The politically correct term for where we are staying is a “Retirement Community”. Words like “Home” or “Facility” are not considered polite.

However, there is more to this than mere nomenclature… what we call things does matter… it shapes our preconceptions of what something will be like and influences how we interact with it.

Retirement communities today… especially this one (where other retirement communities regularly visit to see how they do things here), are designed for life… not the warehousing of people.

When my wife moved me in she described it as more like a resort than a “home”.

But don’t take my word for it… listen to a story that I have heard from two people now… one was the grandmother and the other was a person walking past them in the hall…

A grandmother and her grandson were walking down the hall when the grandson said to his grandmother, “This place is unfair!”

“Why?” asked the grandmother.

“Because it’s only for grandmas and grandpas but there are lots of things here that kids like to do too!”

Out of the mouths of grandsons… he is so right.

I can tell you this… I will be putting my wife’s and my name on the list at a retirement community a lot sooner than I thought. And I will also be having some conversations with my mother and mother-in-law when I move out… this is certainly not their parent’s retirement “home”.