Caring for Parents

Nothing I write here will be new or original. I know that.

Caring about and for my parents is different than I expected, and I just want to get off this adult bus. I came to my hometown to check on my mom last night, and I'm staying tonight too. I realized they needed help with cleaning and I don't want to see my mom doing any of it, if I could help it, this week. So I stayed today, watched the football game and spent time with them. After the game, laundry, vacuuming, mopping ensued. Then heating up dinner and clean up.

This is what I do at home. And I'm doing it here. And I still have to do it at home. But I don't feel angry about it, I am just doing it. This is what adult children who are caring for their parents do. This is what Indian children do. My mom would be doing it for her mother if she were in India. It's a curious thing, caring for people that cared for you. It's sort of like I'm in that Benjamin Button movie and it doesn't feel real. However - what I know is that God gave me this family, appointed this time for this purpose, and this is what I'm doing.

Ailing Mom

I've been struggling this week with my mom's surgery. She had knee replacement surgery on her right knee. It plain took her out. When she awoke from surgery, I was there. She said, "Prathima, is that you?" I nodded. Then she said, "I like your shirt. It's nice." I smirked. She's kind of wacky like that. I left that day for home two hours away, but after I left, she apparently got less coherent in her comments, and she kept having trouble recognizing reality. She thought the milk needed to be put back in the refrigerator, and it turned out to be a jug of distilled water. My younger sister stayed with her the past three nights, making sure she was being taken care of, making sure she did the right things.

It's really hard to describe how much this woman did for me in my younger years in terms of serving me. That's the way she has always been to me and my sisters. She was our servant. She was our mom, sure, and she did exercise some discipline, but she didn't know how to lead us in this country. We were in uncharted territory. How to deal with the "popular" kids in school? No way would she guide us on that. How to be fashionable? We bought out of the bargain bin. How to get good grades? That was my dad's territory. How to flirt? She told us to look away when boys looked at us when we passed them. LOL.

Now, to see her so incapacitated, so unable to take care of herself, it's a bit difficult. I know she hates it. I know she wants to "do" everything. She cannot. Just like I'm learning. I can't either.

waiting, waiting, anticipating

Sometimes I feel like I am in a holding pattern. Which is sort of a misdirection, because I do believe God has me where He wants me. This is the best He has planned for me, and I am content to a certain extent. That is a trick, learning that contentment. Yet, I wonder, what's next? What's going to happen next? I've had a lot of "what's going to happen next" moments this year. Girls growing up, mainly - kind of a big deal. I can't underplay that. It's kind of huge. When I look back at their little baby pictures and their little girl pictures, it seems like a lifetime ago in some ways, and just yesterday in others.

Why are we never completely content? Why do we think about what's going to happen next? The thrill of newness is exciting, the paleness of the stale status quo is less so. I think forward to my 40s, my 50s, my 60s; will I stop caring about newness? Can you have anticipation, still? I am hoping it's anticipation in the eternal, and not just the vapid idea of change that we have sometimes. I have bated breath in hopes of this.