It’s been another heavy weekend of non-blogging commitments. My parents have sold their home of the last thirty five years as they plan a move into a retirement center. The closing and the move are taking place later this month, but the chaos has already hit.
This past weekend there was a gathering of the clan; two gatherings, actually. In Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, there was a baptism of the first daughter of one of my cousins. My father flew down to represent our branch of the family; my father’s aunt Melvin presided over the gathering, bringing people together from all over the world to welcome Caroline Grace into her new life at a church in a beach community that has been part of her family life for four generations.
Meanwhile in Washington my two brothers, my sister and various nieces and nephews came by to help with the dismantling and packing up of a household that has been at the center of our world since Gerald Ford was in the White House. My father’s brother and his bride, my newest aunt, stopped by to offer moral support; they are looking into a similar move in the not too distant future.
The various items of furniture are labeled and coded with dots: going to the new place, going after reupholstering, up for grabs, grabbed. Rugs are being rolled up and labeled; bubble wrap and tape guns are scattered hither and yon; knickknacks are being wrapped up and sorted into boxes as we agonize over questions like who gets the Christmas cookie platters.
My parents are moving to a stunning apartment with, their grandchildren are happy to year, excellent views of the Fourth of July fireworks over the Washington Mall. Some of their friends are already there; it’s a few miles from their youngest grandchildren. We think, we hope that they’ll do well there. No more calls to plumbers and roofers, no more snow to be shoveled, no lawns to be mowed. There are two meals a day in the restaurant and they can get to the library, the swimming pool and the coffee shop without venturing out into city traffic. They picked it out themselves and decided when it was time to make the move on their own. This is about as good as it gets.
Retirement centers have come a long way, and as my generation, the Boomers, moves in this direction, I expect they will continue to develop and grow. Serving the market is the American way, and with more older people holding more money than ever before, the American way of old age is going to change. In the future, you will have more choice than ever about how to be old, with whom to be old, where to be old and what to eat when you’re old. You will, however, still have to be old.
In The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne cynically noted that every utopia, however promising, sooner or later discovers that it needs two things: a cemetery and a prison. America has long since had plenty of both, but old age and death still surprise us. We are the people of progress; we believe in Whig History, history arcing upwards into a grand consummation, like a rainbow leading us into Valhalla. Unfortunately biology has a different plan, and sooner or later we all have to start acquiring the wisdom of age, a wisdom that starts with the art of relinquishment, of graceful retreat.
Caroline Grace, the newest member of the clan and the second of the cousins to carry the name of my great-grandmother Grace, has roots in China and in the United States. Her South Carolina father met her Hong Kong mother while working in Macao. Fifty years ago their marriage would have been illegal in South Carolina. “Bluebirds go with bluebirds and redbirds go with redbirds,” an elderly relative of mine once remarked, to set us all straight.
There’s nothing but joy now that these two people have found each other and brought new life into the world. With Facebook, the whole family knew what was happening and the cousins showed up in swarms. My mother remembers when her family first got electricity and running water in Depression era South Carolina; her parents grew up in a state still marked by the Civil War and slavery. What Caroline Grace will live to see is impossible for us to guess; the rate of technological progress continues to accelerate and the social consequences of inventions like the internet are only beginning to make themselves felt.
I would not be surprised, though, if in Caroline Grace’s world they still need prisons and cemeteries, and I suspect that the art of relinquishment and the graceful retreat will still be skills that, at some point, people will still need to acquire.
I’m heading back up to the stately Mead Manor in Queens today — after making arrangements to ship some furniture and knickknacks. It’s hard to watch the clan disperse, harder still to let go of the house my parents made so welcoming and so beautiful for so long, but there is, I hope and trust, a purpose in it all.
We’ll understand it better, by and by.