My generation is in what’s often called the sandwich generation. Stuck between the responsibilities of parenting our children and taking care of our parents. It’s an imperfect metaphor though because I’m not so much the meat in the middle as I am the bread that’s holding it all together. 

If I dig a bit further back, I find that I’ve always felt like the structural support of the family even as a child. A reiki healer once told teenage me that my scoliosis was a manifestation of carrying the world on my shoulders. Umm no. But still, there’s something to that. Clearly I presented not just as crooked but as worn too. The backbone of the family, collapsing into a 37-degree curve to the right.

“Scarily sensible” – that’s the label my mom gave me. She found it in a family horoscope and stuck it on the fridge.

One evening, my father collapsed in the living room. And I wish I could remember the movie we were watching because it was something silly like There’s Something About Mary or in that genre of late 90s raunchy comedy. Incongruous for the moment, typical for a family event. He was laughing too hard and passed out. He landed, incidentally, on his knees protecting his wine glass. My mom flipped him over and started slapping him. “You will not die on us, you bastard”. No life support interventions were given. My brother, admittedly very young, ran around screaming. I went to our phone (pre-cell phone) and called an ambulance. He regained consciousness and all was well. But I think you get the idea.        

And that’s how I’ve taken up space in the family, quietly trying to hold us together while chaos ensues, and still the one most likely to call the ambulance in the event of an emergency.