Random thoughts of a tired sandwich-generation mother on a Saturday morning

It's Saturday, and I've been writing posts in my head, scribbling cryptic notes about them into my phone since Wednesday. But still. Nothing. I don't have the concentration, the focus.

When I have a spare five minutes I play word games with friends on my computer or my phone. I know these are "time wasters" and I have none to spare, yet need the mindless soothing they provide. challenges with quick and clear outcomes (I won! I lost!) resolved in minutes, as opposed to weeks, months, lifetimes.

Jake woke up at 5 AM today again. He says it's "bad dreams" but I have no idea if this is really about dreams or if that's just a phrase he's picked up from TV/books/movies and finds convenient.

He won't elaborate. Neither is he capable of getting back to sleep.

So another night's sleep shot to hell for me.

It's supposed to be the hottest day of the year today. Triple digits.

We're supposed to be going out to the Island, me and the boys, see my mother, my cousin Annette and niece Katrina; find a body of water to throw our overheated bodies into.

But if I don't get a bit more sleep I'll be too tired to safely drive.

And now it's 7 and Ethan has awakened, also too early.

They will probably fall asleep in the car. Which is OK. (As long as I don't.)

Except it will probably be five minutes before we arrive at Mom's rehab center. So I'll be on the horns of a dilemma: drive around aimlessly to let them sleep a bit longer, eating up fossil fuels and making my mother wait for our visit, or wake them up after a mere cat nap and carry on.

How I wish I could declare today a lazy-stay-home-all-day-electronics day. But we need to see my mother, my cousins, and most importantly my Aunt Eva.

She is come home from the hospital now, under hospice care. All she really wants now is to be left alone. Although vastly more comfortable home than in the hospital, everything is still all too much.

Touch hurts, bothers her.

She has stopped eating, will take water in small sips from a spoon.

This may change. But if it doesn't...



I am sure she has no interest in seeing me. But I need to see her.

To say goodbye. To be there for my cousins and my uncle (who himself just developed walking pneumonia, being there for everyone else and neglecting the care of his own self).

All I want is to lie in front of an air conditioner and sleep.

Wake up and eat blueberries with sour cream; something I thought was disgusting as a kid, but now invokes my mother in the summer so strongly I feel she is at my side, lifting my spoon to her own mouth as I sit and take in the light and the dark, the sour and the sweet. Together.

As life often presents it.