Quiddler and Tap-dancing Clowns
by Cynthia Trenshaw

What would be the alchemy between Leo Baldwin and Mary Brooks Tyler when they met for lunch with me in my Whidbey Island, WA, home?

Cynthia Trenshaw

We were scheduled to talk about “starting over” in later life, about creating community and tapping into personal and spiritual resources to make our own visions of aging a reality in totally new circumstances.

But for my part, I couldn’t wait to see how these two newcomers to the island, each very different from the other, would interact.

Leo is 86, stocky and strong, with welcoming eyes that always meet yours; a bred-in-the-bone gentleman who wears khaki slacks and a hat with a brown silk daisy. His license plate reads “GOIN4 9T”.

Mary Brooks is 52, has long, thick, untamed auburn hair; a woman determinedly creating her own rules, she wears boots, jeans, and handmade patchwork tops. Her bumper sticker reads “American by birth, Southern by the Grace of God.”

Leo is a professional fundraiser and an expert in the field of senior housing. Mary Brooks is a writer and folk artist, and an adjunct professor for Ole Miss. Leo arrived in the Pacific Northwest from Silver Spring, Maryland, Mary Brooks traveled here from Toccopola, Mississippi (emphases on the 1^st and 3^rd syllables of the town and the state).

Leo was divorced once and then widowed once, each after 30 years of marriage. Mary Brooks has been divorced “more than once.” Leo had traveled hundreds of thousands of business miles over the years before he sold most of his belongings in 2006 and packed what was left into a Ford Econoline van facing northwest. Mary Brooks had never in her life left a three-county area of Mississippi until 2004 when she headed toward Puget Sound in an overloaded rental moving truck with faulty brakes.

For reasons unique to each of them, both Mary Brooks and Leo came to Whidbey Island, WA, to establish a new life. Both have adapted to an environment quite different from what they left. Both have strong ideas about what kind of community serves, or does not serve, in the second half of life. Neither of them said what I expected them to say about new models of community, a new vision of aging, or “the second half of life” in general.

In our culture we usually describe who we are by what we’ve done and how we’ve earned a living. So we got that question out of the way first.

Mary Brooks taught writing at the University of Mississippi as part of a court-ordered program mandated by a racial discrimination case that was decided 30 years ago but was finally implemented only recently. The program was a support system for minorities, focused on writing and English, with an underlying mentoring aspect.

She’s also a folk artist, “actually a ‘found-object’ artist. Mississippi is great for that — the state is covered with junk, and there are no locked gates at the dumps. I did most of my best work in Toccopola, which means ‘Where the Roads Cross’ in Chickasaw.” She writes short stories about the characters that inhabit the South she loves. “Also, I’ve spent a lot of time being a grandmother from the time I was 45. But that doesn’t generate any income.”

Leo worked 14 years for AARP, developing programs that justified the organization’s nonprofit status, such as Widowed Persons Services and housing for elderly and disabled persons. He worked ten years in a private consulting firm in the field of senior housing, five years with the Enterprise Foundation which reconstructs distressed areas in cities, and four years as a fund raiser for a nonprofit organization serving the developmentally disabled.

“I lived most recently in Maryland, in suburban DC, 18 miles due north of the White House. I lived in a condo unit for 30 years with my second wife, Marion. The community started as senior housing, with no one under 55. There were 1,500 units. By the time I left in July of 2006 there were more than 10,000 people in that community, like a small city. I was active and busy outside that community, Marion was active and busy inside the community. My work required that I travel extensively. Then Marion had some strokes, was more and more immobilized, confined to our home. I became the caregiver, dressing, toileting, and bathing Marion, and preparing our food. She died in January of 2005. I headed west in July of 2006.”

I asked my guests, How are you creating new community for yourself?

MB: “I always WANTED to move away from the South. At 40 I began thinking about moving-away options — turns out Whidbey Island was the place. I’m a writer, and I discovered Whidbey Island by coming here to a writing workshop. I already knew five people here, mostly writers, when I arrived; that community is even stronger now. And I’ve grown close to my neighbors.

“I used to live on a farm, with lots of land and animals and a ‘kitchen garden’ where we grew all our own food. Grandfather was a blacksmith and he trained horses. Now I live where I can see the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascade Mountains to the east, and I can walk to the salt water of Puget Sound every day.

