting a quadratic equation.

She leads me through the darkened dining room to the living room, where a tray table on wheels and a big-screen TV dominate the landscape. She offers me a straight-backed chair and seats herself across from me on the sofa next to the reclining figure of an enormous brown cat showing no signs of life.

Ask

Listen

Observe

Help

Ask again

The bulk of what I learned about being a licensed caregiver, I learned from the Fundamentals of Caregiving, a

Im not qualified to do much anymore.

But dont get the idea that just anyone can be a caregiver. It takes patience, fortitude, a

I was broke when duty called me to minister to those less fortunate than myself, so maybe Im no Florence Nightingale. And maybe in light of all that happened with Piper and Jodi, Im not qualified to care for anybody. The fact is, at thirty-nine, with a gap in my employment history spanning the better part of the technological revolution, Im not qualified to do much anymore.

, Im not qualified to care for anybody. The fact is, at thirty-nine, with a gap in my employment

do most anything for a guy in a wheelchair as long as he doesn’t have food in his beard.

Squish-squish-squishity-squish, he says.

He wants cereal, Piper explains.

, my child is wearing a cape