On Daughtering
My father’s recent operation was, I suppose, the catalyst. It wasn’t a serious op - just a knee replacement - but it proved to be the flagship for a relationship shift that’s been creeping for a little while.
It was, you see, the first time I drove my mother somewhere because she needed something and had no other access to it than through her youngest child. The first time Dad couldn’t help Mum around the house, placing the burden entirely on her - even when he worked and she didn’t, he cooked the Saturday meal and shared the Sunday lunch marathon. The first time I’ve really seen my dad in pain, frustrated, and even a little helpless.
Though my parents are both pensioners, that knee op was the first really noticeable sign of increasing physical frailty - oh, they’ve had the usual tics and niggles, but aside from their hearing aids (a thought to conjure with for someone who’s always had over-sensitive hearing - inherited, as it turns out, from a mother who’s been wearing digital aids for years!) nothing that the younger population doesn’t also have from time to time. Nothing that really slowed them down, made them change how they lived, how they communicated, nothing that meant I found myself making extra sure I was available to help, feeling responsible for alleviating their current burden, even if all I could do was run Mum about a couple of times and pitch in more when I visited.
It brought about a change in our conversations, too. My mother, who has always refrained from anything resembling pressure for grandchildren, has suddenly started to become more obvious in her desire for them. Where ten years ago Mum was, as mothers seem to be, anxious about my life - and dietary - choices, now as well as our normal weekly chat-about-whatever there’s a weekly update on the status of various illnesses and frailties. Lump scares, future operations, the eye condition I’d no idea ran in my father’s family until he was recently diagnosed, blood pressure monitoring, the revelation that my barely-remembered grandma was severely anaemic, the fact that my mother has spent the last fifteen years nursing a recurring hip niggle that she’s never really felt to be severe enough to consult about with a doctor. The admission, most of all, of tiredness.
I’m reminded, suddenly, that my father is just a few years younger than my other half’s grandmother. It’s unsettling, this sudden pressing down of frailty, the creeping feeling that here begin the years where the balance of worry shifts from parents to children.
And yet, it’s not all negative. Strange as it may sound, my parents and I are closer now. I suppose the essence of it is that our relationship is more adult. They ask advice as well as providing it. I provide support as well as requiring it. We chat on more equal, more human terms. Their frailties admitted, my understanding improved.
Daughtering is, it seems, changing.
October 14th, 2009 at 3:05 am
Wow. I could’ve written this. Or, rather, you’ve written so well what I’ve been thinking about lately. Sometimes I just think it shouldn’t be allowed, parents aging.
This was beautiful. Thanks for writing it and sharing it.
October 14th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Yes, and it’s a funny thing when it does. I’m glad the closeness is making up for the shift; interacting with parents on equal terms can be challenging, but I think it makes for greater honesty, as you say.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Wondeful post that must ring true for so many people in their 30s and 40s. Glad you have seen the positive in it, in that you are closer to your mum and dad in some ways.
I recall a shift too in my late teens when my mum started to confide in me with her worries, and my dad started to argue with me on politics and other stuff, and crucially conceded I had a point a few times. They had allowed me to grow, which I must remember when my children get to that age.
My mother also said when her mother died it suddenly dawned on her that she was now head of the family, and she found that so scary. Though she is such a capable person, a part of her still wanted a parent around for support. I suspect I will be the same.
Thanks for this.
October 17th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
It is SO scary when that happens - it happened for me when I was 25 (although it happened for my Dad and his parents when he was just 20, so at least I got a few more years!). It does change your whole outlook on life. I find it very bizarre sometimes, sitting at work talking with colleagues who are a good 10-15 years older than me and to whom this hasn’t happened yet - their attitudes etc are so very different to mine!
October 25th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I know how you feel, when mum was poorly last year I remember driving away from the hospital not sure what the outcome would be thinking how for the first time in my life I truly felt like a grown up (and being very scared at the prospect), and I saw my dad change from “silly old dad” to someone who could cope (not the cartoon image I had of him in my head).
I think our parents give us the security of our childhood and are in general constant figures in our life (whether we like it or not!), I still turn to mine for advice and seek approval from them, although I’d like to think that they do the same from me.
