On October 10, 2022, Eagle’s Trace celebrated its Seventeenth Anniversary. This event has led me to think about the pros and cons of our decision, in 2004, to move to this retirement community, scheduled to open the following year. When I first heard about this new form of housing, new, at least, to Houston, I never thought we’d actually become involved. Having seen an advertisement in the local newspaper, I sent off for the brochure being offered. It looked interesting enough for Karen and me to attend a presentation in a prefabricated building about an hour’s drive from Longwood, the community where we had been happily living for seven years.
Longwood, with its pine forest and bike-paths, was a new development in Cypress Texas, a rural town north of Houston. Elsewhere, I’ve described the physical nature of our Longwood home, a place which, I thought, would be our location for all of my retirement years. We were living a life I had once merely dreamed about. Nevertheless, I was curious about the concept offered by Eagle’s Trace, a community of individual apartments with amenities that included two dining rooms, a swimming pool and exercise room, a computer room, a library, a beauty salon, a bank, a community store and an on-site medical facility with two doctors and other specialists, along with a dentist. There would even be a new building for extended care as well as one for a spirituality center.
Having attended the presentation, Karen announced to me, much to my surprise, that this is where we would be moving! She looked forward to not needing to prepare dinner each evening, but to eat out, depending upon a menu which offered a variety of steaks and poultry. Occasional lobster was also featured. She maintained, correctly, I would enjoy the results of great landscaping, without the effort of maintaining it.
Having downsized our possessions by giving them to our children and several charities, we moved into our never-seen-before apartment, two weeks after Eagle’s Trace opened for business. For the last seventeen years, we have never regretted our decision to move to a place we continue to maintain seems like living on a cruise ship with much larger cabins.
The advantages of the amenities offered were realized, along with several we had not foreseen. The security of the complex allowed us to continue taking foreign travel without having to be concerned about what might happen to our home during our absence. The delay in erecting a long-term care facility did not impact us, since we had not moved to ET with our terminal years in mind, but rather an active place for living as senior citizens. We would have preferred that the onsite dentist and audiologist had remained, but we were able to retain all of the off-site health specialists we had used previously. A formal religious or spiritual center was never constructed, but our continued participation with our home parish and the nearby Cenacle House, as well as our new involvements with prayer and adult religious education within our new community were fulfilling compensations. The advantages we had anticipated, now, in reality, delighted us. However, the passage of time has brought about a few disadvantages I had not envisioned when we first entered our years of retirement living.
It’s possible that one significant change would have occurred even without the physical move from a large house to a compact apartment. Nevertheless, I associate the resulting modification more with size than with time, itself.
We no longer gather together as a nuclear family as we did in the early days of our marriage. Previously, Christmas was celebrated as a joyful, daylong event in our own house, filled with relatives: our three children, their spouses, their children and, occasionally, other members of the extended family. We quickly learned our limited-in-size apartment would not accommodate such holidays as Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. It was now time for us to travel to their homes for such gatherings, rather than for them to visit us.
For a while we were able to substitute with events held at a series of favorite places. We sponsored gatherings at a Chinese restaurant we had discovered many years ago. Nearby Brookwood, with its unusual meal setting and shops, offered an annual place for entertainment. Sunday gatherings were now held at Logan’s Roadhouse, where the grandkids, as well as their parents, could throw all of their peanut shells on the floor, an action frowned upon in the Garden Room Restaurant, an alternative afforded at Eagle’s Trace. Birthdays were now celebrated where our children lived, not where we lived. Perhaps, there was an advantage in not needing to prepare for a party and to clean up afterwards, but the change does appear to be a significant one when it comes to memories.
In the earliest years of our marriage, I fondly (and not-so-fondly) recall the trips Karen and I made for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and summer vacations to both Niles and Sandusky, Ohio, from upstate New York and New England. Finally, with our move to Texas, those visits were reduced. Rarely did our parents visit us. So, it should not be surprising to me the time has come when a transfer of venues would become prevalent.
With the growth of the families of our grandchildren with their own offspring, the rate of change has increased. Birthdays are now celebrated in their homes with their friends as well as with the relatives who can make it. Housewarmings and Oktoberfests are held in new neighborhoods for new generations. Along with the retirement living of its elders, there is a continuing need for the daily living of every generation wanting to enjoy and celebrate life, itself. Life changes: life stays the same.