2. Doing things for your parents that you used to do for your children. Your very young, very small children.
This sounds like a gift, a wonderful thing that you can do for the people who raised you. Isn't it a blessing to care for those who changed your diapers and took you to all your medical and dental appointments? It's not. I loathe that my parents are no longer the people I grew up with, or even those that I spent most of my adult life getting to know and admire. It's not really the physical doing that I object to. I can go to the store, drive to appointments, even clean up and wash for my parents. What I hate is that the people I do these things for are not the parents I have known most of my life. I miss with an ache in my core the days that I could call up my mom and make plans to come over and bring the kids swimming, knowing she'd have lunch for us and a movie for the kids to watch on the VCR for afterward while we'd spend our time gossiping and chatting about friends old and new, and happenings in our lives. I miss camping with them, my dad taking my son fishing and teaching my daughter to play chess. I miss him being smarter than me. Although at the rate I'm going he probably still is. I miss consulting him on our latest planned purchase, asking him to help out with planning the garden or painting a room.
I've seen things a daughter should never see, I've said things I never thought I'd say. I've had to turn on my teacher voice and mother my parents and I don't like it, not one little eensy weensy bit. But I do it anyway, with love, for these people who are my parents, and are still themselves inside somewhere. They always had a way of loving me unconditionally. They deserve the same.
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