Widowed and Alone in Darien CT.

She sat at a large table in an otherwise unoccupied section of the village ice cream shop, away from the counter hub-bub and the giggling kids out of school for summer vacation. Her attention was directed to the rather thick and heavy paper back book she held balanced with an awkward backward lean, on the table before her. My wife and I were drawn to that same section, probably for the very same reasons. 

She looked up as we seated ourselves at a table right in front of her. I caught her eye and extended a greeting. She was pleasantly responsive and so I asked what she was reading. She smiled and proceeded to relate the story behind the book. The book was about Teddy Roosevelt. She decided to read it because her son would soon be arriving from New Zealand and the two of them would be visiting the historic Roosevelt home in Huntington Long Island. She figured she ought to know something about the once idolized President before that trip. They would be taking the Port Jefferson Auto Ferry out of Bridgeport. She went on to comment that the thought of driving through Bridgeport with the crowds and auto congestion was unappealing to her. 

Because we have relatives on the Island we were able to tell her about a possible alternative way of returning home that was much more circuitous but nevertheless held a certain panache, that she might find more pleasant than Bridgeport. The Orient Point Ferry is much further east along the north fork of the island but it is a fork with a special fascination that can make it worth the trip. The approach to Orient Point is literally sprinkled with vineyards and wineries where wines of many vintages can be sampled to the hearts content of even a Paul Giamatti like character from "Sideways".  She laughed and said she would like that and she just knew her son would enjoy it as well.

She was in the mood to talk and so went on telling about her living circumstances and asking about ours. She resided in a nearby senior community by herself. Her husband died five years ago and so now she lives alone in a three bedroom, three bath up and down home. Her second son lives in Wisconsin, which is where she was born, but she hardly ever sees him. She feels isolated from family. In the community in which she lives people pretty much keep to themselves. There are few if any coordinated social activities.

We told her about some of the Active Adult Communities with which we were familiar and where social and entertainment activities are more than abundant and where people go shopping in golf carts. She seemed interested and wrote down some of the names.

When her husband was alive they went to Naples Florida every winter but with him gone she chooses not to go alone and besides it was becoming too crowded there with people and vehicles. She knew of all the places we had visited in the vicinity: Sanibel Island, Venice, Sarasota and every beach in between.

It appeared that she was torn between her very pleasant Darien home in which she lives a somewhat isolated existence and making a change to a location where there would be a very much enhanced social community but would necessitate making a radical, difficult and disruptive, move. Besides, she just loves New England.