A decade or so ago, when my late father in law went to the hospital for a second heart attack, an older friend welcomed me to the “sandwich generation”. When she saw my raised eye brow, she explained that this generation have both older parents that need attention as well as children who still need to be taken care of and that they (people like my hubby and I)are stuck between the two, hence the term sandwich generation. The nice analogy made a lot of sense back then and brought a huge smile to my face. I honestly found the term amusing. Imagine me being the cheese (I like grilled cheese sandwich) and the both sets of parent’s one slice of bread and the children the other. Back then whole grain breads were not that trendy and Panini was not much in style as they are now, so assumed them to be the soft white Wonder bread. The thought was simply delightful. How stupid was I??
What she failed to tell me then, and I too immature and foolish to realize, was that as I (the cheese) grow older, the sandwich just gets bigger. For instance, the bread goes from 6” sub to a foot long, and gets stale and hard as well. On the other hand, the amount of cheese in the sandwich remains the same and the inside of it gets fuller with condiments and various vegetables and sauce. Honestly at 4T++ I do not find the sandwich generation amusing any more, in fact I find it very exhausting. I think this is a real situation and lasts until…… I become a slice of bread myself.
And then I had another unorthodox thought. I think that we should first be born as parents and then become children versus what is the norm right now. I know that it reminds us the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, but I really mean that we should be born as adults and especially parents, and with that memory and experience age reversely to become children.
It is only now that I realize how I have missed on many things in my life, and how I could have done things differently as child and a youth. Now is the time that I understand my parents and feel what they went through as I was growing, even though I was an exemplary child!! I am sure that with this experience now, if I would have been born as a child, I would have not fretted over many useless things. I would not have been worried for every detail and fought for silly beliefs. I would have enjoyed life more often and laughed harder. I would have engaged myself more with family and would have been kinder to others. I would have not been judgmental and would have been more co-operative. I would have listened more to my parents and trusted them and trusted that things always work out one way or another. I would not have been afraid of the future and worry about things that does not matter in a long run. I would have simply enjoyed the freedom of irresponsibility and found pleasure in simple things such as sunset and the singing of a bird or even enjoy the day to day living. I would not have tried to please everyone or sought everyone’s approval. I would have been more of me and less of what they wanted me to be.
And about the fact that when we are born as a parent, how do we know as of how to function as parents? Well, I know that we all resent one thing or two about our parents and that we swear that no matter what, we will never do that to our children, or be like our parents. Some of us even have to see therapist to resolve some issues about our childhood to become better parents and God knows we all do try our best, to be the best as we can. But here is the truth, as parents, we will be blamed for one thing or another no matter how hard we try. There is always at least one thing that we definitely mess with our children’s lives, so I guess we are ok to be born parents first, because we are always at fault. Later, as we become children, we know through experience what can hurt our parents and what makes them proud and why, or that they are only human doing their best and basically understand where they are coming from. Are you following me???
I am feeling that not only the youth was wasted on me, but middle age is also being wasted on me and I don’t know when I should start to live? I believe that if this was the case, maybe I would have been a better cheese or either slice of the bread in our sandwich. Who knows.
