The Single Egg & The Sandwich

In the last two months we recognized two rather important and popular holidays: Mother’s Day & Father’s Day. No doubt, this year’s iterations of those holidays took on new meaning as we struggled to celebrate them for the first time in our lives during a pandemic.

Beyond air hugs and other special precautions the basic struggle remains, how to best care for our aging parents? Does the coined phrase “Sandwich Generation” have particular meaning in your life right now? Are you trying to balance those responsibilities with your own needs pertaining to midlife issues and still caring for your teenage and pre-teen children? Perhaps you’re balancing a full-time job and caring for older loved ones—that can be a handful, too.

Personally, I remember the day this all became too real in my life very clearly. About 10 years ago during my normal weekly visit to my parents’ house, I opened the freezer door and found not ice cubes in the ice bin, but an egg—a single, frigid, egg. Of course, I asked, “What is this egg doing in the freezer?” But there would be no cogent reply from either parent, only a blame-shifting session of “It wasn’t me,” followed by “Don’t look at me” and some mumbles and grumbles from both. After my initial shock of seeing how quickly each was willing to throw the other under the bus, I realized what the future might look like for me, the youngest child and daughter in the family.

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