“The great secret that all old people share,” wrote Doris Lessing, “is that you really don’t change in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don’t change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.”
Found that great quote on a blog I follow called The Owl Underground.
I miss working and playing at the West Seattle Senior Center. People lucky enough to live a long time are often pretty interesting. The young assume all old people are exactly the same. The pandemic sure hasn't helped, lumping seniors into the same frail, vulnerable category. You can't downplay the risk, but most will do just fine.
Anyway, good news with the vaccine going out to nursing homes. Yesterday, on my Uke Zoom meeting, we invited a 96 year old woman who has basically been confined to her room at a care center for the last 9 months. Imagine that? And yet she looked as perky as ever. How resilient some people are.
She doesn't play ukulele, but loved our weekly sing-along at the Senior Center. A true Ukes groupie! It was fun seeing her. I'm up to 10 invites, which is getting to be quite a wrangle. The only complaint is 40 minutes is not long enough.
We can't play together at the same time on Zoom, but the brave ones do solos while everyone else mutes and plays along in silence. No judgement, just encouragement no matter how bad we sing.
I played "Hey, Good Lookin'" yesterday, and sang the entire song the wrong key!
You think a Hank Williams 3-chord ditty is a piece of cake? Ha.
He wasn't called the Shakespeare Hillbilly for nothing.
Thanks for the shout out! The Scottish poet Robert Burns talks about seeing ourselves as others see us, which would be an interesting giftie, but I think it would be equally interesting (and eye-opening!) if some of those young folks could see us "oldies but goodies" as we see ourselves. Like the man says, "These wrinkles are only skin deep!"
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting dear blogger friend. I feel like I know you somehow? Take care.
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