Supportive Living

Supportive Living: The Commune
Musings of a Whimsical Mad Hatter


Our lives are at a crossroad. We are mulling over ideas about retirement, life style changes ,re-evaluating core values to guide our vision for our future, anguishing about decisions/choices and exploring ways to make things happen. Oh boy! Do wereally get this thoughtful and analytical about how we do things or don’t we just muddle through and try to make sense of what’s happening to us and make the best of or who knows maybe make worse of what life has given us. These days I feel like a muddler more than a planner but the other day Bonnie and I were addressing this and we got all excited about a plan!

The new millennium is trite now the way everyone had made such dramatic expectations from entering the new century but nevertheless it got us thinking about a V----s Millennium Convergence. And the reunion of the siblings bring the realization that we are all getting along in years, and of course we have been aware of how mama is getting older and had raised the question, what shall we do if mama gets sick? We have not inquired of mama if she has contingency plans about getting sick but certainly we assumed it will be our problem. Can we assume it will be others problem if any of us get sick or get very old? Maybe it is my depressed state at this point but I cannot think of anyone who I believe care enough about me to make my infirmity his/her problem. I do not look to my children to be obliged to care for me for love or duty for as the prophet said our children belong to tomorrow and cannot tarry with yesterday. I cannot look to a husband for care for as we know a marriage can disenchant or end in divorce, and neither can I look to friends for that’s just not expected of friendships. But I think like a Sicilian, I can understand the godfather’s affirmation of family and blood relatedness. Blood is thicker than water is truer to me now more than ever. So I’m convinced that when all is said and done we as siblings have the most vital bonding and we should look to each other for support and care. We are the original family and we started out as children living together and it would not be inconceivable to see ourselves in the dusk of our lives reuniting and living together again, experiencing the original togetherness as a family sharing the same blood coursing through our veins.

When I started out I have all sorts of dreams. My soul actually craves more adventure and passion than what my competencies and opportunities can provide. I constantly hunger for new experiences, to know more, to try new things, to taste whatever is exotic ,even strange. I have said my motto is, unless potentially fatal by all common sense deduction, “I’ll try anything once.” I want to be amongst kindred spirits. But I’m also enamored of history. During this VMC we are looking at our family history and we are getting desperate because mama is the only living link and we have not mined her knowledge yet of our family history. History helps put our present in perspective. It is playing out in very familiar form, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Our brilliant plan, Bonnie’s and mine, given birth during a moment of madness, in retrospect, is not original at all. It’s as old as the sands around Virac and Pasacao.

This all began when the neighbors began circulating a protest for a zoning request on Buice Rd. to build a dozen houses on 31/2 acres. Why that’s the acreage I have on our property. I never realized you could put that many houses on 3 acres, although I had a dream when we built our house here that I’ll build a gingerbread Victorian guest cottage in the woods behind the tennis court and when the kids have their families and we’re retired we’ll pass along the big house to one of them, most likely Jay-Jay, and Johnny and I will move into the guest house. Now, that’s exactly how mama and papa planned it when they built the apartment complex on Ateneo Ave. They envisioned keeping us all together, just like papa’s generation of Vargases have that family compound in Virac. Without thinking about this I had the same ideas for our own children. You know how these kind of plans turn out. No self-respecting child wants to live with parents in the childhood homestead, the children all want to see and live in the world.

I had envisioned keeping this house, with romantic family fantasies of being a permanent place to come home to, for the children and grandchildren, a solid, reliable physical haven, which will always be there no matter where they’ve been in the world. But no one is interested. Not the children towards the parental home.

But it’s a completely different matter for siblings in the empty nest phase of their lives to regroup and live together again. We are all looking for a place to build to retire to, we have already broached the idea of buying property adjacent to one another or at least be closer to each other, this is where the light bulb switched. I can subdivide my property into 5 or 6 building lots, get an architect or a developer to draw a really nice cluster housing plan with shared common areas like the swimming pool, transform the tennis court into a shuffleboard area or something, or have a lawn installed for croquet or for the grandkids to romp about, have an area for flower and vegetable cultivation, landscape with footpaths around the various cottages, for I see the cluster homes as cottages maybe Victorian or farmhouse style in feel with front porches and open plans with one-level living with master on the main floor and maybe a loft with extra bedroom or two for the kids and grandkids when visiting. Each sibling will own his/her own cottage and build according to the master development plan. The big house will be the center of shared family activities. I am envisioning that we will have evening dinners together and on certain nights may dress nice, have guests, we’ll have music or movies or mahjong. Holidays we may have grand reunions with our kids and grandkids. We’ll hire a cook and housekeeper and groundskeeper and assess each family a sort of club association fee. We can form a corporation and have bylaws to regulate our fiscal behavior.We’ll elect officers and have quarterly business meetings since we will surely have a complicated financial relationship which we would not want to interfere with our personal relationships. And being a corporation, we can start entrepreneurships. There’s so much talent and ideas for a business between us siblings, I don’t see why we shouldn’t pursue this in retirement. Just think how exciting this would be. I’m also thinking we can plan vacations together and get special group discounts. All these joint activities does not preclude personal time and privacy as we all have our own private homes and it’s up to us to decide whether to have company or enjoy solitude. As siblings age and retire they will be joining this group and eventually all of us will be back in the fold. Come to think of it this may also address our dilemma about mama. She can join us in this venture and she will be the first to build a cottage since she’ll be the first to qualify for supportive living. As we start getting infirm, we can add a nurse to our employees. We can stay in our homestead until we die, no one among us has to go to a nursing home and no one among us has to put any pressure on our kids to take care of us. When we die the subdivided property can be passed on to our heirs, then they can decide for themselves. You know, Martha Stewart is not the only one who can invent a life style and profit from it.