How do I get in on the Active Adult Community scene?

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition's insert on "Mature Lifestyles" 3/16/12

I’m wondering how and when I can get in on the “Active Adult” scene.  I’m curious about what goes on behind those fenced, manicured communities.  Are they keeping something in, or keeping the rest of us out? 

Haven’t you seen those billboards that advertise “Communities for the Active Adult?”  These little enclaves are restricted to those who are 55 and older.  Why, I wonder?  What do these communities do that is so special?  Are their backyard barbeques superior to the ones in neighborhoods populated by younger, less experienced chefs?  Are they saucier, more mellow, or do they use aged beef?  Is the loudest noise these residents want to hear going to be that of themselves snoring? 

Or is it just the opposite?  Are these people being wild and they don’t want anyone else to know it?  Now I’m thinking of “adult” in the context of those sickening, pasty yellow billboards that are plastered all up and down I-95.  They serve as much to pollute the mind as they do to promote their products.  Or maybe it is a tamer kind of wildness, where the residents are biking and skating around their neighborhoods without protective gear so as not to be poor role models?  (You know how impressionable those silly 54-year-olds can be.) 

And what happens when one spouse is significantly younger than the other?  Is the couple’s qualifying age determined by averaging, or by the younger partner?  Some of the more severe cases of May-December couples may wind up being disqualified.  

I guess the assumption here is that couples of the 55+ age group are not going to be bringing along a bunch of ragtag, crusty-nosed, children.  Because that can take the active right out of the adult.  I suppose these communities are for empty-nesters.  Disqualified, again. 

Mostly, these communities are meant for Baby Boomers.   “Baby Boomer” refers to the generation of people born between 1946 and 1964.  Technically, I have missed being a Boomer by two years.  Two years too late - as in I was born in 1966, not 1944, Smart Aleck. 

I have almost a decade before entering this esteemed phase of mature adulthood, but even in 2021, I doubt I will qualify.  It’s not the “adult” part that I will have a problem with.  I can sit through a war documentary as well as any other adult counterpart, and only doze off once or twice.  It’s the active part that will be problematic, of course. 

What does it mean to be an active adult?  You can clip coupons faster than your arthritic counterparts?  Does it mean you can zip into a handicapped parking spot before your neighbor, with her faulty eyesight and even faultier driving, sees it?

Of course, these are exaggerations.  If you look at a modern “mature” adult, you will probably see someone who is more fit than you, and more engaged in intellectual and community events than you were even aware of.  They just don’t make grandmas and grandpas with all those telltale signs of knitting needles and graying hairs the way they used to. 

Besides, at 55, you aren’t exactly a senior, unless there’s a discount involved.  If there’s a discount, we all want to be seniors.  We don’t even mind being entry-level seniors then - sort of a junior-senior.   Unfortunately, these discounts seem to be applied only to products with a senior stigma.  These would be medical products that are so embarrassing that you don’t want to confess to using them.  These are only advertised on channels being watched by aging adult males, well past bedtime: namely, The History Channel at 8 p.m. onwards.  Every ailment and dysfunction known to man, and mostly to man, gets good air time here.

That’s the tragic thing about aging: It’s so hard on you, physically and mentally.  Right when you have the experience and wisdom to handle it all, your equipment chooses not to cooperate.  It begins to deteriorate in an indiscriminate and merciless manner.  Sure, we all know there’s really only one alternative to the advancement of our years and the wear and tear on our systems, unless that secret, anti-aging product, for which you just received a coupon in the mail, really works.

I am still curious about the goings-on in these active adult communities.  I am planning to check one of these out some day.  Until then, I guess, I will have to be satisfied to live in a non-active, immature community.  It’s called “my house.”  Here’s one place where I am doubly qualified to be.

Mirror, mirror...

