Embry and I have always been city people, and I have what could be described as a “woke” superiority complex regarding the suburbs. I admit that this sounds like a snobbish prejudice and fess up to being the kind of person MAGAs can’t stand. You can blame my master’s studies at the UNC City Planning School for some of this, but part of it is admittedly old fashioned snobbery. Well, at Collington we now live in the suburbs. You wouldn’t know it because the beautiful campus is surrounded by a forest, preventing any view of suburban living. But when leaving the security gate at Collington you find you are in the middle of it—attractively designed homes but also very close to a gigantic shopping center with several big box stores.

Including a Costco.

Costco is only a five minute’s drive away. Now, I have never spent a dime at Costco and have only been in one of these massive stores two or three times. I remember being impressed by the tons of merchandise people were purchasing. You see people walking out of the store with 25 rolls of toilet paper, ten packages of 12 ounce water bottles, 30 rolls of paper towels, piles of other stuff that often require more than one huge grocery cart. Not for me. But if you know Embry, she is always looking for a bargain and the prices at Costco are cheap. She can’t help it. It is in her Calvinist, Presbyterian DNA. So, Embry joined Costco and has shopped there a few times. When I pointed out that we really didn’t need so many of this or that, she agreed but confessed that she couldn’t resist the low prices.

This week Embry went to Costco and ordered a huge birthday cake for a special occasion on Sunday at All Souls Episcopal Church—our rector’s birthday. The cake was to be a surprise and the centerpiece of what surely would be a splendid show of appreciation for the great job Mother Sara is doing. Saturday the cake was ready to be picked up; and since Embry had plans to go to a concert with friends, she asked me to pick up the cake at Costco’s and bring it to the church late in the day so that she could prepare for the surprise party on Sunday. I drove Embry to the Metro station only about 1.5 miles away and headed to Costco. The huge parking lot was jammed with cars, but I eventually found a space and joined a line of eager shoppers chomping at the bit to get in. Embry had given me her Costco card, which I scanned into a device at the door and headed toward the bakery. Before I could take more than a step or two, a tiny, older woman wearing a Costco red apron stepped in front of me and said, “I am sorry, but you can’t enter the building. This is your wife’s card.”

I replied that I understood that it was my wife’s card and that I was picking up a huge cake that she had ordered because she had a conflict. She needed the cake Saturday afternoon and had no way of getting to Costco, so I was helping her. I then took a step in the direction of the bakery about a half mile away at the back of the store.

The clerk stepped in front of me again.

“Oh, no you aren’t. This is your wife’s card, not yours. She has to be here. You can’t get in without her being with you unless you have your own card.”

“Excuse me,” I replied in a bewildered tone, “My wife has spent a fortune on this cake for a surprise birthday party and I have to bring it to her today. She is not available to pick it up, so I am helping her. You are telling me I am not even allowed to enter the store?”

The line behind me was starting to get edgy. One person shouted, “Stand aside, let us in! You are holding up the line!” Some big guy shouted, “Move it, old man!”

The Costco clerk guarding the gate asked me to move aside and allowed the eager shoppers to start scanning their Costco cards as they charged off into the vast space packed with people pushing carts loaded with food and merchandise. I explained to her the situation—that I had hardly ever been to a Costco store and did not know the rules and repeated the reason I was there.

With a sympathetic look, she replied, “Sorry, sir, no exceptions. I would like to help you, but these are the rules.”

“Just so I understand,” I replied in a disgusted voice, “No one is allowed to even enter a Costco store if they have not purchased a Costco card, and if you are a spouse of a card holder, that does not make any difference?”

“Exactly. No exceptions for any reason.”

When I demanded to see her supervisor, she shrugged her shoulders and shuffled off, cautioning, “Do not try to leave this spot. You could be in for real trouble.”

She asked another Costco lady in a red apron to take her place as guardian of the gate and returned a few minutes later with her supervisor, another woman, slightly younger. I told her my sad story and how desperate I was. She scowled, looked me over, sighed, shook her head in disgust, and allowed me to enter the store with the parting words, “Never, never try to do this again!”

