Why are we reluctant to talk of old age that we must face one day? — Dawn

June in New Jersey has so far been wet, wily and wonderfully mystic. I say mystic because the century-old trees around and mist-filled hills and vales present a third dimension to life — human, spiritual and universal. On unusually surreal days, the mind travels beyond the present into the unknown mysteries of nature that surround the soul and leave footprints that lead towards reality in its starkness. Our life on planet earth hits one right on the face. How do we live life? When does life begin? When does it end? These questions take on an extrasensory urgency in an atmosphere porous with the pantheistical where time hangs suspended like fog in winter or mist in summer.

Last week, driving past sylvan settings with ivory blossoms still clinging to giant shrubbery refusing to shed as though they didn’t want to die, I come across the words ‘Discovery Years’ and ‘Second Inning’ writ (written?) large on a building front. It’s like a Wordsworth moment. These words, to me, appear ‘fluttering and dancing in the breeze’.
 
Just as the daffodils made the English Romantic poet pen his immortal poem and declare, ‘I gazed — and gazed — but little thought/What wealth the show to me had brought’ I too had to stop my car; and explore what lay beyond those lovely poetic words that seized my curiosity.

Discovery Years is a daycare. It claims to provide ‘a safe, clean, positive environment’ for children starting their lives. I saw babies as young as six-weeks-old and kids as old as 12-years-old. ‘We nurture both the child’s present needs and provide them with the tools they will need in the future,’ the director tells me as a baby bunny sitting inside a cage in the corner of her tiny but pretty office gives me a buckteeth welcome. I love the name, I tell the friendly woman. She seems pleased. It’s important for a child to discover his/her environment. We make it both educational and fun. ‘How children feel about themselves affects the people they are and the people that they will become.’

Stop! Children are ‘people’ is something I’m hearing for the first time. I always thought children to be children. And what does she mean when she says ‘people that they (children) will become?’ Frankly, I’ve never given it a passing thought. We as adults don’t consider thinking too deep into the future of our kids as long as they don’t bother us in the present. Am I right? I know of parents who block out the coming years of their kids and rarely have time to think ‘what they will become.’ The lady’s words like ‘positive setting that nurtures both their present needs, and provides them with the tools they will use in future education and future life’ get drowned as I’m lost in my own thoughts.
 
Discovery Years is such an appropriate title, I conclude. The blend of learning and fun must create a strong foundation for children to become lifelong learners.

The door next has ‘Second Inning’ stamped on it with an Indian woman’s image all complete with a red tilak welcoming you in. Before I can peer in, I see a bunch of elderly men, all Indians, dressed in their suits, amble out into the open lot. They seem okay. Not particularly throbbing with life and vigour as the youngsters next door. They are sedate, passive and expressionless. The word ‘Second Inning’ is as appropriate as ‘Discovery Years’. Indeed when one crosses over to the other side of 65, it’s said that one has entered the ‘golden years.’ Having lived their first inning and now retired, these seniors are ready for their second inning. They want activity, buzz and company.
 
Man is a social animal. He craves company of his peers. In America particularly, I have seen the aged talking to themselves or talking to their pets sitting on benches cutting heartbreakingly solitary figures. Their children have left them to fend for themselves.

Life is lonely, isolating and meaningless for the old. My neighbour downstairs is Angie, an 80-plus woman who until recently led a very active life. She’d cook, iron and clean her two-bed apartment herself. Daily, I’d see her drive around. She looked contented. On festive occasions she always dressed her front door with tasteful decorations.
 
Christmas and Thanksgiving was particularly special. She would have family come over to visit. Her only son Jack is in furniture business. He rarely came to see his mom. I never saw his wife. It was always Angie’s daughter and her husband who would come over to drive her to their home for the weekends. ‘I don’t feel like going every week,’ Angie once confessed to me. ‘I like staying at home and watching the television and doing my own thing… but what can you do?’

Angie’s favourite line was ‘What can you do?’

Then one day Angie was gone. Her car was still parked in its designated spot; her wooden ducks in a white boat were still standing outside the door; her glued paper and pencil asking the visitor to write down his/her message was still stuck to the storm door at the entrance. But Angie was missing. Earlier there had been episodes of fire alarms going on because Angie would forget to put off her stove when going out. Often she’d lock herself out. ‘My mom is in her early stage of Alzheimer’s,’ said her daughter one day. ‘We can’t let her live alone here anymore.’

I miss Angie and have no way of knowing whether she’s alive or dead. She may have played out her second inning and now returned to the pavilion retired…gone to heaven.

All these Indian gentlemen I see are enrolled in the ‘Second Inning’ adult daycare. Where are their wives? I want to ask them but it’s too personal a question. Maybe they all are widowers, who live with their sons or daughters and rarely go back home to India where their roots are.

It’s estimated that in New York State alone, there are 3.2 million seniors. This population will swell to 4.3 million by 2030. Seniors living at home is a popular choice at the moment. ‘But when one of them dies, either the husband or the wife, then it gets very lonely and impractical unless the house is retrofitted in a way that enables a senior to manage on his/her own,’ the woman at Second Inning tells me.

I am fascinated that under one roof, in the same block are two sanctuaries — one for the kids just setting out in the wide open world learning how to live; the other is for the old, aged and decrepit who huddle together (like kids?) learning how to let go of life. The two cycles of life is the stark reality that most of us often shun. More importantly, why are we reluctant to talk of old age that we must face one day — like it or not?

Think about it.
 
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