I did what I always tell others to do. When you're feeling stretched, pulled by all and overwhelmed, take time for yourself. My father was asleep and my mother was getting dressed. The house was finally quiet. So I suited up, snuck downstairs to the basement and hopped on the treadmill. After three days of doing nothing but taking care of everyone else (and eating myself into matzo comas) I figured some "Judy time" was long overdue.
I'm getting into a groove after 45 minutes, sweating and feeling good, really starting to hit the wall, my music blaring, when the song switches, and I hear a voice behind me. "Do you have a radio that I can listen to?"
I shrieked and my heart rate accelerated. My father, in his sweet but mouse like fashion was standing right behind the treadmill, longingly looking at the stereo that blared my exercise music.
"I want to know what's going on in the world," he said.
After I composed myself and caught my breath - and my heart stopped pounding, I told him I'd set him up with a computer to listen to as soon as I finished my workout. He stood behind me patiently. "Later," was not the answer he wanted. He wanted a radio and he wanted it now. He wanted MY radio.
"Bad daughter," my conscience scolded me. "Get off the treadmill and lug the stereo upstairs. Respect your parents. The Torah says so."
But a part of me said, NO - you have to draw boundaries. If you don't fasten your own oxygen mask, how will you be able to be there for everyone else who needs you.
I have to be honest. I don't have the answer to this one. Perhaps it's payback for the times I stood, crying by a closed bathroom or bedroom door when I was a toddler, screaming for something I wanted from my parents now, now, NOW! Or perhaps it's just a rite of passage. A way of teaching me that as much as I've "separated" from my parents, I will never really be able to fully disengage.
Their needs, my needs, our needs...it's all one big melting pot. I just don't want to lose myself in the proverbial witches brew...
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