Day 142 - not a superhero

 Today is the 3rd day of the 21st week, the 23rd day of the 5th month, the 142nd day of 2023, and:

• Declaration of the Báb Day: a merchant of Shiraz announces that he is a Prophet and founds a religious movement, which has come to be knows as the Baháʼí Faith.
• National Best Friend-in-law Day
• National Day to End Obstetric Fistula
• National Lucky Penny Day
• National Taffy Day 
• World Chron's and Colitis Day
• World Turtle Day

Note in passing:  on this day in 1934, Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. 

Quote of the day:

"You can do anything as long as you have the passion, the drive, the focus, and the support."

~ Sabrina Bryan, AKA Reba Sabrina Hinojos, American dancer, choreographer, actress, and singer

My respect for my son-in-law is boundless and I can only watch with awe as he balances working a stressful full-time job, with caring for a disabled wife and two little girls, with keeping a growing garden flourishing, all while keeping his emotional balance and sanity.  He is totally awesome and s real life super hero!

And that is a problem.

Because he is doing all of this alone.  

Why should being a superhero mean that one has to do it on their own?  He desperately needs more support.  Right now his support system seems to be a mother-in-law whose health issues keep her at home, a sister who lives across the country, and folks he can hire - a part-time nanny, cleaners, yard workers.  

I'm not sure if it has always been that way, or if it is a function of our modern or of Western society.  There just seems to be so many people quietly going about their lives, juggling multiple roles, handling responsibilities that are back-breaking - caretaking for elderly parents, working two jobs, functioning as a single parent, et al.   But this isn't a new development - it seems to have happened somewhere back in the 1950's or so.  Maybe that was when single family housing became the norm with our parents generation?  I don't know.

My two grandmothers had very different old age experiences.  Grandmom Hughes lived in a community surrounded by long time neighbors who visited each other constantly, often just strolling over to wile away some time sitting on the porch chatting.  Her daughter [Aunt Blanche was the youngest of her three kids and the only girl], and later her oldest granddaughter [me as I was a homemaker at the time], called and talked to her every day.  Her entire family gathered together every Thanksgiving.  Her brother and sisters would come and visit, staying for a couple of weeks before returning to Frostburg.  She seemed so active right up until the end.  Grandmom Riley?  Widowed at a very young age, she survived her sisters and her sister-in-law.  Altho she lived with her oldest daughter and her husband, after he passed away, the two ladies were increasingly isolated except for my mother.  I would go and see her every other week or so when my kids were little, but she wasn't really very happy with me after I left my 2nd husband, whose parents were close friends of my aunt and uncle.  At the end, it was just my mother and I - Mom had retired at that point so it was a bit easier, but I was working full-time and lived on the other side of town.  The difference was that Grandmom Hughes had a support system, but Grandmom Riley did not.  They both had lived in the same neighborhood for decades; they both were widows.  I'm not really sure why their experiences were so different or why Grandmom Riley was so alone.

One's personal support system is tied to the social safety net in many ways - worrying about how you can afford things can definitely erode one's sense of well-being, something "conservative" politicians seem to ignore all the time.  But what role did the family, the neighborhood, the church play in personal support in the past?

Is isolation the inevitable end result of our "go it alone" social mindset?  In other cultures, I don't hear about elderly people adamantly refusing to leave homes where they are living alone.  Of course, hereabouts you don't seem to have as many multigenerational dwellings either.

My support system?  

• Family:  Two kids, both disabled and dealing with extreme health issues, one son-in-law with far too many things to juggle right now, one step-daughter who is working two jobs, caring for her son, and trying to eek out some semblance of a personal life
• Friends:  one friend who is blind and dealing with a crumbling condo unit, one friend who lives with her husband [both of which have their own health challenges] who lives in a state over 2K miles away [supposedly a 30 hour drive], and a woman who is currently my direct report at work who has her own family plus a mother in India who needs help
• Paid:  a cleaning lady who comes every other week, and an organizer who I hire now and then to help me with downsizing.  
• Governmental:  Social Security, Medicare, health insurance paid by Baltimore County Retired Employees

Am I worried?  Hell yeah - I don't want to be a burden to anyone and everyone single one of the family and friends have their own very pressing issues.  The paid goes away as soon as I cannot afford them, along with my home.  And the government seems to be on the chopping block of every GOP politician, even tho I paid for that Social Security every day of my life since I was 15 years old.  

Sabrina was right, neh?  

Screw this - I'm going back to my 2nd life.