Susan Hoffman shares about her journey between the Bay Area and Washington to help take care of her family.
In January 2024, I did what a lot of native Californians only dream of doing: I left. It was a reaction to other circumstances in my life. The time had come to take care of my aging mother. I did not want her to go into any kind of a facility and she was adamant about not living with me in the East Bay.
However, moving in with her where she lived in the Central Valley was also not an option. More than 25 years ago my sister moved to Vancouver, Canada, and had been on me for years to “move north”. So, in a leap of faith, I sold my house and my mother’s house, and we bought a house that would not only accommodate us, but my adult son and his roommate. We all now live together in Washington.
True multigenerational living. To say it has been an adjustment is an enormous understatement. Yet it is an honor to care for my mother and while I spend a lot more time than I would like fixing what we have come to call “the house of deferred maintenance”, it’s not horrid.
I’ve also become an expert at visiting the Bay Area. I can leave my new home on a direct flight to Oakland on a Friday and be back by Monday afternoon, while my sister stays with my mother. It’s a gift I give myself every two months as a caregiver sanity check.