Last week, I shared the not-so-secret fact that I have added twenty pounds to my frame in the past two years. Thank you for rejoining me for this very important announcement. You could be worrying about world peace, global warming, the floundering economy, the healthcare system, pollution, the state of education, or moral decay in general, but you have chosen instead to drop your worries and your seventy-five cents to follow up how I had to move up a pant size.

Trying on one pair of pants after another, I had time to reflect on more than just my looming figure in the dressing room. I recalled envying people with dimples. Now, I too, had dimples of my very own. These, unfortunately, were around my knees, and those are significantly less charming.

My worries, as usual, are selfish. I like the relative maturity and stability of being a 42-year-old woman, but I would prefer that Mirror Mirror show me my 22-year-old, pre-children self. Perhaps you will be kind and say, “Vineeta, you don't' look so bad.” But then you will hasten to add, “for having had six kids, you don't look too bad at all.” That's like telling the hospitalized man wrapped entirely in bandages, “You look great, considering you were just run over by an 18-wheeler.” I do appreciate the intent of the compliment, (and I will take any compliments gladly!) but then I recall that the last time I bore a child was over four years ago. That's enough time to get a college education. Is it too much to hope to lose a few pounds?

After my Vision of the Dimpled Knees, I had a conversion experience: something had to change. This must be why I was in the changing room. Fortunately for me, our church was offering a free exercise class then.

Free is a word that is tossed around quite, um....freely these days. We have sugar-free, fat-free, lactose-free, pesticide-free, free speech, free elections, and, my favorite, free-free. Free-free is something that truly costs you nothing. This kind of free is on the Endangered Freebies List, except for people who are unable to read fine print. These people keep getting snaggled in all sorts of “free” deals. Free-free is my favorite kind of free. Oh, did I mention that already? I’m sorry; I should have warned you. This column is not repetition-free. My usual audience, consisting of six children, requires that everything be repeated. Everything. Repeated.

Many people are preaching the good news of getting fit to improve cardiovascular health, energy levels, endurance, and quality of life. These are the people who tend to look good in exercise apparel. We all want to be healthier, of course, and if our figures look better, who will object? My motivation is reversed, however. Give me the better figure first, and then, if I can liver longer and stronger to continue my chore-list of domestic duties, so be it.

I wish I had my priorities right. I want the heart and compassion of Mother Teresa, but then, I draw back. Could I adopt her simplicity: the plain and paltry wardrobe that cloaked her tiny stooped figure; the face that, lined by the deepest of wrinkles, radiated love and humility? Yes, I want her heart, but then I pass on the platter for looks. I look longingly at the dishes serving the latest pop divas, the original Pop Tarts. I wonder why I can't have both at the same time, but perhaps they lie on divergent paths. These platters may not even be served in the same banquet hall.

Grandma Strikes Back

“I see you finally found your mommy,” the lady cooed to my youngest when she saw me washing his hands in the restroom. He had been crying for me earlier on the campus where I was checking on some things. My friend was entertaining him, and although he is so fond of her that he plans to “marry Miss Rose,” he still suffered (or made me suffer) from separation anxiety. The lady in the restroom now recognized him as the owner of the wailing lungs.  Then she paused to re-examine my face.

Whenever strangers stop to look at me, I become fearful or vain. Self-conscious that I might have spinach (or realistically, candy) lodged somewhere in my teeth, I shut off my crooked-teeth exposing smile and looked down to discreetly perform the tongue-as-a-toothpick probe. Feeling safe in this regard, I allowed a small and sad thought to enter my small and sad mind. Dare I think it? Did this lady recognize me from this column? Sometimes people do, and are kind enough to stop me and say so.

But I had little to fear here.  The main advantage of being published in a family hometown newspaper is that you can continue to be just as anonymous as you might have ever hoped to be. The cooing lady halted and checked herself after conducting her facial cross-examination. She addressed my son again, “Oh, or is it Grandma that you found?”

