Life has been very busy. We decided we would put our home up for sale. The upkeep and tasks of keeping a home have been getting a little more difficult. We both realized that as we aged, this could only get worse. Our house sold in three days and we scrambled to find a new place to live. We decided to move closer to our sons and now live almost exactly between them in the wilds of McHenry County.
I must confess this has been a very strange and scrambled experience. My parents moved to Warrenville in 1959. This was a big move to what was at the time a very big house. We had been living in a small starter house that my Dad was able to get with his GI loan. Prior to that we lived in apartments and rented homes. I don’t think my parents ever thought they could afford a house of that size. After my father’s death my mother continued to live there and eventually one of my sisters moved in with her husband and children. When she moved out my mother decided she would continue to live alone in her house. During the illness prior to her death, my other sister moved in with her own husband and children to help and care for her. After my mother’s death she continued to live in the house. Eventually both my sisters ended up living in Warrenville. We moved there in 1980 and raised both of our sons there. So my sisters and I, and all our children, were all living fairly close to each other in the town my parents moved to in the 50s. It was a charming, quiet town and was a great place to raise children.
Now I find myself in strange environs. At times this reminds me of living in France. Beautiful country, but I don’t speak the language yet. I don’t know the roads and everything seems new. It also seems very quiet. I think everyone goes to bed at around 8:00PM. I keep looking out the window and see older women walking small dogs. I keep waiting for meals on wheels to begin knocking on our door.
I keep thinking about change. It is difficult learning new things and learning new places. My wife keeps thinking of this as an adventure. I am still struggling to find places to put things.
There were experiments we used to do with people to get them to recognize the difficulty in change. One would be to ask them to write their name with the non-dominant hand. The signature is unrecognizable because it is so difficult to do. The other seems very simple. First we would ask them to put on their coats. We would ask them to concentrate on which arm they used first. Then we would ask them to put on their coats using the opposite hand. They were usually very surprised at how difficult it was. The purpose at the time was to get them to realize the possibility of change and “getting in touch” with another part of themselves.
I know now that this was old thinking, but change does challenge. It forces us to adapt. I suppose the challenge of that is good, but change is harder as I get older. I like having the same things and places around me. Now I have to adapt and have to accept that this “old thinking” is because I am getting old.
I have vague memories of my grandfather who died when I was five. He was seventy-two. This is the age I am rapidly approaching. This seems like an ancient age. I began thinking that this was the last stop before my sons put us in the nursing home. How long until I am there strapped to a wheel chair overcome with the smell of urine and disinfectant that seems to inundate those places? My youngest son once told me jokingly that he was going to put me in a nursing home and not tell anyone where I was. Now I am getting concerned about that. I think that my initial response to moving here and seeing the apparent age of the residents encouraged this. I know when you begin to think of only one thing everything seems to relate to that. Older women walking small dogs, old men in motorized wheel chairs, all seem to mean that this is where we are headed.
However maybe not. I just looked out the window and saw a young girl with green hair walking her baby. Perhaps the key to this adventure is to notice new things and not just old things. Perhaps the new can overcome the old and make everything fresh again. The boxes we moved in with are almost all empty now. This place is beginning to feel comfortable. I keep thinking we forgot something at our old home, but then we find it. So putting old things in new places may be good for them and just maybe it could be good for me.