There is a stretch of coast between Montecito and Carpinteria, about half a mile long, where the freeway curves close to the ocean and a small grid of streets climbs up the hillside above. This is Summerland. If you are not paying attention, you will miss it. Most people do. Those of us who serve households here know it as one of the small treasures of the south coast — a village that has somehow, across decades of pressure from every direction, declined to become anything other than the place it has always quietly been.
Summerland has, on its main street, the antique shops that have been antique shops for thirty years, the Big Yellow House that has been there in one form or another for longer than anyone living can remember, the small coffee place where everyone knows everyone, the cemetery on the hill with its old graves and its long view of the channel. There is a beach at the bottom of the village, and a small park at the top. There are streets so quiet you can hear the doves in the morning. There are houses, on the upper streets, with views of the Pacific that you would have to have been born here to fully appreciate.
The people who live in Summerland have, in many cases, been here for a very long time. Some came in the seventies, when the town was even quieter. Some came earlier. They bought small bungalows that were modest at the time and have, of course, become anything but. They raised their children walking down to the beach. They watched the village evolve, and decline to evolve, and they came to love it precisely for its small refusal to change.
These are the families we have come to serve here. They are, in our experience, some of the more interesting clients we have. The town is small enough that we cannot describe households in any detail, but it is fair to say that Summerland has, across the decades, attracted creative people, independent people, people who chose this strip of California specifically because it was not Montecito and not Santa Barbara and not, importantly, somewhere larger. They valued the smallness. They are, in many cases, still valuing it.
What Summerland Households Want
The home care needs in Summerland are, in spirit, similar to what we encounter in Carpinteria — practical, unfussy, oriented toward a comfortable continuation of a life that has been lived in this place for a long time. The differences are matters of texture rather than category.
Summerland households tend to want privacy at a higher pitch than even Montecito households do, and for different reasons. Montecito's privacy is the privacy of formal estates set back from the road. Summerland's is the privacy of close neighbors who have agreed, by long custom, not to inquire. The village is small enough that everyone knows everyone, and the social code that has developed around that intimacy is one of quiet respect. People do not, in Summerland, discuss their neighbors' health. They do not speculate about the cars in the driveway. They do not, when they see a caregiver helping an older woman out of a vehicle, comment on it later at the post office. This is one of the village's quiet virtues, and we honor it absolutely. Our caregivers know that Summerland is a place where what happens at one house is not, ever, the business of any other house.
Summerland households also tend to want caregivers with a particular kind of independence. The clients here are, very often, lifelong independent thinkers. They do not want to be managed. They do not want to be told what is best for them. They want a thoughtful adult in the room, available for what is needed, not running the household on someone else's behalf. The caregivers who do best here are the ones who can hold themselves steady against the temptation to over-direct, who can offer without insisting, who can wait until they are asked. This is a real skill. It is not the same as passivity. It is, in many ways, a more sophisticated form of competence than the institutional kind.
The Day's Texture
Mornings in Summerland are often the part of the day our clients love most. The fog often comes up the hill from the beach in the early hours, and the upper streets sit briefly in cloud before the sun begins to burn it off. The doves are extremely loud in this town for some reason — perhaps because there are not many other sounds for them to compete with — and the morning, for most of our clients, is the time when the day is most distinctly Summerland.
The morning routines we hold here are gentle. Coffee on the porch, when the porch is warm enough. The paper, in households that still take one, brought up from the box at the road. Breakfast in the small kitchen, with the window open if the weather allows. There is, in many of these households, a long-established morning routine that has been the same for thirty years, and our job is to support it rather than to introduce anything new.
Mid-mornings often involve a small errand into the village. Down to the post office. Across to the small grocery. Sometimes a coffee at the place on Lillie Avenue, where the same staff has been making the same drinks for years. Mid-mornings are also, in some households, the time for whatever creative work has continued into late life. We have served writers, painters, and craftspeople who have, well into their eighties, continued to keep daily hours at the desk or the easel or the bench in the back. We do not interrupt this work. We support it, by handling the things that would otherwise interrupt it.
The walks in Summerland are some of the most pleasant we do. The upper streets are quiet enough that even a slow walk feels meditative. The path to the park at the top of the village. The descent toward the beach, when the client has the strength for it. The flat blocks along Lillie Avenue, where the older houses sit with their small gardens. The cemetery, which has a long view of the channel and is one of the more peaceful walks in this part of California, particularly in the late afternoon. A caregiver in Summerland learns these walks until they become as familiar as a second neighborhood.
The afternoons here are often spent quietly. Reading. Visiting with a neighbor who has come up the street. The phone call with the daughter or the son in another city. The garden, where there is one. A nap, where one is welcome. We hold these afternoons gently, present when wanted and elsewhere when not. The house is a quiet house, and our presence is calibrated to it.
Evenings are early. The light goes long in summer, and our clients often sit out on the porches or the small back patios well into the lavender hour, watching the channel turn dark. Dinners are simple. Bedtime is unhurried. The night closes in the village's particular silence — no traffic, no voices, only the occasional dog from a neighboring street and the persistent sound of the surf, two blocks downhill, that has been the lullaby of Summerland for as long as there has been a Summerland.
A Note on the Quiet
We have come to understand, after some years of work here, that the quiet of Summerland is not merely an ambient condition. It is part of what its long-time residents are aging into. They came here, in many cases, precisely for the quiet. They have built lives around it. They have, in their late years, become more dependent on it rather than less.
This has practical implications for the kind of home care that suits Summerland. The caregiver should not bring loudness with her. Her voice should be calibrated to the room. Her movements should be unhurried. Her phone calls, when she must take them, should be brief and discreet, and not made from the rooms the client occupies. Her conversation should be welcome but never insistent. Summerland is, in a very real sense, a quiet community, and the caregiver who arrives ready to fill the silence will, sooner or later, be sent away — usually politely, but firmly.
We hire and train with this in mind. Our caregivers in Summerland are, almost without exception, people for whom quiet is comfortable. They do not feel the need to perform. They can read a room. They can settle, for an hour, into a chair across from a client who is reading, without needing the moment to be anything more than what it is. This is, in our considered view, one of the more underrated qualifications in home care, and it is one we look for with particular care when we are matching caregivers to households here.
A Final Word for the Summerland Families
If you are reading this from a house on Greenwell, or on Lillie, or on any of the quiet streets that climb the hill above the freeway, and you have begun to wonder whether the moment has come for some help in the house — for yourselves, or for a parent, or for a spouse — we would be honored to be one of the conversations you have.
We will not, in any way, presume on the village's quiet. We will arrive when invited, leave when our visit is done, and not call back unless asked. We will, if the fit is right, propose a way of beginning that is modest, respectful, and entirely sized to your actual situation. We have learned that this is how Summerland prefers to begin relationships, and we are happy to begin in that manner.
Summerland is a small place. It has, for as long as we have known it, taken excellent care of its own. We are proud, when asked, to be part of how it continues to do so.
— The House of Age Well Care