PenPenWrites

My dentist was and wasn't looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. Her back has been bothering her and the idea of making a huge Thanksgiving dinner–family tradition calls for everything to be home made–was tiring in itself. And she knew she would get little to no help from her son and his wife, who come for the lavish meal and stay on for an overnight visit–with their four small children.

Whew. I'm tired just thinking of all that work. She has to get all those beds ready, stock the fridge not only for Thanksgiving dinner but for meals the next day. Her son occasionally helps a little with clean up but her daughter in law, she says, considers the trip to "grandma's" house a vacation.

"I understand that," says my dentist. "She's got four small children and she's home schooling them. She offers to bring something but I don't feel i can ask." What my dentist would really like is not an extra pumpkin bread but to be able to keep her seat when the meal is done and have her grown children pitch in to clean up.

How do we ask for what we need? Are we afraid of asking too much from our adult children? Or are we so used to doing everything ourselves that, comes the day when that gets difficult to do [the back hurts; so does the wrist], we don't know how to turn things over to others?