Barbara Clendinen was a true steel magnolia, a charming honey-voiced Southern woman who was capable of dealing with any situation, whether it was widowhood or integrating the Tampa YMCA.

The one thing she was not prepared for was old age.

"None of my mother's generation expected to be this old," says Dudley Clendinen, a former New York Times reporter and features editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who now lives in Baltimore. "No generation before has lived so long, accumulated so much, grown so independent in old age, or become so demented as have our parents."

And no other generation of children has faced the baby boomers' dilemma of what to do about aging parents.

In 1994, after years of becoming more frail, Clendinen's 79-year-old mother finally agreed to move into Canterbury Tower, a full-service Tampa Bay geriatric apartment building with a nursing wing. The average age of the residents was 86.

Four years later, after his mother suffered a debilitating stroke, Clendinen decided to write a book that would portray how the Greatest Generation was dealing with this "new old age." In the process, he hoped to unravel the mystery that was his mother.

Written from the research of 400 days and nights spent at Canterbury over a seven-year period, "A Place Called Canterbury" (Viking, $24.95) is an intimate, often hilarious chronicle of a son's last years with his mother and her colorful friends.

In a recent interview, Clendinen talked about what he learned about his parents' generation and himself.

Q: Was there one point at Canterbury when the residents and staff began treating you as one of them, or were you viewed with suspicion by some?

A: It took some months, maybe a year or more. I started off being well-known because I'd been born in Tampa and my mother had been born in Tampa. My father had been editor of the Tampa Tribune for almost 30 years. Many of them came from the part of Tampa I grew up in and were comfortable with me. But the board wrote this letter that essentially said, "Watch out. Here comes the Bogeyman." Then people suddenly saw me not as the boy they'd always known but as the writer who was going to write about them. So I had to create trust, not just familiarity.

Q: One of your purposes when you began spending so much time at Canterbury was learning more about your mother. Did you discover anything you didn't know about her, and what other questions would you have liked answered?

A: I never asked my parents the simplest questions. It never occurred to me to ask my parents how they met. I didn't ask them about their childhoods. My mother was very manipulative of men, including her son. That power diminished with the effects of the strokes. I did start trying to interview her about her life, by telephone in the last two or three years before her strokes. But I wasn't comfortable. I couldn't ask the same questions of my mother that I would have of someone else. Women of that generation were such role players. I had the distinct feeling that she was putting a rosy glow on everything.

Q: Do you think some of the residents told you more about their lives than they told their children?

A: I think that's true. I know it's true. Maybe because it's easier for them to talk to me, since I'm not their son. I developed a special role there. I didn't realize it for a long time. Because I was there so much, more than any other family members, I became the son they wish they had. I also became the person who wanted to listen to them, who took an interest in their lives and their stories.

Q: The people you talked to at Canterbury seem to reflect the good qualities of the Greatest Generation. They have a sense of humor, grace and toughness about them. Do you think baby boomers will respond as well when they reach their 80s?

A: I hope they react as well. I began to think I would move to Canterbury when the time came. It felt so much like home to me. Then it occurred to me that I'm 63 and if I moved there in 15 or 20 years, the people there would be my peers and it didn't seem like nearly as much fun. It's hard for me to visualize what would happen at that age. We all have to answer the question of how we're going to live at that age, and how we can make those years as much fun and stimulating as possible.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Dudley Clendinen discusses "A Place Called Canterbury." 8 tonight. Outwrite Books, 991 Piedmont Ave., Atlanta. 404-607-0082, www.outwritebooks.com.