The last move

And the last post?

Troll Bridge is a landmark in the Ohio retirement center that Bill and I now call home.

The boxes piled up again, some never even unpacked from the previous move nine months ago. Two workers loaded the truck and drove a mile down the road, and a new chapter of my life began. The move on June 15 went smoothly. I hope and expect that it’s my last one.

I moved from a rented apartment to a retirement community here in the Ohio college town where Bill and I relocated last September. At 72, I’m a bit on the young side for senior living, but Bill – at 83, with Parkinson’s – is not. When we arrived, Bill took a small apartment in this nonprofit, Quaker-run retirement center, which has cottages and apartments for independent residents as well as a care center for those who need support. I rented an apartment from a local landlord a few blocks away while staying on the waitlist for a cottage. (As our friends know, Bill and I have had separate living spaces for the past few years while enjoying a conventional marriage in other respects.) This spring, my name finally came up.

Retirement cottages look out on a wetland. Bill’s apartment is in the building at far right.

Bunnies, geese and ducks

So here I am in a quiet, spacious cottage, joined to other cottages around a grassy quad. A sliding door opens to trees and gardens, with birds and wildlife everywhere. Right now we have a proliferation of bunny rabbits hopping around; there are also chipmunks, squirrels, Canada geese, ducks, blue herons, hawks, and many species of songbirds. The perimeter path is lined with wildflowers and winds past ponds and wetlands, with nest boxes for bluebirds and tree swallows.

This is a community we know well. My father lived here for 18 very happy years. Over almost two decades of visits to him, the retirement center and the town around it became a second home to me.

We received the warmest of welcomes, for which I am grateful. Many residents remember my dad. Living here full time isn’t quite like visiting, though. I value community, something that has become ever more important in the Trump era. I want to be part of a vibrant network of neighbors and friends. Yet sharing a space with 350 other people, many of whom know me by name or soon will, takes a little adjustment. Urban neighborhoods, like the one where we lived in DC, are more densely populated than small towns, but in the city most people don’t know you. There’s a measure of anonymity there; not here.

I’ll adapt in time, as almost everyone does. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to bike around town and volunteer at the local food pantry. I still co-edit the NOPE Neighbors newsletter remotely once a month or so. And from now through the fall, I hope to spend time preparing for the signal event of this year: the November midterms.

Covered walkways connect a maze of cottages.

I’m an Ohio voter now

I lived most of my adult life in the District of Columbia, which is disenfranchised, a colony in all but name. DC residents pay federal taxes but have no voting representative in the US Congress, nor is there a state legislature. When I filled out my ballot as a DC voter, there was no meaningful office to vote for between the US president and the DC mayor.

Suddenly, by the simple act of packing up and moving, I have two US senators and a congressman. They’re all MAGA Republicans, but Sherrod Brown is running for his old seat and is critical to Democrats’ hopes of flipping the US Senate. There are other races, too, both statewide (governor, secretary of state) and local (state legislators, county commissioner), that could loosen the GOP’s grip on heavily gerrymandered Ohio.

Several of us are planning to canvass, and we’ll be making a first foray on July 15. To my relief, we’re going to a town, not a rural area. I’ve canvassed politically mixed suburbs and talked with conservative voters in Pennsylvania and Virginia in previous electoral cycles, and I’m fine with that. But Trump-loyal voters in rural areas, on remote properties down long drives, quite possibly protected by dogs and guns – that makes me nervous. Perhaps I’m indulging in stereotypes. Perhaps not. I’ll let you know.

A tree swallow nest box at the edge of a pond near my cottage.

Goodbye to Third Age

I may continue to write occasionally about politics, but insofar as this blog depicts my personal life, I’m winding it down. I’m sorry about that, as I enjoy writing it. But there are reasons.

First, I’m now a member of a small, close-knit community, or rather two communities: the retirement center and the town. Even if I don’t identify my location, it’s not hard to discover. I see no way to document my life here without inadvertently doxxing my neighbors and invading their privacy.

Second, the social media environment is changing. I stopped posting personal content on Facebook some time ago, and I never did use X, Instagram, TikTok, or other such platforms. Especially with the rise of AI, it’s just too hard to control the dissemination and, potentially, distortion of material once it’s posted online. The use of AI to generate content is also discouraging to those of us who still write our own text and take our own photos, an artisanal approach that is on its way out. We might as well be devotees of the quill pen in the age of movable type.

The trolls guarding Troll Bridge.

Greatest hits

My Third Age archives will remain on Substack, and there’s no paywall. I hope you might find time to browse some posts you may have missed.

They include interviews with women (and a few men) whose stories touch on third-age themes of caregiving, volunteerism, and social justice activism. My friend Jennifer is caring for both older and younger generations of her family. Gwen describes how her husband’s stroke changed their lives, while Dale spent years as a hospice volunteer. Betsy volunteers as a writing tutor in a men’s prison. Mike, a former priest, works closely with migrant communities on the US-Mexico border. Ann, well into her 80s, spearheads political organizing in our retirement community. Gail and I discuss how writing (in her case, memoir and poetry) helps us hold together the disparate parts of our lives as we look back.

Daphne, a veteran of the civil rights movement, is curating a collection of 5,000 letters she’s received over a lifetime from figures such as Alice Walker, Angela Davis, and Michelle Obama – not to mention the FBI. My husband Bill remembers his childhood on an interracial cooperative farm in the Mississippi Delta. Our friend Adwoa recalls the road trips her African American family took in the 1950s, at the height of segregation. It was fascinating to compare her experience to my own memories of family road trips, including a last one in 2022 to Canada with my dad.

Speaking of Dad, the archives contain two interviews with him on his World War Two experiences, as well as a piece on planting his garden. His death in 2023 prompted reflections on the elder care crisis and on coming to terms with loss.

There are, of course, plenty of posts on political topics, from canvassing to immigration to racial policing to – as we were leaving the city – the arrival of ICE in DC.

Finally, if you want a laugh at my expense, along with rueful reflections on aging, check out Cathy and the Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Thank you for reading, and for your thoughtful comments. I look forward to continuing the conversation in some form, whatever that may turn out to be.

Planting my father’s garden back in 2022 in the same retirement community where Bill and I now live. I’m one of maybe a dozen second-generation residents.