Sentimental Holiday Feelings

Watching the line dancers doing a Christmas performance it hit me what a close knit community we’ve built here at the continuum care facility. A few tears rolled down my cheeks as I thought about the overlapping Circles of Friendships that have developed since our campus opened. Most of us have found our Tribes---those people in our inner, middle and outer circles. And the best part is that everyone’s Circle of Friendships connect to make this place a warm and accepting place to live despite (or maybe because of) our individual foibles and idiosyncrasies. We’re truly a microcosm of a larger community.

Over the two years I’ve been living here I’ve written extensively about those foibles and idiosyncrasies. As I sat looking around I realized I write more about the funny or annoying aspects that I see in my neighbors and not enough about the endearing and admirable side of some of those same people. Heck, I’d sound like I’m living on Movers and Shakers Row if I wrote about the charity work some of these people do. They don’t just belong to do-good groups, they’ve started them or run them. I found out yesterday, for example,  that one of the guy here has helped several of the waitstaff to get college scholarships, using his connections and writing recommendation letters for them. Now I know why we've lost some of our best waitresses.

Seeing the different facets of people is one of the things I like the most living here. I see people who support causes I hate but I can still like and get along with them. Case in point our resident, most avid Trump supporter knows I like pea soup and she always gives me enough for three bowls when she makes it. She loves to cook and is generous to everyone like that. The woman who called me to rally support against the bombed-out gingerbread house makes beautiful bows for packages and does so for anyone who asks and this time of the year she’s been kept very busy. She and I had some similar experiences---I worked in the floral industry for 20 years while she volunteered making floral arrangements for club banquets and parties---and she is ready and willing to help others along those lines. I am not. I selfishly keep my floral arranging talents hidden under a basket.

What brought the tears on and caused this train of thought to come to the surface was a couple who came in late---while the line dancers were doing their thing. The woman was pushing her husband in a newly acquired wheelchair and came close to barging right through the dancers to the point they had to adjust their positions while her husband tried to get her attention to stop. She’s in the middle stage of dementia and until his recent fall he was an extraordinary caregiver to her. He still is but his row is much harder to hoe right now. Not too long after we all moved in I wrote about the first time I found myself at a dinner table with them. I had a mini melt down because she kept shoveling food off her plate and onto mine. I’m kind of a germaphobic and would never eat something that had been on someone else’s used fork. Especially from a total stranger like she was back then. I didn’t know she was having issues with early dementia at the time and I was trying not to show how freaked out I was. Fast forward and I recently saw her refuse to eat a salad because she was afraid of the croutons on top. It’s so much easier to feel compassion when we can look past our own issues and see where others are coming from.

We have another couple here who is very popular. She’s got Lewy Body dementia and a good sense of humor about it. They go everywhere holding hands. (Actually, all the couples on campus do that.) She was my Mahjong mentor two years ago but now occasionally she’ll ask me to clarify a rule and she’d been playing weekly for 35 years. He’s another great caregiver as well as another avid Trump supporter. Although he keeps his politics closer to the vest than the Trumpter mentioned above. Both of them hate Hillary to a point that it shocks me every time they voice it. He’s also the Class Clown and will do anything for a laugh. At the end of the Line Dancers routine, for example, they were asked to huddle together for a photo and The Clown sat on the floor in front of the line dancers for the photo-shoot and just to be clear he’s not a line dancer and didn’t prance around wearing reindeer horns that day like they did.

We have quite a few couples here who I admire for their devotion to each other. One couple is in their mid-nineties, super sweet to each other and to others, super religious but you don’t want to mention transgender issues around them because she thinks all the public schools are trying to make children change their sex. Boys into girls and girls in to boy for God only knows why we Evil Liberals want to do that. Then there’s the couple we could easily nickname the Complaint Department. Nothing is ever good enough for them---not the food service, not the cleaning crew, not the grounds keepers. I couldn’t live inside their skin but they do hold management’s feet to the fire over some things others collectively care about and wouldn't get done without Mr. and Mrs. Squeaky Wheel. We all have a place in the microcosm.

We have a new couple in my building. I don’t know them well enough to give them a nickname shorter than The Artist and the Eye Candy. They are social and are taking part in various activities, building their Circles of Friendships here which is what you have to do when you're the new kid on the block. Network until you find your Tribes, unfortunately for me they seem to be seeking out other couples for their Tribe. I’d love to get an invitation to see their apartment because I’m told she has an art studio set up in what I use for a den---we have identical floor plans. Her husband is the first man in my age bracket I’ve seen in ages who can take my breath away just by looking at him. Be still my heart. He’s so good looking! And immaculately groomed. A sharp dresser. They seem devoted to each other in that touchy-feely way that lets you know they are still attracted to one another which seems to be a requirement for couples living in a continuum care complex. 

I’m guessing that happy couples are disproportionately represented in places like this. The couples moving into CCC’s want to be sure their spouses are cared for after they’re gone---that’s a fact. Just ask and they’ll all tell you that. But I’m also guessing that husbands and wives who’ve fallen out of 'love' or 'like' don't want to be locked into a CCC. They both probably hope they'll be the last one standing and they don't want their finances tied up in a non-refundable jointly chosen life style. That’s my theory, anyway, based on no research and no anecdotal evidence.

