The Sandwich Generation

These past few weeks have been busy ones.

I’m the peanut butter in a generational sandwich, helping my aging mom at the very same time my kids are raising their own kids and looking to me for a measure of involvement in their lives, and even occasional help.

It’s a rich blessing to be involved with multiple generations. It’s also a recipe for intense busyness.

I find myself sandwiching mom’s doctor appointments in between end-of-the-school-year events my grandkids have invited me to. Or I fit in watching a 2-year old between my mom’s women’s group game night and fixing my husband’s dinner.

Speaking of my husband, he has his own calendar of events and occasions he’d like us to be part of; he’s a patient man, but he’d like some time and attention, too. It almost seems selfish to mention the long-delayed career, the hobbies and interests, the other friends I’d like to have time for.

I’m certainly not alone in facing these issues. Many women – and men – around my age are helping to care for aging parents even as they carry responsibility for younger family members, work, and civic duties.

How do we fit it all in? How do we make it all work? Where are the practical tips that will help us manage all the things we’re trying to manage?

Let’s talk about that over these next few weeks.

What's Cooking?

I’ve promised myself I’m going to exercise self-discipline. I’m just going to say no. I’m not going to buy another cook-book.

It’s not like I don’t have enough. We have an entire bookcase of cookbooks, and in the kitchen, several more shelves of cookbooks and recipe card files.


But one of our daughters is tempting me with her new favorite cookbook. It’s filled with recipes for things I’ve always wanted to try, both to cook and to eat. The directions are clear, and the text is fun to read – just what I like in a cookbook.

I like to cook, and I like to read about cooking. Reading a good cookbook is like having a conversation with someone who likes the same things I do. The photographs and illustrations inspire me, new ingredients and recipes intrigue me.

“I could do that,” I tell myself smugly, as if creating a three-layer coconut cream cake is, well, a piece of cake.

The problem is that all the hungriest people have moved out of our house into homes of their own, and the preacher and I can’t possibly eat everything I can cook or bake. Oh, the hungry people all come back regularly, and they bring their own little hungry people with them, but their visits aren’t regular enough to justify the kind of cooking I used to do. And while the preacher’s a good sport, he does occasionally take note of the left-overs.

Sharing a meal with people you love is one of life’s most persistent blessings. Like most blessings, it involves a fair amount of effort, but even that effort becomes something of a blessing when the work is shared. Showing the kids you love how to shuck corn or peel potatoes or make a piecrust is not only helpful – it can be fun. The cook gets some help, and the helper gains a new skill, not to mention that lovely feeling of contribution and accomplishment.

A good cookbook is an encouragement, offering direction, instruction, and vision. It’s a back-up for when the cook runs out of ideas – or patience in instruction. And having a shelf-full of cookbooks is like having a kitchen full of friends.

So what's your favorite new cookbook?

Spring Flowers

Lilacs are blooming now, even the ancient bush that blooms purple at the very back of our yard. Last fall, we thought it was done for; it looked ragged, as if it would not survive the winter. Somehow it rallied this cool, damp spring, and is crowned with blooms now.

All the spring bulbs’ blooms have lasted a long time this spring, courtesy of the cool damp. Even the anemones are still blooming, dark blue punctuation marks in the grass. The lily of the valley is almost ready to bloom, and sitting in the swing is a lovely, fragrant adventure.

By the end of winter, I am so ready for warm – OK, hot – weather. The past few years I’ve gotten my wish, and spring has gone by so quickly that even the spring flowers bloomed a day or two, then succumbed to the heat: a perfect example of be-careful-what-you-wish-for.

This year, though, our yard has been a long-running show of spring flowers, and it’s been fun to see the kids we love playing among them, hiding Easter eggs in them, trying to pick them to bring in the house, leaning over to smell them.

One of the pleasures of gardening is the way it transforms outdoor space into a place to live in, a place of grace, beauty, and delight. Sharing it with the kids we love is just another way of enjoying the fruit of our gardening labors.

