For the past year I have been the custodian of both my mother and my 3-year-old child. I make their dinners, beds and doctor’s appointments. I unfold the napkins on their laps, wipe their mouths after they eat and give them kisses when they’re feeling sad. I remember being delighted when my daughter decided to toilet-train herself. It was the same week my mother became incontinent.
Mom came to live near us in the spring of 2000. Her osteoporosis and heart disease had gotten so bad that she could no longer live independently, so we placed her in an assisted-living facility that was close by. My father suffers from Alzheimer’s and lives in a nursing home, so I, the eldest daughter, was the obvious candidate to oversee her care.
Over the next several months Mom suffered a series of small strokes that caused her mental acuity to slip. She began to babble, wander out into the parking lot and forget to bathe and eat. She dropped 15 pounds, alarming in someone who weighed 105. She became convinced her television was talking to her and ripped the cable out of the wall.
We decided to admit her to the psychiatric unit of the local hospital for an evaluation. Once there, she lay in a fetal position, staring at nothing and answering all the doctor’s questions in monosyllables. When she emerged from this emotional chrysalis six weeks later, she was my child.
I brought her home and began the painful process of learning to mother my own mother. When I was growing up, our roles were always very clear. Her job was to critique, guide and teach, and mine was to absorb, react and learn. But now it’s as if we’ve traded parts, like actors in a play who’ve switched scripts on a whim.
These days I dress her, plan her activities and take her on short walks–just as she did for me when I was young. I remember how magical she would make my birthday parties, transforming the house with glittery streamers and serving cake shaped like a unicorn or a fairy. On ordinary days she’d serve my sister and me oat-bran pancakes that looked like clown faces, or turn peas and carrots into eyes and eyebrows.
Now I arrange her food. I tuck pork chops between bookends of spinach and top the arrangement with a poached pear. I make a little house out of strawberries and cake. She claps her hands in delight, along with my 3-year-old. And some mornings I find myself making clown-face pancakes for everyone.
Because I have a full-time job, my husband and a family friend take turns caring for my mother during the day. When I get home at 5, my shift begins; my life is a perpetual series of errands and tasks. Between my daughter’s ear infections and my mother’s occasional falls, the emergency room feels like our second home. I bring along a bag of toys for my daughter, crossword puzzles for my mother and coffee and a book for me to pass the hours.
I have begun to call my role “extreme mothering”–the care and feeding of people on opposite sides of the life arc. It is not unusual for me to make three different kinds of meals at breakfast, lunch and dinner: one for my child, one for my mother and one for me and my husband. Going out for an evening is nearly impossible, since few babysitters are willing to look after two generations.
My family’s experience is not unique. One in 10 people over 65 experiences signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. For the 85-and-older crowd, that number grows to 50 percent. Most of these older people live with family members, and it is primarily the eldest daughters (when they exist) who volunteer for the job. Many of these women are, like me, mothers themselves. Many of them work, too.
As the boomer generation ages, one can envision the products advertisers will begin marketing to their children: instant everything, disposable clothing and diapers that can expand from tiny to huge.
I’m always frenzied, stressed and behind on the laundry, but my life isn’t all bad. I love it when I recognize the sound of my mother’s laugh in my daughter or see them both curled up watching “The Wizard of Oz” together. And of course, I’ve been forced to develop a much better sense of humor; if I don’t laugh when I spill the bedpan, I’ll cry.
Whenever I’m truly on the brink of despair, something always saves me. My daughter will crawl up in my lap or sing me a little song. My mother, for her part, can surprise me. The other day she told me she is happy now, despite her pain and confusion. “I just wish that little girl would hold still for a moment so I could look at her,” she said. “When I can see her face, it makes my day.”
