So last I posted it was mid-August. A few days later, I had a flood. Water started coming through the basement front door and up the sewer drains during a mid-afternoon deluge. I knew exactly what to do because I’d been here so many times before.
So the drill began. Deploy the flood gates and sump pumps, fire up the wet vac, drag out the mops, and burn through rolls of paper towels and bottles of disinfectant spray. Answer the calls and texts from concerned neighbors.
Being a flood victim has become my personality now, especially after the disaster of Hurricane Ida in 2021. That day thirteen people across my borough of Queens lost their lives. We were spared the worst, though our basement got destroyed.
Even after rehearsing this disaster scenario many times over, that particular day I fumbled. There were no red alerts, no obvious warning. Just a burst of rain that was heavier than usual. And that’s what got to me the most. What happens when even your best-laid plans fail because you took a minute to chill?
So I haven’t written here since. If I am to be honest, I was and am just burnt out. If I am to salvage anything from this latest experience it’s to understand the difference between being prepared and being resilient and to adjust accordingly.
For years, I’ve built my life around the idea of constant vigilance. I am always scanning for what could go wrong, preparing for the next crisis, trying to keep my mother stable, my son thriving, and the house intact.
But now I realize that vigilance has diminishing returns. The more energy I pour into preventing every possible disaster, the less I actually have left for handling the ones that come at me anyway.
The basement is dry now, but as we move into peak hurricane season, I catch myself falling back into old OCD-like patterns: listening for sounds that shouldn’t be there, looking at the walls for signs of leaking pipes, checking the forecast obsessively. A former neighbor wrote this great piece for Wirecutter on flood-proofing older homes, and I found myself re-reading it to review my plan. What I realized this time around is that flood damage isn’t just ruined belongings, it’s a recalibration of your relationship with safety itself.
Caregiving works much in the same way. The crisis may have passed, but what is left is your understanding of what you can and can’t control.
Rethinking the Safety Net
A new AARP report landed recently: Caregiving in the U.S. 2025. The numbers show 63 million Americans providing unpaid care, a 45% increase since 2015, nearly a third of us in the sandwich generation and almost half of us with no backup plan if something happens to us.
I am my mother’s backup plan. I am my son’s backup plan. But no one is my backup plan. So the question is: How do I build systems that don’t require me to be superhuman? Better information so I’m not constantly researching from scratch. Clear processes so decisions don’t feel impossible. A community that shows up, not just one that says, Let me know if you need anything.
And maybe it also means being honest about what I need to stay functional. I’ve started a weekly strength training class because watching my mother struggle daily with mobility has taught me something about my own future. The caregiving I can provide at 75 will depend on the body I build at 53.
What Survives the Storm
As many parents know, this August-September transition can be brutal. New rhythms and rituals take hold. For me, my son started middle school last Thursday, September 4th. Three days later, he turned eleven.
In past years, I’ve orchestrated elaborate birthday celebrations. This year, I kept it simple because I’m exhausted and out of funds. On the walk home last night, Owen said: “I’m so sad this day is over. It’s the only day I get to feel special, and the only day you don’t yell at me.”
Well shit, kid! Glad you've mastered the art of punching me in the gut with your words. I'm proud of you for that skill!
But gosh, that's not how I see myself as a parent. I see myself as patient, empathetic, and more forgiving than my own parents were. But Owen’s words reminded me how chronic stress seeps into every interaction, creating a constant tension. That’s the hidden cost of sandwich-generation life. Not just being stretched thin, but knowing your kids are learning what constant vigilance looks like.
That’s taught me something about caregiving feedback loops. When someone tells you how your stress is affecting them — whether it’s your kid, your parent, or yourself — the instinct is shame or defensiveness. But what if we treated it as useful feedback? Owen’s bluntness gave me a chance to course-correct. My mother’s complaints about my impatience sometimes do the same. The people closest to us see our blind spots most clearly, if we’re willing to listen.
Finding the Through Line
That’s why this fall feels different. I’m not just recovering from the flood, I’m using it as feedback. About what breaks under pressure and what doesn’t. About the futility of trying to prevent every storm, and the possibility of learning to weather the ones that come.
After a summer of planning and experimentation, Caring in the Middle is becoming something more concrete now. Not just a newsletter to process my thoughts and feelings about the stage of life I’m in, but also a resource to make it all more manageable, for me and my friends and my readers.
So here I am at this next sprint which focuses on building out evergreen guides and articles on my website. In tech speak, a sprint is a focused period of intense work on specific goals and that’s exactly what I’m doing here. Clear information for eldercare decisions. Practical frameworks for overwhelming choices. Step-by-step guides for navigating systems that weren’t designed with caregivers in mind.
I’ll share my progress here for things like new articles, updated guides, behind-the-scenes notes on what I’m building and why. Think of this newsletter as the development diary for the resource I wish had existed when I started.
The flood taught me that perfect preparation is a myth. But it also showed me what survives when the water rises: the relationships that matter, the skills we’ve built, and the stubborn insistence on showing up even when we’re tired of being on alert all the time.
I’m so glad you’re working on this and that you linked to the AARP report. We need public options for elder-care as much as we need public schools!! There is NO SYSTEM!