People ought to be warned about middle age. My daughter is 18 and needs help dealing with increasingly adult situations. My mom is 78 and is able to handle very little by herself anymore. Increasing pressure and responsibilities at work. I know it happens to everyone. Nevertheless, it’s a lot!
@annahavron @jabel @ReaderJohn My wife and I married and had our son when we were almost 40. By the time he was 18, all his grandparents were dead. I often think how they'd have enjoyed watching his progress into adulthood. Maybe we're an open-faced sandwich generation. Now that I think of it, since we live near our son and our grandchildren and see them many times a week, we're the top slice of a generational sandwich. Disturbing thought when I put it that way.
@jabel @JohnBrady We think about this a lot, especially since we’re “gettin em in right under the buzzer” (Nate Bargatze). My son will be 1 when I hit the 4-0, while I have clear, teenage memories of my parents turning 40, and of grandparents turning 60. I’m fairly go-with-the-flow most of the time, but this is a rough thought for me
@JohnBrady Hmmmm, but it appears, if I may go by the lovely photos you occasionally post of the youngest generation, that you are giving care rather than being in need of receiving it. This makes a mix of metaphors.
@jabel I completely understand. My parents are 70 and our kids are 19, 16, 14, and 12. My seminary and organisation responsibilities continue to increase. It's definitely a challenging time that we are struggling to manage.
@jabel The bright side was that thanks to the timing she was able to use the money he left to go to school out of state. But having it all in the same year I turned 50 was a lot emotionally.
@tinyroofnail There are good reasons to have children young(er). I didn’t either; I’ve thought of them all far too late. But I think a lot about the dwindling of extended families, partly from children being spaced out and partly from one-child families making fewer cousins.
@annahavron @JohnBrady I expect the longer one continues caring for others, the longer until one has to be cared for. That would have been my grandmother’s wisdom, I think.
@dwalbert I think about the gag in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the Greek wife has 21 first cousins and the only-child Anglo husband has one cousin who lives a few states away. At the wedding, her side of the church is packed and there's a tiny knot of people on his side. I was very much on the Anglo side, but we're working to move the next generation over to the Greek side. (Semi-apologies for the ethnic stereotyping).
@dwalbert It’s very true. In admitted self-defensiveness, it was never a plan or an ideology. I’m just a slow, late- and sporadic-blooming, lost sheep. 🙂
@JohnBrady Funny, that's one of those movies I've never seen but have heard referenced so often that I feel as though I might as well have. I believe any ethnic stereotyping was not only in the original but the point of it?
@tinyroofnail Well, I tend to think that most of the early-and-often approach to having kids has always been a product of not thinking through all the available options, so actually being wise may be contra to what wisdom would have us do. Or something.
