I’ve spent the last ten days in Florida, helping out my mother. She’s in good health for her age, but at ninety-four she can’t live alone, and my sister, who lives with her, was called away to take care of her grandson. I enjoyed getting Mom to talk, except when the topics were digestion and her friends’ illnesses. Every time I make a long visit without a lot of other relatives around I learn new things about her life. (I never knew that before she dated my father, she’d gone to a prom with her gay best friend! That would have been around 1936.) I mostly regret that I had to bring my laptop so I could work at my day job much of the time.

I got back home with enough time to do laundry, make an appearance at work tomorrow after putting in a full day working remotely today, and fly to Boston, where my older daughter is graduating. She’s getting her MA. When I fly back, my younger daughter will be coming to stay for a few weeks before I help her move to Wisconsin, where she’ll be working for the next year.

My sister and I are currently in the sandwich generation, caught between the demands of our kids and the needs of our parents. I’m a lot better off in that respect than I was a few years ago, when my kids were in elementary and middle school and my father-in-law was living with us because he’d had a stroke. I didn’t have the option to work from home then, and often the only time I had to myself was my 45-minute commute to the office. Now my older sister has set her life on hold to move in with my mother. Sis seems to like living in hell a retirement community, something for which I am grateful even as I find it incomprehensible.

I thought once the kids were out of high school they wouldn’t need me any more, and I’m sure any parent of twenty-somethings reading this will laugh heartily at my naïveté. It’s not the everyday chore it was a decade ago, but the family responsibilities are still there, and even when I’m not doing something for them, they are on my mind.

So I’m still sandwiched. I suppose the question is: what kind of sandwich filler am I? Am I stale cheese and bologna past its sell-by date? Or am I fresh mozzarella and tomatoes with a tasty sauce? It’s scary to realize I don’t know the answer.