Therapy

So I spent part of a morning with a grandma friend.  Just a little background, I majored in community health education.  My professors encouraged me to get a gerontology minor.  There was just no way.  I knew myself and that I’d be no good with the older set.  Now that I analyze it, it’s probably based on the very same reasons why I shied away from anything with kids.  I know.  Not a pretty confession.

I don’t know how I came to be in the therapy section of a convalescent home, but before I knew it, I was in a large room—the most energy and movement I’d witnessed in this facility.  This was where the action was.  I sat as her helper moved my friend’s arms and legs for her, helping her stretch.  I asked her if it hurt or felt good.  “It hurts so good,” she explained.

Before I knew it I was at a large table with four women in wheelchairs.  One was stringing beads.  The very same ones I’ve had at home for the little kids.  One was pinching clothespins on a towel.  What a great idea!  I totally would’ve done that with my little ones!  Another one was putting large pegs in an upright board.  I was transported back to my day care days.  I totally remembered those pegs!  Then the friend I came to see was set up next to me with a little card with colored dots and a plastic peg board so she could copy that design with her own tiny pegs laid out on a washcloth (another inspired idea!  So they don’t all roll away—love cheap innovation!)  It was all so interesting to me!  They were here to work on their fine motor skills.

I had no part to play; I was content to make my observations.  And I know we laugh about how life goes full circle and we end up the way we started.  But here I was in my own laboratory, just ticking off the startling similarities in young life just starting and life that is fading.  The closer you get to each end of the spectrum, the more parallels you see.

Both baby types and senior types need lots of help.  Most would like independence; they just haven’t mastered skills or else they’ve lost mastery of their skills.  And yet we continue to cheer on any small accomplishment.  Like the beading I mentioned above.   Beading requires similar mental exertion to grasping Cherrios on a high chair tray and getting them to the mouth, and sometimes they need our help getting started.


They aren’t that stable on their feet.  They don’t quite trust their legs yet/anymore and so can’t walk very well.  The balance is a tad off. 

They sleep a lot.  Sometimes in their seats.  Sometimes in front of the tv.  Sometimes they balk at naptime; usually it’s after lunch.  But they all get up early.  And they don’t always sleep through the night.  In fact, usually they need to go to the bathroom a couple times; they sleep on and off throughout the day—especially the closer they are to the beginning of their life or the end of their life.

They also take things in.  You have no idea they’re engaged until they suddenly say something that reveals just how long they’ve understood what you’ve been saying.  Kind of have to watch yourself.

Both kinds of bodies are a little funny looking, lumpy in weird places, mostly soft.  But that’s also their beauty!!  We totally disregard what their shells look like.  We excuse the baby set and the grandparents from needing to adhere to such rigorous standards; their size is acceptable whatever it looks like.  It’s only the middle part of life where we’re prisoners to what our shell shows.  One reason smiles come easy for these age groups: they are carefree and accepting of their somewhat paunchy yet saggy, wrinkly skins.  They’re just excited when they can get it to work right.  What a blessing our bodies are.  Why do we spend so much energy worrying about how they look and much less on what they can do?

They aren’t afraid to tell it like it is, what the unvarnished truth looks like from their vantage point.  The part of the brain that controls tact isn’t developed or else it came and went.  We make excuses for them.  And that’s fine.  Unfiltered thoughts can be refreshing because along with the kids asking you why you have so many freckles, they also tell you good things you never knew mattered.  And you have to take them at their word because they just say it like they see it.

From what I can see, they are completely accepting and immediately forgiving.  Mistakes are fine, no one cares if you pass a little gas, if you trip them on accident or if you leave them unoccupied for a bit.  They’ll mostly just look around.  You feel safe being just you because you know they don’t hold grudges.  And it’s not even that they can’t remember.  They’re just that way.

I like the way the helper stretched my friend’s muscles.  Gently.  Like it hardly did anything.  Reminded me of when I’d do that with my little babies:  moving their legs around to relieve gas, just to move their muscles and because I figured they’d like it.  I assume older people have sensitive skin and that they’d love to be massaged just like babies.  Who wouldn’t like cream rubbed into them every day?  Sign me up.  I think both sets like to be touched.

They don’t have or else they’ve lost a bit of control with their eating, so they might need a bib.  Some of their food is soft because teeth are hard to come by.  Meals are a big deal, and eating kind of wears them out.

When I looked around, I saw contentment or reflections from a far off place or time.  I always wanted to ask my babies what was going on in their minds.  And I felt the same questions bubbling up in the therapy room.  What were their heads filled with?  What memories were they retracing?  What could they tell me if they could talk?

I liked the slowness of my new friends in therapy and it reminded me of my early mom days when days just had a different speed.  It occurred to me that those just coming and going are the ones who really get it.  I felt like I had been privy to a secret that morning because my friend had let me into her life and we took it at her speed.