My grandmother, Betty Griffith, recently came to Durham from Virginia to check out our new place. She loved the Bull City sunsets, the rooftop terrace that overlooks Durham Bulls Athletic Park and the stellar restaurants, like NanaSteak, within walking distance.
When I do a quick mental run-through of everyone I know, my housing situation and my lifestyle most resemble — drum roll, please — my grandmother’s.
Stay with me, here. At 85 years old, she lives in a one-bedroom apartment (in an assisted living facility in Virginia). My husband and I live in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Durham. She has access to all kinds of common spaces outside of the walls of her private home – a gym, patios, porches, libraries, sitting areas. So do we. The staff in her facility organize group activities like wine tastings, art shows, holiday parties and corn hole tournaments. Our apartment team coordinates rooftop gatherings, fitness classes and nights out at nearby restaurants. An elevator makes it easy for her to visit a friend on a different floor or head to a distant common area. Same. When it’s time for her to take the garbage out, she simply puts it by her door for the valet trash service to grab. Ditto. If she doesn’t feel like 
getting in her car, a shuttle will take her to a medical appointment, the grocery store or the mall. Being in downtown Durham, we leave our cars parked all the time and walk to run errands, head to a concert or dine out. If something breaks, clogs, flickers or stops working entirely, she calls maintenance to take care of it right away. So do we. Free from the complications of school schedules, veterinary appointments or a malfunctioning A/C unit, we seemingly have more spare time than others – for socializing, reading, watching movies, exercising and so on.
There are obviously some differences, the most notable being that her facility is populated exclusively by senior citizens. Our apartment community is home to babies, grad students, retired professionals and everyone in between. Her place offers an apartment cleaning service, so she doesn’t have to bend down to rid herself of dust bunnies. My husband does 98% of our cleaning, but that’s not quite the same thing as having a cleaning service (ha!). 
Through her meal plan, she can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in the downstairs dining room (although she sometimes cooks in her apartment or goes out). We don’t have a dining room here – but there are plans to get a barista! Neither of our households have pets – although we do have that option, while she doesn’t. Medical professionals are on hand inside her facility, should she ever need them – we don’t have that.
How did each of us get here? My grandmother owned a home for decades, worrying about yard work, snow removal and roof repairs long after my grandfather – afflicted by Parkinson’s – went to live in an assisted living facility several miles away. It was only after he passed away in 2013 that she decided to give up all of that responsibility. Her children and grandchildren were grown and living out of state. It was time to simplify.
My husband and I became homeowners in our late 20s, lasting six years before admitting that we didn’t find pulling weeds, cleaning gutters and removing a bird that had found its way into our attic to be all that fun. So why we were doing it? The answer: Because society told us that’s what you do when you grow up. You buy a house. You maintain a house. You bring tiny people or tiny animals into the house. Maybe one day you upgrade to a bigger or a newer house. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I used to carry around some guilt about building the life that I want. (How absurd was that sentence? Whoa!) I used to question why I wasn’t like everyone else. What kind of gene was I missing that I didn’t want the house, the kids, the dog, the cat, the minivan, the timeshare, the second home? But I’ve just never longed for a life that’s chaotic. I don’t do well with chaos.
Life can be relatively worry free, if that’s the path we choose to take. Why should that privilege be reserved only for children, who aren’t yet ready to tackle major responsibilities, and seniors, who earn the right to emancipate themselves from various pressures after a lifetime of them?
I’ve been called an old soul for most of my life. Maybe this confirms it – I’m 35 going on 85. And I’m perfectly okay with that.
After a decade as an editor with various NC magazines, Andrea Cash launched her own creative services company, Andrea Cash Creative, in 2017. She helps small businesses and organizations in Durham and Chapel Hill with content strategy and creation, branding, PR, social media, and video and event production.
Andrea is passionate about community building, doing work that benefits the greater good and helping entrepreneurs grow their business in a purposeful way. Outside of work, Andrea sings in her cover band Penny’s Bend, plays tennis as often as she can, volunteers with Habitat for Humanity of Orange County and Book Harvest, and runs communications for grassroots progressive group FLIP NC.
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