Moving my parents into their apartment was a hurdle in a race I’m still running. The next hurdle? I needed my parents to be happy in their new digs.
This was not a small task set before me. When the last place you’ve lived was your home of 48 years, the next place had best be prepared to bring it.
Most of the responsibility for being happy with the independent living community lay with my mom. If Willie is happy, then Indy is happy. If Willie is upset, Indy wants Willie to do whatever it takes for Willie to be happy.
In other words, Indy goes where Willie goes. She’s home to him. She’s all that matters.
Willie is far less romantic.
There were things I could do, though, to stack the deck. Willie, for example, was concerned that us kids would no longer just drop by, as we had when they lived in our house. It was the house we all grew up in. We thought nothing of walking in whenever we were in the neighborhood.
Before you ask, no. None of us ever walked in on them doing it. Like I said, Willie isn’t big on romance.
The apartment, however, was not our childhood home. Would we still have that level of comfort? Would we still just pop in? Willie strongly believed unannounced visits from her children were about to be a thing of the past.
So one day, not long after the move, I found myself in the old neighborhood. My errand done, my car automatically set out for my childhood home.
But it wasn’t my house anymore. I don’t think the young couple now living there would appreciate me waltzing through, a beer from their fridge in my hand as I called out for my daddy.
So I pointed my car towards my parents’ new home. Indy once told me, as a young adult moving from our house, that I could always come home again. But I’d never come home again. It was time I started listening to him, top to bottom. I couldn’t go home again. But my parents are home for me. That should be what matters.
They had to buzz me in when I arrived. If they were doing it they had plenty of time to avoid being caught.
But this little gesture of mine was just a wine tasting. Willie, on the other hand, was busy buying the vineyard.
For this to be home, she first needed the apartment blessed. A pastor friend of hers was only too happy, blessing the apartment during a friendly visit.
This, Willie asserted, did not count. For the blessing to count, we all had to be present. Willie. Indy. Me. My husband and kids. My brother and sister. Their children. My brother-in-law. My aunt and uncle. My cousin.
We’ve talked about this being a two-bedroom apartment, right?
Willie’s next move was signing Indy up for the Men’s Oyster Group. The Men’s Oyster Group spends one evening a month at a local restaurant, sampling the oysters and each other’s company. I asked Indy if he liked oysters. I couldn’t recall him ever eating one.
As it turns out, Indy does not like oysters. I don’t know if Willie knew or even cared. I do know that when my dad ordered a dish that was not oysters the Men’s Oyster Group explained such radical thinking was not allowed.
And Willie? She took a job manning the front desk on Friday mornings. Stop by the Friday evening happy hour and you’ll find Willie bartending. The food and sundries in the lobby café are supplied by Willie. The apartment’s newest board member? You guessed it.
My parents have date nights at the building’s movie theater. I was told the entire plot of Second Chance starring Jennifer Lopez. I was told how much Indy loves rom-coms.
“What’s a rom-com?” said Indy.
One day, my dad introduced me to a neighbor from my parents’ hallway. She had a fascinating history, Indy explained. It included fleeing from a civil war and a childhood in Europe.
Willie huffed. It seems this woman had told my mom that she is the leader of their hall. Well, Willie hasn’t been led by anyone in her life and she sure as hell wasn’t starting with this lady, civil war or no. Willie explained she had begun polling the other residents in their hall and did I know what they said? This lady wasn’t THEIR leader, either.
Willie feels she’d be a much better Leader Of The Hall than this lady.
Willie is probably right. After all, she told Indy he loves rom-coms and oysters. Look at how well that turned out.
Willie and Indy also joined the building’s pinochle group. This pinochle group is basically the movie Very Bad Things waiting to happen.
If you’ve never seen that movie, get on the stick. Pretend I’m the leader of your hall and do what I tell you.
The pinochle group, in what I hope is not a euphemism, requires players to swap partners. One of these players gets very angry when his partner plays poorly. We’ll call him Angry Indy because he has the same name as my dad.
I was visiting the apartment one day when a resident knocked at the door. He had come, he explained, to apologize for his bad behavior at pinochle.
I was all ears for this. I mean, more in tune to this conversation than any episode of Daredevil, Picard, or Orphan Black put together.
With his departure I rounded on my dad. “Was that Angry Indy?” I breathed, excited by this self-aware apology.
“No. That’s someone else from pinochle,” Indy explained.
Wait. Another dude from pinochle had been acting up?! What the hell was going on with this pinochle game?!
The months wore on. Indy and I boxed on Wednesdays. Willie and I visited Friday mornings, chatting as she worked the desk. The kids and I decorated for Christmas. The old men in the lobby told me I was pretty. Willie told me I came over too much.
One day, eight months after the move, I was taking my leave after one of my too-frequent visits. Willie was walking me to the elevator. I take the stairs, but she doesn’t know that. She’d think I was crazy.
In the hallway, she told me how happy she was. How for the first time, maybe in her entire adulthood, she could breathe. Being in the apartment had freed my parents from a house they could no longer care for properly. It had freed up money they had used to travel. Promise me, she said. Promise me, if I get sick again, you’ll do what you did before. You’ll fight for me. You’ll save me.
And in that moment, I was relieved. I was proud. My parents were happy. They’d put their backs into it. They’d made this a home.
I was also leaving. The Leader Of The Hall lady was fast approaching. She was upset with me because I hadn’t been bike riding since I had my children. I don’t need the ire of the self-proclaimed ruler of hallway C, second floor.
I get enough of that from her successor.
