North Carolina & Outlaws

E and I have been in Wake Forest NC since Saturday, visiting his parents, who moved down here from Connecticut. By every real measure it's a great visit, and the move was a great move for them. I'm usually pretty skeptical of people moving AWAY from their established communities after they retire, but they had a hub of family down here and moved into a much more friendly neighborhood -- luckily, since the health problems E's dad had been having got even worse pretty shortly after the move. There's an undercurrent of tension in the house, as his mom tries to be the nurse to his dad, who now has a VAD, requires wound dressing care morning and night, and is having short term memory issues.

For E and I, used to going about and spending a lot of time doing our own things, it's a very cooped existence. Fine for a few days, but we've both reached the point of feeling mildly anxious/stir-crazy.

On the bright side, it turns out his dad has headphones for the TV, so we're no longer listening to hard-of-hearing-volume Fox News whenever his dad is awake. That shit is terrifying.

Hopefully tomorrow the weather will clear and we'll be able to go for a long walk at a park or nature preserve, and we can get some wiggles out.

Not just generational

I knew E's mom was having to step up and stretch to be a caregiver for her husband, but I didn't realize how much. She never balanced her checkbook. She's never pumped her own gas. She worked part time as a hair dresser for awhile once, and buys and sells stuff on consignment, but her world is amazingly small (the town 15 miles away from their home in Connecticut was 'all the way over THERE?!'). It's kind of neat to watch her grow, but kind of terrifying to realize how stunted she was.

My grandmothers are both very near her age; definitely the same generation. My paternal grandma has a college degree and worked as office manager in her husband's law firm up until she retired a few years ago. My maternal grandmother is STILL the book-keeper at the town hospital, took five children on a cross-country road trip while pregnant with twins, and spent a summer living so far up the Elwha with those same kids that the weekly groceries were delivered by pack horse.

Granted, maternal grandma's life is pretty strange by many standards, but even my paternal-grandma's country-club/shopping/ladies-luncheon world is broader than E's mom's to a mind-boggling extent.