How did I get here? Where are the adults?
My shift into a card-carrying member of the Sandwich Generation was a bit of a surprise (at least it was to me).
It seemed like one minute, I was taking care of young children, just doing what parents in their thirties do, and, the next minute, the theoretical “you’ll have to take care of your parents someday”, became reality.
While the actual care and all that goes with it is just what you do, the whole thing represented a deeper shift to me.
Though I suppose I’m not old (42. Shut up. I am not.), it really made me realize that I, and some of my friends, had become the “grown-ups”.
Catherine Mulrooney, in this column in the Toronto Star, sums up the shift I experienced that really threw me for a loop when all this with my parents started:
When I squeeze in a coffee with friends these days, the conversation takes on a whole new tone. It is no longer about finding the name of a good pediatrician or sharing techniques on getting a baby to sleep through the night.
Instead, there are questions about whether a friend’s mother handled surgery or how to negotiate the complicated world of finding a place in assisted living or the latest research into Parkinson’s disease.
Though it is a natural evolution, some of us have to talk about all this stuff at once.
E., You are 42? Wow, I figured you for early 30’s, really. *grin*
It hit me when I noticed that a great deal of my prayer time was being consumed by the health concerns of various friends and loved ones.
I will be there soon. My mother is still reasonably young, but has rheumatoid arthritis. On her recent trip to Nashville, we went to the zoo, where I pushed her in a wheelchair so that she didn’t exhaust herself. I’m 30. I’m not ready. But it’s coming. Crap.