Expectations

October 2, 2025.

When you’ve grown up as the first child of the first child of the first child, it’s incredibly hard to do things that will disappoint others. I’m not talking about things you’ve committed to do. Ethics mean your word is your bond, unless something critical arises.

No. I mean things you feel you should do. Just because you may disappoint someone if you don’t.

I cannot begin to explain how often that has guided my actions. It doesn’t matter if it means I’m terribly inconvenienced. It doesn’t mean that someone else may have to do a tiny bit more. It doesn’t mean that I’ll even be missed.

I’ve simply grown up — I’m 70, well past grown up! — worried that I will disappoint someone else. No matter what it costs me.

There’s got to be a balance. I shouldn’t harm myself just so someone else’s life is easier.

Damn. It’s only taken seventy years.

2026 update: I started not to move this short-short post over, but it is a part of "finding family," and our place in it. There's so much responsibility being the oldest. It's disproportionately greater when one is the first of the first of the first...

If you are in that spot: You are seen!

COMMENT WORTH KEEPING

As an eldest child of an eldest child, I hear you!

--Valerie Cotter, Fruits of the Forage, October 2, 2025.

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