Part I

The movers had come that morning and gone through the house like a whirlwind, loading the couches, chairs, tables, bureaus, bed, boxes and belongings into the van.

Now they are gone, and Irene Rothberg is in her living room, alone.

Except for the white wood desk chair she is sitting in, the house at 18 Van Meter Drive in Amherst is stripped bare of its furniture, and its history.

Exhausted from days of packing, Irene welcomes the chance to sit.

She is a small woman, wearing jeans and a pullover of black and white stripes. Her gray-white hair sets off the bold, black glasses on her face, a contrast that seems to reflect her refreshingly forthright and candid nature.

Her 51-year-old son, Seth, who lives in Amherst, arrives and takes a seat on the staircase to wait with his mother for the cleaning crew.

Irene is glad that her husband, Irving, isn't here to see the house looking this barren. But he had left earlier, driving the couple's Camry to meet the movers at their destination: the Rothbergs' new home in the Lathrop Retirement Community in Easthampton.

When the cleaners are done, mother and son take a last walk through the house.

"This is where we'd lived for 44 years," she says, "and where we had invested a lot of ourselves."

Now it was empty, all gone.

"There was nothing left of us and our lives in that house," she would say later. "It wasn't sad, but it was one of those epiphany moments: This is over. This huge part of our lives is over."

*****

Despite its meaning for Irene Rothberg, the moment was, in a way, utterly ordinary. It is one that is being played out countless times in the United States every year, as the population ages, and as people live longer, healthier lives.

For Irene, who is 75, and Irving, 85, that day -- Oct. 25, 2006 -- capped a long process they had gone through together, confronting questions more and more Americans are facing. Where did they want to live when they reached old age? Did they want to stay put on Van Meter Drive, and make changes, like adding ramps, if needed? Or should they look at condos, or at various types of housing for seniors? And, if they did move, what would it be like to leave the house that had been their home for so many years?

*****

They bought it in 1962, for $18,900, and it was their first home. Married 10 years by then, they'd put in their time on pullout couches in tiny rented apartments. They'd lived in the kinds of places where you shared the bathroom down the hall with other tenants. They'd battled cockroaches. "We were young, and you can do things like that when you're young," Irene says.

They'd married in 1952, a year after meeting as camp counselors in the Poconos. Irving at the time was making his way through the doctoral program at Pennsylvania State University; Irene had finished her junior year at New Jersey College for Women, now Douglass College.

They moved here from Philadelphia, where Irving had taught at Temple University. When an opening in the Spanish and Portuguese department at the University of Massachusetts offered a chance to leave city life behind, they packed up, piled their two little boys into their black Rambler and headed to Amherst.

The modest three-bedroom, one-bathroom house on a quarter-acre sliver of land was part of a development that had gone up in the late 1950s. Just a stone's throw from UMass, it was close enough for Irving to walk or ride his bike to campus, where he taught Spanish language and literature.

They got to know their neighbors and their neighbors' children. They entertained friends, gathered for Thanksgiving dinners and Jewish holidays, and came and went from town and civic meetings, school events and services at their synagogue.

"It was a great place to grow up," says their second son, Adam, who lives in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. Now 47, married and the father of two daughters, he works as a spokesman for the Simon & Schuster publishing house in Manhattan.

"Basically every house had kids," he recalls. "You could walk outside, knock on a door and find someone to hang out with, or get a baseball game going in the vacant lot."

Irving and Irene furnished their home with mostly contemporary furniture and an eclectic mix of artwork. Over the years, they made both cosmetic and structural improvements to the house to meet their changing needs. They knocked down a wall to open up the space between the living and TV rooms. They converted the upstairs into a study for Irving, plus a master bedroom and bath. They renovated the downstairs bathroom, remodeled the kitchen and added a screened-in porch. They hired a carpenter to make built-in bookcases in the living room to house their growing collection.

"I've always thought of this as a faculty house," Irving said one afternoon last summer. So close to campus, and with the study and all those bookshelves - it was easy to imagine it being sold over time to one UMass faculty family after another.

