'I'll Never Put You In a Nursing Home'
I have always promised my two children I would pay their way through college. But as they advance through their teens, the stubborn gap between soaring college costs and their college accounts is worrying me. Will I have to break my promise?
In proud or emotional moments, many of us make grand promises to our kids, our parents, our spouses, our bosses: I'll never put you in a nursing home. We'll never get divorced. All this will be yours one day. You'll never have to worry about money. But there are some promises you should simply never make, lest harsh realities -- illness, stock-market crashes, marital strain or simple human frailty -- make you a liar in the end.
Mia Herschel vowed years ago that she would never put her mother in a nursing home. "My mother would say, 'Promise me you will never put me in a place like that. Kill me first!' " and Ms. Herschel assented, she says.
But Alzheimer's disease afflicted her mother in her late 60s, and her symptoms soon made it unsafe for her to live independently. Ms. Herschel, on a doctor's advice, arranged for guardianship and placement of her mother in an assisted-living facility. Now 70, she is expected eventually to move to a nursing home.
Ms. Herschel, Lake Zurich, Ill., wishes things had turned out differently, but takes comfort in knowing, "I did the best I could." She says she will never ask her daughter to make promises about long-term care; "if I do, I've asked my husband to punch me or something."
Keeping promises has grown harder in the past decade as the burdens borne by families -- health care, education, care for the aged -- have grown heavier. Double-digit gains in the costs of all three, plus a 38% increase in the over-85 population, according to the Census Bureau, are overwhelming families. Accelerating corporate change, from restructurings to outsourcing, has made breadwinning a high-stakes gamble. Marriage has become the stress buffer, the oil in the machinery, that makes it all work. Or not.
Bea Record promised her children she would never sell the family home. After moving a lot as a child, she hoped to settle down for good on her peaceful rural homestead near Waco, Texas. "I promised them we would always have a place there -- a place to return to whether it was joy that brought one back, or tears," she says.
Nine years later, a divorce left her with too much upkeep to handle alone, and a layoff forced her to relocate to find a job. Her children, then nine and 11, "remembered the promise, and they hated" moving, she says. Now in college, they're doing fine. But Ms. Record, an information-systems manager in Shreveport, La., vows never again to make promises about matters she can't control.
Like the economy. Just as I did, Charles Smith, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., promised his three young children he would put them through college. He had always prospered in his work in construction sales and contracting. But years later, he had to recant when the economy tanked, taking with it a parts-supply business he had purchased. The kids earned scholarships and worked their way through state universities; they bear no resentment and "we did just fine at the end of the day," says his daughter, Cindy Akers Goldstein, a Pittsburgh labor lawyer.
Nevertheless, Mr. Smith says he would have done better to tell them he believed, based on the information he had at the time, that he could pay for college, "but we have to be flexible enough to adjust" if times change.
Sometimes, it's our own inner landscape that changes. Soniya Perl, West Los Angeles, Calif., loved her job as a food-service director and promised "with all earnestness" to return to work soon after childbirth, she says. But after a week back at work spent worrying and racing home on breaks to breastfeed, she realized she was no longer willing to keep her promise.
"Work was my baby until I had a baby. Then she became my priority," Ms. Perl says. She stayed on for two months to help find a replacement, but "in retrospect, I wish I'd handled it better. ... I give full credit to moms who can do both. I couldn't, and didn't want to," she says.
"We will never get divorced," is another promise many parents are tempted to make. But it's important to distinguish between a hope and a promise. My children say I made that promise when they were very young. I remember telling them only that I hoped their father and I would always be together. But my kids heard it as a promise and thus were hurt more by our breakup years later.
For me, this calls to mind an apocryphal tale about the fiery composer Igor Stravinsky. Known for writing ridiculously difficult passages into his works, he created a violin interlude so formidable that a violinist came to him and declared it impossible.
"Of course," the composer is said to have replied. "I don't want the sound of someone playing the passage. I want the sound of someone trying to play it."
Perhaps that's what we should strive for in family life -- the sound of someone trying. I promise to try my best ... to keep the family homestead, to care well for you in old age, to provide enough money, to raise you in a happy home. I will try. That is all that is within my power.
