At O’Hare again, hoorah hooray. Doing another CT trip to help my parents with eldercare; this trip is mostly about helping my dad with consolidating some of my mother’s bank accounts, and touring some nicer long-term care facilities.
We’re not sure right now whether it’ll be better for her to be at home with my dad and an in-home carer, or in a long-term residence. My dad is almost 80, and it’s getting very difficult for him to help my mother with everything she needs at this point, both physically and in terms of memory care. That decision will come soon, but regardless, we want to know where we’d like her to be, if she does end up moving to long-term care. Hence, tours.
I do also have a lunch meeting in NY on Saturday — I don’t have a lot of time in the city, but if you’re a friend of mine who might be available either for morning or afternoon coffee meet-up, or possibly an early dinner, let me know? My plan is to take Amtrak from Berlin, CT to NY Penn Station on Saturday morning, return in the late afternoon or early evening. I haven’t booked the train yet, but should do that later today.
Flying home on Sunday. Am a little bummed that I’m not going to be around for Kavi’s second homecoming dance on Saturday, but we’ve gotten her dress (sparkly silver), shoes (ditto), appropriate underthings (strongly recommend Central Foundations in Berwyn for knowledgeable and gentle bra-fitting and help with finding something supportive to wear under a spaghetti strap dress).
Kavi says she can manage accessories on her own, but I told her she could borrow almost anything of mine (anything except the wedding ring, which I’d be upset if she lost) — Homecoming has a Met Gala theme this year, so she might want to get a little more bling-y than her own jewelry permits.
She has PROMISED me that she will get at least one good picture. Kevin will try, but it is not his strength, so I’m relying on Kavi’s selfie skills and her friends!
This is what we call the sandwich generation — when you’re raising children and doing eldercare at the same time. My eldercare responsibilities have been fairly minimal so far, and probably will remain so; some people, mostly women, get squished hard in this sandwich.
We did offer to have my parents move in with us — we talked about converting the garage to have an in-law apartment above, for example. I’m not sure what that would have looked like, honestly — it would have been pretty hard, in a lot of ways. But they didn’t want to do that — all of their community is in CT, and my dad is, amazingly, still working part-time. So here we are.