In 1974, during a six-month sabbatical in Europe, the Rothbergs visited a factory outside Lisbon renowned for producing decorative ceramic tiles. They bought some as gifts, and custom-ordered a blue and white one with their last name inscribed on it. After it arrived, Irving tacked it up outside the door that led into the breezeway, and there it stayed for the next 32 years.

"We made this house ours," Irene said. "We've stamped it with our personalities."

*****

Irving Rothberg retired from UMass in 1992, and then got increasingly involved in town politics. He served on the town's Cable Advisory Committee, became a member of Amherst Town Meeting in 2001, and, in 2003, co-chaired a panel that explored changes to town government.

Irene, who had been working as a secretary in the theater and dance department at Amherst College, retired in 1997. She went on to become a volunteer docent at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, showing visitors around and telling them the history of the center and a bit about the Yiddish language and literature. "They were as busy as I'd ever seen them," says Adam.

But as Irene puts it, "We were getting older. And we did not want our children to be responsible for us in the way we'd had to be responsible for our families."

Her parents had lived in the Bronx, and as they aged, in the 1980s, she and Irving had urged them to move into a smaller apartment or to some type of housing for seniors.

"But they resisted it," Irene says. Then, after her mother fell and broke her arm and their physical problems began to mount, "they begged us to do something." The Rothbergs found a comfortable, well-run nursing home in the Bronx that had a space available, and helped the couple move in.

"And then they blamed us because they didn't like it!" Irene says, able to laugh about it now. "Look where you put us, my father would say!" Then, turning serious again, she talks of how stressful the situation was. "They were old, and set in their ways. It was hard on them, but they could not stay by themselves. There wasn't really any good solution." There were hardships on the other side of the family, too, with Irving making many trips back and forth to Philadelphia to help care for his sister when her health and ability to live alone deteriorated.

Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Rothbergs never considered moving to a warmer climate.

"I was so miserable I could have died!" Irene says of the searing heat she disliked so much on a trip once to Phoenix. As for Florida, the beaches were beautiful, but in other ways, "it seemed empty to me," says Irving, who thought they'd miss the academic and cultural life of the Five College area. "This is a good part of the world," he says.

They certainly didn't want to be any farther away from adored granddaughters Isabel, 11, and Maggie, 9, the children of Adam and Janet Rothberg. Framed pictures of the girls occupied spots on shelves in the living room where the children had so often played during many visits to Amherst.

So why not stay where they already were?

There was Irene's hip, for one thing. Plagued for years by arthritis, she knew that the day would come when she would no longer want to deal with stairs. Staying on Van Meter Drive would at some point mean bringing the washer and dryer up from the basement, plus converting the ground-level family room into a master bedroom. When push came to shove, Irene recalls, "I just wasn't up for more remodeling."

The responsibilities of replacing an oil tank, repairing a dryer on the fritz, of arranging for snowplowing in winter, yard cleanup in spring and leaf raking in fall were all starting to wear. At some point, as Irving puts it, a house becomes "a psychic burden," and by last spring, that time had arrived.

"I will be so happy," Irene said, "when somebody else is responsible for all the things that go wrong."

*****

They had entered senior citizen territory at a time when choices for older Americans had greatly expanded, at least for those with financial resources.

Irving's rank as a full professor at UMass and the added income from Irene's job hadn't made the Rothbergs rich -- not with Seth at Oberlin College and Adam at Columbia University -- but it had at least earned them a secure slot in the American middle class. Once Adam had graduated from Columbia in 1981, they'd been able to add to their savings, they say, beyond what had accumulated in pensions and Social Security. In another step to plan for the future, they'd taken out an insurance policy for long-term health care 15 years ago, when Irving turned 70.

Spurred by the memory of Irene's parents, the Rothbergs started thinking and talking in earnest about their own future at least six years ago.

They began with a visit to Applewood-at-Amherst, where they toured the facility, sat down for a meal in the chandeliered dining room and mingled with residents.

