Missed bite of the sandwich generation

I could hear the persistent beep of a second call coming in on my phone this afternoon as I was talking to my mother in California.

In my mind, I told myself, "It must be Craig; he always calls about this time to see when I'll be getting home."

Actually I was already on the train heading back from Queens to Manhattan, having the usual-but-not-so-usual call I have each weekday with my mother, who lives by herself in California -- or did until a few weeks ago when she took her third fall in 20 months. This time she broke a rib that punctured a lung. She was in the hospital twice for it, and now is on oxygen full time. She hates it, connected to an oxygen generator and dragging around a clear plastic tube wherever she goes, the way Marley dragged his chains in "A Christmas Carol."

The beep continued, then a pause, then the long beep, signalling a message left on my cell phone.

My mother, who is 83, now has my sister living under her roof. My sister and my mother are like kerosene and flame; they ignite each other with sparks of painful angry slights and long-time hurts and neglects. Craig and I get to mediate, although lately I've been more cowardly and let Craig, whom both women admire and respect, do more intervening.

My mother needs care and my sister is trying to do it as well as she can, but sometimes she is bossy and blunt. My mother is trying to survive and express her will to live by denying she's ill and by keeping her independence with a fierce sort of do-it-myself attitude. I'm better at dealing with her, but I know my mother's demands can be endless, while my sister's orders can wearing.

I end the conversation with Mom; she's feeling depressed and unhappy.

I check the message; it's not from Craig, after all, it's from David, trying to reach me after two weeks of phone cutoff at the FOB.

He understands; "I guess you're in the subway; I'll try to call tomorrow."

I'm devastated.

News from David and Southern California

We have heard from both David and Fort Lewis that his unit's Welcoming Home ceremony at Lewis will be in mid-October. The Lewis e-mail set a tentative day, but I'm not going to publish it here yet until we are closer because at this point, it's a moving target.

David said he will be in Kuwait three weeks prior to coming home, doing paperwork on equipment, matching numbers on vehicles and equipment to inventory tracking materials, so he may possibly arrive back a little later than the rest of the company. Ah, the glamorous life of an Army lieutenant! But at least he'll be out of harm's way.

I have added a new link: Stryker Brigade News, which appears to be written and/or moderated by someone at Ft. Lewis. No big secrets revealed but does have an inside view of those attached to Lewis, both in Washington and deployed.

The other bit of news which kept me from posting for a while was that my mother has been in the hospital twice in July, once for a fall and then back due to breathing problems. She was returning to my sister's car after a lunch out when she fell and broke a rib, which slightly punctured her lung. Fortunately, my sister rushed her to an emergency room, and the hospital re-inflated her lung. However, she was in ICU for a few days, and then came home, but then had to return for two nights.

Craig was able to stay there almost two weeks, and did a lot to help her, and I visited for three days last week, and was almost useless except to cheer her up. Dusty is staying with her now, but that is only temporary and we are trying to persuade her to allow a helper to come in more often, but she values her independence above her health.

Sometimes this feeling of being stretched one way to concerns about David -- worrying but not being too protective, letting go what is already gone -- being pulled to protect what is fragile and needing more protection but resisting it, such as my mother -- and then stretched by a job that eats time but pays little -- just frays at me until I have little time and energy left. I think that's why I want to crawl into my historic-feminist novels and Harry Potter's world to get away.

Craig has been tremendous; he knows what to ask the doctors, how to set up the home health care, what to ask the nurses and physical therapists. I don't know what I'd do without him.

David blogged July 8

David checked in by phone and by blog on Sunday. He was almost light-hearted about his "Saddam's Revenge," a reaction to bad local water. He After I talked to him on the phone, I wondered if I should have been more worried, but because he trained as an EMT, so he knows enough to know when to get medical treatment, and not play the tough guy. Still, it's not fun, and I'm glad he has some time off this week to recover.

I haven't blogged much this last week, partly because of work and partly because David's blogs have been so thorough and evocative. But I also find that the sense of crisis mode I had when David first went to Iraq has dissipated somewhat, the way the inevitable 9/11 mood faded. The wave after wave of Google alerts listing bombings, casualties, Iraqi and American politics, and most of all, other bloggers commenting with varying levels of insight (or idiocy) and political angles has become numbing.

And that numbness is both deceptive and disarming. I am sitting 10,000 miles away from Iraq, and it's easy to be swept away in the daily detritus of my job of newspaper deadlines, of Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby stories (played equally and more prominently on broadcast media than the war), family issues and even in the cultivation of my terrace garden. But in Iraq, people lives are at best, greatly disrupted, at worst, torn apart.

Still, it is inevitable that we -- David, Craig and I -- have all adapted to this "crisis." We wait for the phone calls and blog entries; we send packages, wait for them to arrive. As a parent, I am trying to adapt to a situation of the adult child telling me it's all in day's work to drink bad water -- offered by a local resident in good faith and hospitality -- and to suffer its consequences. It's all in a day's work to bang down a stranger's door and take over the home -- and feel bad about it, but knowing it is necessary for this campaign. It's all in a day's work to know that someone is shooting at you, but what you recall at the end of the day is a little girl's smile.

Regarding David's July 4 blog entry, the cynic in me was surprised that the Iraqis welcomed the American Army to take over their homes. But given their situation, what else could they do? Al Quaeda took over Baquba with Taliban-like strictness, even forbidding smoking, which is much more common there, and then kicked people out of their homes so they could rig them up as bombs. Of course, they sincerely welcome the next wave of invaders who will destroy the bombs and get rid of the invaders. But our guys can't stay too long, because it is human to say within their hearts: "Get the hell out all of you and leave us in peace."

It has nothing to do with how our people handle the people -- although how they behave will be remembered for many years after -- but just the weariness of war.

I think I've rambled on enough.