I wish I hadn't just watched iRobot!

photo: nydn.org

Did you see the story about the 90-something woman who exhumed her dead husband and dead twin sister, propped them on separate couches in her tidy little home, and enjoyed little chats about her day while drinking tea? I made up the tea part. She's more of a vodka tonic kinda gal. OK, I made that part up too. I did NOT make up the dead people part.

The article didn't say whether Miss Jean had any children or church members to check up on her, although there apparently were neighbors who helped out. The investigators determined she was mentally healthy - except for the whole "I see dead people" thing.

The population of elderly folks is predicted to double before 2050, with most of the growth occurring between 2010 and 2030 when our Baby Boomer parents reach their elder years. These aging parents will need support and care from adult children. There's something called the parent-support ratio that I found...um...interesting. The ratio is predicted to be almost 3.5 "kids" aged 50-64 to care for every one parent over age 85. Of those elders over age 85 who are not "institutionalized", 50% need assistance with ordinary, everyday activities like bathing, cooking and getting around the home.

I think isolation is one of the biggest dangers for our elders. There is no substitute for face-to-face contact to help with the inevitable loneliness of living alone or to evaluate mental, spiritual and physical health. All I can say is, we're going to need some help!





Statistics from http://www.census.gov/apsd/www/statbrief/sb95_8.pdf

Women At Work - Third Times A Charm

I have to say, one of the best things about having grown children and a somewhat empty nest is that my husband and I don’t have to sort out who will be taking care of our children while we work. With 58 percent of children under six having all parents in the workforce, it’s a problem common to many.

My husband learned very early to fend for himself. He’s an ironing fanatic. I buy wash-and-wear. In his dream home there would be a room just for ironing, where an expensive iron awaits, maybe on a timer. If he could awake to the smell of coffee brewing and the click, click of an iron warming up he would be a happier man.

So, early in our marriage he learned I would not be making him breakfast or ironing his clothes before work. When our children were born, he jumped in with diaper changes, bathing the babies and although he didn’t have the “equipment” for midnight feedings, he was very active in their care. I almost wrote that he was a great helper, but we agreed long ago it wasn’t about one of us parenting and the other “helping”. We were in it as partners. Although one partner was way better at color coordinating outfits and finding tiny matching pink socks and putting bows in the hair. But hey. Is it really life altering if your child shows up at daycare with her little dress on backwards?

So when it came to juggling child care while my husband and I both worked, it was an equal-opportunity challenge. I wanted to be the one caring for my baby though. I wanted to not have to wake her up on a cold morning, bundle her sleepy sweetness into a car seat and hand her off to someone else. I wanted to be sure she was safe, teach her to play peek-a-boo, watch her learn to turn herself over, teach her to read, help her make cupcakes for school, take her to gymnastics, pick her up after play practice, take her to volleyball, shop for a prom dress, help her with her graduation speech, know her friends from school and connect with her friends parents. I delegate all kinds of things at work. I didn’t want to delegate parenting.

Through our child-raising years, we juggled life, work and parenting so that the girls were always a priority. Sometimes I worked from home. There was a tiny and glorious window of time where I didn’t work at all. Sometimes we traded off taking our vacation weeks. Here’s a parenting math problem for you. Two parents plus 10 vacation days each equals how many weeks of summer vacation? That would eight weeks of someone at home with your children if you split each vacation day in half. See how that works? The pre-teen children sleep the first half of the day anyway! I’ve worked early and my husband worked late so that one of us could be there at either end of the school day. You name it, we’ve probably done it to care for our children.

I wish I could say my children never let themselves into an empty house after school. I wish I could say my children never had to call me at work. The day Mr. Mooberry let Tessa call me at work doesn’t count. She had that man wrapped around her little third-grade finger. Seriously. What teacher lets a child call her mom because she’s worried the dog will be frightened by a thunderstorm?

Plenty of moms seemingly successfully balance work and raising children. Mona Sutphen, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, was recently featured in Working Mother magazine.

“Described by colleagues as smart, focused and disciplined, Mona has witnessed the toll Washington jobs can take on the lives of people with families. She’s known staffers who didn’t know how to stop working. ‘They thought they were so essential that they couldn’t leave the office. There was always something else to do, and it overtook their lives,’ she says. ‘There are times you have to be at the office, and there are also times when you don’t really have to be there, though it would be better if you were. Now that I have a family and a little more experience in work settings, I have more confidence that I can cover what I need to accomplish and I can make the trade-off.’”

Ms. Sutphen goes days without seeing her children awake. Her husband works long hours as well. Their solution for child care is an au pair, who lives with them and cares for the children while mom and dad work very demanding jobs.

This is where I get really cranky. The story about Ms. Sutphen was under the category of “Real Mom Stories” on the online site for Working Mother. While it is marvelous that accomplished, experienced and well educated women have the opportunity to work in important jobs and serve as role models to girls everywhere, this story is not about your average mom.

Your average mom does not have the money to hire an au pair, much less house one in her three bedroom, two bath ranch-style home in suburban USA. Many parents are going it alone, without a partner. In female-head-of-household families where there are children below school age, 54% of those families have an annual income that falls below the federal poverty level. Fifty-four percent!

Middle class or working poor –women have their own “Real Mom Stories”. Their stories are way less glamorous and they certainly do not include an au pair. The reality is, aside from a very small minority, all of us moms care about what happens to our kids. We just hope that each day will be a better day and we can work it out.

Again, I’ve written something that has no obvious conclusion. I have to go to work, though thankfully my seemingly well-adjusted children are grown and can feed and house themselves and I no longer have to worry if I’ll get home in time to pick them up from school. There may soon come a day where we have to sort out elder-care issues in our household. But for today, I’m thankful to be on the other side of that one life challenge.

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/galefraney/

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Wow the last seven days have been, um, interesting...exhausting...challenging. I anticipated they would not be a walk in the park, so to speak. But I probably underestimated the need to dig deep and pull up from the depths both physical and emotional strength beyond what I thought I had in reserve. And there's the problem. One must start with some reserves in order to tap into said reserves.

My husband's parents are now moved out of their Kansas home and into our new shared home in Oklahoma. (We must sell our current home before joining them.) There is still a lifetime of accumulated stuff to go through in the garage and the kitchen is not fully unpacked. But the basics are in place. Including the mailbox, which apparently got knocked down while the new home was empty. Funny how you don't notice things until you wander out to see if the mail has been forwarded yet, but are unable to actually find the mail receptacle.

If we weren't already on a first name basis at Home Depot, we are now.

Did I mention that we also lightly passed over Father's Day and Mark's 50th birthday? By the time Sunday rolled around we were too exhausted to celebrate anything except that we could go back to work on Monday and sit down for a few hours. Indoors.

Can I be honest? Well, as honest as I can be on a blog that people actually read? I have no problem getting along with my in-laws. I have great hope for our ability to coexist peacefully. It's when other folks get all up in our business, giving out unsolicited advice, whispering discontent, that things don't go well. The four of us have to make our own way, find a new normal in this transition. It's not going to be easy for any of us, but I think it will be worth it.

Mark and I lead fast paced lives and will need to slow down and actually listen respectfully before moving ahead with plans or changes or opinions. The in-laws are from what has been called "The Greatest Generation", a group of fiercely independent folks who endured and thrived despite great hardship. They will need to learn the art of graceful dependence as their bodies and minds begin to betray them.

There are many challenges ahead, but I anticipate an improved quality of life for all of us. May God be with us in this new phase.

Oh, and happy birthday to my precious Mark. 50 is a respectable age. Your body has given you a present of a few gray hairs. I kinda like them.