Applewood, which is now affiliated with Loomis Village in South Hadley and Loomis House in Holyoke, is a 103-unit independent living development in a scenic rural area of town that offers gorgeous views. Built for those 62 and over, it opened in 1991, with apartments ranging in size from studio to two-bedroom. Buy-in costs range from $145,000 to $335,000, 90 percent of which is refundable when a resident dies or moves. A monthly fee of $1,575 to $3,470, depending on apartment size, covers a dining program, utilities, real estate taxes, housekeeping services, transportation, maintenance, a wellness program that includes on-site health clinics, cultural activities, classes, preferred access to assisted living or nursing home care at other Loomis facilities, and so on. Applewood also offers what it calls its Assistance with Living program, a system that, for a fee, brings medical help and help with daily living tasks to residents in their apartments, thereby avoiding or postponing a move to a nursing home.

Attracted to the notion of staying in Amherst, close to their friends, doctors and town activities, the Rothbergs paid a $2,000 deposit to add their names to Applewood's waiting list. The practice, common at many similar places, means that people move up the list as residents relocate or die.

But as time went by, Irving and Irene had second thoughts. Though they could afford it, they worried, says Irving, that they wouldn't have as much discretionary income left over. Irene wasn't sure they needed all of the services, such as the daily meal. A good cook who'd always liked to entertain in her own home, she says she wondered if she'd really want to go to a dining room every night. They eventually decided to take their names off Applewood's waiting list, and to have their deposit returned.

*****

At about the same time that the Rothbergs looked at Applewood, they had one of their regular sessions with Bruce Fogel, their longtime attorney, whom they had come to consider a friend. Fogel works at Bacon & Wilson, a large western Massachusetts firm with an office in Northampton, where he handles estate planning and elder real estate as well as zoning and business matters.

Worries about running out of money are hardly unusual among older clients, Fogel says, and so he routinely talks with them about their options and plans. A tax return, as he puts it, is a window into what's going on, and the discussion surrounding it is a way to raise questions about health needs, for instance, and other issues affecting the financial picture. "I try to make it a more proactive discussion," he says, so that his clients don't find themselves simply reacting to crisis down the road.

The Rothbergs, at that point undecided about their next move, say Fogel mentioned that his mother had moved to a townhouse in the Lathrop Retirement Community off Bridge Road in Northampton about a year after her husband died in 2001. That development, which opened in 1989, comprised 77 townhouses. As an independent living development, Lathrop did not offer dining services, but freed residents of maintenance chores, and had a community center that housed a library, meeting room, mail room, and a kitchen that residents can use for community lunches, family gatherings, and other functions.

On a dreary, rainy early-spring day, the Rothbergs drove over to take a look. Probably because of the weather, they say now, they came away -- well, unimpressed.

But later, on a sunny day with flowers in bloom, they went back a second time and visited with Fogel's mother, Rita Fogel, who showed them around. This time they decided to put down a $1,000 deposit which would add their names to the waiting lists for Lathrop's townhomes in both Northampton and Easthampton. The 75-acre Easthampton community, located along a winding drive off Florence Road, consists of 61 townhouses and an apartment building called the Inn, which has a dining room that serves a main meal of the day, and a cafe. The Inn also offers a Wellness Center staffed by a nurse practitioner, a library, a fitness center, transportation, weekly housekeeping and activities.

The mulling over, the visits, the deposits -- none of that had been instigated by Seth and Adam, in keeping with their parents' vow to make their own decisions. Not that the sons hadn't thought about their parents' next move.

"My own concern," Adam recalls, "was that they would be able to make the choice in their own time, and in the way they wanted to make it -- so that it wouldn't be made for them."

*****

Adam pinpoints the summer of 2002 as the time when the issue of his parents' future turned from abstract to concrete. "Everything came into sharp relief," he says.

Earlier in the year, Irving suffered a seizure and was hospitalized and diagnosed with epilepsy. Though the condition was treatable with medication, he was under doctors' orders not to drive for six months, until his condition stabilized. Then, on a day in June, Irene lost her footing on the stairs up to the second floor, tumbled, and wound up with a broken ankle and a cast.

