life
ELLECANADA.COM 83
STUCK
in the
MIDDLE
Taking care of your kids and
your parents? You’re not alone.
By TRUC NGUYENW
HEN MY husband and I
bought our first home in
Toronto’s West End, after
years of attending open
houses and more than a few
failed bidding wars, it was a happy coincidence
that our winning offer landed us less than two
kilometres away from my childhood home. At
the time, being that close to my parents was a
bonus but not a priority—after all, I only saw
them every two or three weeks when we lived
farther downtown and a few times annually
during the years that I lived in Brooklyn.
Six years and two kids later, I’m an exhaust-
ed millennial mom, and I nearly weep with joy
when I think about my physical proximity to
my now-retired mom and dad. They watch our
toddler two days a week and will often stop
by just to drop off my favourite home-cooked
Vietnamese dishes like pho soup and bò bía
wraps. But living so close to my parents, who
are now entering their 70s, also means that
I’ve become the default “Ask Siri” for them.
Whenever high winds blow shingles off their
roof, when they’re locked out of their email for
the millionth time or when they want to find a
cheap flight for a wedding, I get a call. In some
ways, the expectations about my role in the fam-
ily have been honed over the decades. As the el-
dest daughter of immigrants, it was always my
job to translate, literally and figuratively, the
nuances of our new life in Canada—I was fill-
ing out school forms and replying to government
letters for them when I was still in grade school.
I’ve always been grateful that I’m able to be help-
ful, but the increasing regularity of their requests
in recent years has given rise to fear about their
declining health. Coupled with the hectic pace
of my full-time work and efforts to raise two
children under the age of five, this has resulted in
my sometimes feeling more tense than the crowd
during game six of the NBA Finals.
It turns out I’m one of about 25 percent of
Canadians who are caught in the squeeze of h