Too Wet for Gardening? Not Too Wet for Reading . . .

Here in the Midwest, it’s been a soggy spring – not the best for early gardening outdoors. Even so, there are things we can do to encourage a love for gardening: starting seeds indoors, looking through gardening wishbooks (otherwise known as catalogs), reading up on new plants, or new ways of doing familiar tasks in the garden.

And we can read those books about gardens and gardening with the people we love.

Here are some of my favorite garden books to share with the kids I love:

** Of course, for the youngest set, Beatrix Potter’s Peter Cottontail books. I remember being all curled up in a big double bed while my grandma read them to me and my sister when we were little girls. Peter was her special favorite – I think she had a thing for bad little rabbits! I can remember looking at the pictures of Mr. MacGregor’s garden and wishing I could visit. These gentle stories are still fun to read to little people.

** The Gardener, by Sarah Stewart, tells the story of a little girl who’s been transplanted into the city during the Depression. In this Caldecott Honor book, the seeds her grandma sent with her from the family farm transform her corner of the city as well as the people who live there.

** Mrs. Spitzer’s Garden, by Edith Pattou, is a fun book about a different kind of gardener. Perfect for the child who will be going to school next year for the first time!

So, what garden books do you like to read with the kids you love?

Grow a Garden, Grow a Relationship . . .

Want to have a lot of fun with the kids you love? Grow a garden together.

Sharing an interest in something green and growing will help to grow your relationship, too.

Plan what to plant together, and keep track of how it grows. Even if you don’t live near one another, you can share your experiences by e-mail, or snail mail, or on Skype, or by taking photographs of what’s happening in your garden and sending them to one another. Ask questions. Volunteer information. Look things up together, either online or at your local library, and share what you find out. Rejoice in one another’s successes, and learn from each other’s mistakes.

If you live close enough to one another to actually share the work of a garden, share the work! Invite the kids you love to help you get the soil ready and plant together. Water, mulch, and cultivate together. Pull weeds together. Keep track of how the garden is doing together. Harvest flowers and vegetables together. Put the flowers on the dining room table, prepare the vegetables, and share a meal together, and enjoy the fruit of your patience and labor – together.

It takes patience to grow a gardener. Kids who are just beginning to garden are almost sure to walk in the wrong places, water the weeds, and pull the carrots out before they’re quite ready, just to check on them. (Seriously, how do you think chefs figured out the value of baby carrots?)

Working together in a garden is one way to encourage the kids you love to appreciate gardening. It’s more than that, though. The conversations you have about gardening – whether they are long-distance or in person conversations – help shape your relationship. And the experiences you share -- having fun together, learning new skills, accomplishing something tangible – nurture the relationship and help it grow.

Watch for more ideas in the days ahead!

Spring Planting Time!

This time of year, I love to find seed packets at the grocery store.

What a fun thing to share with your grandchildren!

Why not pick up a packet of radish seeds, or sunflower seeds, or seeds for some other green and growing thing, and send it to your grandchild, along with a note encouraging them to try planting it?

And while you’re at it, share your seed-stories with them. Tell them about the gardens you’ve grown, or the vegetables you’ve harvested. Share your stories about herbs, or four-o-clocks, or zinnias as an encouragement.

Pick up a few seed packets for your own garden, too, and let your grandkids know what you’ll be trying your green thumb at this season!

Watch for more grandkid-gardening ideas in the days ahead!

Just for Fun . . .

The job description for moms and grandmas is a long one, and includes things like “inspire-er” or “encourager” or “resource person.”
Resource person? Well, yes – even the inspire-er and the encourager need inspiration and encouragement now and then. We need to know where about resources that inspire and encourage us, so that we can inspire and encourage our families.
Here’s a fun, inspiring, encouraging site for those of us who enjoy being outdoors, who enjoy the natural world, and who want to encourage our families to enjoy those things, too.
Sharon Lovejoy has written a number of books , including Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars, that encourage exploring the natural world. Her blogsite, Sharon Lovejoy Writes from Sunflower House and a Little Green Island, does the same thing on a regular basis.
Make time to visit – you’ll be inspired, encouraged, and challenged to learn and do more, and to have fun in the meantime!

