Caregiving? What's in a Word?

We've now turned the words "Care Giver" into a compound word.
Caregiver or caregiving (even though spell check doesn't like it one bit) is now one word. Two words smeared together. Apropos. Two lives smeared together. I'd like to think of two lives as a Jackson Pollack--layer after layer of lives, history, forgiveness, memories.

Caregiving can be such a sterile term for something so natural. When the nurse's wrote in my chart after my daughter was born that the "Mother has bonded well with her child." I wanted to ask if someone should be post bail. Apparently we had bonded, hadn't we?

We don't call mothering, "infant care," or child care. Child care is something someone else does--not mom or dad--that's called being a family. Ah, family, now that's a loaded word.

I used to teach my young daughters that family was an acronym for "Father and Mother, I Love You." It sounded really sweet when they were four and five years old... Now they roll their eyes and give me a smirk. At least it's a family smirk.

Now I have a new word--Care Receiver. It's not yet a compound word. It's a two-worder. It even looks funny as one word. Carereceiver. Care-receiver. Once again, sterile. I prefer, "Loved One." I'd like to be referred to as the loved one--the one who is loved. But that's just me.

Giving and receiving are reciprocal terms. Full circle--you never know at any given moment who's giving, who's receiving. At any moment some tiny miracle may takes place. Someone smiles, laughs, tears, has a transcendent thought...or just sighs.
Carol D. O'Dell, author of Mothering Mother