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What Immigrants Teach us about Aging

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Bowne Park 2014 by Janet Simpson Benvenuti

Last Sunday, my early morning walk took me to Bowne Park in North Flushing, NY an oasis of trees, grass and walking paths surrounding a pond in the borough of Queens. I wandered past the neatly manicured lawns of single family homes first built by the successful physician and attorney sons of Irish and Italian immigrants, now inhabited by their Korean and Chinese counterparts. I joined the dog walkers doing laps around the park, past the basketball court where my son once played, perfecting his three point shot through a chain-link hoop. On one end of the court, a future Jeremy Lin practiced his layup while on the other, four grandparents stretched in synchronous motion, practicing their tai chi.

Ahead, an elderly woman stepped up and down the on the lower rung of the climber where my daughter once scampered gleefully showcasing her skills on the slide and jungle gym. On my left, another did gentle pushups on the back of a park bench near which two men and a woman chatted, speaking in tongues and sharing a laugh.

I live in two worlds. In one, I engage with global leaders worried about an aging America. State governments shudder at the cost of long-term care. Health care providers predict rising demand while business leaders offer employees flexible benefits and housing leaders construct more assisted living complexes, anticipating future demand from aging boomers. In this world, I speak nationally about strategies for supporting an older America, coach families who need guidance through the perplexing maze of available options while encouraging entrepreneurs bursting with ideas that can make a difference.

In the second world of my personal life, I see easy solutions that are blind spots to those whose vision of the future includes separating seniors from their families. I returned home from my walk, climbed the front stairs, and unlocked the door of my mother-in-law’s home that I have shared for the past twenty years. Despite the street appearance of a single family home, the interior opens to three separate apartments each inhabited by family members. As children and teenagers, a visit to grandparents by my children meant running upstairs while a trip to their great-aunt and uncle required a loop outside to the backyard and three steps back inside to knock on their kitchen door. My husband, his brother and cousins were raised in this home along with their grandmother after whom our daughter and niece are named.

This week, we put the family home up for sale. At 89, it’s time for my mother-in-law to transition to a new home closer to her physician son. With only two days notice, 19 realtors attended the open house, and we received 15 offers within five days, all but one from Asian families planning to use the home as it was intended, a place of inter-generational love and support, with walking access to stores, the post office, buses and the railroad, a 20 minute commute to downtown Manhattan.

In few decades, my husband and I will need to downsize. Will we move into a retirement community in a sunny locale, find an assisted living community to live with strangers, or will we build a new three family home and invite our children and theirs to grow old with us? Only time will tell.

c 2014 Circle of Life Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.


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