How does your relationship with your parents change as you become middle-aged and they become elderly? It’s a question most of us will have to live, especially children of the Baby Boomer generation (who are retiring at a rate of 10,000 per day). But, if you’re like me, you may have avoided given the question much thought because maybe you can’t imagine your parents as elderly or maybe you just think you can control how it all happens.

Of course, neither of those assumptions have a lot of truth to them. As I found out in the fall of 2018 when, over a crash course of twenty days, I found myself put in charge of my mom’s health care, finances, and house. On the twenty-first day, I moved Mom into an assisted living community. No son wants to move his mom into a “home”, and with three big projects underway, this son didn’t really have the time to do so, To make matters worse, all of this was happening in Dallas, Texas, a city that was hundreds of miles from my own home. A city that has been bringing out the worse in me since 1965.

“The Mom Chronicles” is a weekly series that tells the story of Mom and I are doing with this big transition and how I’m starting to see that, while there’s a lot of frustration, impatience, and just sheer panic in taking care of one who once took care of you, there’s also a lot of grace and wonder.