Nicola Prentis is raising her two kids abroad and trying to look after her mother back home.
Provided by Nicola Prentis
When my cellphone rings as I'm wrangling my boisterous 8- and 11-year-olds into bed in Spain, I answer immediately. I know I'm adding another hour to the bedtime routine.It's my mother in the UK, calling for the third time that day. I don't know whether it's an actual emergency or the kind where she can't remember how the TV channels work.When I moved away from home at 24, my mother was in my hometown raising my teenage brother. It never occurred to me that if I ever had children, my mother would get old enough to need taking care of at the same time.I never thought it would be meBack then, like most 24-year-olds, I couldn't have told you what I'd be doing in a year's time, let alone decades.As it turned out, I would live in various countries, ticking them off a constantly evolving wish list, finally settling in Spain in 2012 and having children of my own three years later. Even then, the idea that my mother might not be independent forever never crossed my mind.
Not even in the last few years, as a trickle of my expat friends started moving back home to look after aging parents, did I think care responsibilities would fall to me. After all, I have two siblings in England who live closer, and I can't move my children as I co-parent with their father, who lives in Spain.Now that my mother is 80 and has a variety of significant health conditions, the buck often stops with me. My sister, who lives in the same town, has her own health issues, and my brother and mother don't have the kind of relationship where he can help her in any practical sense.