Until Next Wednesday… ©

Photo: The guy at the top is not my new neighbor but they could have been cut from the same cloth. He's an actor, model and photographer named Andreas von Tempslhoff, age 75.

High Tea and the Mayor

It’s a rare occasion when I share a photo of myself online but the one below of me all dolled up and experiencing High Tea seems like a good time to do it. People on my continuum care campus are not used to seeing me put any effort into my clothing. (Jeans and a sweat or tee shirt are my uniform.) Heck, I even broke out the jewelry and I traded in my tennis shoes for some black dress shoes I’ve owned for two years and only wore once before. The self appointed mayor of our independent living building even paid me a complement while were waiting for our bus---only the third one I’ve gotten out of him in the nearly two years we’ve lived here. And one of those complements was for a poem I wrote that got me in a little trouble with the management. The third complement the Mayor gave me was when I walked a run-away at a purple fashion show for Alzheimer's Awareness. I wore a long, purple and turquoise  lounging dress of fake silk and he told me I “won the fashion show.”   

Mr. Mayor is an odd duck in many ways but in other ways he’s typical of most males born just before WWII whose ideas of the male/female roles are firmly fixed in his head. I met him the first month after we both moved in. I was in the cafe by myself and he came in and asked if he could join me. I said ‘yes’ and a scant few minutes later he got up and said he changed his mind and he moved to another table by himself. I found out later on that his wife had died not long before that and he was kind of a shy, corporate lawyer. His wife was a stay-at-home mom of five boys who always had a cocktail waiting for him when he got home from work and she laid his clothes out for him in the morning. She'd never even shaved her legs in front of him and they dressed for dinner at night. Fast forward to now, it didn’t take him long to get over his shyness and now he has what we all call his harem that he dines with him weekly at the so-called Mayor’s Table--seven women who are the cream of the crop, the head cheerleaders, the most bedazzled, the Royalty and Chosen Ones---I’ve used all these nicknames in my head and they often have cocktails beforehand in one of their apartments. His guest list changes slightly from time to time but I’ve never been invited to dine with the mayor so it's a good thing it's not on my Bucket List. In all fairness, the Harem mostly lives on the same floor which makes it easier for them to form friendships. I live on a hall with only six apartments and I rarely see anyone on my floor and I doubt I could pick two of them out of a lineup.

I do often sit at the community table with Mr. Mayor at lunch time and know how seriously he takes his job as the self-appointed mayor. He set up a residence council with by-laws and legal papers and a newsletter that he did ask me to be in charge of, which I turned down. I knew I had the experience to put one together but how he could possibility know that based on one poem I wrote and hung in the mail room is still beyond my comprehension. I’ve never told anyone here about the 24 page, by-monthly Readers Voice Newsletter I sold by subscription for ten years. I don’t even think my nieces knew about it. And Don---bless his heart---edited every word I wrote for spelling errors and in the process he learned a lot about romance books, the women who wrote them and read them. 

Anyway, back to the mayor. He’s kind of the center of every event. He makes speeches and advocates for residences on all kinds of things. For example, he got management to install dehumidifiers for those who wanted them attached to their furnaces and he wrangled a seat at the table when our CEO got promoted and the management was interviewing his replacement. He got them to agree to a matching fund to buy a baby grand for our lobby (but the majority of we residents voted the idea down). He might be a self-appointed mayor but he’s more than earned the title. 

Going to High Tea: that’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was in The Red Hat Society and I lost the opportunity to go with them. Back then we didn’t have a High Tea place in town so going was a day trip, and back then I couldn’t leave my husband alone for more than a scant two hours. My red hat sisters came back raving about how much fun it was to dress to the nines and be served exotic teas, fancy sandwiches and pastries on elegant china. 

A High Tea room opened up here in town this summer and the decor and table settings were rich and fancy with its exposed, vintage brick wall and red velvet davenports and gold trimmed china which is a good thing because the service was not great and the food was so over priced it could have ruined the experience if we had let it. (The photo of the menu is below.) By the time they added on the tax and the tip it was $49.00! per person. It looks like a lot of food for the $37 but everything you get for the $37 was two-bites and while it all tasted good, $49 plus $7 for the bus ride really put a nick in my budget. Or as one of my High Tea companions said, “I might as well have rolled up dollar bills and lite them on fire.” 

Still, the experience made me feel young again. Young enough to be having tea parties with my mom and later on with my nieces when they came along. My mom didn’t drink coffee or soda pops. I don’t even remember her drinking lemonade but I find it hard to believe that she’d have made it for us kids without pouring herself a glass or two. I also don’t remember her ever drinking ice tea but, again, I obviously didn’t pay enough attention back in those days to imprint a lasting memory of her liking ice tea or not. Her English ancestries would be proud that her appreciation for a good cup of hot tea never wavered. And that tea better be hot or she’d sent it back to where it came from for a do-over. Funny how some memories stick with you and others seem to float away like dandelions blowing in the wind. 

Until next Wednesday... ©