Thursday, September 12, 2013

Thoughts of an empty nester


I met Ann today after 12 years. At that time she had just graduated with a Masters in Social Work and had come to work at MCIS on a project. She had always been interested in issues of equity and access for vulnerable newcomer populations and so we worked well together. Ann continues to be soft spoken, humble, understated and thoughtful, notwithstanding a PhD from Brown, an Associate Professorship, twins and a good life with her lawyer husband who is a partner at one of Canada's largest law firms. Ann and her husband are shining examples of kids born to immigrant parents, who knew the struggle and the hardship of surviving without English and who continue to live within their ethnic communities, their only contact with the mainstream through their highly successful children.

Over a lunch of sandwiches from Panera Bread, Ann told me that her most recent work is on the condition of immigrant seniors - their social isolation and their preponderance in the ranks of the poor. This is particularly true of widowed or single seniors, she said. I had a moment of pause imagining life in a "silent world", the result of isolation and language barriers, where income security is sometimes not a guarantee.

The immigrant senior’s story goes something like this. Parents leave their home countries to be with their adult children. They help them out with babysitting. When the grandchildren no longer need their caregiving, they experience a loss of identity from not being “relevant” anymore in an alien culture. Their well- meaning children are preoccupied with the stresses of a competitive work environment which makes ever increasing demands on them. Within this new economy, these children are perpetually adapting and proving themselves to be assets. Due to mechanization and the need for up -skilling, they fear becoming obsolescent. (Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism (2006)). Within this reality, the uncertainty and inability to conceive of a life narrative is further compounded for immigrant seniors.

My thoughts turned to me. Having hit fifty, I am not too far off from becoming a senior. However, my story has a slightly different trajectory. I am an educated professional with a fulfilling career. My experiences are as an empty nester now and god knows what in the future. I already feel that emotional void from not mothering as I would like to. Ironically, with social media there is less meaningful contact with our children than in the past. I remember when I got married I spent several hours writing long letters to my family back home, relaying in detail what I ate, saw or cooked. I wanted them to witness my life and to share my experiences, notwithstanding the thousands of miles between us. Now with the barrage of information, the paradigm has shifted. Our youth are preoccupied sharing with thousands of people in online communities. We don’t enjoy the privilege of living vicariously through them and of sharing in most of their experiences. We cannot make demands on them for that would mean overcrowding their cyber world interactions. It would also mean laying on the guilt which we do not want to be accused of doing?! We cannot even get them to acknowledge our stories sometimes. And yet we want to be relevant in their lives and wonder how or if we should even strive to? Above all, if today’s seniors are unable to script their lives’ narratives, what on earth will our lot be? We can probably read tea leaves before we know what will become of us in a decade or so, in a world where technology makes us more isolated as we age? Or else, will we be leveraging it to our advantage? We will make our online communities real ones, supplanting our face to face interactions with facebook “likes”? Really?

My mind was spinning out of control, when Ann’s calm voice brought me back to the present. “Our studies have found that immigrant seniors are extremely resilient…” her reassuring voice trailed.

After Ann left I was still moping wondering how I was going to build my resilience for this uncertain future, when I saw an email from my daughter. She was filling me in on everything that was going on in her life. She also said " I enjoy your emails and chat notes so keep them coming". Well, that changed everything...

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