Golden years

Sun City, Arizona, was the US’s first largescale retirement community when it opened in 1960. For the past 43 years, it has been home to the Sun City Poms, a marching and performance group whose 28 members range in age from 58 to 89; they practise three times a week and appear at up to 50 events a year. US photographer Kendrick Brinson has been documenting Sun City since 2009 and describes it as a “joyful and uplifting” place to be. Towards the end of last year, as vaccines were bringing the Covid-19 pandemic under control, she wanted to know how the Poms were faring, and flew back to Arizona. “We all worked hard on Zoom to be ready to perform when the lockdown was lifted,” says marching director Kathy Villa, 65. “I might have teared up from seeing so many happy faces at once,” says Brinson.

FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER, I’ve wanted to be a grownup. As children, my friends and I would play at being shopkeepers and customers, thrilled to inhabit an adult role. As a teenager, I lived alone abroad. By my 30s I had all the things I thought signalled adulthood: a career (as a journalist), a home, a husband, a washing machine, a dishwasher and a fridge. All the paperwork and white goods to prove I was finally the competent, confident adult I had always hoped to be.

But at random moments my non-adultness would pop out, like when I opened my kitchen bin to find the lid thick and throbbing with squiggly maggots, and immediately called my mother for