Connie and I both are creating new communities as live apart but try to stay together. It’s a good thing…
I THINK I am settling into a new sense of community after six months of living apart from Connie and I sense she is doing the same.
This morning I sat on my flower-filled patio, the Buddha water fixture gurgling softly and read the news on the iPad. I miss holding a newspaper but that’s a musing for another day. On the balcony above me a Golden Retriever is lapping at his water bowl. The Golden and I go back a ways.
When Connie and I moved in more than three years ago a young woman down the hall had just gotten a Golden pup. Now he’s grown, she’s fallen in love and moved in with a fellow from another unit and they live above me, so we are still neighbors.
I’ve gotten to know the folks up and down the hall from me since moving down from the third floor. I can go pick up a bagel in the common room of a morning and see some of my old neighbors from the third floor.
I have been going to the pool most days. I figure at my age a little bit of Vitamin D-filled sunshine isn’t going to make a huge difference in whether my skin becomes host to cancers and if it does, well, not sure how big a damn I give at this point.
The birds were singing this morning, the big Golden was lapping away, one of the apartment staff stood beside my patio and chatted me up for a few minutes and after a month or so in the new unit, I felt like I was settling in.
When Connie and I did our 9 a.m. check-in call she reported breakfast went well and brought me up to date on how her unit mates were doing and behaving. Some good, some not so good and some pretty poorly. She outlined her day. She repeated a few things, not for emphasis but because that’s how conversations go at this stage of the journey.
The apartment complex is hosting a BBQ Thursday. I told her I was going to bring her back for that and for an hour or so she can step back into what was “our” community even if it’s become more “my” community. Then I’ll take her “home” to her community and sit with her in it for a while, as I do every evening.
I’ve come to treasure community, even if it shape-shifts from time to time. For each of us, in different ways, it feels like a warm blanket, protection against a reality we both know is out there, but we want to keep waiting at the gate for as long as we can.
Rich Heiland, has been a reporter, editor, publisher/general manager at daily papers in Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and New Hampshire. He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Xenia Daily (OH) Daily Gazette, a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year. He has worked as a consultant doing public speaking and training business specializing in customer service, general management, leadership and staff development. He and his wife live in West Chester, PA. He can be reached at [email protected].