Location: Lakeview Nursing and Rehabilitation
Date: Sunday, February 17, 2013; 2:00-3:30 pm
Growing up, one the regular routines that I had was reading the morning newspaper with my breakfast. Well, when I say news, I mean the sports and
the comics section. In the evenings, my
dad used to get two other city news periodicals and I used to love them not only for
the comics, but more importantly for their puzzles section. There was a logic puzzle wherein a story was
told, clues provided, and we had to guess from that who was doing what to whom - somewhat similar to the game ‘Clue’. In fact, my buddy from school and I used to
love solving these independently and discussing our findings in the class the next day. Every success I have had solving logic
problems in competitive exams, I owe to that practice with a newspaper. Something special has been lost in today’s
technological age where news is read online.
That smell of an unread newspaper is something I will always remember
from all of my yesteryear's and even now when I go visit my dad, every morning I
reach for the newspaper and yes, it is still the sports and the comics.
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| Sunday Papers |
The Chicago Cares opportunity
description said that ‘Volunteers peruse
and discuss the Sunday paper with residents’. I wrote to Mary, our volunteer leader and
asked if there was any special preparation that I needed to do, any particular
paper that I should read that morning, so as to be prepared. She said that I did not really need any practice and all I should do was be prepared to converse. I could certainly do that, and so showed up
at Lakeview Nursing with no knowledge on what had happened in the world that
day.
Mary came in carrying a bunch of
newspapers ranging from ‘Chicago Tribune’
to ‘New York Times’. The other volunteers were Fran and Brad, who
had even bought a Spanish newspaper for one of the residents.
My pal Jim from ‘What’s The Word’
came in and requested the sports section of the Tribune. He wanted to find out what was happening at
the White Sox’s spring training. I asked
if he was a fan and he said he used to root for the Cubs, but has now given up. Being a fan of all teams Boston, I knew how
he must have felt, having seen similar frustrations in Red Sox faithful pre
2004.
Mary paired me with a resident,
Valeria, who said that she could not hear very well and also did not have her
glasses. I said not to worry and asked
what was it that she wanted to read. She asked
for the sports section from the Tribune and we opened a big two page article
celebrating Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday. Now, MJ is beyond divine for Chicago natives
and they had gone all out for this one, discussing his 50 greatest
moments. I read a few of them for Valeria and asked if she remembered any of those. She kept nodding and said that she liked sports and even played some in her time, including tennis and volleyball. In fact, she claimed to be quite an accomplished
tennis player. She said that along with
some of her friends, they used to often go and watch policemen play baseball. Seems like Valeria may have been an interesting
young woman!
She said she has four kids, three
of them boys. One of her grandson’s just
graduated from high school and both of his parents are police officers. I asked her if that’s what he wants to become
and she said maybe not. By this time we
both were getting tired of reading about MJ’s exploits and I asked if she wanted to read the
comics. She said that she remembered
when the comics were a nickel and the later a quarter. I asked what her favorite comics were and was
pleasantly surprised to hear ‘Superman’
and ‘Batman’. Yes indeed, Valeria must really have been an
interesting young woman. I noticed that
she was now more interested in the sales inserts in the paper and was studying
the ‘Walgreens’ one intently. She complained that the coffee had just gone
on sale, right after she had bought some.
She went about collecting all of these brochures and tucked them away
for reading later.
In the meanwhile, we had been joined
by another resident, who introduced herself as Jackie. She was recovering from reconstructive foot
surgery and complained that this was the first time in four weeks that she had
seen a newspaper. She was an extremely
sharp woman and I was not surprised to hear that she used to be a teacher. She loves her newspapers and started perusing
the Tribune. She seemed to have a nice
sense of humor since she showed us a picture of the Afghan President and said
that he looked suspicious. I said that
he was after all under a lot of stress and she agreed. “He needs a vacation in Florida”, she said. “Me
too”, I replied. We talked about gun
control in schools and she mentioned how back in the 70’s she was in University of
Wisconsin at Madison and there was a gun issue that scared everyone. We talked about crime in Chicago and she said
she lived in Obama’s neighborhood and many a youth over there gets into crime
just to embarrass him. She said that
despite all of this, Chicago was a safe place and mentioned how she had told
someone off in LA when they had mentioned Chicago as an unsafe place. “Have
you seen your city”, she has asked them. Jackie definitely looked like someone who enjoyed a debate.
I asked why she was in Lakeview
Nursing, if she lived down South. She
said that she was in fact supposed to go to a nursing care facility over there,
but they denied her entry and she came here.
It seems everything had been set, but when she arrived there, they would
not let her in. It felt insurance related
and I told her that. I said that we were
glad to have her here and mentioned about all the other programs Chicago Cares
has at Lakeview Nursing. She seemed interested in
‘Pet Therapy’ and talked about her
dog growing up. They had named him ‘Trouble’ and she had him since 6th
grade. There were no prizes for guessing why the dog's name was such. She told me about
the one time when she and her family, with parents and two brothers, had gone
on a picnic and Trouble fell in a river.
Because he was a Cocker Spaniel, all the kids could see as they chased
him downriver, were his big ears. She
said that once they got him out and into the car, Trouble proceeded to spray
everyone by drying himself. Jackie was
really fond of the dog and I could see it in the way she spoke.
Valeria left soon, not before
telling us that she too had a dog called Rusty.
Then Jackie and I set the newspapers aside and just chatted. She asked about my background and when I said
I was from ‘Mumbai’, she said “You mean Bombay”. She knew a lot about India and the world and
in fact had taught in Ethiopia as a part of the Peace Corps. She had been a teacher all throughout, from grade
school to graduate level. We talked
about life in the nursing home and she said that many people give up when they
come here. I said that it is mostly
because of loneliness of the place and she would never be one of those people
because of her personality. She has a
tendency to make friends and engage people in conversations, partly due to her
travels and her life.
Mary came and reminded me twice
that time was almost up, but it was not as if I was visiting someone in prison,
with fixed visitation hours. I was
really enjoying my conversation with Jackie, but thought it would be better
to leave with the other volunteers.
Jackie thanked me for my time and said that we volunteers were doing a
great job. I told her that I would be
back in a week for Bingo and was hoping to see her then. Before leaving I collected all the newspapers and gave them to Jackie, so that she has some reading material during the week.
I walked out with Mary and Brad
and though I had not done much of Newspaper reading, I had enjoyed an enriching
afternoon nevertheless – just like the puzzles from my childhood. And despite all these years, I still had
found myself reaching for the sports and the comics.
*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy
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