SubscribeWishing I could be in two places at once
On my daughter’s first day of high school, my mother was in the hospital.
My daughter was nervous. She was entering a new school in the North Carolina city where we moved recently and didn’t know what to expect. My mother was a bit worried too; she was feeling poorly and undergoing some tests to determine what was going on with her body. I was wishing I could be in two places at once.
My mother’s situation wasn’t life threatening but my sisters and I were concerned about what the test results might reveal. The doctors decided to keep my nearly 80-year-old Mom in the hospital to check her out after one of my sisters took her to emergency room. I couldn’t make the drive to my hometown, a little over an hour away, because I needed to register my daughter at her school. Thank goodness for cell phones.
I didn’t tell my daughter initially that her grandmother was ailing. She was under enough stress: Would she be able to find her homeroom? Would the other kids be nice? Would everything go okay during her first day? I hugged her. I told her not to worry. I smiled and joked.
By phone, I told my Mom I loved her. I told her not to worry. I made those kissing noises.
By the end of the day, the doctors had cleared my Mom to go home, citing no new medical problems. My daughter had easily found her homeroom, and she and I had met with a counselor to come up with a class schedule she liked.
I went to bed early.
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I am a member of the Sandwich Generation, a Baby Boomer raising a teenage daughter and dealing with the needs of an aging mother. I am a veteran journalist, having worked for more than three decades as a reporter and editor. Mostly recently, I was an editor with the Metro section of The Washington Post.
