Hello! I just got back from a family vacation in Florida, one where I did not bring my laptop. It was easier to truly shut it all down than I thought, and also necessary in order to stay connected to human life forms. Instead of the usual roundup and recommendations section of the Sunday newsletter, I wrote a long essay. Please grab a paid subscription and help us continue to expand the definition of recovery for everyone who needs it. Next week we’ll get back to our usual format. It’s good to be back. — AJD

As a Christmas present to my mother, I promised her that we’d finally bring the kids down to Florida to visit her at her independent living facility in Jupiter. This trip would mean everything to her. It was a chance to show off her grandchildren to her friends at Mangrove Bay and to the caretakers there, those who’d heard her speak fawningly about them for so long. These people also probably knew about the sadness in her voice when she told stories about the kids. They also likely knew how resistant I was to the idea of bringing them into this place.

When my mother told me about other grandchildren who visited her neighbors, I could hear the envy in her voice. “I would love it if you would bring the kids here at some point.” I would always placate her in the moment and say something like, “Maybe next year,” but never follow through on it, and if she ever pressed me on it, I’d make her feel like it was a ridiculous thing to suggest and to please stop asking me about it. Didn’t she understand? I had work, Julieanne had work, the kids can’t get sick on an airplane again—a list of extremely legitimate but also entirely pathetic excuses not to come see her.

It should also be noted that most of the residents in her facility are in their late 80s and early 90s. One woman just celebrated her 102nd birthday, which was front-page news in the Mangrove Bay monthly newsletter. Within that context, you’ll also realize that most of the grandchildren are in their late teens and early twenties and can come and go as they please. Ours are six, seven, and eight. And traveling with our three to Florida—even the less desirable part—during Spring Break felt foolhardy. It was like trudging three kids to Times Square for New Year's Eve. It annoyed me that she didn’t see it that way.

I also said that I didn’t want to scare them if they got spooked by old strangers in wheelchairs. I imagined one or all of my kids, horrified by the residents’ deteriorating physical conditions—some napping in a chair with a toothless mouth open, lurching around like broken witches. Worse, they might be exposed to the residents’ desperation for human interaction. That had terrified me when I visited my grandparents at a nursing home at their age. An old woman was calling after me the minute I got separated from my father. “Little boy. Oh, little boy. Come here, little boy.”

When we arrived and walked through the hallway, my youngest boy blurted, "This place smells like old people." He was right, of course. If you’ve been inside one of these places, you know the smell: dried urine, ancient perfume, dying flowers in waterless vases.