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An article in this month's Politico magazine, "Seniors Take Manhattan," is all about the ways that it's easier to "age in place" in a big city than almost anywhere else in the U.S. The author, Debra Bruno, marshalls tons of evidence in defense of that position. That's the calculus my husband and I applied when we decided to move to Manhattan back in 2002, when he was 51 and I was a few months shy of 49. As we mulled the pros and cons of his job offer, we thought about all the ways in which it's easier to be a very old person in New York: plentiful take-out, great public transportation, no need to shovel snow or worry about leaf-clogged gutters, an easy ride available whenever you tire out and want to just lift your arm and say, "Taxi!"
Now that my husband and I have lived here for more than 12 years, and are both in our early 60s and staring down the beginning of actual old age, I'm starting to think more about whether that's really true. From what I've seen of my mother, who also lives in Manhattan, living in a big city was great for her in her 80s, but everything is much harder now that she's 90, increasingly frail, increasingly forgetful, and increasingly home-bound. If you live in Manhattan and you're very old, you can't just zip into your car to do . . . whatever. If do get out, everything's a bigger schlep -- and for at least three months a year you have to worry about bitter cold or slippery sidewalks.
What would my ideal set-up be like for being 70, 80, 90? I can think back to what it was like for Mom when she was 80 and first moved from Queens to Manhattan -- she liked a lot of the people in her seniors-only apartment building, she loved taking buses to museums or concerts all over the city, she met a man who became her constant companion and was always good company, she spent time with me and my brother and our adult children, who lived in Brooklyn. But as she got more and more frail and forgetful, and after her beau died and many of her friends in the building died or moved away, Manhattan seemed less than ideal for her. Does that mean my husband and I were wrong when we thought about the city as the best possible place to be old?
So yeah, what I want is for my husband not to become old and frail and then to die. Short of that, I want us both to keep cognitively intact and reasonably mobile and healthy as long as possible. And while we're thinking about best places to grow old, how's this for an ideal set-up: having enough money to stay in our Manhattan apartment and ALSO to rent a place for three months or so, during the coldest New York weather, off somewhere in a warmer climate, with palm trees and a place to swim. A gal can dream, can't she.
