On our second (and last) full day on San Cristobal we headed to the island of Española. 
It was a beautiful day and we saw some beautiful things, (it turned out to be kind of a bird-watching day), but as I mentioned in the last post, it was a tough one emotionally for me and Dave.
Because it marked the actual moment in time when real-life reality sunk in: things in our family are going to have to shift a little. Lucy can't keep up.
There have been seeds for that acknowledgement planted over and over. Of course we have known it's been coming as she continues to lose her vision...and even just a week before hiking to that waterfall in Baños (back HERE) some of the big seeds had sprouted. But this was the day that will go down in infamy in my mind: the day of realization that this vision loss is getting the best of us.
Oh, we will continue to fight. We will fight hard. We are all up for the task, especially Lucy. But something shifted this day to make me realize we have to find a new balance. We need to revamp the fight somehow. And I don't know how...yet.
It's strange because there really wasn't anything in particular that happened to bring us to this. We guided her over rocks, we helped calm her emotions, we pointed out little things carefully so she could see them. All of that has become second nature. There were no out of the ordinary outbursts or meltdowns...it was pretty much business-as-usual. So I don't know why this particular day was the dark one, but it was, and Dave and I both knew it without even talking about it.
I don't want to dwell on that sad thing, and really, I don't think I need to write this down to remember it. But I don't want to gloss over it either. I don't want these pictures telling the rest of the story to just sit glowing out of the computer screen pretending like nothing happened to change our hearts this day.
It's interesting how pictures can do that. That's the crazy thing about social media.
So I'm throwing it out there as part of the story. Maybe writing about it will help me define it better.
Some day.
Here are some snippets from my journal this day:
I’m sitting on a smallish motor boat rocking over huge waves
in the middle of the ocean...just finished playing “Lucky Unders” with Lucy at a little fold-out
table. The smell of gas is so powerful it’s making my stomach churn. Lucy is
somehow unaffected by this. The rest of our family is sitting on a makeshift
little rubber boat out in the open air on the back deck sick as dogs with
motion sickness.
We don’t generally get
motion sickness, but there’s something about the motion mixed with the intense
gas smell that’s getting them. The sun is just starting to filter through the
clouds after a thick, heavy gray when we took off an hour ago.
We are in the Galápagos Islands. Between San Cristobal, the island where were staying with the stinky sea lions in a cute little town that can boast authenticity but definitely not good food, and a little uninhabited island called Española which is our destination today. As our companions on this boat there are two guys from Ohio, a guy from the country of Columbia, a lady from Ecuador and two ladies from Romania (yes, Romania!). They are all kind and good and make me want to learn all I can from them...as soon as my stomach stops churning :)
We are in the Galápagos Islands. Between San Cristobal, the island where were staying with the stinky sea lions in a cute little town that can boast authenticity but definitely not good food, and a little uninhabited island called Española which is our destination today. As our companions on this boat there are two guys from Ohio, a guy from the country of Columbia, a lady from Ecuador and two ladies from Romania (yes, Romania!). They are all kind and good and make me want to learn all I can from them...as soon as my stomach stops churning :)
After a good bout of complaining she got in and at least put her head under water to see if she could see the giant turtle right in front of us.
She couldn't see it, and didn't have the coordination to hold the breathing tube in her mouth (it's so easy to take stuff like that for granted...seems like it should come as second nature but to some people it doesn't), and she did NOT want that mask strap around her head (sensory). But once in the water her body relaxed and she smiled just to be hanging out there, floating along with us, which made us smile too. Sometimes it feels so overwhelming to know how much to push, but I was so happy that I pushed this one...that she would be part of the fiber of that family memory, bobbing on the salty sea into little caves with her family, being pushed gently by her dad since she refused to wear fins and couldn't keep up.
She was glowing that she did that thing, and so were we.
That island was crawling with marine iguanas, and I really like those creatures.
Here's a little more about them:
We started in on the bird-watching walk, going into auto-pilot with Lucy clinging to our arms and us guiding her every step across the rocky terrain.
In my mind that’s just what we do to help her. We want to help her make memories, see the world before hers goes dark. And I think that’s been a good approach up until now, she has learned and accomplished so much! But I’m so fiercely adamant about pushing her to do all she can do that sometimes I need to realign my thinking. Sadly she couldn’t see the birds even if she could stop concentrating on her foot placement for long enough to even try.
So when Dave wanted to turn back with her I didn't think it was an awful idea. It just wasn’t working. The guide let us know the path only got worse from there on out.
And he was right. It did get worse. Something I never would have given a thought if it weren’t for Lucy. It is so easy to take movement and walking for granted. So she and Dave turned back (he wasn't overly interested in the bird watching so he was ok), and we went on, through lots more fascinating marine iguanas and birds.
But first a picture on this island:
All smiling and happy on the outside, but really conflicted in our hearts...the girls too.
We knew Dave and Lu were ok though...they were kind of excited to go back and play cards, so we tried to take advantage of exploring that island with the group.
We saw some pretty cool “boobies” (although not the blue-footed ones Galapagos is famous for):
Here's a baby one before it's feathers change:
...and some albatross who amazed me taking off into flight, unfolding a six-foot wing span that had looked so compacted and wobbling to get their huge feet off the ground. It was really so cool.
We also saw a hawk (above), and some other varieties of beauty-birds:
...up and over some pretty rocky terrain we were glad Lucy didn't have to maneuver...with renewed over and over gratitude that we could.
The memo somehow got lost in translation about what we were supposed to bring this day, so we were unprepared with no hats or water on a very warm day and were pretty excited to get back to Dave and Lu smiling back on the boat, waiting for us with gobs of water and fistfuls of playing cards.
LONG ride back to San Cristobal. The gasoline smell had cleared out of the boat and everyone was up for cards.
Back to our favorite pizza place one more time (I think this was the fifth day of pizza…but honestly so few options), and cold showers and Rumikub plus stuff like this back at the hotel:
We went to bed with such full hearts...so much gratitude to be in that amazing place with people we love so much. But there was some heaviness accompanying that fulness... mulling all the feelings and thoughts over from the day. I want so much for Lucy to be a part of all that we do, which means we need to find a new kind of balance. This was a tough thing to swallow...and I still don't really know what it means, but it rested heavy on my heart for the rest of the day…and the rest of the trip too. And even now, sitting in my kitchen back at home, it pricks tears behind my eyelids.
We all have them: these twists and turns in the road of life. I don't think anyone is immune. They come in all different shapes, sizes and varieties. It's not so much what they are but what we do with them that matters. We're all on a grand journey to figure them all out.
...and hopefully we remember to ask for help and guidance from above to make sense of things in the process as we find our way.