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VOL.20, NO.10
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I N S I D E … BALTIMORE BEACON — OCTOBER 2023
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Move to a new home is a mixed blessing By May Benatar Last spring, my husband and I moved to an over-55 community about 30 minutes north of our former home. Our new apartment is in a high-rise, on one level, less than half the square footage of our house. We left behind a spacious home with 16 stairs from entrance to bedrooms, so our knees are a lot happier here. Our neighbors are very welcoming. There is a culture of warmth and acceptance of newbies like us. We love our place. And yet, at first, I felt something was wrong. I was disoriented and grieving my beautiful home due south. Is this the right fit? Did we make the move too soon? Have we made a mistake? The move made me recall the upheavals of my past. I have moved at least a dozen times in my 78 years, not counting the many times I moved during college. One thing I’ve learned: I hate moving! It really throws me off. A psychologist I worked with told me during one move that what I was feeling was normal. On the Rorschach inkblot test, she said, there was one particular inkblot test that was diagnostic for schizophrenia. But non-schizophrenic people who were in the middle of a move typically read that card as if they were indeed psychotic. In other words, people in the midst of a move are usually indistinguishable from seriously mentally ill persons.
Moving to a new stage in life When I was younger, moving could be fun. At the end of college, which involved multiple moves, I was glad to be settled in Ann Arbor for graduate school and not have to move for two whole years. Indeed, it was hard to get me to leave! A friend had to gently (or not so gently) suggest it was time for me to look for a job.
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We were just months away from graduation, but I didn’t want to leave, to change, look for an apartment, find new friends, take on more responsibility, or enter fully into adulthood. Moving, I’ve come to realize, often marks a change in status — a new developmental stage, sometimes a step up in status, but often a mixed blessing. The next few moves in my life reflected new phases as a wife and mother. I moved from a big city, where I had friends and support, to the suburbs, where I had no car or public transportation and a six-week-old baby. That was a tough move. In fact, becoming a suburban parent was perhaps the most difficult move of my life. Again, it reflected a major developmental change to another level of adulthood. Things did get easier, and when we moved our growing family to a larger home, we stayed there for 30 years. Suddenly we were middle aged or maybe a little beyond.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MAY BENATAR
The first issue of Passager was published in 1990. It was well designed and printed on quality vellum paper. To save money, the journal was squareshaped, printed in black and white, and stapled. Former Maryland poet laureate
PHOTO BY LAURA MELAMED
Creating a literary journal
OCTOBER 2023
More than 125,000 readers throughout Greater Baltimore
Elevating new writers over 50 By Laura Melamed Did you know Baltimore is home to the only national literary journal and press dedicated to writers over 50? Launched more than 30 years ago, the journal Passager was the brainchild of Baltimore writing instructor Kendra Kopelke. Then 28 years old, Kopelke was inspired to launch Passager while teaching older writers at the Waxter Center, a senior center in Baltimore City. Their work impressed her, Kopelke said in a recent interview with the Beacon, because older writers “have a very different sense of time than someone in their 30s, and they have a very different sense of who they are.” Spellbound by their stories, she wanted to share her students’ work with the public. So Kopelke worked with a graduate student at the University of Baltimore, Sally Darnowsky, to establish a journal and bring their voices to light. “It creates power, putting these voices together,” Kopelke said. She and Darnowsky wanted to show that older people can still evolve. There is an idea in American culture, Kopelke said, that “when you’re 50, it’s too late to figure it out, and then when you’re 60, you can’t start anything new.” Challenging that idea and giving people over 50 a venue, she said, “was what we really wanted to do.”
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Settling in Today, we are at our over-55 community, almost fully unpacked, meeting more neighbors, and exploring the neighborhood. I know we made the right decision in moving here — and really, I have no complaints. We couldn’t have received a warmer welcome. But I’m unsettled because, like the transitions of the past, I am aware of this new stage of life. Moving here comes with the realization that we are now among the elderly. Walkers and canes and scooters are everywhere. We can no longer deny that we have some disabilities and certainly are in the concluding stages of life. The clock is ticking more loudly, and time moving faster and faster. After several months here, I am more
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Author and licensed psychotherapist May Benatar had conflicting emotions after a recent move to a Maryland retirement community. After an adjustment period, however, she and her husband are thriving in their new home.
comfortable every day. I appreciate that, if I lose track of my phone, I don’t have to climb stairs to look for it. I can see the sun set over the trees from my balcony. Traffic is at a minimum, and my daily walk is easy, lovely, scenic. My husband and I have joined some fun activities here. There is plenty to do: book groups, painting class, a collage class, yoga, movies, a gym, a couple of indoor
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pools, a hot tub. We are enjoying as much as we can. Who cares what the Rorschach test would show? May Benatar is a psychotherapist in Silver Spring, Maryland. An occasional contributor to the Washington Post, she is author of the memoir Emma and Her Selves: A Memoir of Treatment and a Therapist’s Self-Discovery.
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LEISURE & TRAVEL Kendra Kopelke and Mary Azrael, co-editors of Passager, have been publishing the literary journal for writers over 50 since 1990. They also launched a book publishing press, Passager Books, which has published authors as old as 101.
Lucille Clifton appeared on its cover. Inside was an interview with Clifton, a few of her poems, and poetry, fiction and works of memoir by local writers over 50. To launch the first issue, Clifton gave a
OUR 24th YEAR
See PASSAGER, page 16
Sunday, October 22 Noon to 4 p.m.
Info & Resources • Screenings • Vaccines • Giveaways For more info, visitt beacon50expo.com To sponsor, exhibit or vo olunteer, call (301) 949-9766 eaconNewspapers.com or email info@theBe
free reading at the University of Baltimore Law Center. Two hundred people attended the reading and purchased enough copies
Silver Spring Civic Building Silver Spring, Maryland Featuring a Keynote Conversation with Tony Perkins, News4 Anchor
Men in kilts — plus castles, hiking, boating and more in Scotland page 13 FITNESS & HEALTH 3 k When can you stop screening? k Affordable ways to eat healthy LAW & MONEY k Keep your credit score up k Cryptocurrency scams
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