Every year, around the first of November, Lexington Family Magazine publishes its Successful Aging Resource Guide, a collection of stories and directories to help seniors and Sandwich Generation families navigate the complicated landscape of aging.
In preparing this guide, I meet and interview seniors who are doing just that -- aging successfully.
This year I met Magarette Scanlon, a 74-year-old resident at The Lafayette retirement community, her daughter Tina Hughes and granddaughters Allison, 12, and Jacklyn, 8.
The two lovely young ladies were all dressed up when I met them because they were joining their grandmother for lunch in The Lafayette’s elegant dining room. I was there to take their photo, but Magarette and the girls were anxious to give me a tour of the place.
As we rode the elevator and walked the halls, I was tickled to see the girls greeting resident after resident, asking about their pets, their health, their lunch plans.
And the girls weren’t merely talking to their senior friends -- they were hugging them, thrilled to see them.
When I asked the girls what their favorite part about visiting their grandmother was they both answered without hesitation -- “The people.”
I am so jealous! I want my two daughters to have lots of surrogate grandparents too! I want them to feel comfortable around people of a different generation.
I want them to have a “village” to watch over them, to hold them accountable in their behavior and to inspire them.
Not that my girls don’t have terrific grandparents -- they’ve had four.
But Allison and Jacklyn have a whole community full of “grandparents.” I want that too!