THEY call us the sandwich generation: those of us who have elderly parents and dependent children, both needing our care and attention at the same time.

But I don’t feel like the filling in a sandwich. Because the filling in a sandwich, tightly packed between two pieces of bread, isn’t going anywhere.

I feel more like a chunk of melted mozzarella cheese, pulled and stretched so long and thin, that you can see right through it, until tiny holes start to appear.

If only life were like the movies, we could, like the indestructible superhero Mrs Incredible in the children’s film, simply stretch ourselves as far and as wide as we need to when necessary, then spring back into shape again.

There was never any mention of Mrs Incredible’s parents. But I am a daughter as well as a mother, and now that my mother needs me just as much as my children do, I can’t stretch myself so thin that I can be there for all of them.

One is in Northern Ireland, the others are in North Yorkshire. It didn’t occur to me when I spread my wings and left my home town to carve a career and a life for myself elsewhere that this could make life difficult in years to come.

It’s not something that appeared to bother my parents either, when they encouraged me and my siblings – some of whom ended up in far flung corners of the world - to go off and do whatever we wanted to do. At least if it did, they didn’t let it show.

But now that my 89-year-old mother is in decline, I must leave my children to be with her. They remain in the capable hands of their father, of course. But he is being stretched too, trying to juggle his work commitments with their needs, and he can’t do it indefinitely.

So while I go backwards and forwards, sleeping in chairs in hospital wards, then taking turns with my sisters to wash, feed and care for our mother, who now needs 24-hour nursing care, at home, where she wants to be, the boys are having to make do.

Most after-school activities have had to be cancelled, they have had to make their own tea, I wasn’t there for Roscoe’s birthday and, on two occasions when their dad had to be away overnight, they were left in the care of a neighbour.

I’m not going to be around for half-term week either, when we usually go away and do something together.

None of this, of course, will do them any harm and they say they don’t mind. At times, I’m sure they even enjoy me not being around to pester them about homework and tell them off for leaving their dirty underpants and socks on the bathroom floor.

But that doesn’t stop me feeling like a bad mother. Just like I feel I am a bad daughter when I leave my mother again to return briefly to my boys. Saying goodbye to her is hard because I never know when it might be the last time.

If I’m honest, I’m not leaving the boys just because my mother needs me. It’s because I want and need to be with her. My siblings, with equally demanding jobs and family commitments, are also rallying round.

She was of the generation of women who was forced to give up her career as a nursing sister and midwife once she married, not that she ever complained, happily devoting her life to raising her six children. She was always there for us.

“We owe it to her,” said one of my sisters. And we all know we’re very lucky that we are able to do this for her now.

There was a momentary low point when my mother-in-law rang this week: “I spoke to Albert the other day,” she said. “He didn’t say anything, but I can tell by his voice he’s really missing you.”

It felt as if that over-stretched mozzarella had suffered a little tear. But I suppose if she’d said he wasn’t missing me at all, that would have been worse.