I thanked her, grabbed one of the huge shopping carts and charged off toward the other end of the store, weaving through the isles packed with people pushing carts overflowing with bundles of toilet paper and other merchandise, passed by the counter selling pianos, the section selling giant TVs, some  so big I concluded  they would have to be hung on the side of a barn, giant bins of vegetables, some guy doing magic tricks in a section selling child’s toys, and finally reached the bakery. I told the clerk I was picking up a cake for “Howell” and observed a dozen or so carts stacked with giant birthday cakes waiting to be picked up, all looking exactly alike. Eventually she found the one marked “Howell” and off I charged with the cake to the checkout counter. There were a least a dozen people ahead of me in line with carts stacked high with merchandise, so I headed to the self-checkout area where there were few people and one young man standing around wearing a red apron. When I asked him for help, he asked for my Costco card.

“I am sorry,” he replied, staring at the card, “You can’t buy this cake. Your wife has to buy it. The card is in her name.”

“Pardon me,” I replied, “I have already been through this drill, and they finally let me in the store and now you are telling me that you won’t let me buy the cake and take it home?  The cake cost a fortune, and this is money going to Costco. The cake has a name on it that no one else can use. Are these people nuts? I have to have the cake today. There is no other option. This is for a surprise birthday party.”

I considered feigning a heart attack.

There was a long pause as the young man looked me over. When he realized I was at the point of tears, he looked over his shoulder to see if any Costco employee was watching. “Don’t tell anyone I helped you, ok? I will be in real trouble.”

I handed him my credit card, which was a Master Card, because earlier in the week I had gotten a call from my bank that someone was using my card number to buy questionable, expensive gifts online and had to cancel the card.

“I am sorry. Costco only takes Visa cards. You will have to return the cake.”

I told myself that this could not be happening.

I frantically pulled out my wallet and pulled out all my cards, desperately thumbing through them and pulled out a bank debit card, which miraculously had a Visa marking on it.

“Will this work?” I asked, holding my breath.

He scrutinized the card then nodded, put the card through and wished me a good day, warning me not to try a stunt like this again.

“Don’t worry,” I replied.

Only in America, I thought.

It has been well over a month since my last post and since we moved into our new digs at Collington.  A lot has happened during this time. Trump has shown his cards as to who he really is and what he wants. He is an obsessed, egotistical nutcase, who is well on the road to becoming a dictator, upsetting world economies and the post-World War II world order, and making life for so many people miserable. But you already know this, and this post is not about Trump.

I am BAAACK! And this post is about our move.

 What is Collington like for us? What about our experience so far?

Here are some first impressions:

1. The moving experience takes a toll. Moving is hard at any age but especially for old folks. In our case Collington required us—and I suspect everyone–to use a moving manager, which made all the difference. There is no way we could have pulled this off without the help of a firm that managed the entire process—Town and Country in our case—and they did a terrific job including hanging all our photographs and artwork. I think one of the factors which keeps people our age from moving is the challenge of downsizing—especially if the move is from a single family home. We had already downsized about ten years ago when we moved from our Cleveland Park, single family home to the Kennedy-Warren Apartments a few blocks away, but we still had to get rid of a bunch of stuff, and the experience wore us out. This is another reason for people our age to make the decision to move before the challenge becomes too great.  My main excuse for not blogging is that the moving experience has been exhausting and stressful and has taken a toll, but finally I am  recovered enough to get the blogging going again. When I talk to other residents about the stress of moving, most say something like, “Welcome to the club….”

2. The campus is gorgeous. There is no senior living community in the Washington metro area that comes close to the bucolic feel of Collington. It did not hurt that we moved in during the early spring with cherry blossoms and dogwoods in full bloom. But still where else in the Washington area–or practically anywhere else–will you find a community surrounded by towering trees, with meadows, landscaped courtyards, a small lake and three miles of walking and hiking trails—and still close to the downtown of a major metro area? (The Metro station is about a mile and a half away, and the trip to Metro Center takes about 30 minutes.) You won’t, and that is one of the main reasons we chose Collington. We have not been disappointed. I look out my home office window onto a large meadow surrounded by cottages linked by covered walkways. The cottages all have space for small gardens, most of which are beautiful. On the other side of the meadow are more cottages, most with patios and some with screened porches and sunrooms. Behind them is the perimeter road which surrounds the development on the campus and provides access to the community center with a large dining area, auditorium, library, bistro, bar, and meeting rooms. The apartments, the health care center, indoor swimming/lap pool and fitness center are adjacent. A small lake, home to a flock of Canada Geese, is behind the community building and apartments. On the other side of the perimeter road is the forest. There is no hint of any other development that is beyond the dense trees, so you have the feeling you are in some kind of Garden of Eden. Embry and I are city people, having lived some 50 plus years in a wonderful urban neighborhood near the zoo, so this is a change for us. Embry says she never envisioned living in a suburban neighborhood, but this feels like something different—a kind of fairy land. Of course, suburban neighborhoods are close by even though you can’t see them from the Collington campus. These neighborhoods are beautifully designed, high end neighborhoods with expensive homes. The residents are almost all African Americans, which in my view is a good thing, but I still bemoan the fact that so many of our neighborhoods in the U.S. remain segregated by race.

