It’s Logistics

The diagnosis came while we were living between coasts.

Our daughter and her family are in Los Angeles.
My husband is a university professor. During the school year, New York calibrates him — his identity, his love of learning, his writing, his students.

When he’s off, he comes west.
I move between the two more fluidly.

It worked.
Mostly.

Two homes.
Two centers.
One marriage adjusting in real time.

Then the neurologist called.

Parkinson’s.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise. I had already been adjusting for years — small pauses, moments of distance, the subtle feeling of not quite landing when I spoke.

Some people interpreted his mannerisms as ambivalence.
Sometimes arrogance.
Sometimes simply disinterest.

But that never felt accurate to me.

He is deeply kind.
Generous with his time.
Especially with his students.

When he is present, he is fully present.

That was part of what made everything so difficult to recognize at first.

Other people explained it away.

“He’s an artist.”
“He lives in his head.”
“He’s creative.”

And perhaps that was partly true.

Maybe we had both been building a life around accommodations neither of us fully understood yet.

Still, over time, I became responsible for the logistics.

But the diagnosis didn’t create the structure.

It revealed it.

I’ve been the noticing one in this marriage for thirty years. Long before Parkinson’s had a name.

My husband has always left everything to me. Everything except his university work.

That lane?

Impeccable.
Focused.
Brilliant.

The rest?

Life.

Apparently, that was my department.

And because I am capable — because I get things done — it stayed that way.

If I drop the ball, the ball stays dropped.
If he drops the ball, I pick it up.

You do the math.

Somewhere along the way, that became the system.
And he has come to expect it.

Repeated long enough, it becomes logistics.

And logistics gets tiring.

Caregiving didn’t invent the imbalance.
It simply made it fluorescent.

I am the one who makes sure nothing slips through the cracks. Not because I volunteered.

Because if I don’t, it won’t.

That isn’t martyrdom.

It’s logistics.

But somewhere inside all that logistics, I began to fade.

You can disappear without leaving.

You can become indispensable and still feel unseen.

Some days I am generous.

Some days I want a room that is not reactive — not managerial — not compensatory.

A room where I am not the scaffolding.

If I don’t build something that belongs to me, I will disappear into competence.

And competence, while very useful, is not the whole story.

There is warmth here.
There is real love.

But there is also a woman who is not done being visible.

So here I am.

Writing.

still curious.