Image from Roz Chast’s book Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
On our daily dog walk we pass the house of a woman who runs a wallpaper and interiors shop. This morning she was removing large rolls of fabric from her car boot, replacing it with a folded-up pushchair. We nodded hello and she said something about switching her brain from work to grandma mode. "Who am I?!" she wondered out loud, waving her hands either side of her head as if to say, this challenge is real.
This challenge is something that I think about on a regular basis. Like many of us, I find myself pivoting between various tasks, having to segue from one version of myself to another multiple times on any one day. Who am I? is a question I frequently ask of myself.
And hand in hand with that goes the question of my value - where is my value? What am I worth to the world? It feels elusive, this sense of value, of contributing on a higher level to something, to serve myself properly, to honour what I'm meant to be doing. At the moment, I’m unsure of my value - except perhaps that it's all made up of all the small, everyday things I am involved in. Sometimes it feels I am in service to everyone else. And actually, that's OK, because I need and want to be there for those in my life who need me. But it often leaves me feeling confused. What exactly am I achieving right now?
I’m involved in lots of disparate projects, where my contribution is piecemeal. But at the same time, the responsibility is big. Sometimes when the phone goes, I don't know if it's going to be a doctor's conversation for my elderly mother, or for my husband Ian who's got cancer. Or it might be to do with the care home where my dad lives. I'm in the midst of getting my eldest son ready for uni. Tonight is the production of my husband Ian's one man show - a creative project I'm involved in on the peripheries, and I've been focused on that too for some weeks. Then there's work (paid!) that I do alongside Ian. And my own creative activities - art - that I haven't got around to so much of late.
It's trying to do all these things - look after elderly parents, be involved in Ian's treatment, help him with his show, be there for my sons, do paid work, do the things too that are important to me creatively - that leads to a sense of fragmentation. My life is made up of 'bits'.
And I think some of the challenge comes from what Bree Groff has said about being 'underworked' and 'wrongly worked'. We're all aware of the term of being overworked at work - when we've too much on our plate. Yes I feel I have too much on at times. Yet I also see how Bree's terms of being underworked and wrongly worked apply to my situation. Often it feels I’m caught up in the minutiae, such as if the shelf life of the bread I'm buying for my mum long enough. The other day I was wandering around a supermarket and I thought, how many hours of my life have I spent grocery shopping for parents (and during the pandemic, in-laws too)?
At the same time I know what I do is important. There is no one else to speak on my parents’ behalf, to ensure they're getting the right care and so on. I have no siblings. But still, so much of what I do is so basic and I feel so underworked. And also, I never signed up for this role of carer! - when I'm feeling down about it all, I complain to myself I'm in the wrong job! I'm both underworked and wrongly worked.
And it's hard, to shift gears, to go from having lengthy discussions about my mum’s medical treatment and all the emotional impact that has, to getting into work mode and sitting down to edit a story for a client. But that's how it is.
I'm not alone. I know that. There are many people in similar situations. And also I know there's not going to be much longer with my parents. They are 97 (dad) and 88. It's extraordinary really. And ... I'm grateful for the time I can have with them. I just wish it were a more fulfilling time, with more joyful and pleasant interactions, instead of what it usually is, about health and food or the rubbish...
Anyway, my son's off to uni tomorrow and so we're going to walk down the road together and see my dad in the care home two minutes away, and hope he's awake and bright enough to acknowledge my son. So I switch from writer and communicator to mother and daughter... and just try and do the right thing.
Great to see your newsletter, Zoe. So challenging to balance all these different things. And all good wishes to you both for this evening.
Zoe, you are clearly a force of nature, and also I know that it never feels that way when looking at bread expiration dates. Thank you for sharing your story. It definitely makes me feel less alone (especially as a fellow only child).