Once again, I really enjoyed this visit to the Senior Center. As with our last trip, there was a lot of joy and humor in our conversation, and also a lot of passion. That’s an interesting breakdown of a stereotype that I find applied to old women in particular–that they’re complacent or checked out, not present enough to have opinions, or to be excited or angry.
Giselle noted this in their blog post–we were at the same table–we didn’t focus heavily on the book itself but it served as an entrance into a much broader conversation that delved into our personal and family lives.
We discussed cultural values around aging people, which I was excited to talk about as it’s something I consider often. My dad is from India, and India being a culture deeply connected to family structures, it’s understood without discussion that it’s the responsibility of adult children and grandchildren to care for their aging parents. When my grandfather started to get sick and to need more help, my family helped my grandparents move to Bangalore, where my cousin and his wife live, so that they could ensure both of my grandparents had the support they needed. My grandfather has since passed, and as my grandmother is getting older, my dad is planning to bring her to California to live with him. There was no questioning this decision–culturally there’s no other option.
My mom’s side of the family, on the other hand, handles aging very differently. My mom and her family are white Midwesterners and consistently as family members have aged they’ve been placed in nursing homes. At the senior center, we discussed this pattern as one that’s very American: because our culture is so individualistic, there’s a major reluctance to shift one’s own life to accommodate the needs of our elderly relatives. Where my dad’s side of the family will move, change jobs, find new schools for their children, etc., if that’s what’s required to support one another, my mom’s side prioritizes personal wellbeing over the wellbeing of the unit.
I often feel torn between these two ideologies–knowing that community support and the wellbeing of the people around me is deeply important to me, and that I want to hold boundaries around taking care of myself before I try to take care of others. We had a long talk about the way that institutional structures in America make it almost impossible to do both of those things–we can hardly support ourselves, so we can’t support each other, and there’s no adequate system in place to properly support folks as they age. While that’s always a frustrating fact to remember, I found it validating to hear that other people are feeling the same frustration, and hopeful to know that there are people across generations who want to work to change that.
Coming to Age 