In the Land of Adult Diapers
The other day, I was invited to a local retirement home for a reading attended by the inmates who constantly swung between amused, depressed and borderline demented. When we think about these places in my city, more often than not, the first thing that comes to your mind isn’t Seinfeld’s Del Boca Vista but a building that looks like a sterile, sad life support machine. In a certain way, it is, because these people act like mutual emotional crutches, aided by the nurses that try to make their daily life into something worth getting out of bed for. They do it through various workshops, like writing and a reader’s club. It sounds almost like an amalgam between Nora Ephron and The Golden Girls. With the difference that there was no Blanche Devereux here. One of the ladies was famous for having had been the first woman teacher with a driving licence in her school. These small triumphs are what feminism is about for me.
I was reading an excerpt from my novel The Crystal Bell, a chapter based around my mother’s apple cake recipe. Someone in the audience started sobbing silently: it turns out, they lived just around the corner from my family so it hit a nostalgic nerve that brought it all back. A moving gesture of genuine understanding, and she wasn’t the only one. When I arrived an old man hugged me and wouldn’t let go, as if I were a lifeboat. It might as well be true, who knows how many visitors he gets in the first place. My friends who were behind the whole idea, coming in with trays of food and drinks, were equally moved by the experience. The nurses talked in a kind and warm manner to the inmates, warning them about things that they shouldn’t touch because they already had too much of it beforehand. After a certain age, people once again turn into childlike creatures. Their needs are basic, reminding me that what they need from us is what we’re all about: good company, shared values, positive energy and gratefulness for unacknowledged blessings we get used to a bit too easily.
There was a faint whiff of urine in the air, the hallways were long and painted in the coldest shade of white, in complete contrast to the garden surrounding the place outside, full of greenery, little separate seating areas and hedges close to the riverbed underneath it. We had finger food, chocolate chip cookies and apple pie. I went outside and saw an old man sitting on a bench in the shade, sipping coffee and having a smoke. Across the table from him was an old woman, but she didn’t talk to him. Her eyes stared towards the river and the ducks swimming in it, doing their daily route. On the other side is a river island, stuck in the middle of the city between its two beds like a ship parked in a dock. I’m one of its lucky inhabitants, originally it was inhabited by artists, writers, publishers, politicians, secret service agents and polite old ladies who make great cakes. Or at least that’s what you tell them before you throw it away.
There must be a story behind this man’s face. What he told me was indeed worth listening. His life sounds like the perfect material for a novel I can imagine myself writing. We’re not done talking yet, I decided right there I was going to come back and spend some more time with this guy. Who knows if he’ll be open to the idea but from what you can see there, he hasn’t much to do around there apart from sitting in that garden and looking through the fence out into the streets where cars and stray dogs pass by. Other inmates spend a lot of time doing the exact same thing, ocassionally interrupted by the nurses that inquired about their therapy or discipline. You can’t help but feel a little sorry for them: because when you look at them and it scares the living daylights out of you. One day it might be you, drooling into a handkerchief. Didn’t I tell you to take it slow with the cake? You already had enough for today. Take it easy with the caffeine, it will make your heart race more than you’re able to handle it and then we have a problem.
I watched in slight disbelief and I froze from the chills that ran down my spine. Then it was time to come back up for air. Today was about them, not about me. He was still there, puffing away, looking me straight in the eyes. Having revealed he’s got a stash of his own poems, what I saw there slightly changed: no longer this bitter, lonely creature but someone who refuses to share though it might be worth reading. It no longer matters since there’s no one to share it with, he said. But it’s a perfectly relatable problem: everyone’s got something they’d want to take with them into the grave. There won’t be enough room in mine for Tutankhamun’s gilded chariots but I’m a low maintenance kind of future corpse anyway. Queen Victoria allegedly left a 14-page long instruction manual for her own funeral. While I’m certainly a bitchy queen at times, I rarely go all the way like that.
What surprised me the most was instead of a slow, undignified decay, the inmates felt like a compassionate community that had a fulfilled life however it might look like to outsiders. It’s not a social trashcan or a waiting room for the morgue. There’s more to it. While I don’t know if they got visitors like family members or friends, they don’t seem to lack good company. Loneliness kills more people than covid, cancer and obesity combined. What I saw there was anything but. While some might have health issues, it’s not for a lack of socialisation. The number of people in attendance suggested they were quite interested in events that break their predictable routines and expose them to something new, a fresh breeze from the outside. Of course, I was more than happy to humor them.
There are differences that define your ability to fit in. I was told by a friend who’s a writer and a social worker for elderly single people that those who move into facilities like these from an apartment block tend to live longer and fit in better. On the other hand, if you got used to live in single housing, you’re unlikely to last long in a place like this, according to his experience. I call that the fish out of water situation. Humans are social, tribal beings which is why introverts are a mystery, self-sufficient and deliberately distanced from everything inside this collective bubble. Not just because it takes bravery to do it in a world of family discounts or resorts, billions of smartphones the screens of which are plastered with babies. It’s also due to the fact that social media, Hollywood and peer pressure brainwash suggestible young people into believing they’re never enough on their own.
You might contradict me by emphasizing the cultural ecosystem of liberal capitalism where your life is a career ladder and you don’t have time to even consider a long-term and energy-consuming investment like having a family. You’re encouraged to throw away all that in favor of making money, unable to put your roots anywhere because that ladder can take you from New York to Nairobi to Nebraska in a matter of weeks. Who’s got any time for a private life in a mindspace like that? Don’t be silly. The inmates at the retirement home didn’t strike me as particularly unhappy, rather introspective and focused on the good things that remain attainable. It triggered questions I postponed for years: how much is enough and what it takes to feel like you belong, how much you’re willing to compromise.
We’re a picky generation. Maybe it’s our unwillingness to get out of our own echo chambers or looking for the best match in the sea of dating apps, maybe not enough of us face the ultimate test, the “in sickness and in health” part of the wedding wows. This is the most difficult challenge in every marriage, the litmus of strength which is the basis of your bond with the other person in this emotional equation. It’s easy to live the good life in good times. What it actually comes down to is what happens when you’re in desperate need of help. Single people at least have a plausible excuse. If you’re married, that’s a different tune which is sometimes too hard to hear. The divorce rate among my generation is likely higher than here. It reminds me of that lady who kept waiting for the perfect occasion to wear her special dress. In the end, she was buried in it.
The man I talked to went from being a good student to a political dissident to a drug smuggler in South America. Life may be an ordeal for some, but his is a story waiting to be told. I’m not sure I’d have the guts to go through all of it, but that makes the difference between those that write and the rest who live through it, with occasional exceptions. This is one of the most important lessons of writing, once again reiterated during my visit. The most important thing is to keep your eyes and ears open and the stories will come to you. Like last night, when I attended a classical music concert with a baroque cantata called “I’ve got enough”. Do I? Who knows. There was a conversation between two men seated next to me. The son of one of them barely escaped death from a big parasol that fell down and missed hitting him within a few inches. That’s also an untold story. But for another time.