“Where I came from I had lots of space and privacy. Now I live in a mobile home park, so close to my neighbors I can hear their morning coffee perking. With everyone so nearby, it feels kinda like being off at ‘church camp’ in the South – albeit a very strange church camp!

“In the park we help each other a lot, like family. But it’s a different ‘family’ from what I’m used to.

“I’ve written from the age of 13, though often in secret. The South is a storytelling culture, so it is a natural for me to be a story writer. My heart community is mostly writers. But the way I talk is storytelling. My next door neighbor, Miss Vivian, is 81, and we swap stories all the time. From her I get the local stories of the island history. That makes this feel more like my ‘home’.”

LEO: “My daughter lives here, and she had such a workable network for me to fall into. I rented first, so I could explore the island. It helps to be able to drive.

“Soon after I arrived I got a call from a local church, welcoming me to the area. I ended up joining that church. My nonconformist religious background makes me nudge the pastor about changes. We’ve had conversations about housing, and I got an invitation to join a visioning committee around the topic of housing. That group introduced me to still other people, people involved with visioning for the future.

“In Minnesota I founded a life-care program, converting a 165-unit hotel into housing with a full range of care. Its mission was to ‘Do for people what they can’t do for themselves, but let them to everything else even if they make mistakes.’ I believe that’s crucially important in community.

“I’m skeptical of co-housing arrangements. It may look good today, but in three to five years things may not be nearly as compatible. People know too much about each other. Emotional responses generate problems to be solved, and then the relationships take a beating. I think senior housing should be managed, not self-supporting or self-governing. It’s best if individuals are not contractually locked into their living situations. To maintain their sense of being in control and independent, they have to have the right to leave.”

In this move, what did you leave behind that you can’t replace?

MB: “I left five generations of family behind – that’s the toughest part.”

LEO: “This past Christmas I sent out 80 Christmas letters, and had almost as many responses. It made me realize how big a separation this has been, how many people I left behind. I hadn’t known I’d had so many beautiful women in love with me!

“But I don’t really have relationships to go back to – I can’t reconstruct what I had there.”

What if you had to leave here and start over yet again?

LEO: “I’d do it the same way – get rid of my THINGS, pack my clothes and whatever else will fit in a family van, make connections when I arrive, borrow furniture, settle in.

“My father homesteaded in Montana in 1908; in the late 70’s, when he’d been widowed for 8 years, I asked him ‘How do you like living alone?’ He said, ‘You have to learn to live with yourself. If you can live WITH yourself you can live BY yourself.’ I think he was right. It’s not so much finding other people as deciding what is important for you. I value solitude, privacy, self-determination. I like challenges. We are problem-solvers, and if we can’t find a problem to be solved we’ll make one!”

MB: “If I moved again I’d first of all make damned sure that the rental truck had good brakes!

“I’d be more methodical, even in the midst of spontaneity. I don’t fear starting over again. I can find people with mutual interests no matter where I am. If nothing else, I can find the locals who are rich with the stories of their native place.

“Family matters to me. I hope some day to be geographically closer to my family again. Where I grew up, family WAS my community; we had a great time together. I’d like to be a grandmother close-up again, but I won’t force that to happen. I’d like to be surprised by it naturally. A strong sense of community just follows me, wherever I am."

Mary Brooks looks thoughtful. “In a way, my move away from my family was FOR my family, as well as for me. The South is so communal, so rural, and poor, that families have had to stay together to survive. For family to move away is frightening. But today my daughters have nothing to look forward to in the South. My leaving has given them permission to leave as well.

“Some day I’d like to own property that by its very nature calls in community to itself. I’m always up for the next adventure – any permanence that there is, is inside me. I trust the Mystery.”

Tell me about your inner guidance, your wisdom.

LEO: “What I practice is to sit on the edge of my bed at night for a few minutes and think about that day, or the near past: What I have done or been involved in or pondered and am concerned about. I don’t exclude fun things like the movies or playing Quiddler [a game like Scrabble, played with cards, that is popular locally], but mostly it is more sober: what have I done or thought about; how have I brought ‘peace on earth,’ justice to the abused? How have I responded to environmental/climatic issues? Have I been kind and thoughtful and caring enough to feel pleased about my personal contacts? Or have I overlooked or brushed aside opportunities in pursuit of some temporary pleasure?

