Communication - Whipping Boy

Have you noticed, as the house daughter or son, in a care-taking, or a care-giving situation in the family, you notice that you are the object of verbal abuse perpetrated in yelling, screaming, or elder judgmental or rude and divisive comments? This is mental abuse of you and your self-esteem by the elder, the elder’s dear friends who have now adopted you, or sometimes your own siblings.

You become their, “Whipping Boy”.

It’s going to happen. You are the target for their practice that has:

• More time to live than they do – jealousy
• More knowledge about the world – frustration
  
• More economic, or less economic means – worry
• More opportunities than they had

And more… All or anything that can create a tension in conversation suddenly, and unexpected explodes on to you. Who happens to be the closest person who they have some degree of intimacy with, and out of left field, whammo – the comments rip out of the elders mouth.
What’s important here is your reaction. Your own degree of thinking inside THEIR box, and the understanding found there, is what will have effect on the outcome experience for all parties involved.
Your consideration for allowing the venting of old issues to come out and to be resolved or retrenched in old patterns. Even though you are being whipped with words of anger, frustration, worry or jealousy grab hold of yourself and stop to decide what degree do you now need to protect yourself, and just walk away; saying nothing and leave.
We get to decide, to ponder, but initially you will have a reaction that must be controlled to the situation, the person, and the environmental factors of the conditions.
To what degree is the root related to medications, ill-health, lack of stimulation – and more are all up for your consideration when this arises.
The whipping of the house daughter or son caregiver will take you by surprise. It will challenge you in ways unthinkable, and you can’t run away. You must grow up, evolve, and manage with grace, charm, and self-preserving dignity for all parties the relationship. It doesn’t mean you have to accept it, you have to manage yourself and let the parent just spin off, spit it out and you are the target. Like you never took the same hell for money before, well this is where the bank account in heaven starts to fill-up.
How’s that for a job description? "My Last Job: Collecting Brownie Points for Heaven". Try getting a future employer to understand what and how you do what you do or did for House Daughter or Son in the ‘duties’ section of your next job application.

Yard and Gardening -Tiptoe Through the Tacos

It pays really well to have an elder parent with a garden. They have all the time in the world to dig, dote, and water - if they wish. All you have to do is pick up the stuff they need to make this garden grow.
There’s this sitting and watching they do from their perched chair, looking out over it - daily. The patience extended to being older is fact. They aren’t going to move too fast, since they know they might fall. And, once set into a motion or an action, much like the rest of us, they get stuck in a position. Remember the garden demands bending over and it becomes a quite useful stuck position to be in for planting, weeding and chatting up the plants. And, they work that way for longer than I can, and only complain once, when they become upright. Since you or I would attempt to stand upright and relieve ourselves of pain by using stretching, drugs or miracle prayers to higher power.
The elder parent gardeners know, there is no relief, so they live with it, with their eye on the prize, fresh food from the garden in a short period of time. Possibly shorter than if they attempted to get to grocery store or fruit market on their own, so it works well for them.
Imagine if we all just, lived with it. The tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce along with the corn would still grow. Someone, even the sky above (weather or the birds) would still water, fertilize, and pick them when ripe to eat them. What if we just put up the aches and pain and sought no solution the discomfort. What if we all got used to the discomfort, recognized it and then ‘went on’ and made a great summer meal into the fall. All that’s missing is the meat.

Driving - Reverse Jets

No one wants to say they dinged their own car, a cute little VW Golf with less than 40,000 miles on it. No one admits to that, but when the dings add up and the car appears to be a dirt track derby car, I, this adult -child begins to wonder about my mom that drives the Golf.
I took my last vacation, but I didn’t know it was my last vacation. Have you ever had that feeling? Like passing a kidney stone, who wants to remember that. Well, I had five days of either bizarre hotel rooms or camp stops in state parks. Returning home, only to see the carport with the moms cute little VW Golf with dings turned into a rather large dent on the back end. Relaxation was now over and done. I had started back to work with my luggage rolling up the driveway on first view of this feat of her car.
It only took a few minutes after unpacking for me to ask, “What happened to your car, mom?”
Then it took about four cups of coffee to figure out the whole, real story and what to do about it. Since it wasn’t safe to drive with the back end bashed in and no taillights on the cute little VW Golf, it fell to me to call the insurance company. Then, make a list of the possible repair shops, call the towing company, and believe that once was enough.
Only a few months passed in time, and I took another long weekend away. Mom could drive, and walk at this time, and things were looking good with guy I was dating. Maybe, I could move out and be in love. The weekend was sweet. Not so fast.
As the luggage rolled up the driveway, it was revealed. Moms cute little VW Golf happened again to be crunched in the same place.
It turned out that backing out of the driveway was not her forte. This was the second time, she backed out of the driveway and hit a car passing by. This was second senior citizen who was driving at or below the speed limit of twenty-five mph, that mom didn’t see backing out of the drive way. Everybody was okay, except for their automobile damage, which included the not-so cute anymore, little VW Golf.
The car was repaired and, “salvage” was stamped on the title. Mom got the repair plus $800.00 US dollars for the salvage stamp from the auto insurance company.
Later, she sold the cute little VW Golf for an additional thousand dollars to my nephew, who still drives it today. In addition, he’s tweaked it himself at least twice backing out.
Reverse karma?