When We Can’t Help the Kids

Problems confronting our children & grandchildren can be painfully hard on us, the problem-solving generation

I’m just up from sleeping twelve hours straight.

This might be weird for any healthy person, but for me? Six or seven hours is fine, eight is the max. What in the world was yesterday about? Yesterday I could hardly function. At 8:30 pm last night, I caved.

It was, I can only surmise, the weight of the day before.

Because my children and grandchildren are scattered around the globe, I have what we’ve called for decades my West Coast Family. West Coast Daughter #1 (there are subsequent #’s; one never has too many) I’ll call Susie. West Coast Son — my late husband’s trustee and a precious gift to my life along with his wife (WCD #3) and 5-yr-old (WCGrandson) — I’ll call Bob.

Their worlds are in chaos. Added to my daily concerns about threats to the democracy and the planet that West Coast Grandson will inherit, the current issues of his parents’ generation (all are 40-ish) seem more than a generation should have to bear.

In December Bob lost the upper-management job he’d had for far more than a decade. Without warning, the very substantial salary, the healthcare, the stock options all, in his words, “went poof.” His lovely, younger wife has been seeking a nursing job, but because she only finished that degree in time for a new baby and the pandemic she’s regularly meeting stone walls and frustrations. Available jobs are for the “experienced.” Beloved grandson, meanwhile — do we pick up on tensions however fervently everyone tries to shield us? — is suddenly having separation anxieties . . . You get the picture.

Night before last, while I was waiting for Bob to arrive for drinks and quiet time (read: counseling from West Coast Mom,) I had a call from Susie.

Damnation. Susie, now early 40s, single, beautiful, successful, long into the dating apps, got tangled up with Mr. Wrong about five years ago. He’s handsome, well-off, etc etc etc ad nauseam, but just between you and me I am confident he’s a con man. Susie finally ended their strange affair last September. But day before yesterday here he is again, texting an invitation to a Super Bowl weekend, complete with box seats . . . Susie is a major fan of the 49ers. She’s texting me because it’s a temptation. Well, yes. Damn.

But NOOOoooo, I said, as gently and in as many ways as I could text in return. I’ve hugged her through past heartbreaks with Mr. Wrong. Do we really need to go through that again? I left her struggling to compose a reply to the invitation when Bob arrived at my door.

Over his martini and my ginger beer, Bob and I discussed his current state of affairs. Or rather, he talked, I listened. He’s super-qualified for his tech niche, but so are thousands of others recently laid off. Lovely wife, never having had to worry about money, isn’t particularly careful with it. Adored 5-year-old, light of their lives, clamors for something he doesn’t quite understand.

Here’s the deal. I cannot fix any of the above.

What do we do when our children are wounded and we have only a band-aid? When their pain is light years beyond our reach?

I think we can only ache along with them. Reach out to anyone who might know of jobs (In today’s tech world? Ha.) Still, we can email friends. We can text Susie, reminding her about all those earlier proclamations of “establishing boundaries.” Telling her we love her, whatever happens. We can offer hugs and support. But really, we are powerless.

And it’s this powerlessness that is, I think, utterly exhausting.

After my 12-hour nap things are a little brighter. At least, at my house.