永远不要做出的承诺
我经常向我的两个孩子许诺说，我会支持他们上完大学。然而，随著他们一点点长大，大学教育的开支大幅上涨，再看看我给孩子们存在帐户里供他们念大学的钱，让我真是担心。我难道真的得失信于孩子们了吗？
多数人会在自己感到骄傲或激动的时刻，轻易向孩子、父母、爱人或老板做出承诺：我决不会把你送进护理院。我们决不会离婚。总有一天，我的一切都是你的。你不必为钱的事操心...但其实呢，有一些承诺是你永远都不能轻许的，残酷的现实 -- 疾病、股市暴跌、婚姻危机或者单单是人性的脆弱 -- 都有可能最终使你无法兑现你的诺言。
米亚?赫雪(Mia Herschel)多年前承诺以后不会把妈妈送到老人护理院。“我妈妈说，'答应我，你一定不会把我送到那种地方去。否则，你就先杀了我!'”米亚说，她当时答应了妈妈的要求。
然而，她的妈妈在快70岁的时候患上了阿兹海默氏老年疑呆症，她的病状使她已经无法安全地独立生活。米亚在接受医生的建议后，把妈妈安排到了一个生活协助机构(assisted-living facility)居住。现在，她妈妈70岁了，米亚可能不得不将她送进护理院。
米亚也希望事情的结果不是这样的，她只有想到自己已经尽了全力心里才舒服些。她说，她绝对不会让自己的女儿许诺长期照顾自己。
在过去的十年中，随著每个家庭的负担--医疗、教育、照顾老人--变得日益沉重，人们履行承诺越来越难。据美国人口普查局(US Census Bureau)公布的数字，过去10年上述三项支出的增幅达到了两位数字，85岁以上的老年人口也增加了38%，这些都已经让一个家庭难以承受。与此同时，个人供职的公司也正在加速变化，从重组到外包，都使人们的养家糊口不再稳稳当当。婚姻已经成为了压力的缓冲器，彷佛机床的润滑油，使一切仍然继续著。可一旦婚姻也有问题，那可如何是好？
碧?瑞克德(Bea Record)答应她的孩子永远都不会卖他们的房子。童年时频繁的搬迁让碧很想永远安顿下来，在得克萨斯州韦科附近过平静的乡村生活。“我答应他们，不管发生什么，快乐也好，悲伤也好，那里永远有我们的家”，她说。
但9年以后，婚姻失败的她无力独立承担大量的供养房子的费用，失去工作更是迫使她必须到其他地方重新开始过活。那时，她的孩子，一个9岁，一个11岁，都恨透了搬家。孩子们一直记得她答应过的事。如今，孩子们已经上大学了，过得也不错。碧在一家公司担任信息系统经理，她发誓再也不会对那些她控制不了的事做出任何承诺。
和我一样，查尔斯?史密斯(Charles Smith)也曾经承诺要供三个孩子上完大学。他从事的建筑销售和承包工作以前一直很赚钱。但多年以后，经济形势的低迷使他们家的收入大不如前。孩子们通过获得奖学金以及自己打工读完了大学，他们从来没有埋怨。“我们还是走过来了”，他那如今已经是律师的女儿说。
不过，史密斯说，我应该对我的孩子们讲，我是基于当时家庭的收入状况才承诺供他们上完大学，但如果情况发生了改变，我们也不得不随机应变。
也有的时候，是我们自己发生了改变，不想去履行曾经的诺言。索尼娅?珀尔(Soniya Perl)以前担任食品供应服务部门主管，她十分热爱自己的工作，并决定一生完孩子马上就回来工作。可事实上，当刚刚返回工作岗位一个星期，她总是担心自己的孩子，忙著赶回家喂奶，她知道自己曾许下的诺言可能无法实现了。
“在生孩子之前，我的工作就是我的孩子。我的女儿出世后，她就成了我的全部”，索尼娅说。她坚持工作了两个月，帮助寻找替代她的人选，可“回想当初，我希望我能处理地更好一些...我太佩服那些既工作又带孩子的妈妈了。我是做不到她们那样的，我也不想那样做”，她说。
“我们绝对不会离婚的”，这是又一个父母经常对孩子做出的承诺。但重要的是，我们应当把愿望和承诺区分开。我的孩子们说，当他们很小的时候，我曾经说过这样的话。但我只记得我告诉过他们希望他们的爸爸会一直和我在一起。但我的孩子却把这种愿望当作了我做出的承诺，所以当我们夫妻多年后离婚时，孩子受到创伤更大。
这让我想起了一个关于脾气暴躁的作曲家史特拉文斯基(Igor Stravinsky)虚构故事。他以创作极其难以演奏的小提琴曲著称。有一次，他创作的小提琴插曲实在太难了，一个小提琴家找到他，直言不讳的说，这个曲子根本就无法演奏。
“是这样的”，据说这位作曲家回答道，“我不想听到别人将这曲子演奏出来的声音，我想听到的是别人努力想演奏它时的声音”。
也许这就是我们在家庭生活中应当努力达到的境界 -- 不断去努力。我只能承诺会尽自己最大的力量...去保持家庭的和睦，照顾年迈的老人，挣钱养家。我会尽力去做。那才是在我能力范围内的事。
