Lessons from my mother: the world has good bones

This article is part of a series reflecting on my values and how they continue to shape the decisions I make as a person, mother, friend, colleague, leader. Today’s topic is what my mother has taught me about how the world has good bones.

“I have cancer.”

My mom’s voice cracked through the phone, splintered as my heart compressed. Breath was shallow. A momentary pause before a surge of adrenaline.

“Okay, tell me what you know.”

And that’s how it started on a Friday afternoon at the office. I left almost immediately after, couldn’t take my last meeting, told my boss I was going home. I’m part of a growing demographic: those middle-aged adults raising kids and caring for parents.

We are called the “sandwich generation” and there are approximately 29 million of us in America. This term describes middle-aged adults who find themselves juggling the demands of caring for their aging parents while also supporting their own children. This is the generation I am a part of and I’m in good company. According to recent estimates from the Pew Research Center, about 47% of adults in their 40s and 50s are part of this group.

This growing demographic trend underscores the considerable impact on those balancing caregiving across generations. The challenges faced by these individuals are multi-faceted. On average, caregivers dedicate around 20 hours a week to their responsibilities. Financially, the strain is notable—caregiving expenses, including medical costs, home modifications, and respite care, can total about $7,000 annually out-of-pocket based on numbers from the AARP's "Family Caregiving: A Survey of Caregiving and Financial Costs."??Many caregivers also face reduced income due to the need for time off or reduced working hours, with some even leaving the workforce, which can impact their long-term financial stability, including retirement savings.

Here's the thing – I’m very lucky, in that I have the means to support my immediate family, whether caring “up” or “down”. And I’m even luckier to have a mother who is still able to tell my twins delicious stories, to make Zora laugh and laugh in her tales of Heidi in the Alps, and who still finds ways to take care of me as only mothers can.

But I’m also tired.

My father died of cancer, and now we face this with my mother. I lost three of my four grandparents to cancer. This feels cold and cruel. There are days when it feels so heavy.

And yet, when I need to show up at work and bring energy, breathe life into the spaces around me, I can authentically feel and walk with lightness and joy.

Because it can be, just, both, right?

When I’m feeling dark, sad about the prospects of this broken world, I think of my mom and what she teaches me, still.

As we drove home from the hospital last week, Zoan asked my mom how she was feeling about the cancer. We talked about sickness, and things that felt unfair.

And then my mom said, “But life can be so beautiful, don’t you think?”

She sees so much beauty in it. And I can as well, if I just bring that lens to it. We always find what we go looking for. Maggie Smith expressed it perfectly in her poem “Good bones”.

"Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children.

The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world.

Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful."

This is what my mom has taught me: this world has good bones.

My mom has cancer, and there is so much suffering across so many corners, so many children hungry and hurting, but this world has good bones.

My mom has cancer, and my children are worried, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to be the realtor proclaiming the good bones, selling the girls on the story that everyone will be okay.

Because it will be however it ends, a mix of good and bad, of joy and sorrow, of love and choice and loss.

This world has good bones.

And for all of those who may be like me, out there in the world, feeling the stretch of the middle years, keeping one eye on those growing and one on those dying, we can hold out our arms and showcase the rafters, the architecture, the foundation.

Because this world has good bones.