It’s surprising when our parents turn out to be ordinary people isn’t it?
And I’m trying really hard not to comment on the grandchildren thing!
December 15th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I’ve been preparing (not very successfully, but let’s just say it’s been a constant feature in my mental landscape) for this kind of thing for many years, as my mum and dad, although not at all old by today’s standards, were a decade older than most of my friends’ parents, and my dad especially has not been in good health for some years … and as my grandmother said to me when I was 9 or 10 years old (thanks, Nan!) “An only child is a lonely child, and when your parents are gone, you’ll have no-one.” Well, my husband and daughter are very far from being no-one! - but in terms of caring for aging parents, there was an element of truth to her words, because it does mean that I am destined to have that role all to myself, and my mother and father do NOT make it easy!
I understand completely your appreciation of the way it is changing your relationship to your parents into something more rounded and mature: it’s something I experienced last month when we spent a long w/e with my parents, doing chores for them (cleaning, shopping, cooking) after my mother came out of hospital with pneumonia. For a few days, they allowed me to show that I am not still 4 years old, that I can be relied upon to do grown-up things, that I do not have to be protected from everything and needn’t remain the last person they would think of calling upon for help, which sadly tends to be the case. They are terrible at accepting help from anyone, but especially from me. A few years ago, my dad was banned from revealing to me that he’d had a minor stroke because my mother thought it would upset me. Another time, he was in hospital with bleeding and suspected cancer and it was 4 days before I could reach either of them on the phone: I had no idea why nobody was answering. She’d been at home most of that time, but thought it best simply not to get in touch with me at all.
The grandchildren thing was always different for me, because of my mother’s inability to communicate things in a straightforward way. She always impressed on me how much of a burden her sister’s grandchildren were to her - “How can they [my cousins] DO that to her, going and having more??” - and gave every indication that she thought I wasn’t a capable adult and that children would likely never be part of the picture anyway. When I got pregnant, my grandmother whispered to me when my mum was out of the room: “Your mother’s always moaning, ‘They’re never going to give me any grandchildren’ …!”
Anyway … Now my mum is recovered from the pneumonia, it seems she’s back to her normal controlling, overbearing self, but I’m thinking maybe that will change as she and my dad grow less able to do stuff for themselves. It will HAVE to change, eventually. And relying on others, even family, is my father’s worst nightmare: when I was a kid, he used to tell me he wanted me to “put a bullet in his head” when he reached the age of 60. He is 80 now.
Oh boy, am I in for a ride.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Whoa! Sorry about the length of that comment … How much do I owe you for the therapy session?
January 7th, 2010 at 9:14 am
Hi Cat, What a moving account which has enabled me to see a different way of ‘daughtering’ to the life of daughtering I’ve experienced.
I guess my own experience is of feeling responsibility foisted upon me for my parents welfare, even from childhood. It’s been a heavy load and one I now find at the very time I should be shouldering it (when they’re nearly 80 and just over 80) I’m so profoundly tired of it I just want to escape it.
It’s a strange thing, when living through it, I didn’t have the clarity of vision to push-back the responsibility from myself back to my parents, but simply accepted it to be my role. It must have been right if it was expected of me from my parents right? So I made myself available often taking short notice time off work when needed to ferry them about, to support mum through her many operations when dad abdicated this role, the list is long.
It’s not just the physical support that steals your time and energy but far more of a challenge is coping with the emotional baggage.
I’ve woken up to it too late to recognise there could have been a different way, a healthier way, a fairer way.
It’s not been all ‘one-way’. My mum has been needy its true but she’s given a lot back too. But in terms of core responsibility, ours has been a topsy turvy relationship with the children expected to be the adults.
Thanks Cat for this piece in your blog. It’s enlightening and helped me to evalulate things with the perspective you offer too. And I promise you this. You’ll never get pressure from me on the grandchildren subject!
March 8th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Hi Cat
Thanks for posting a comment on my blog. The slip came with a dress from Boden. I have hardlyw orn the dress but wear the slip all the time.