Finding Balance
“I think maybe I had a better childhood than you kids did.”
Those words, spoken recently by my 83-year-old mother, gave me pause. I had, in fact, thought I’d had a pretty good childhood.
“Why do you say that, “I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
“We spent a lot more time with family. It wasn’t so busy. My grandparents came to dinner every Sunday. We spent summers swimming at the lake. We didn’t really travel, so we had a lot of time to make our own fun at home. Life was simpler.”
As kids, my brother and I were involved in quite a few outside activities. For me, this included Scouts and a wide variety of lessons: dance, art, piano, roller skating, horseback riding, and swimming and diving during the summer months. For my brother, it was Cub Scouts, t-ball and then baseball, basketball, karate, and likewise, the requisite summer swimming lessons as well. To date, I’d looked back on these years thinking we’d been fortunate to have had opportunities to explore so many areas of interest.
And, even with the busy schedule, we ate dinner as a family, played with friends in the neighborhood until the streetlights came on, and yes, traveled, both as a family, and as we got older, on our own. In high school, I spent a year as an exchange student in Germany, an opportunity my mom had previously encouraged and praised.
But these days, my mom frequently laments, “You’re always so busy.” “You should sit for a cup of coffee,” she’ll say, and I’ll reply, “I can’t. I have to… fill in the blank: drive Kate to dance, or skating, or choir; get through math – or reading – or another subject with the kids; start dinner; throw in a load of laundry”… and there it is, the business that is perhaps seen as “too much” when one has moved from the chaos of raising kids to the quiet of the later years of retirement.
It’s not, in fact, that my childhood was less, but at almost 84, my mom is leading a life that is slower-paced and perhaps she’s feeling a bit left behind in our busy-ness. Sure, she attends the kids’ recitals and shows, posts proudly on her FB page as they advance through the ranks in Scouts; and joins us for family dinners periodically – but it’s not enough.
And therein lies one of the most-difficult aspects of multi-generational living: balancing the needs and activities of the youngest generation, with the responsibilities of the middle generation, and the desires and expectations of the older generation. There has to be a give and take, but deciding where to give and when to take is something I clearly have yet to master. If you have, I’m certainly open to suggestions as to what has worked well for you, or even what hasn’t worked – there’s something to learning from mistakes and mishaps, too.
