<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.
“Super Auntie” present and reporting for duty! This is what my family calls me (and I call myself!), and I’ve worn the title as a badge of honor for almost 20 years….but becoming caregiver to my mother has made all the other “super” things I’ve done over the years much more difficult to complete. Taking on her care over the last 10 months, means that I am able to say “No” to many things, mostly to doing things with people and attending activities that I would LOVE to do. It has always been a balancing act but the scales are more heavily weighted on everyone else’s needs more than my own more than ever before. The only bright spot is that I have found SO MANY other women in the same boat, struggling with caring for an aging mother (with all the baggage that relationship can bring), while trying to live some semblance of the lives they had before they were “on call” 24/7.
Your list is an intense one! Any one of those items would have been a lot to deal with on its own, but all together?! 🤯
I'm glad you listened to your internal no and took some rest. And I'm hoping to learn from you, as I struggle with all of that as well.