"Abbie," my 83-year-old
great aunt Martha said, "you know you shouldn't eat cherries if
you're drinking milk."
My grandmother turned
a look of mild annoyance on her older sister. "Martha," she said,
"I've been drinking milk and eating cherries all my life."
"You have not," said
Aunt Martha. "My mother told us it would cause indigestion. I
don't know how you could have forgotten that."
"I can hardly forget
what never happened," said my grandmother. "Perhaps you're confusing
what our mother said with all those weird dietary pronouncements
The Doctor (Martha's late and unlamented husband) loved
to make."
"Abbie," her sister
said, "I'm five years older than you, and I know. But then,
you never did pay much attention to what Mother said about domestic
matters."
"Martha," my grandmother
snapped, "you certainly are older than I am, and so is your memory."
At that point my mother
rose from the table. "Please," she said, "can't we just enjoy
dinner without arguing? My children bicker; you two bicker. It
seems to me that siblings never appreciate how lucky they are.
I always wanted to have a brother or sister," she said, and her
voice quavered, "but now I'm beginning to be glad that I never
did." And with that, she threw down her napkin and stomped off
to the kitchen.
There was an appalled
silence. My brother and I sneaked guilty glances at each other.
Aunt Martha did something fussy with her napkin. My grandmother
headed for the kitchen to comfort Mother. My father, who had grown
up in his grandfather's large household with six aunts and uncles
who were like siblings to him, just smiled.
"Family dynamics,"
he said. "Tricky stuff."
As "retirement communities"
and "assisted living" complexes spring up all across the country
like mushrooms after a cool rain, I find myself thinking about
the generations of children who will never live in a house with
grandparents or other elderly relatives. For them, "family dynamics"
refers to what goes on within the nuclear family, and the more
I think about it, the more I come to believe that that tidy little
nuclear unit is not all it cracked up to be. Nor, I am convinced,
are the one-generational dwelling arrangements that are supposed
to free seniors of all the messy inconveniences of life the only
answer to all the problems of getting old.
Those retirement communities
are great for a while. As long as you have your health and your
driver's license, they afford carefree living and lively companionship
in much the same way a college campus does: you're housed with
others your age, and employees of the institution do the chores
needed to make life run smoothly — things like maintenance
and food preparation and yard work. You're still free to visit
your children and grandchildren, but you don't have all those
annoying chores that once tied you to your home or necessitated
hiring help to do them for you.
You do, of course,
have to give up some personal freedoms in return. And once your
health begins to break down, there are suddenly many restrictions
on your life style. Some are caused by the nature of your illness,
but some come from "Management," those people who run the place
where you live. In my mother's case, those interventions involved
forcing her to move from her garden apartment to a smaller one
in a large building, and from that to the "Health Center," a euphemism
for infirmary, where the truly infirm (and she was) are
held virtually captive. I am sure that many people are grateful
to have "Management" take over the hard decisions that come with
having an elderly parent, things like: At what point do you step
in and take control of your mother or father's life?
The sad truth is that
old age requires us to give up personal freedoms, no matter what
our living situations. At some point, it is no longer safe to
drive the car, or lift the heavy garbage can, or climb the ladder
to clean the gutters. Sometimes it is no longer possible to eat
what we want, go where we want, do what we want. And frankly,
when faced with that moment, I would much rather be living among
those who know me and my tastes and priorities than to be living
with strangers who must be paid to take care of me, no matter
how well-meaning they may be.
I'm not at all sure
that any of my children would be willing to take me in, and I
certainly don't like thinking about the possibility. But at the
same time, I remember my early childhood as an entirely happy
one, spent in the company of my brother and parents, along with
two grandmothers and a great aunt, all under one roof and all
reasonably content.
It can't be easy to
create such a living arrangement. Adult "children" who have been
on their own for years can't help finding it difficult to have
aged parents back in their daily lives, no matter how much mutual
affection they share. Privacy is an issue for all concerned. Differences
in religious preferences or political loyalties or firmly-held
opinions of any kind can destroy even the best intentions as adult
family members set out to create a joint household. It is hard
for the elderly to defer to an adult child in matters of parenting
even if they're not living in the same house, but if they live
with those children and grandchildren, the matter of ultimate
authority can be dicey indeed. Even things like food preferences
or the distribution of household chores or annoying little personal
habits suddenly loom large.
That said, it seems
to me that there are some very good parts of living in a multi-generational
household that make the effort worthwhile.
For one thing, there's
a healthy perspective that often develops. Children who grow up
hearing about the scrapes their parents got into when young learn
a lot about forgiveness and growth and the possibility of redemption.
The middle generation receives support during those difficulties
that come with parenting. And the elderly enjoy the respect that
comes when the kids and grandkids tap into the wisdom that life
has (willy-nilly) given them.
Children who live in
a multi-generational household learn early on that they are not
the big gem hanging at the end of the necklace: They are just
links in a chain that started long before them and will go on
long after them.
Their parents receive
some freedom and relief from the need to pay constant attention
to the children. (When I was little, I never had a babysitter
who wasn't related to me).
And grandparents find
themselves feeling useful, not just as babysitters, but as boon
companions to a teenager, perhaps, or as sources of financial
or psychological assistance to all.
My husband's family
had probably the ideal situation. Both sets of grandparents lived
in their own houses, but within a mile of the house where he grew
up. He had not only all four grandparents nearby, but also a great
grandmother. He (and they) loved it.
When my own children
were young, we were pretty much a nuclear family. The closest
grandparent lived 90 miles away. Fortunately, the grandparents
all took an active role in becoming more than just visitors to
their grandchildren. Still, it wasn't the same as the intimate,
daily knowledge of one another that both my husband and I experienced
with our extended families.
There is a depth to
that kind of living that can't be created by artificial means.
It takes a series of little things like being allowed to help
sort Aunt Martha's thread drawer and button box as she hummed
gently off-key or told stories of her childhood; or watching as
Grandma expertly pitted her breakfast prunes; or feeling Grandabbie's
gentle hand on my shoulder and her quiet: "You're a good child."
It also takes seeing things like my mother throwing down her napkin
to make her point, or listening to the squabbles of sisters who
are seven decades older than I. It even takes having to sit at
table while Aunt Martha, who chewed every bite precisely 100 times,
finished her dinner. Talk about a lesson in patience...
There is a resonance
to that kind of upbringing that is almost gone in this modern
world, and we are the poorer for it.
