I like my sister‘s house. I’d like to tell her that I am moving in there. She can just think of me as one of the other farm animals. I could be a baby donkey or maybe a tiny horse, but I wouldn’t want to be a chicken because laying eggs would be exhausting. I like my sister’s house because every room is filled with people and when you walk around trying to decide where you’re going to sit inevitably you sit next to someone that turns out to be the very right person for that moment. There are people there that are young and people there that are old though this Thanksgiving I was the oldest. I liked being the oldest. I think I could say eldest, but I think that sounds arrogant in a funny way. Anyway I’ve been interviewing retirement communities and what I’m looking for is the same feeling I have when I’m staying in my sister’s house. I don’t think I’m going to find it.

All the communities I see have people living separate lives. They’re walking around all alone and eating all alone and there isn’t any one table where you can sit if you’re a stranger and want to make friends with new people. I want to live in a place where I can just go downstairs and find someone very easily to play Scrabble with me. I’m not a good scrabble player or even an OK scrabble player, but I have flashes of brilliance that my partner always appreciates. I think that would be a good description of me in life. Anyway, I considered asking my sister if I could just move in with her, but then I realized that everyone would be gone that had been there over Thanksgiving. That would be OK cause I do get along very well with her husband and with her.

Probably at some point in my life living alone will get tiresome because I am a social creature and I like to have someone to eat dinner with. I don’t like to cook the dinner but maybe I could find someone who did. I like going out to dinner most of all but if I lived in a community, you could just go out by going downstairs.

 I don’t know why in this country we haven’t figured out how to better house our older friends. If we lived in Italy, everyone would stay in the family home and be taken care of but we don’t live in Italy. If we get dementia, then we are sent to live in a place where usually very young people who are not paid very well take care of us. I wouldn’t blame them for being angry at their lot in life. I’m not sure how I’m going to solve this, but I’m going to keep on trying. I think there’s an answer, or maybe just a compromise. I’d like to have a little cottage with a small patio that I could sit outside on and take care of whatever things I had to do while sitting in the sun. I like beauty, so it would be nice to be in the country, and probably on the west coast because that’s where my family live. The family that I created not the family that I was born into.

My idea is to live in a place where there are cottages for everyone and the main house has a big great room with a giant fireplace and lots of cozy couches around it. There are game tables for people to play scrabble, or whatever game they like and there’s a great music system. There’s also a giant screen tv so  everyone can hang out in the couches and watch movies.

 

Everyone living in this community would be convivial and those that were a little bit shy would be helped by the others who weren’t. In order to keep young people around I would provide housing for people that work there, so you could see their children playing outside and interact with them. There would be bowls of apples all around, shiny and red, and glass jars filled with candy just like in Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory. Call me crazy, but getting old in a place like this would be heaven.

 

I don’t know why no one else has thought of this and implemented it. All of the places I’ve gone to see have been so institutional. I think if people started building these places without making them an actual business, we would have some interesting things going on. The trouble as I see it is that people are reluctant to admit that it’s time to give up their own life and house and find a place where they can spend several years before they die enjoying themselves. People have a hard time facing the fact that they are getting old and may need help as this happens.

 

 

 

An intentional community built in this way would be ideal because everyone could make decisions about how to run things. There would be no profits intended just a community that supported one another.

 

It’s a practical dream. I may have to build it myself.