As soon as we walk through the doors, the hostess at the end of the hall breaks into a big beaming smile, It seems to always delight people, seeing a significantly older woman - she's 93 - out & about, having a grand time, with a good appetite for food & life.
As we enter the main dining room, we spot an older man on the right, exchanging big smiles & happy greetings. We only know each other from the occasional Monday lunch, but it feels like we're all friends. We've seen him with friends, with children, with grandchildren, always at the same table, always having a fine time. He's seen us grinning at him like the two happy women we are, delighting in someone enjoying friends & family.
The staff doesn't bother giving us menus. My grannie client is a lock - the cajun blue burger (without the spices), medium, no pickles. I'm the question mark - meatless lasagne or eggplant parmigiana? And dessert? Always a dish of chocolate & vanilla ice creams with a little chocolate sauce & a little whipped cream for my g.c., a cappuccino for moi.
On this Monday, the parking lot & dining room was filled. One table in particular caught my eye - the LARGE round table in front of the fire place was encircled with eight or nine women, all dressed in holiday finery, all sporting smiles as big as Texas. What joy to be so near them. I pegged them as in their upper 70s. Spot on! They'd been been gathering at each other's birthdays & Christmas since their 1956 high school graduation!
Small wonder I was so intrigued by just watching them interact. To me, they were a group of older women having a grand time. But to each other... Ah, none of them saw the same thing that I did. They looked across the table & saw a young woman in the prime of her life. They mirrored for each other all the low notes of life, which they helped each other move through, and all the HIGH, the ones they held onto even more tenderly in their hearts. To the rest of the room, the looked like grandmas, even great-grandmas, but to each other... To each other, they were priceless mirror that instantly transported them to long past years.
I get to see that same dynamic every Tuesday night, when I take the same grannie client from her upscale senior residence with all its wonderful programs & facilities to our hometown's considerably more modest village. While it doesn't offer craft clubs or an indoor swimming pool, discussion groups of all types or fully equipped exercise or computer rooms, it offers something even more valuable - lifelong friends. The other day, my g.c. sat at a table made up almost exclusively of classmates & schoolmates. Oh, the verve & vigor of the laughter that rang from that table, where the youngest is just about to hit the big 9-0. Whenever we leave from a Tuesday night dinner, it's a sure thing my grannie client will have a more sprightly spring to her step & a smile as big as Texas on her face.
Friends from our youth - for me, they'd include Hannah & Marcia, Billy & Clark - are mirrors that reflect back to our older selves those younger days & younger selves. There are a lot of advantages for oldsters to move to a fine facility like the one where my grannie client lives, but there are no mirrors there to her younger self. She is blessed to be able to see her friends once a week, to reflect back to them those carefree days of youth & all the moments between then & now.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest? Friends of long ago help us see ourselves at our fairest! Blessings on them, whether they are mine, a grannie client's, or a circle of classmates circled around a table at Scoogi's, creating another memory to treasure in their hearts.
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