Work Worth Doing . . .

Most of the work we do as wives, as moms and grandmas, is the work of a support staff.
It’s not particularly glamorous. It’s not always exciting or stimulating. It’s not usually financially rewarding.
But it is extremely satisfying.
It’s satisfying to see the long-term reward for your effort.
It can be hard in the day-to-day to see that keeping the counters wiped up and the floors vacuumed and mopped is creating a place that is clean, that smells fresh and inviting, that feels like a place your family wants to come home to.
It can be difficult in the moment-to-moment to realize that kind words, thoughtful deeds, and beautiful touches are crucial in creating the kind of home where your family feels safe and nurtured.
It can be exhausting in the long term to consider how often you will set the table for a meal, or make the beds, or load the dishwasher or the clothes washer or give the kids a bath, even though those are the things that make up the rhythms of family life, and create a foundation for your family’s health and stability.
Creating a home and family life together involves its fair share of drudgery, but it is also a work of faithfulness, a work of art, and a work of significance, and it is work worth doing.

Five Ways to Share Your Love for Music

How do you share your love for music with your children and grandchildren?
Here are five ideas:
** Play a variety of music for your family to listen to. Change up pop and rock with a little bit of country, a little bit of classical, a little bit of sacred music.
** Experiment: be willing to listen to music you’re not familiar with. Try music your family likes. Occasionally try some music none of you have tried. Make use of radio; with internet radio stations, you can find almost any kind of music you’d like to try.
** Make music together. Sing together in the car. Have age-appropriate instruments to play – even a small child can practice rhythm with two pan lids, and older children will have fun with harmonicas, recorders, or finger cymbals. Don’t forget to join in the fun!
** Go to concerts, even if you don’t know any of the performers. From school concerts to concerts in the park, to a local concert hall – experience live music.
** Connect the music you listen to with stories of the musicians and their lives and times. Music is an integral part of history, and affects everything from the evolution of instruments to costumes and clothing. Knowing the background can enrich the music.

And Now -- This Week's Top Ten . . .

Music is multi-purpose. It moves us, it motivates us, it makes us happy.
If you had to choose the songs that would give your kids or grandkids a sense of who you are, which songs would you choose? And why?
Here are some of the songs I’d be choosing from:
** Be Thou My Vision . . . because it’s become our family hymn.
** Rocky, Rock . . . a lullaby I sang to my kids and now, sing to my grandkids; it’s a tune I made up, woven into Jesus Loves Me and Tura Lura Lura.
** Handel’s Messiah . . . yes, the whole thing, because how can you just choose one part?
** Sheep May Safely Graze, a song of home, and Home
** Beach Boys, Fun, Fun, Fun
** Holden’s Evening Prayer, especially “Let My Prayer Rise Up” . . . a foretaste of heaven when sung with people you love
** Star Spangled Banner, because I love being a citizen of this country
** Bali Hai, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, because I always wanted to go there
** Moonlight in Vermont, because I always wanted to go there, too
** Cape Cod Bay, because I always thought I would go there
That’s just ten pieces of music, and that’s just a start. It doesn’t include anything by Johnny Cash, or Garth Brooks, or Trisha Yearwood or Alison Krause. There’s no Huey Lewis or Stevie Ray Vaughn in there, and no Yo Yo Ma. No Beatles, no Tom Petty, no Bonnie Raitt. And no Frank or Dean or Ella or Tony.
And it leaves out most of the hymnal, which is almost a category to itself.
So what would be on your list? How would you choose the music that identifies you?