Cater

cater
verb, transitive. To provide food and drink, typically at social events and in a professional capacity. To provide what is needed or required. To try to satisfy a particular need or demand.

Ed cradled his head in both hands and stared at the surface of his desk. He could hear Mary talking to their daughter, Ellen, in the kitchen. As happened more and more often these days, the girl had had another crisis at school. Instead of calming and recovering after she arrived home, she was spiraling into a pattern of regret and self-recrimination. Ed feared that Mary’s probing and suggestions were making it worse, rather than helping. Sometimes, he felt that his wife catered to their daughter’s problems, rather than trying to help her to rise above them.

His thoughts turned to his sister Jennifer. He could remember her going through similar spells when she was in school, and she never seemed to find a way to solve her problems. Jenny had grown into a troubled woman, alone except for her mother and siblings. Last winter, she had tried to take her own life. They knew that she wanted help because she had done so in the parking lot of her workplace, where someone was sure to find her. One of her co-workers had done so, and had called an ambulance. Jenny had gone into a rehabilitation facility after her initial hospital stay, but had left after she began to feel better--a matter of days rather than the weeks Ed felt that she had needed. She hadn’t lost any weight. She hadn’t pursued psychotherapy any longer after leaving. She had moved in with their mother, who was doing her best to take care of Jenny and maintain both their households, despite her own troublesome health.

That situation was not going to end well, Ed thought. Mom had such diminished reserves of strength these days. He wished, for the hundredth or thousandth time, that his father was still alive. With his passing, Ed knew, his family now considered him to be the patriarch, to whom they could turn when they were at a loss as to how to solve their problems. He knew that in time, Ellen woulld do the same, but for now, he let Mary do the heavy lifting.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.