Suddenly both parents, once so active, were housebound, says Adam, as if they were "trapped" on the first floor. With neither able to drive to doctors' appointments, they became dependent on friends and on Seth. "They didn't want to ask me for help," Seth says. "It was almost as if they were ashamed -- even though they'd done more than their fair share for me over the years."

"They were wonderful," Irene says of those who rallied around them, running errands, offering rides and showing up at the door with casseroles. "But you know, you can't continue to do that. People have their own lives."

Though the crisis passed and the Rothbergs became mobile again, the summer of '02 had reinforced their belief that they should eventually move. Given their inclusion on Lathrop's waiting list, they were invited to attend an informational session after plans to build 17 new Easthampton townhouses were announced in 2004. Entrance fees for the new development would range from $260,000 to $315,000, 90 percent of which is returned to residents or their estates when they no longer live there; a monthly maintenance fee of about $1,350 for the largest homes, less for the smaller, would cover expenses including trash pickup, groundskeeping, appliance and roof repairs, water and sewer, and property taxes.

Along with about a dozen others, Irene and Irving attended a luncheon meeting at the Inn. When Lathrop officials and architects asked for suggestions and reactions, Irene raised her hand. She was skeptical about the plan for open-air patios -- too many bugs -- and wondered if enclosed porches would make more sense. She also had no interest in having a basement. ("We didn't want another place where we could dump things," she would say later.) Others agreed with both points, and the plans reflected those concerns. In the end, some of the townhouses were built without basements. They also had screened-in porches with optional glass panels, in addition to open-air patio areas. "We were so impressed that they would listen," Irene says.

The development would be part of Lathrop's continuing care setup -- an arrangement in which residents are able to stay in their apartments or townhomes and contract with the Lathrop Support Services program for additional help as needed. If, for instance, they wanted to come to the Inn for a meal, or have one delivered, they could do so, for an $11 fee that would be added to their monthly bill. If they needed a home health aide while recovering from surgery or illness, Lathrop would arrange that, for a $25 hourly fee. If they needed transportation, they could, for a nominal fee, reserve a spot on the Lathrop van.

Besides the appeal of a one-story house, with no yard to maintain, there was another bonus, one for which there was no charge. The townhouses on what would be a new street called Mulberry Lane would have a sweeping view of open, undeveloped meadowland.

Captivated by the location, the Rothbergs made up their minds, and were ready to sign on the dotted line. The agreement meant that they would pay in several installments, with $70,000 due at the time of groundbreaking and the balance when they moved in. With Irene and Irving on hand to watch, the shovels went into the ground at the ceremonial groundbreaking on Nov. 29, 2005.

Ahead of them lay a new round of decisions about sorting through all the possessions they'd accumulated during their 44 years on Van Meter Drive. They'd have to ready their house for sale. They were excited about the prospect of moving, but worried as well. By the beginning of 2006, the Rothbergs were hearing that what had been a red-hot housing market in Amherst was starting to cool off.

Next week: With their house on the market, the Rothbergs face uncertainty and a long wait.

Part II

The main stroy in last week's Hampshire Life chronicled the process Irene and Irving Rothberg of Amherst, 75 and 85 respectively, went through in deciding to put their house on the market and move to a retirement community. Though their story is personal, the questions they confronted are being faced by many Americans as people live longer, healthier lives.

Irving, a retired professor of Spanish language and literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Irene, a retired office worker at Amherst College, had raised their two sons, Seth, now 51, and Adam, 47, in their home on Van Meter Drive in Amherst. They had realized that, as they aged, they did not want the responsibility and burden of maintaining the house; nor, they said, did they want to burden their sons. And they were lucky enough -- a phrase they use to describe themselves -- to have some savings that would give them a few options when deciding where to go. The Rothbergs settled on relocating to one of 17 new townhouses being planned at the Lathrop Retirement Community in Easthampton. The arrangement would allow them to continue to live independently, free them of the demands of home ownership, and allow them to purchase additional support services, such as transportation or help from a home health aide.

