My hillside home is up two different intervals of entry stairs then on five levels. When my husband needed more support than a cane, our solution was to keep a walker on each of the three levels he used. The best one, with a seat, was always kept in the car. All of them were needed, then kept for my own aging. Don’t need them yet. So far I don’t even need a cane, unless presented with stairs without a handrail.

Now that I have “suddenly” become elderly (83) I’m preparing our home better to age in place. To circumnavigate this house there are 81 places where one must either step up or step down. All of them now have handrails. The wooden entry stairs will be replaced, then a stairlift added to help carry the two or three zipped big thermal bags of groceries to the front door. The stairlift will be very useful because even now I’m getting the bags upstairs like a human inchworm. I lift one, place it up two steps, then bend down and pick it up to place it up two higher steps. Likewise the other one or two bags. Yes, that sounds pathetic, but it works. Seven times lifting and placing gets me to the front door. It will feel like a luxury to simply hold them on my lap and press a button to transit up the different intervals of steps and a slope directly to the front door!

My perception has changed to notice things which never mattered before. When watching movies I now notice when someone is shown going casually up or down stairs. So very long past is the era when I could go up two steps at a time. Nowadays, I notice actors, or politicians, going on stairs; simply gliding up or down, without paying any attention to the handrails. How I envy them!

This is how I’m (already) aging in place.