Before moving from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom (with “den”) apartment, we knew there would be changes in our lifestyle. The most common one is related to “downsizing.” Modern businesses, when they reorganize their corporate structures, often refer to the process as “right-sizing.” This reinterpretation is relevant, as well, for living in a retirement community.
Karen and I knew we must give up/eliminate/throw-out large (and small) items we would never need in the foreseeable future. Furniture, of course, requires the largest modification. One of our three “extra” bedrooms at Longwood had already been converted into a study for me. Although a second bedroom had been set aside, in part, for accommodating guests, there would now be no reason to keep any bedroom furniture for use by guests. (They would have access to a guest suite at ET or could stay in a nearby motel.) In addition to beds and dressers, there were the usual living room and family room stuff. Who needs a six-foot, colonial style couch in an apartment? Along with end-tables, sideboards and other cabinets?
We made a compromise for the dining room. The table and chairs were eliminated, the hutch would be kept, but the once sacred, wedding dishes, stored within, would now be used for daily meals – mainly breakfast and lunch, since we would eat dinner in the Garden Room, the common dining room at Eagle’s Trace. Our children and older grandchildren were given the option of taking our used furniture, as we had once experienced with our own parents when we established our first homes in Ithaca and Hanover. What they didn’t want (which was much of what we had to offer!), was given to charitable agencies. At the same time, we would no longer function as the storage place for items they had left under our care until they, themselves, had “larger” houses for their own self-storage. Now was the time to take it or forget about it!
The major hardship we had concerning downsizing was our book collections. All of mine had to fit into the two bookcases assigned for my study. (No longer would there be a wall of built-in bookshelves.) Karen’s collection would be relegated to a single bookcase in her study, the den which adjoined our new family-living room through its arched doorway. My study, which tended to be more jumbled, would use the space originally allocated for a second bedroom, since this room had a door that could be closed to hide that jumble.
Karen donated a bookcase, with spirituality-related books, to the Cenacle. My theological books and others relating to my diaconate work were packed off to the Library at St. Mary’s Seminary. Our most interesting donation was a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica given to the new, local Harris County Community College. The librarian was pleased to receive it and offered the assistance of a young student to help me carry the boxes from my car into the building. The amusing part was that the student had never seen a printed set of encyclopedia books; he was truly amazed that such a non-Internet publication existed!
Of course, over the first months in our Eagle’s Trace apartment, we did need to buy a few, smaller, items to replace what had been downside. A cabinet for the TV. Another one for my computer and its accessories. A small table and two chairs for the eat-in-kitchen. Two recliners and a very small leather couch for the family-living-dining-room. Although we retained pieces of our heavy New England furniture, the new, contemporary additions mixed well with the established items purchased more than fifty years!
Living a retirement lifestyle was more than accommodating the furniture. As we downside our material possessions, we up-sized new activities available at Eagle’s Trace. The retirement-living principle at ET was to join an existing interest-group or create one you wanted to join! Ultimately, more than ninety different interest-groups were established by our residents. Our individual focuses began to shift from our religious communities at the Cenacle, Christ the Good Shepherd and St. John Vianney to those within our retirement community.
Karen became active in a choir-singing-group and various prayer-spirituality-groups. I joined a book-club and even used the physical-fitness center to counterbalance a sedentary life. She joined the walking club. Karen also organized days-of-prayer and related mini-retreats for women as well as other efforts associated with neighbor-to-neighbor communication. I began to facilitate an interfaith bible-study as well as presentations for adult religious education, under the title of The Catholic Project. Ultimately, we joined Legacy in Words, a memoire group which led to the production of this blog, CamerosAndCarousels.com.
The only area we purposely avoided was any long-term involvement in committees associated with the “governance” of Eagle’s Trace, although we did accept a short-time assignment to the Residents’ Life Committee, which had oversight for the counseling efforts we enjoyed. Karen agreed to serve on the Election Committee for the Residents’ Advisory Council, which offered suggests to the management team of our Retirement Community. I even got conned into serving on the Civility Committee for the RAC.
The concept of the need for a committee charged with making suggestions for “civility” in a retirement community is, perhaps, a strange one. However, many elderly folks, who were used to owning their private homes on private property, did not recognize the differences which may result from hundreds of people living under the same roof. It had been decades since we had resided in a dormitory with its individual and communal spaces. We had forgotten that noise might be transferred through ceilings and walls, that someone might dispose of trash in unexpected places, that a borrowed cart used to transport purchases from the car to the apartment should be returned to a common site and not left in hallways or elevators. Yes, living in an enclosed community, even with independent living, does demand a level of basic civility, if arguments and estrangements are to be minimized.
Karen and I learned that those who reside within Eagle’s Trace may do so like a hermit, who lives in solitary confinement, or like cenobitic monks, those living in community, who gather as needed for meals, prayer and work. Retirement living should not be the same as survival of the fittest!