Of Maturity and Caregiving

     I used to pride myself on my preternatural maturity.  I laughed in the face of anything animated or, heaven forbid, DISNEY.  I took fairy tales for what they were at face value -- classic works of children's fiction to be appreciated, but fiction first and foremost.  I enjoyed "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood", but mainly because they imparted great and ageless advice about how to live in this world and how to process that which you couldn't understand.  The only commercial children's show I ever liked was "Pee-Wee's Playhouse", because it was strange and esoteric instead of being soft, fuzzy, and babyish, or wreckless and irresponsible.  I used to sit in class and sigh whenever one of my classmates disrupted the teacher because I truly enjoyed my lessons and wanted to learn more from the teacher.  I took to playing reluctantly and only when I allowed myself that one little, minor frivolity (and even then, I preferred walking by the train tracks that cut across our play space).

     But when you have a parent who becomes direly ill, you're forced to grow up really quickly, no matter how mature you think you are.  When my father first developed cancer, I wasn't even in fourth grade yet.  I wasn't told exactly how ill my dad was, but I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that his condition was serious.  I remember joining him as he went to his chemotherapy and radiation appointments and being aware that he had to do something in that strange building with the pastel linoleum floors, but I was never made aware of what exactly he had to do.  I just remember his having to be in bed a lot, my having to help Mom do the household cooking and cleaning, and his going into the hospital to "take the cancer out"; he was recovering from that surgery when my grandfather died.  Mom later told me she suspected Grandpa made a deal with God to go instead of Dad, because Grandpa had a grown daughter (my mom) with a family of her own and I was still a little girl.  There's no way of knowing whether that was true or not, but it's a touching thought to think.

     Thing is, I never really got involved with what was going on when I was little, but I think it still had a slight impact on how precociously mature I became after Dad went into remission and we had fully mourned Grandpa's loss.  I think that's why I started to lose patience with other people's frivolities and trivial concerns.  My true maturation process didn't begin, however, until my dad's cancer recurrence when I was in college.  That was the time when I was allowed to be fully informed of everything and given the opportunity to participate in the actual caregiving process.  This is when I went to school learning all the basic ins and outs of true caregiving and how it is to have a parent who is helpless and in real need of your aid, much like I was when I was little and I needed my parents' help.  Having to bury my dad, though, forced me to grow up at warp speed and changed me completely.  Even now I view my life in terms of before and after.  Then when I was thrown itno the role of sole caregiver for my mother, I had to do considerably more maturing as a seemingly endless list of new challenges, trials, and difficulties.  Now I feel as though I'm approximately sixty years old on the inside, even though chronologically I'm in my early thirties and my face tells the lie that I'm about 26.

     You want to know something?  When you've had to do all that maturing and growing into a hyper-aged individual, you tend to want to regress somewhat.  There now lies within a small part of my being an inner child who wants to revel in everything that is silly, fantastic, and immature.  This small part of my being wants me to actually start watching Disney movies, linger over the humorous cards at Hallmark and giggle inappropriately, believe in fairy tales, give myself completely into the world of play and fantasy, and be the big, hopeless romantic I never really was.  I have no idea why this happens, but it has been happening to me and I have a feeling that as more duties and responsibilities are laid upon me, that part of me that is that silly, cheerful little girl will grow and I'll find myself doing things that the much younger version of myself would consider objectionable.  Maybe this means that if I ever found myself in the role of parent, I'd be the most excitable, fun parent around.  Maybe any future children of mine would think their old mom is being silly, stupid, or embarrassing.  I wish I could explain it to them how or why I felt the need to channel forth these impulses and emotions, or impart to them the history of me and who I was when I was their age -- a serious, sober woman-child who felt more connected to the world of adulthood than her own world.