The Rothbergs attended the groundbreaking for Lathrop's new development in November 2005. Then they turned their attention to packing up their old home -- and trying to sell it in a real estate market that had started to flatten out.

Our story picks up there.

*****

"They're things! They're just things!"

That is Irene Rothberg's way of describing some of the possessions she and Irving acquired in 54 years of married life. She knows that they have more than they will be able to bring with them to their new home in Easthampton. She knows that some stuff, like old pots and pans and clothes that haven't been worn in years, can be given away or tossed. She knows that she'll never, ever part with other things, like the silver candlesticks that her grandmother had given her when she and Irving got married. And she has wondered, despite her desire to shed the excess, if she'll find it wrenching to let some things go.

Irving had, in fact, started tackling the toughest job -- the black hole of the basement -- long before he and Irene knew where they were going to move. From time to time, he would venture downstairs to sort through stuff, everything from broken-down furniture to mildewed college notebooks, to emerge later with yet another load for the dump. What he could not handle himself, he turned over to the pros, hiring a local crew to haul it away.

The hard moments aren't always predictable or rational. There's the bike -- the old Raleigh that Irving had ridden to work and around the neighborhood. He remembers buying it way back in 1963 at a shop on State Street in Northampton. It had cost a grand total of $65, and they'd let him pay in installments.

Now, faced with letting it go, he finds himself feeling sentimental about the tangible reminder of times gone by. The bike, he decides, deserves a new life, and so he takes it to the Bicycle Exchange in town, an outfit that fixes up old ones for resale.

There are other twinges, especially when he goes through stacks of notebooks and papers from his college and post-graduate days. Discarding the effects of his academic life is hard, he says, "but once it's done, it's done."

*****

On a January morning a year ago, he and Graham Christian, a doctoral student at UMass, are standing upstairs in Irving's book-lined study. "Books have been part of my life for a long time," Irving says as Christian waits to take some of them to the Center for Renaissance Studies, a research center at the university. "I'm grateful to have these go to where they can be used."

As the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito drone on on a small TV set in the office, Irving pulls one volume after another -- accompanied by an occasional pouf of dust -- from the shelves. He turns them over in his hands, reading aloud titles like "The Prodigious Magician," by Calderon de la Barca; an anthology, "Spanish Poetry of the Golden Age," and William McCrary's "The Goldfish and the Hawk." Some he keeps, but many wind up in the cardboard boxes that Christian carries out to his car.

Now and then, Irving reverts to the teacher he was. "This man is very important in the study of Spanish drama," he says at one point, then stops himself. "Here I am lecturing," he says, "and I didn't mean to do that."

*****

Flurries are falling on a raw and cold March day when Irving arrives at Lathrop's parking lot. Accompanied by Roxy Davis, the development's director of sales and operations, he walks to the site of what will be his and Irene's new home. Heavy equipment dots the landscape, and there is little to see but the outline of where the house will stand. But as he shows the spot to the photographer and reporter who have come along, pointing out the view of meadowlands and hills, Irving's pleasure is palpable. The sunsets will be beautiful, he says, adding wryly, "and that's appropriate for this time of life."

*****

The "For Sale" sign is pounded into the ground in front of the house at 18 Van Meter Drive in April. An ad extols its virtues as "a great gem," a well-maintained Cape with lots of updates, including a new roof, insulated windows and propane hot water heater. With its freshly cleaned wall-to-wall carpets and recently pruned trees in the front yard, the charcoal gray house is on the market for $369,900.

But just weeks earlier, signs had begun to appear that the red-hot housing market in Amherst was cooling off. The Gazette had previously reported that the average value of a home in Amherst had increased 40 percent since 2004. But in February 2006, the Gazette noted that prices were rising more slowly, and houses were sitting on the market longer. Now, there were nearly 130 houses on the market in town, about twice what the inventory had been just a few years earlier, according to the Rothbergs' Realtor, Steven Palatt.

