My mom and her partner became the first participants in my research this evening. That mostly involved me covertly filming them while they experienced VR worlds for the first time, namely outer space and nature. It was a remarkably touching moment that felt akin to a family sitting down in front of a TV set for the very first time. It was especially promising given their particular corner of the boomer mindset that involves a general aversion and mistrust of technology. My mom tried it first, taking in a 360 video of the Great Barrier Reef. She said hi to the fish as they passed by, jerking her head in reaction as they entered her periphery. Next she tried a river somewhere in the tropics, looking down at a boat captain from where the camera was anchored. Needing to really give her the full experience, which I myself had not even had the chance to try out yet, I purchased Nature Treks VR for $11.99. While it was loading, I introduced her to Tilt Brush. Before handing it to her, I selected a brush and picked a colour to spare her (and myself) the controller confusion. With her right hand, she took to it straight away and I filmed as she decorated the air before her with clusters of swirls with a face that meant business. I mentioned that it was possible to change brushes, and to my amazement she followed my instructions on navigating to the palette menus and click-selecting with the trigger. Then she took to it on her own, trying out various brushes.

Her partner Hugh was up next. He’s a big nature guy who hasn’t been able to do much of that sort of thing lately. At 74, his body would have been struggling even without the diagnosis of Huntington’s Disease a decade ago. His movements are disjointed and his sense of balance impulsively distrusts his surroundings, keeping him fairly fixed in place. Neither he or my mom are tech people, to the point that I think they have a kinship in this regard, although they each have their moments when they’re wowed by it. Hugh was still raving about the time he completed and sent in his marks to Seneca College, where he’d been teaching before retirement, from all the way up here in this farmhouse near Meaford. My mom suffers from password amnesia, which means my brother and I also suffer, possibly more, for the hours of restrained aggravation of trying to walk her through password recovery over the phone. But she still brags about being better than all her friends at knowing her way around her iPhone. She and Hugh once called me because the DVD player wouldn’t allow them to insert a disk. I suggested they hold the slot with a thumb and turn the whole machine upside down. Sure enough, it spat out two disks; the one that had been causing the jam and the original one that they hadn’t ejected. It frustrates me, a lot. Needless to say, age isn’t improving the situation.
Nature Treks had finished downloading by the time Hugh assumed his volunteer position on the couch. I set it up so that all he had to do was use the controller to pick one of several illustrious looking scenes from a carousel menu that hovered above a dark pool of shimmering water. To my delight, he figured this out intuitively, and found himself in the middle of a green meadow. There was no aversion to the technology, only a boy-like wonder as he mumbled excitedly, calling out animals like “elk!” as they crossed his path.

When it was my mom’s turn again, it was no different. They took turns standing and walking around through the space or slowly making a circle. It felt to me like what it must have been like for families experiencing television in their living rooms for the first time. I hadn’t been expecting it, but the irony was that the VR experience was anything but isolating. On any other night, we’d typically be in different rooms absorbed in our own activities. Suddenly we were sharing a collective experience and a sense of joy, even without being able to see what the other was seeing. And I got to watch my mom move and react like she might’ve as a 10 year-old kid.
They both agreed (on their own volition) that there was a lot of potential there for seniors. It was plain to see that from where I stood and it gave me hope for next winter.
I worry a lot about my mom living alone in her condo (Hugh lives a block away but will eventually be moving to a care residence. Winter isolation is hard on seniors without a pandemic in place, but with the likelihood of another lockdown coming next winter being fairly high, it looms in the back of my mind. Watching the two of them chatting away about bunnies and elf calfs like that was the most hopeful I have felt about their circumstances in as far back as I can remember. Suddenly the idea of my mom as an avatar hanging out with Hugh on a lake on another planet with Hugh, from their separate locations, didn’t seem all that impossible.