Just So You Know, I Love My Mother

In many ways, multi-generational living makes sense. But that doesn't make it easy

- KEVIN CHONG

NOW THAT I live with my mom, my preferred mode of communication with her is by text. We're in each other's faces enough these days. Her first messages come in the morning, before sunrise, when she hears my heavy tread from her suite downstairs in our Vancouver Special, a mainstay structure in the city's residential areas. Once deemed boxy and cookie cutter, the architectural equivalent of a Honda Element, Vancouver Specials are now touted for their ability to accommodate two households, one on each floor. I'm in the kitchen, making my eight-year-old's school lunch, when my phone buzzes and my mother puts in her breakfast request.

Until she started dialysis at the end of 2022, my widowed, then seventy-one-year-old mother managed to be both active and sedentary, gamely driving in her SUV to a slate of appointments, school pickups for my daughter, and mahjong nights. The arrangement had served us well since we all moved in together in 2021, a decision made with my wife's approval. My mom had been on her own since my brother married and moved out, right before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In early 2023, dialysis, new medication, and an injury left her on her back most of the day. My brother and I took her to hospital appointments and blood tests that always seemed timed to crater our workdays. We endured her criticisms and round-the-clock bedside requests - my brother, who lives a few minutes away with his wife and in-laws, more stoically than me. While my mother was out of commission, my wife and I took over the school pickups and cooked her meals.

From the outside, we are enacting the best practices of urban family resource management. With rising housing costs and changing demographics, multi-generational living has finally gained social acceptance. Advocates trumpet its economic and emotional benefits.

Despite being so on-trend, I don't feel especially cool living with my mom. And even an hour from sunrise, I'm already exhausted.