A May 24, 2006, story in The Boston Globe, headlined "Buyers' market: A record glut of houses for sale in Mass. should send prices tumbling," reports that the Federal Reserve's series of interest rate hikes is making it more expensive to buy, causing houses to sit unsold. Sellers, the Globe reports, are reluctant to lower prices.

Palatt says that two years earlier, it would have been reasonable to expect the Rothbergs' home to sell in about a week, at full price. But now, no offers, despite a steady stream of prospective buyers.

"We're trying very hard to be patient," Irene says one afternoon in May. Complicating the picture is her impending surgery. In an effort to deal with her steadily worsening arthritic pain, she has decided to undergo hip replacement surgery, which takes place in June. The operation is followed by weeks of recovery and rehabilitation, proves to be a long haul, but by July, Irene is calling the results -- less pain and much more mobility -- nothing short of a miracle.

On the housing front, though, there are still no miracles in sight.

Adding to the bad news about the market, the Rothbergs are getting feedback that the house that had served them so well isn't impressing buyers looking for more and bigger bathrooms, updated kitchens and so on.

Discouraged, they reduce their asking price to $339,000. Still no nibbles. "We're becalmed," Irving says in July. "A year ago, we could have cornered the market. Now it's cornered us."

*****

Worried that they might not be able to move after all, the Rothbergs talk with Lathrop's Roxy Davis, who counsels patience. She says she will extend the move-in date, and hence the payment due date, from September to October. They're not the only ones in limbo, she says; others who had signed up for the new townhouses are in the same boat.

For sons Seth and Adam, the ordeal is hard to watch. Apart from keeping in almost daily touch by phone and email, "there was not anything I could do for them," Adam recalls now, "and that was painful." Though they all understood that selling a home is a cold-blooded business, he says, it was an emotional experience for his parents. The lack of offers was feeling like a rebuke.

An offer finally comes in September, from a couple in Worcester, who want to buy the place for their children to live in while attending UMass. After some back and forth, the two sides agree on a selling price of $297,500. At $72,000 less than what they'd originally asked, it is a crushing blow -- but not one that will prevent their move to Lathrop.

As much as Irving had liked to think another faculty family would move in, he and Irene conclude there is no point in holding out: There is "nothing left to fight with," Irene says.

It had been, Irving says later, "a miserable experience."

*****

By early October, though, the disappointment is starting to recede. On a Wednesday morning, when they visit their home-to-be to take measurements, landscapers are planting trees outside. Inside, the house has the fresh smell of newness and paint.

The thoughtfulness of the Lathrop staff has meant a lot, they say, starting with Jack Cooper, director of facilities, who has been regularly emailing them pictures as construction progresses. They're impressed with how well-planned their house is, down to the details like the ample outlets, and the grab bars in the bathrooms. The lawn is newly seeded, and, Irving says, "just think, I don't have to mow it." On their way out, catching sight of some of their neighbors, they walk over to introduce themselves.

*****

By Oct. 25, the day the movers have pulled into Van Meter Drive, anticipation and excitement have given way to bone-wearying fatigue.

In the kitchen, the counters are crowded with cartons of orange juice, maple syrup and other odds and ends being disgorged from the refrigerator and cabinets. Irene is still packing. "We thought we were so organized!" she says with a laugh. She wants to make sure to keep track of her kitchen stepladder, "which I can't live without," and the toaster, "the most expensive toaster we've ever had."

The day before, she and her husband had been up since 5 in the morning, she says, and "Last night at 12, I said to Irv -- I think he was disconnecting the computer -- I cannot stay up one second longer."

Irving, dressed in khakis, a sports jacket and sneakers, is carting more bags of trash out to the curb. The strong younger men, he says, are doing all the real work. "I'm doing the worrying."

Here and there, they are still finding things, like a stray bike helmet, that seemed absurd to pack. "Does anyone want this?" Irene asks, to no one in particular.

