Introduction.

     While chatting with a dear friend of mine, it's suddenly come to my attention that my voice is sorely in need of being raised.  One often hears of people in their twenties and thirties blogging about the life lessons they learn as they venture forth into the real world and trod their own path through self-discovery and toward domesticity and fully fledged adulthood.  One also often hears of people in their late forties and fifties blogging about the trials and travails they experience when they come to realize that the relationship with their parents has become reversed and they are now in charge of their parents and their well-being, whereas when they were younger, their parents were in charge of them and their well-being.  But you never really hear from people in their twenties and thirties who've had to forgo the usual and expected components of their lives in exchage for having to step into the role of being their parents' caregivers.

     I'm going to change that -- by chronicling what it's meant for me to be an assistant caregiver during my dad's final years on this plane of existence (in my early twenties), as well as being my mom's sole caregiver throughout my mid to late twenties and up to the present day (where I am in my early thirties).  From pure outward appearances, it may seem that we're all handling things completely perfectly.  My mom seems like a relatively healthy, spirited person, with her rosy red cheeks and generally good humored demeanor.  And I don't appear to be touched by much in the way of stress; it has often been remarked of me that I appear to be in my mid twenties, and I will spiff myself up and put on a smile when out in public.  But the public face often tends to lie, and those lies tend to be the largest ones one can possibly tell.

     The reality of our situations is such:  My mother is often in poor health, her face contorting as she hides her latest bout with chronic pain or illness or setback as she attempts -- but fails -- to become at least a tiny bit independent.  I am frequently so exhausted that I am familiar with the phenomenon of being too tired to fall asleep at night, and I can barely keep enough energy reserved in me to where I can derive pleasure from anything that does require the exertion of energy.  Moreover, every time I gaze upon my countenace when getting ready early in the morning, I can see a little more light extinguished from my eyes and a deeper set of creases throughout my face as I age at a phenomenal rate, much like when I was little and I found myself at the maturation level of a teenager, thus finding the exploits of my peers distasteful to say the least.  And maybe what I'm going through now is a punishment for those earlier days of precocious yet obnoxious maturity, or maybe it's God's way of telling me He (or She) believes I'm fit for canonization and I should rise to the occasion.  At any length, my mother and I often find ourselves donning masks for others but clawing them off viciously in the privacy of our own home or amongst a very chosen few who are welcome into our inner sanctum.

     This blog will probably not completely break down those barriers.  There will still be things I'll not chronicle out of respect for my mother's medical privacy or my own sanity.  But I do aim to at least give a flavor and sense of what it's been like to be my mother's caregiver at a ridiculously early age, as well as inform others about the ins and outs of life as a younger parental caregiver.  Because while one often gets that perspective from someone whose adolescence was filled with hippie aphorisms and the sounds of the Woodstock scene, I'm here to give it to you from someone who hails from the grunge-and-gangsta-rap generation.  Whether you like it or not.