calvin and alice

i've been reading this book
on the train into work
by calvin trillin
called 'about alice.'

it's a memoir about his wife who died. i am enjoying it. there was one paragraph that particularly caught my attention:

"...when we were in our early thirties, it occurred to me that one way to divide the people we knew was that some of them were still dependent on their parents - financially or emotionally or some other way - and some of them had seen that role ended or even reversed. i never embarked on a study to see if that distinction was a predictor of how people handled what has to be handled to get through life - the small matters of logistics and maintenance that were known around our house as Administrative Caca, or serious issues of, say, catastrophic illness or financial disaster - but is suppose i always assumed that alice's early responsibility for her parents had something to do with her tendency to sit down and systematically deal with whatever problem came up..."

it caught my attention because this is something i struggle with personally, and this was the first time i have come across someone else addressing the issue.

i don't want to forget this thought.