We do hard things
A Sandwich Season anniversary
Hello friends—
Yesterday marked a Sandwich Season anniversary: Exactly one year ago, my parents moved out of their house of 32 years and into a retirement community. It feels as if five years have passed since then.
Here’s a quick recap of the past 12 months:
The Big Move
Mom’s hospice journey, passing and memorial service
Dad’s stroke, TIA and covid
Leo the dog’s respiratory infection and near-death experience
Clearing out my parents’ house
Doing mold remediation and renovations on my parents’ house
Nearly placing my parents’ house on the market
Having a change of heart and moving into my parents’ house
Clearing out our own house and putting it on the market
All the while parenting a teenager with special needs
While helping my parents prepare for their Big Move, I found a bookmark among my mom’s things and hung it on their fridge. It became a mantra for me (in addition to my shouts of “I CAN DO HARD THINGS!” as I drove back and forth between my house and theirs, wearing grooves in the streets). The bookmark remains on their—now our—fridge to this day.
I took that photo on the morning of my parents’ Big Move, at 10:39 to be exact, in the midst of doing one major thing I thought I could never do—convincing my parents to move—and after doing a smaller thing I had never imagined.
After getting my son off to school, I had headed over to Mom and Dad’s house to see if they were ready for this important life event. The packers and movers would be arriving shortly, and Mom and Dad were supposed to make themselves scarce for the day. By suppertime, their new apartment would be all set up and ready for them.
When I arrived at my parents’, I found that Mom was still in bed and not showing any signs of rising. Forget the fact that strangers would be arriving soon, Mom needed to get out of that bed so it could be taken apart and moved!
More than that, though, I needed her to get dressed. I imagined her showing up at the retirement community in her pajamas and rumpled robe, hair all disheveled. What would the neighbors say? Ack, that is such a Mom-ism! She taught me all too well. But I wanted her to show up in her new place looking and smelling beautiful, well cared for, loved. As she was.
That was the morning our roles fully reversed. I looked at her and started thinking like a parent.
Dad was busy gathering up things for the move, but Mom clearly had no plans to go anywhere. So I began cajoling her into the idea of sitting up.
Nothing doing.
After numerous fruitless attempts, I remember getting serious. I told her, “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
“What’s the hard way?” she asked, challenge rising in her eyes.
“I’ll keep hassling you until you do what I ask,” I told her.
“What’s the easy way?” she asked, her eyes softening slightly, a flicker of curiosity.
“You do what I ask,” I said, smiling.
Relying on my vast stores of patience, hard won from parenting a child whose first answer 95 percent of the time is “no,” I gradually coaxed her out of bed and into the bathroom. There I encouraged her to undress, one article of clothing at a time, for a shower. She looked at me like I was mad.
“People would really wonder about this,” she muttered, clearly imagining what others would think. See? I learned this habit from the best.
Slowly, carefully, I guided her into the shower stall, which was too small for me to enter with her. I turned on the water and closed the door just enough to keep most of the spray inside.
“Get your hair wet,” I encouraged, and this woman who had carried, borne, bathed and raised me, now, at least half-heartedly, did as I said. Reaching in, I worked shampoo into her hair, gray and white, still remarkably thick and wavy at age eighty, and helped her soap up.
You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Still covered in suds, she insisted she had to sit down. There was no seat, no handrail, in the shower stall. So I rinsed her quickly and helped her out, supporting her to the edge of the nearby tub to dry off with a towel.
I helped her dress and then walked her slowly through her bedroom, through the kitchen and into the guestroom, to a bed that wasn’t moving with them to their new apartment. She lay down on top of the covers, followed closely by Miss Kitty II. There they rested while the packers and movers dismantled her world, boxed up her and Dad’s necessary and favorite things, carried them all out to a truck, and drove them across town.
The rest of that day is a blur.
I do know I met the moving crew a few hours later at the new apartment. The woman in charge of the operation—an energetic angel with a mind like a digital catalog—was setting up their furnishings, exactly as we had asked. She is so detail-oriented, that if you have a book sitting out on a desk, opened to page 42 in your original home, you will find it sitting on the same desk, open to the same page at the new location.
I remember talking with her about where to put Mom and Dad’s artwork, so by the time they arrived later that day, most of it would be hung on the walls. The apartment would look like “home” from the moment they entered it.
What I also remember about that day is how, despite all of the upheaval and emotional dishevelment, I had to put on my game face. Months earlier, I had agreed to give a half-hour koto (Japanese zither) presentation/performance at a downtown art gallery. It was part of the annual meeting of the local garden society, which was raising money to establish a Japanese garden.
So I showed up. I spoke. I read from my memoir about how years back I had abandoned a complicated situation and run off to Japan. I played the koto for an art gallery filled with people.
You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
In the process, I learned that even as one aspect of life is falling apart, others continue. Life does go on.
Now I’m in the midst of doing yet another thing I think I cannot do—or maybe I should say, that I thought I could not do. I’ll share about it once it’s further along.
Meanwhile, I keep learning the truth behind the quote on my mom’s bookmark: Why must we do the thing we think we cannot do? Because it is only by doing the hard thing that we learn we can do more and bear more than we ever imagined.
And through it all, we can love each other and be OK.
Well … OK-ish.
; )
Advice from the middle
A friend who is in her own Sandwich Season recently told me about a senior in her life who wants to give a special teacup to a granddaughter but isn’t ready to part with it.
We looked at each other, eyebrows raised, wide-eyed. We both know how hard it is to liquidate a lifetime’s worth of Stuff. It isn’t just emotionally hard, but doggonit, it’s hard to find people who want the Stuff, even the most beautiful Stuff.
Example: Treasured teacups from my own family’s collection sat for months, unpurchased in a busy consignment shop. They were priced at $5 apiece.
“Tell her,” I suggested, “‘if someone wants a teacup, kiss them and give them four!’”
We laughed, and my friend told me to share this. So here it is.
Share your thoughts
Sarah- yet another entry that brought tears to my eyes. It’s interesting but in a totally different vein, whenever things in my career at the ESD would get impossible, my boss simply had to say “you can do hard things…” (yes, this from Tim M!!!) And so, we did! Love the life stories you share. Thank you so much ❤️
Big sigh, I hear you, Sarah. First, BIG hugs of empathy. I know the shower situation well—a kind of clinical detachment as 'nurse' mode came over me every day for Dad. The Amazonian work that you have to do is familiar, but not as a parent on top of everything! This is a great article to share all the roles, hats, and emotional AND physical stress you go through. More hugs.