Moving In
Postcard From Plush Mills
Life inside a senior living community
Frankly, I never thought I would be living at Plush Mills.
Photo courtesy of Plush Mills
My wife Mary and I talked about it back in 2007, and both of us agreed we weren’t ready yet. In fact, I had recently started SeniorCare Cooperative, a service to help older people stay in their homes. While the business had not taken off like a rocket, it was helping some folks. And Mary and I had already downsized. Her MS was getting worse, so we had moved from New York back to Swarthmore, to an apartment in the Strath Haven Condos. We were both still in our early 70s. We were still travelling. We thought we should wait awhile.
Plush Mills was just being built back then. I thought, “Why not go see what it’s going to be like?”
I learned that the units were rentals, and that you could move in with no money down and no long-term commitment. Besides, at Strath Haven, I had to cook, or else we went out for meals. And, at Strath Haven, there were no medical people available if Mary needed something.
So I went. I met with Plush Mills’ owner, Kelly Andress, and the rental director, Joan Sobel. Nice folks. The building was behind schedule and you really couldn’t tell what it was going to look like from the model apartment, but my first impression was positive. I liked the way Kelly and Joan talked about senior living. As they described it, the place would be much more attractive than I had imagined. I had pictured a kind of nursing home, with a hospital feel, but they talked about it like a cruise ship – light and airy, with attractive furniture, smiling people, and a pub.
Time passed. The building got built. I went to visit again, and I liked what I saw. The halls were wide, and the ceilings were high. There was art everywhere – pictures and statues and decorative objects. And of course, there was the pub. Warm and homey. A place you could meet friends and talk a bit before going to dinner.
The management was offering a lot of incentives to the first 35 people who moved in: a free parking space in the garage, custom paint in your apartment, crown molding. I’m a sucker for crown molding.
Also, Mary’s health was getting worse. She was having trouble walking even with a walker. Plush Mills had nurses on the second floor. I knew that would be a help as things got worse.
I started to look at different apartments at Plush Mills. There was a two-bedroom place on the sixth floor I really liked. It had two balconies that gave us wide doorways into both the living room and the master bedroom. Joan assured me we would get medical help if we needed it, even on the sixth floor. I thought we should give it a try.
Also, I really didn’t like to cook, and not eating out would save us lots of money.
Mary wasn’t convinced, though. She never liked moving. But I knew from experience that, once she did move, she’d quickly learn to love the new place. I told her we could keep our Strath Haven apartment and move right back in if we didn’t like Plush Mills.
But we did like it.
Now, 12 years later, I can tell you we made the right decision for the wrong reasons. Oh sure, the healthcare helped, and not having to go out for meals was great. But the best thing about living at Plush Mills is how easy it is to meet your new best friend.
Pub bartender Tony always dresses for the occasion. Photo: Ken Wright
I met my first new best friend one month after Mary and I moved in: Bill Hooper. Two months after Bill died, I met my next best friend, Tom Rafferty. I have 10 or 15 friends here I never would have met at the Strath Haven Condos. They don’t have a pub, and they don’t have our wonderful bartender, Tony.
As we age, we lose a lot of friends. They move, or they die. If you live in a house or even in an apartment building, it’s hard getting to know new ones. You just don’t have anywhere to meet them. But at Plush Mills, you can have a glass of wine with someone in the pub any night of the week, then go in for dinner. When you lose a friend, a new one will have just moved in.
Ken Wright is a longtime resident of Swarthmore. He has lived in four different houses in the borough, and now he resides just over the town line at Plush Mills.
