Memoirs typically cover an author’s early days, or a challenging and pivotal time in middle age after learning a life lesson. Not here. In “Oh No, Not the Home,” readers meet octogenarian Peggy Rowe, who at 86, is sharing her most recent experiences moving into what she refers to as “the home” with her husband of 64 years. What a refreshing notion to consider that at this age, one can write about a life experience as if it’s another chapter, with more to come.
While her name may not sound familiar, her son Mike Rowe of the Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” series may. He is also the host of the podcast, “The Way I Heard It.” That’s where Mike introduced listeners to his mother, Peggy, in a segment called “Coffee With Mom.” There, she gave updates on her and her husband’s activities in a lively and entertaining style.
As Mike explained in the Foreword, these chats came about because of the COVID-19 lockdown; the mother and son kept in touch via regular zoom chats. Mike recorded these chats and added them to the podcast. He was delighted, he wrote, “to see the audience grow to over half a million. For whatever reason, people enjoyed listening to a bestselling author and her marginally famous son chatting about the minutiae of life.”
Peggy Shares the Secret of a Happy Marriage
From the podcast, came her books. In this, her fourth, Peggy welcomes readers in her preface by saying, “Welcome to a story about two people in their eighties and nineties who are transitioning through old age.”Right in Chapter 1, readers discover how the two debated downsizing and moving from their condo to a retirement community. They discussed the pros and cons, with husband John not so sure, but Peggy, aware of their advancing age, was all in. In those debates, she shared her inside techniques at getting her partner to see things her way. “So, I reminded him,” she wrote, “that we were eighty-eight and eighty-three … let’s not wait too long.” Then, as if winking to the reader, she says, “I backed off. It’s what you do with husbands.” It was a strategy she’d used many times throughout their successful marriage.
Eventually, John came around, and after settling in at their new place, Peggy tells the story in the chapter entitled, “Strangers in a Strange Land.” Like Lewis and Clark, the two would grab the map of the building and go exploring. “Instead of paddling through white waters and traversing dense forests,” she wrote, “we merely navigated the indoor walkways that link three neighborhoods.” They’d stop and smell the roses as they went about their day, but it was more like appreciating the “plants and flowers that decorate shelves beside residents’ doors.”
Getting the Credit She Deserves
In the chapter entitled “Independence Day,” Peggy recounts the day she was shopping for an outfit in Macy’s. At the register, she was told that if she opened a store credit card, she’d receive 20 percent off. Considering the offer and always up for a deal, Peggy agreed but was shocked to be told she was not approved.“What? There must be some mistake,” she replied. The issue, it turned out, was that Peggy had no credit history. All of the family’s finances were in her husband’s name. This innocent conversation turned into a quest for the author to establish her own credit, especially after she spoke to a neighbor at the home’s Mahjong night. The recent widow was unable to manage her finances after her husband died; she too had no credit history. “I had raised a family. I’d had a career. I had a driver’s license, a library card, and an AAA card. I was a best-selling author, for Pete’s Sake,” Peggy wrote. “Yet, I could not get my own credit card!”
Her observations of life at “the home” are reminders to accept with grace and humor whatever life puts in front of us. These include discovering the pleasure of daily gourmet dinners—“after sixty years of planning menus, pushing grocery carts, preparing sixty thousand meals, and cleaning up afterward,” or returning home from a dinner out only to have John in a panic realizing he left his dentures in a rolled-up napkin on the table, or the catching sight of the mouse they see so often at the residence, they’ve given it a name. So lively and friendly are her stories that there are reports they’ve enticed others to move there.
At first, the retirement community’s management didn’t like Peggy’s use of the phrase, “the home.” As Mike writes, “They don’t want people to think you and John live in a nursing home, or an old folks’ home.”
This Empty Nester Finds a New Career
As a stay-at-home mom raising three sons, Peggy put aside a career in education but continued her journal writing. Eventually with Mike and his two brothers out of the house, she spent more time writing. From those notes, she had plenty of material for the bestselling book series.Readers will no doubt be inspired at the couple’s 64-year-long love story, their shared sense of humor, their spunk, and acceptance of the changes that’ve come their way. Her philosophy of life is sprinkled throughout the 16 chapters, but it all comes down to this simple motto: Accept the forgetfulness that comes with aging—forgetting the glasses, the hearing aids, even teeth—but “never leave home without your sense of humor. It’s essential—at any age.”
