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ForumCaregiver Support: Sandwich Generationi almost made a list

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i almost made a list

#1 · June 20, 2026, 11:44 pm

Quote from HappierFit Editorial Team on June 20, 2026, 11:44 pm
— Elena Vasquez (sandwich-gen / MSW, contributor)

Last week I wrote about the pothos. Theresa, the dry cleaner, the six-dollar plant, the four minutes in the driveway. A few of you were kind about it and one person asked if I was going to "keep it up," which is a fair question and also the exact question I have been avoiding.

So here is the small honest thing for this week. On Tuesday I caught myself making a list. Not on paper. In my head, at a red light on Sherman, the way I make every list. I had gotten to four people. The man who reads the water meter and always says my name. The woman two doors down whose porch light has been out since April. A former colleague I have not called since her divorce. Theresa again, a second time, which is when I noticed what I was doing. I was building a route. I was turning it into the thing I run my whole life as — a sequence of obligations to discharge efficiently, except I had invented these obligations myself and assigned them to me and was already, at the red light, feeling slightly behind on a kindness schedule that did not exist eleven days ago.

I want to be precise about why that scared me. It is not that planning is bad. It is that the entire texture of the dry cleaner thing — the part that made me sit in the driveway — was that nobody asked. The second I make a list, someone is asking. Me. I am the one asking now, and I answer to me harder than I answer to anyone. If I systematize it I will have rebuilt the exact machine I was, for eleven minutes, free of.

So I did not do the route. I want to report that cleanly. I did not visit the meter man with a thing. The porch light is still out.

What I did do was very small and I almost did not write it because it does not advance any story. I went to pick up my mother's dry cleaning on Friday. Normal pickup. Theresa had the pothos on the counter, in the window, getting the afternoon sun, exactly where I'd guessed. One leaf had a brown edge. She saw me see it and she said, a little defensive, "I am not very good with plants." And I said it likes to dry out between waterings, it would rather you forget it than fuss it. And she laughed — not the ten-second crying thing, an actual short laugh — and said that made two of us. That was the whole exchange. I picked up the bags. I did not buy her anything. I did not plan to say anything and I did not.

I drove home and did not sit in the driveway. I just went inside. I am noting that too, the not-sitting, because I do not know what it means and I do not want to decide what it means.

The peer-reviewed me has a whole framework forming about intrinsic versus prescribed prosocial behavior and how the moment you instrument the latter you collapse the former, and there is real literature there, and I am not going to write it. I am just going to leave the list at the red light where I left it. Four people I did not visit. One leaf with a brown edge. That is where I am this week.

— Elena Vasquez (sandwich-gen / MSW, contributor)

Last week I wrote about the pothos. Theresa, the dry cleaner, the six-dollar plant, the four minutes in the driveway. A few of you were kind about it and one person asked if I was going to "keep it up," which is a fair question and also the exact question I have been avoiding.

So here is the small honest thing for this week. On Tuesday I caught myself making a list. Not on paper. In my head, at a red light on Sherman, the way I make every list. I had gotten to four people. The man who reads the water meter and always says my name. The woman two doors down whose porch light has been out since April. A former colleague I have not called since her divorce. Theresa again, a second time, which is when I noticed what I was doing. I was building a route. I was turning it into the thing I run my whole life as — a sequence of obligations to discharge efficiently, except I had invented these obligations myself and assigned them to me and was already, at the red light, feeling slightly behind on a kindness schedule that did not exist eleven days ago.

I want to be precise about why that scared me. It is not that planning is bad. It is that the entire texture of the dry cleaner thing — the part that made me sit in the driveway — was that nobody asked. The second I make a list, someone is asking. Me. I am the one asking now, and I answer to me harder than I answer to anyone. If I systematize it I will have rebuilt the exact machine I was, for eleven minutes, free of.

So I did not do the route. I want to report that cleanly. I did not visit the meter man with a thing. The porch light is still out.

What I did do was very small and I almost did not write it because it does not advance any story. I went to pick up my mother's dry cleaning on Friday. Normal pickup. Theresa had the pothos on the counter, in the window, getting the afternoon sun, exactly where I'd guessed. One leaf had a brown edge. She saw me see it and she said, a little defensive, "I am not very good with plants." And I said it likes to dry out between waterings, it would rather you forget it than fuss it. And she laughed — not the ten-second crying thing, an actual short laugh — and said that made two of us. That was the whole exchange. I picked up the bags. I did not buy her anything. I did not plan to say anything and I did not.

I drove home and did not sit in the driveway. I just went inside. I am noting that too, the not-sitting, because I do not know what it means and I do not want to decide what it means.

The peer-reviewed me has a whole framework forming about intrinsic versus prescribed prosocial behavior and how the moment you instrument the latter you collapse the former, and there is real literature there, and I am not going to write it. I am just going to leave the list at the red light where I left it. Four people I did not visit. One leaf with a brown edge. That is where I am this week.

#2 · June 20, 2026, 11:49 pm

— Marcus Webb (men's emotional wellness, contributor)

That list at the red light. I do a version of that with the journal, except backwards — I'll sit down with the Moleskine before the second coffee and catch myself deciding I should write about the right thing today, the real thing, get it down efficient, like there's a grade at the end. Aaron mostly just sits there and lets me hear how dumb that sounds out loud. The writing doesn't have to be good. I keep forgetting that's allowed to mean the doing of it too, not just the words.

The brown leaf and you not making it a project — that's the part I'd have skipped right past, and it's the only part that's true. Friday I wrote half a page that was just me going around something I haven't named yet, the brother stuff, and I didn't name it that day either. Drove home, went inside. Did not sit. I don't know what your not-sitting means for you, but I clocked the same thing in mine and left it alone.