Grandma? Grandma??!!! Too bad “Grandma” wasn’t equipped with her walking stick, or she might have executed a few deft, eyesight-improving maneuvers. Too bad Grandma was showing additional signs of aging and was too slow to retort with, “Oh, I’m not his grandmother, but thank you for the compliment. I’m actually his great-great-great-grandmother, arrived here fresh from the crypt.”

I realize that at 42 then, it is conceivable (pun intended) that I might be a grandmother. A young mom of 21 whose child repeats the feat, could very easily be a grandmother. And being an “older mom,” I should be used to comments like this.

I was 23 when my eldest was born, but after all, I was 38 when my last child was born. A few years before that, when I was 35 and expecting my fifth child, I had noticed an “AMA” stamp on my chart at the ob-gyn office. I might have been flattered to be included in the American Medical Association by virtue of being an experienced mother. Remember those old cough-syrup commercials that had taught us to appreciate the value of “Dr. Mom” with her maternal, medical wisdom and her keen ability to select the appropriate cough syrup?

But alas, AMA is no compliment. It is a red flag to alert medical personnel that the woman this chart represents is risking childbirth in spite of her Advanced Maternal Age. My nurse-midwife, in the initial interview, had asked, “Have you had a change of sexual partners?” No. “Are you now, or have you recently been using drugs or other illegal substances?” No. “Alcohol?” Again, the answer is no.

I’m sorry to disappoint people, but my life is just not that exciting. If I go to the grocery store and can actually find and use a coupon to save a dollar, that’s excitement. Getting a “real” handwritten piece of mail in the daily deluge of bills that pepper our junk mail, that’s excitement. If someone else changes a roll of toilet paper in the house, then that’s excitement, bordering on delirium. Getting my 3-½-year-old (who still wears 2T clothing) to actually eat a complete meal – that’s just about as giddy as my life ever gets.

Whether I seem young or middle-aged or incredibly old to you will depend on your vantage point on the great number line of life by which we define our time-strapped selves. It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me what my age is, because as long as you’re in circulation on Earth, I figure, you have to land somewhere on the number line. I must admit to paying closer attention to obituaries nowadays. If I may borrow the words of Arundhati Roy, the 1997 Booker Prize-winning Indian author of The God of Small Things, being 42 is like “Thirty-one. Not old. Not young. But a viable, die-able age.”

There are people whose every hope for happiness hangs on a number. What’s my age? What’s my salary? What’s my GPA and class rank? What’s my weight? What’s my car’s mileage? What’s my SAT score? What’s my credit score? How many kids do I have? How much money is (oops, was) my retirement account worth? I would like to pretend that numbers don’t really matter that much to me, because I know the One who holds my life in His hands. But in spite of that, I haven’t been able to achieve that state of sublime philosophical detachment from the numbers that shape and quantify my life.

So the other day, when I stepped out of my car and caught sight of a puffy-faced, middle-aged woman, it bothered me to recognize it as my own reflection. I don’t mind being 42, but I don’t necessarily want to be instantly pegged as being 42, if not older, as Ms. Grandma-Detector seemed to have done.

Fear and vanity are not only the pathetic plight of the middle-aged woman, they are the basis of a booming, billion-dollar industry of make-up, weight loss, tooth-whitening, de-wrinkling and cellulite-defeating agents. According to James M. Rubenstein in An Introduction to Human Geography (the textbook for an online course that I took through NOVA- Northern Virginia Community College), the United Nations reported that “Americans spend more per year on cosmetics ($8 billion) than the cost of providing schools for the 2 billion in the world in need of them ($6 billion), and Europeans spend more on ice cream ($11 billion) than the cost of providing a working toilet to the 2 billion people currently without one at home ($9 billion).” A sad and sobering thought, is it not?

So what’s the lesson in all this? To rise above self-absorption and not worry what I look like? At this age, apparently, the three B’s of basic hygiene (bathing, brushing teeth, and brushing hair) just don’t seem to cut it. Or is it to never venture out in public without eye make-up? On any given day, it depends on my resolve and my mood. Either way, though, I’m definitely going to look into that walking stick.