The rack

There's got to be a more apt euphemism than "the sandwich generation." This one is so, how should we say it, foody. The metaphor of it doesn't really hold well, at least not past the visual sense of it. So what if, in fact, the corned beef and sauerkraut, the peanut butter and honey, the egg salad, the tomato and mayo, the bacon lettuce and tomato, is caught (is it really caught?) between two slices of bread (white? rye? whole wheat?). That's as far as the metaphor extends in any interesting way. Otherwise the relentless push and pull of oblige and love and compassion and regret and guilt and respect is more like ... well, something else. The rack? A tractor pull? The Rack it is. I'm racked. Rack 'em up. Let's wait for the rack and ruin.

Today Margruite got the call. Her Dad had his second heart attack in less than a month. So here's what the summer looks like if you're living our version of The Rack. You help to launch one iteration of yourself off to university. You support another iteration in her new job and a new living space. You adjust to the relative emptiness of the house with the final iteration, in her final year of high school. While you do this you celebrate your father's 90th birthday. You perform miscellaneous tasks to do with your duties as executor and power of attorney over his accounts, etc. This might mean a simple phone call. It might also mean a drive in to the city. You try to coordinate these things so as to minimize the trips. But some calls come, and when you answer them you just know that the game's changed, and you have no option but to respond to the change.

The complicating factor in all of this, believe it or not, is love. At least it's that way for me. If I could dispassionately watch this happen, flex and sway with it, and not be affected on a gut level, I'd be in better shape. Annoyed sure, but not spent. You find yourself becoming immune to calls at times. You make calls, then you take calls, then you wait for calls. You want to unplug the phone, because when you talk into it sometimes you feel yourself draining away.

Why is this impulse to freedom from responsibility so strong in me? Why do I not want to care, when the only way out of it is to care? I recall now this moment, which I know was in fact many moments, of my Dad walking home for supper (because I would occasionally accompany him on this walk) wearing his tan windbreaker (in Fall) and a hat of some sort, and stopping by to see Grandma. She was living alone in a 6th Street single level fourplex. Grandpa had died a few years back. Dad did Grandma's banking and other things. He arranged for her rides to church on Sunday, or would take her himself (we didn't attend the same churches). He never, or I never heard him, quibble about these visits, or this tasks. It was a regular, natural element of his routine. She lived quite literally, "along the way." How great an impact proximity has on the quality of, and routines of, our lives. My Dad's "Rack" was mitigated by being nearby. Grandma's place was on the way. Each day he could spend 15 or 20 minutes with her, helping her. It was a marvelous economy. He had the same pressures that we now experience, but with less distance.

We have, in our time, tempted ourselves with a childish oblivion: out of sight, out of mind. We move away. We move parents into seniors homes. We pay professionals. We get some space. We seek a separation that seems to ease the load (physically), but which, in fact, complicates our interactions with those we love and for whom we need to care. We have allowed our desire for the apparent practical gains of distance (I'm going to live my own life!) to cloud the logic of living close, physically, to the ones who need, or will need our care. And frankly there's not much we're going to do to change it now. We've made the choice to stretch. We've tied ourselves to our own rack. And so its wheels will turn.  

The ride in:         14'C Wind SE 20k
The ride home:   17'C Wind SE 30k