“In the morning I reverse the process: I spend a few minutes consciously thinking about what opportunities the day has in store, and what I need to do to be ready to respond and to open new doors in the future.”

MB: “For me, everything is language. I’m open to listening to everything. What does THIS have to teach me? How about THAT? I open doors; I close doors. I pay attention. I pay attention to resistances inside me, those physical places that I often try to overlook, those times when my inner dialogue shifts into argument.

“And I remind myself that nothing is an accident.”

Who do you want to be standing around your deathbed?

LEO: “I don’t ever want to be on a deathbed. I don’t want to need anyone around the bed. If cyanide is justified for CIA agents, why not for me when it’s time?

“But barring that, I’d want caring professionals around me, aware of their authority and also thoughtful, knowing that they often create pain as well as alleviate it. I’d want my daughter and other family close by, encouraging me to go in peace.”

MB: “My mother was horrified when she realized I was really leaving Mississippi. She said, ‘You’re going off all alone and you’re going to die! Where are you going to be buried?’

“But I go where my own personal guidance tells me. I’m living life fully, and the flesh is just flesh, not soul. I don’t want to be dependent on medical technology, but I’m not afraid of dying. I want to still be doing my art when I’m 97. My Mamaw [grandmother] is 97, and frustrated because she can’t wash dishes any longer. But she’s holding spiritual energy for my daughters – I can see that. So I trust that my aging and dying will be okay too.

“But if I can, I want to go out with a bang. When I’m on my deathbed I’d like to have lots of tap-dancing clowns around me. I want my death to be a celebration of my life.”

So what HAD I expected of two such different people as Mary Brooks and Leo? I had expected each to have a strong desire for structure, for permanence, after their uprooting moves. Whidbey Island is one large county floating in Puget Sound; the south end, where they have settled, is rural and comparatively isolated, reached by car ferries from the mainland. This past winter there were several extended power outages. There are two small incorporated towns, no shopping malls or big box stores, one small hospital, one nursing home, and no continuum-of-care campus. But neither of these two people, not even Leo with his lifetime of experience in creating communities for seniors, feels a need for a structured living community for themselves as elders. Each has found a way to create a supportive community but neither seeks a residential community.

Neither Mary Brooks nor Leo assumes they know what the future holds. However things play out, both recognize the inevitability of change and the impermanence of life. As Leo said, “It’s interesting how our culture used to seem very sedimentary, now it’s so transient.” And as Mary Brooks responded, “I carry my permanence inside me.”

Maybe that’s the very essence of wisdom. For that matter, maybe that’s the strength of any community made up of people in the second half of life: to know oneself, to enjoy one’s own company, to trust oneself, and from that position of strength to reach out to others.

Mary Brooks and Leo have that strength in common.

And it turns out they have another, unexpected, thing in common: A few days ago, when Leo went to pick up his mail, he was surprised to see a letter in his post office box addressed to “Mary Brooks Tyler.” He knew that in a couple of days he was going to meet someone with that name, and he wondered how on earth this letter had come to him.

It turns out that when Mary Brooks first moved to Whidbey Island she’d had PO Box #1425; she had moved a year later to an area with home postal delivery. Before he left Maryland, Leo’s daughter had “gotten the process of moving started” by renting a local post office box for him – and he was assigned to #1425!

So before they hugged goodbye, Leo delivered Mary Brooks’ mail to her, a symbol of the alchemy and synchronicity in which they both trust, in their second half of life.

Cynthia Trenshaw lives on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound and is a teaching colleague of PeerSpirit, Inc., specializing in issues of aging. She is certified by the State of Washington as a Professional Guardian for elders and a registered nursing assistant. She is nationally certified as a hospital chaplain and a massage therapist. For several years she was chaplain of a 200-bed nursing home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and later became a teaching practitioner at the Care Through Touch Institute in San Francisco, serving homeless people on the streets, under the viaducts, and in the shelters of the Bay Area. She earned her master's degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1998 just before she turned 56. Her master's thesis focused on Circle as a spiritual practice. A Harvest of Years, her short guide to working with circle groups, may be purchased through PeerSpirit.com.