Everything is important ...

But not today

<Welcome to Sandwich Season, adventures in middle age, sandwiched between aging parents and growing children ... and other duties as assigned.>

Hi everyone—

I’ve heard it said that “If everything’s important, then nothing is.”

I get it, really I do.

Still, I’m going to give this saying a big “yabbut.”

That is, “Yeah, but … Sandwich Season.”

What I mean is, sometimes everything actually is important. What’s happening with Jon and me, with our son, Max, and with my dad, it’s all very important. And sometimes it’s all important, all at the same time.

We had such a day last month. It involved selling one house and buying another, a band concert, a celebration supper, taking the next step on a freelance project and driving the Mom/Daughter Taxi all over hell’s half acre.

I could see the madness of that day coming, but I felt powerless to cut any of it out of my schedule.

Full disclosure: I do think it broke me, a little bit.

I think back to when my dad was in the thick of his career, even into his early retirement, when he would run, as my mom said, “pell-mell, hellbent for leather.” Teaching classes, grading papers, chairing meetings, taking on writing projects, giving presentations, leading workshops, volunteering at the food pantry. My mom and I would shake our heads—it was clearly too much.

Sometimes when I came home for a visit, I sat Dad down. I would tell him, “It’s time to practice saying ‘no.’”

“Repeat after me,” I would say. “No!”

“No!” he said, chuckling.

He knew the drill. I would tell him he was doing too much, that he needed to work on saying “no,” even to opportunities, even to the fun stuff.

“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnooo!” I prompted.

“Nnnnnnnnnnnooo!” he laughed.

“I’m serious, Dad. Noooooooooooooo!”

He looked back at me, both of us wide-eyed. “Nooooooooooooo.”

“All right. See? You can do it,” I admonished.

“Yes, yes,” he would nod his head. We both knew he was humoring me.

It never took. And, I know, I know, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. Max and I have often laughed about how things seem to happen, “everything at once all the time.” (We were saying this long before the release of that movie of a similar name.) And we just keep going.

Maybe what I’m learning now, in my own Sandwich Season, is that back then my dad was in his own version of this season of life. He was juggling career and family—my mom, his parents, his sister, my brother and me, his far-flung cousins and aging aunts and uncles, all the while trying to make time and space for his own pet projects.

This is how he and I and so many of us suck the marrow out of life in our own special, overzealous way. We can do it, so we do it and overdo it … until we can’t.

I get it.

And I know better.

By the end of that crazy, crazy day last month, I saw it in my eyes. I felt it. I even tasted it. My right eye was twitching. My hair was frizzled. (Am I the only one whose hair reveals their state of mind?)

Sucking the marrow is very taxing.

I teach yoga classes and run with Leo the dog, and hope those things are protecting me from the ill effects of overdoing life. But we know that all the yoga and cardio in the world isn’t enough to keep a punishing schedule from doing harm.

So after that Friday of Madness last month, I limped through the weekend, helping Jon wrap up our taxes and reflecting on all the things I’d been part of in the past year and a half. (Feel free to skip reading this list, if it’s triggering.):

• Supporting my parents as they aged in place

• Organizing my parents’ move into a retirement community

• Finding homes for generations’ worth of family treasures

• Preparing to sell my parents’ home

• Helping my dad care for my mom as dementia and other health problems emerged

• Working with Hospice

• Experiencing healing in my relationship with Mom before she passed away

• Helping Dad plan my mom’s memorial service and delivering a eulogy

• Helping our dog recover from a near-death experience

• Supporting Dad through a stroke less than two months after Mom died … and then a TIA … and then Covid

• Deciding with Jon to purchase my parents’ home

• Preparing to sell our home

• Moving into my parents’ home

• Supporting Dad through his move to a different apartment

• Preparing Max to move and getting him set up with various support programs

• Selling our home

• And more

The weekend after that completely mad week last month, I announced to Jon, Max and Dad that I would be taking a week off of everything. Unless they needed me … but please don’t need me … but if you really, really do, let me know. (Yes, I realize my boundaries have gotten fuzzy. I’m working on that.)

I slowed things down. I canceled meetups and phone calls. I even spent some time staring out the window.

And I started to feel just a bit more human.

Over the past seven months, I have written about many of the blessings I have found in this Sandwich Season, which I describe as “adventures in middle age, sandwiched between aging parents and growing children ... and other duties as assigned.”

But I also want to acknowledge that this time of life can feel punishing. Keeping track of so many people’s needs and wants—as important as they are—and balancing that with my own life, has been hard.

Sometimes the kindest, most loving thing to do, for everyone’s sake, is to step off the crazy carousel and take some time to listen to the spring wind ripping through the trees.

Share your thoughts

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