"Honey, you want your Eagles hat, don't you?" she asks. Irving, a fan since the couple's days in Philadelphia, certainly does.

Irving, meanwhile, is looking for a folder of misplaced paperwork relating to their new home. "They must have packed it," Irene tells him. "Or is it possible you put it the car?"

Irene goes upstairs to check on progress there. Their blue-carpeted bedroom is almost empty. The handle of a toilet plunger pokes out of a cardboard box that sits on the bathroom counter. A drawer tray from the bathroom, an envelope of x-rays, shells collected on Cape Cod by one of the granddaughters wait to be carried off. "We'll never have another room this big, that's for sure," Irene says, taking a look around.

After the van and Irving have left, she waits downstairs. It was "eerie," Seth recalls later, to find his mother sitting alone in the empty, still house.

The cleaners arrive and work their magic. When it is time to leave, Seth takes out the key to the house that he has kept all these years, and leaves it on the kitchen counter.

*****

Two days later, crumpled pieces of newsprint are piling up like snowdrifts around Seth's feet as he and Adam, who has driven up from New York, unpack their parents' belongings. In the reverse of the process that had taken place in Amherst, a salad bowl, canisters, the cutting board, pots and pans, flatware, the silver candlesticks are all seeing the light of day again.

Irving has left to take care of some paperwork at the Lathrop office and to stop at the bank to get a safety deposit box and order checks with their new address.

"I'm so glad you guys can make me laugh," says Irene, buoyed by the presence of her sons. Later that day, the trio move into the master bedroom, where Seth and Adam help their mother hang clothes. She has already gotten rid of many garments, she says, especially dressier outfits that she'd worn to work. And shoes, lots of shoes. "I was the Imelda Marcos of Van Meter Drive," she says.

*****

It is January, and the blue and white Portuguese tile that Irving and Irene had ordered in Lisbon more than three decades earlier hangs above their front door. The Lathrop maintenance staff handled the chore of putting it up, and also hung their artwork inside.

The Rothbergs have settled in. The furniture all fits. The family photos, including their wedding picture from 1952, are displayed on a set of bookshelves in the living room. An arrangement of fresh flowers sits on the coffee table.

"This is my favorite thing," says Irene as she opens a slider to reveal a washer and dryer just outside the master bedroom. No more basement, no more trips to the darkness down below.

Though she misses the counter space she'd had, Irene is getting used to her new kitchen. The "agility kitchen," as Irving dubs it, referring to the smaller turnaround space.

The Rothbergs aren't feeling unmoored. "We're just in a different neighborhood, that's all," says Irving. He is still planning to go to his Amherst Club meetings; Irene had just made a trip back to her hairdresser in town. They're also exploring their new surroundings. They'd discovered, and liked, Zoe's, a restaurant up the road, and intend to check out the Apollo Grill in the Eastworks building.

They are making new friends. Irving has recently enjoyed a lunch out with a group of other men from Lathrop. He and Irene have been joining other residents who are Jewish in a gathering every other Friday evening for prayers to welcome the Sabbath. They are looking forward to hearing a talk author Tracy Kidder will give in the community room at the Inn, an apartment building on the property.

There are subtle differences. Irving says he had never really felt retired in Amherst, perhaps because he had stayed in the same house, in the same town. Now, surrounded by retired people in a retirement community, he is feeling -- well, as though he'd definitely retired. That's not good or bad, he explains, just an acknowledgment of this stage in life.

Irene had often wondered how she was going to feel about leaving the old house for the last time. Before the move she would sometimes sit in her living room, or lie awake in bed at night, thinking about how much she liked the place. But now, here she is, "and I don't miss anything -- except the kitchen counters. I don't feel anything but glad to be here."

They are happy that Seth took some bookcases and that Adam and his wife, Janet, wanted some of the serving dishes and a set of English china that had been in Irving's family.

It's nice to think of Adam and Janet using those dishes for gatherings in their home, Irene says. And if they don't have enough space, there's always another solution, she says: "They have a big basement."