3. We love our cottage. Our cottage is perfect for us— about 1,400 sf and just a tad smaller than our Washington apartment—two bedrooms, two bathrooms, smallish kitchen, living room, den, sunroom, and outdoor patio looking out onto a large open area across from other cottages and a view of the surrounding woods. Our front door opens onto a beautifully landscaped grassy courtyard surrounded by other cottages in our cluster of 14 units. A covered walkway connects the cottages and provides covered access to the community center, about a five-minute walk away. In 1981 when I did the market analysis and feasibility study for the property, the concept of continuing care retirement communities was still in its infancy with not many CCRC’s on the East Coast. Since most of these communities were in the Philadelphia metro area, I spent a good bit of time visiting the CCRCs in Philadelphia, and I recommended that the design should be similar to that of Kendal at Longwood, a continuing care retirement community in the Philadelphia suburbs. The community which got built looks a lot like Kendal at Longwood. In the early 2000s Collington affiliated with the Kendal Corporation, an offshoot of the original Kendal community in the Philadelphia area. Full circle, as they say.
4. You feel a bit like a freshman entering college. Can you remember your first few weeks in college when you did not know anyone and all those who were in higher grades seemed well adjusted and you felt lost? The saving grace for college freshman is that since all the other freshmen classmates are just as lost as you are, you usually find other confused and lost people to bond with. And before too long you begin to make friends with those who are older and wiser and settle in. The main difference is that when you are a newbie at a senior living community, you probably are the only one moving in at the same time you are. So, yes, you feel a bit lost. For Embry and me the confusion and feeling of being lost has been softened by the friendliness of residents at Collington. Everyone nods and smiles and says hello. No exceptions as far as I can tell, at least not yet, and this makes a huge difference. And Collington has a system in place for easing the adjustment. We were assigned an “ambassador,” a very kind couple a tad older than us who have lived in our “cluster” of cottages for many years and whose job as an ambassador is to make us feel at home and welcomed. They have hosted us to dinner in the Collington dining room and introduced us to many of their friends. The week we arrived and after we got settled, our “cottage cluster” had one of its monthly pre-dinner socializing events, and we volunteered to host the group, which enabled us to meet most of the people living around us and show off our new home. That was a fun event though remembering names and keeping people straight will continue to be a challenge for a while. There will be a dinner next week for new residents, which happens on a regular basis depending on the number of move ins. That every resident has gone through the same experience we are going through I think makes people more understanding and supportive of newbies like us.
5. There are two generations of old folks living on the campus. Because of the large number of cottages (around 200, including a few even larger “villa” units), Collington has tended to appeal to a slightly younger population than most CCRCs. Average age for new residents is a little over 75 instead of the early 80s as is the case nationally, and there are more couples, around a third of all households. So, the age mix begins in the 70s and extends well up into the nineties, many of whom have lived here for well over a decade. That means you have “younger” seniors mixing with people who are old enough to be their parents. That also means you also see people using canes or walkers and some using electric wheelchairs. Before we moved, I remember being asked by some friends my age why I would consider moving into a community with a bunch of old folks. My reply was that at age 83 I am now an “old folk” (and like many here at Collington have started using a walking stick myself on longer walks). We old folks living here at Collington and other senior living communities are the survivors. But the experience of living with other people, some older and frailer than us, is also a reminder that we humans on the planet Earth do not live forever and the final checking out process is often messy and hard to navigate. That is the main reason cited by most of people I have talked to when I ask the question of why they chose a CCRC –the availability of health care and supportive services when that time comes.

But make no mistake: Collington is not a place where people come to die but rather to live life to the fullest, given the limitations associated with aging. Squeezing the last few drops out of the lemon, as I often say.

Stay tuned. More to come…