No Worries is a monthly column exploring the ever-evolving and ever-confusing world of modern relationships. Whether it’s with a judgy parent, a friend being weird, a toxic ex, or an insufferable colleague, relationships are not easy. DM us on Instagram (we'll keep it anonymous) or ask for a friend—your guide Cheryl-Ann Couto is here to help.
Q.
I am 45F, married, with 7YO twins. My husband and I both moved to a city for work in our early 20s and made our home here, but our parents stayed behind in our hometowns. As father-daughter relationships go, mine is not the best. Nothing worthy of a TV drama, just the usual garden-variety control issues, and the fact that he’s a cranky old man to be around. My mum was the glue that held our family of three together, and after she passed away during Covid, his health has been floundering. He forgets to take his medication on time, forgets meals sometimes, is extremely averse to advice, and is nasty to the help who can’t seem to last beyond a few months in that house.
The problem is that my life, after years of chaos (of managing two young boys), finally has some semblance of structure, but it still feels fragile. I feel guilty even thinking about it, but I just know it will all come down like a house of cards if I add my crazy dad to this mix. At the same time, he’s 80 and frail and I’m so scared of what can happen to him while he’s alone and far away. Assisted living seems like a practical solution, but feels worse—I feel like I have failed as a child if I can’t take care of him in his old age. I’m stuck between wanting to hold on to the sanity I’ve worked so hard to find and doing the responsible thing as a kid. What do I do?
A.
Dear Good Daughter,
It appears you are experiencing my least favourite sandwich after the club: the generational sandwich. An acutely millennial condition in which the bread slices of young wards and ageing parents are closing in on you, threatening to leech you of your crunch and vitality and leave you mealy and a bit like limp lettuce.
I am sure that in today’s self care-espousing culture, you have heard every (correct) argument for why you should prioritise your hard-won equilibrium. Yet your crushing guilt remains. This is because of that other acutely millennial condition: you’re young enough to see suffering-in-the-name-of-duty for the full-blown mental health crisis it is, yet old enough that putting on your own oxygen mask first feels like a true dereliction of duty.
So, what to do with this terrible in-betweenness? First, get comfortable with it. Most of life is lived in the middle, no matter what the algorithms would have us believe. Neatly delineated periods of perfect peace and poise are rare, if they exist at all; you’re better off adjusting expectations for an ebb and flow, with occasional splashes and crashes.
Second—and this one might be harder from where you’re standing—remind yourself that the generational sandwich is a choice. An inconvenient, less-than-ideal, doesn’t-feel-like-a-choice choice. You’re an only child and all this worry about doing right by your curmudgeonly dad tells me you’re a good one at that—which means that caring for your parents in their old age was always on the cards for you. And probably a calculation you made even as you stepped into ‘late’ motherhood? So, maybe you’re not ‘trapped’ or ‘stuck’, you just decided to have it all (foolish optimism is another acutely millennial condition) and now you’re just at the challenging portion of that wildly ambitious plan.
Third, and most important: it is amply clear that you can do hard things. Leaving home young to make your life elsewhere, bringing up twin (!) boys (!), dealing with the loss of your mom even as you unconsciously ready yourself to step up and take her place as the family glue—this is not your first rodeo. Just empirically speaking, you will find your way to a fine balance.
What might that look like practically? If you can’t have the idyll, maybe locate the point of least distress for everyone and start there. For an elderly person with control issues, like your dad, I imagine agency, ownership, and a way to safely yell at people is paramount. Which means moving into your home would not just be bad for your sense of well-being, but his too. Could you, instead, bring him closer—into the same city, the same neighbourhood, or even another floor of your apartment building? This way, you can unobtrusively keep tabs on his health and provide an empathetic ear and extra tips for the help when they have to endure his wrath.
Another thing: see him as often as you can manage. Give him space to grumble. Make sure to yell and shout back at him too, as only a child is allowed. Take meals together. One cannot overstate the alchemising power of giving someone your time and attention, especially when that someone is your garden-variety grumpy old dad.
And when it gets too much—which it will, often—go away to your own house, where you’ve created a sanctuary in which you can calmly dissociate with a Reels marathon or take the foetal position because the twins are at school.
Maybe, along with everything else, you’ll also get to have a happy father-daughter relationship eventually. Not to flog the sandwich thing, but what if it turns out you were right all along? You can have it and eat it, too.
