70Candles.com

Jane, Age 73

The Heart of a Senior Center

As we segue from busy work lives to the more leisure pace of retirement, a vast array of possibilities lies before us. What to do with this ocean of time? I set about studying this question by listening to friends and acquaintances and by exploring my own neighborhood…a kind of elder-anthropological study.

A dear friend wrote to say as she turned 70, she was recruited into a senior dance corps. Singing and dancing had always been fun for this spirited women, and there she was, in her costume, ready to entertain audiences throughout the holiday season…with a brief break when her family all took her on a birthday celebratory Disney Cruise. She was having a ball!

I decided to investigate my town’s Senior Center. I was amazed at what I saw there.

This Senior Center fills every space in a one-story, compact facility. With an amazing enrollment of over five thousand local residents and another one thousand who live in other towns, it hosts between 300 and 350 each day, in a wide variety of well-attended activities.

The very capable white-haired Recreation Coordinator, who has been involved in the Center for the last ten years, considers people there to be her “family.” She knows many feel the site to be their “home away from home,” and provides a good “window” to observe the Center.

Through exercise classes, dances, knitting circle, arts, crafts, card playing, mah-jongg, table tennis, lectures, orchestra practice, weekly luncheons, and countless group trips, people over age fifty gather, become involved, and find, above all “companionship.”

The spirit of the place is apparent when one enters the door. Warm greetings at the front desk, shrieks of laughter from the table tennis room, Latin music from the Zumba class, the click of cue sticks on pool balls—the clack of the mah-jongg tiles—a comfortable place to be.

Before or after yoga or stretching groups, women drink coffee together and chat. Those who go on semi-annual bus excursions or fly to places abroad, get together back in town….New groups form while old ones endure.
Impact on the Seniors? The planner of all these activities stresses health, vitality, and social connectedness. Comments she has heard: “My doctor said I was the most limber seventy-five year old he had ever seen!” “You saved my life, when you made me see my doctor, when my heart rate was so high.” Backs have been strengthened, knee surgery avoided….spirits lifted.

Heart-warming are the random acts of kindness, and the graciousness and generosity toward each other that she sees among the members.

This gentle and warm-hearted woman has a chair beside her desk where anyone can come to sit and just talk; she listens. “Many live alone, or have no family around,” she explains. They just need someone to tell things to.” She patiently and empathically lends an ear.

When asked what she has gained from her experiences at the Center, she answers, “So many good friends that I could never leave and go anywhere else.” She’s learned that you can never tell what a person has been through in their life by the way they look, for she’s found that many have survived hardship.

Above all, from everything she’s seen, she’s convinced that, “Aging is a state of mind.”

How do you now spend your days? What new endeavors have you embarked upon?
Please share them here for our 70candles readers.