Location: Lakeview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center
Date: Wednesday, November 20, 2013; 6:30-8:00 pm
I always enjoy my visits to
Lakeview Nursing and this evening I arrived to find that our
Volunteer Leader Gwyn was already there, along with another volunteer
Greg. From the looks of things,
this was it for the evening. Well, there were 3 of us, which was 2 more than the number of residents who had shown
up for the project. Jim was sick,
Mary had just been through surgery and Larry has not been well for 3
months. This left just Jack from
the usual team and he was in attendance.
It was a shame that Larry was absent since it was his birthday and as is
her custom, Gwyn had made cookies from him. I remember attending a year ago when it was Larry’s birthday
and just like this evening, Gwyn had bought cookies. Wow, a year. Has time really gone by that fast?
 |
| "Please Mr. President" |
Gwyn said that it would be great
to have some more people and asked if I could go look for my buddy Elmer, who
always adds color to any occasion.
I found him in bed and asked if he wanted to join us. He said that he had lost track of time
and asked me to convey his apologies to everyone. I mentioned that there was a cookie in it for him should he
come, but he looked tired and said that he would have to miss all the fun. There really wasn’t anyone else who
attends this program and so I returned back to the community room. Gwyn said that there was still work to
be done and we should get to it.
This was the first session for the January-February issue of ‘As We See It’, meaning we were starting
with a blank piece of paper. As
she set up the laptop computer, I took a look at the November-December issue,
and there were several interesting tidbits. One of them was that the President of the U.S. can actually “pardon” a turkey or two for
Thanksgiving, following which they can live free. I did not know this fact and while I do not know if turkeys
have lawyers filing petition on their behalf, it does seem like an unenviable
task for the President to choose his favorite ones!
We were ready to commence and the
four of us started by discussing some of the more special days and occasions
that occur during the first two months of the year. There are popular ones like
‘New Years Day’, ‘MLK Day’, ‘Presidents
Day’, ‘Valentines Day’, ‘Super Bowl Sunday’ etc, but Gwyn wanted something
less famous than that. Greg and
Jack would be combing through the ‘Chase’
trivia book, while Gwyn and I would be searching on the computer. I asked Gwyn if it was her laptop and
she said that it belonged to Chicago Cares. What was interesting was a big Justin Timberlake sticker on
the front of the computer. Looks
like someone over there is a huge fan!
I opened Google and put in search words, “Things to do in Chicago in January” and voila, there was a link to
a website which gave a calendar view of everything that was happening in and
around the city. This was a
goldmine of information for me personally, let alone for the newsletter. There were a lot of things to do in
January such as ‘Winter Wonderland’,
‘Lincoln Park Zoo Lights’, ‘Flower & Train Show’, ‘Live Storytelling’
etc. While I was interested in
attending quite a few, there was also an event called ‘Polar Bear Plunge’, where people wearing swimsuits jumped into the
lake! This was something I had no
interest in watching, let alone dream of doing. Gwyn said that she has seen it and had no words to comment
on the utter stupidity on display.
February had things such as ‘Chicago
Auto Show’, ‘Youth Poetry Festival’ and a ‘Dog Show’ where you can actually pet the dogs. This was all good enough for me,
especially a ‘Mardi Gras Pub Crawl’. Suddenly Chicago wasn’t looking too bad
a place for winter.
 |
| Surely this was more dangerous |
In the meanwhile Greg and Jack had found something called ‘Silent Music
Week’, which celebrated silence.
Eh, what? I mean, really,
what? How was that even supposed
to work? I looked online and found
a news article from the 50s that said that a 65-piece orchestra assembled and
did nothing. It sounded like the “Emperor’s new clothes” to me and I hope
that people paid for this silent recital with invisible money! This prompted Jack to tell us his music
stories from childhood. It seems
that his mom was an accomplished piano player and dad was a barber. However his mother remarried and his
stepfather was an opera singer, meaning Jack was always around shows and
musicians. He said that he had met
almost all of the famous musicians passing through Chicago. He had started playing an organ at a
young age and gave his first performance at 10 years old. He told us how some of the organs have
5 levels of keys and are huge. He
talked about travelling with his parents for shows in the 50s at the height of
racial segregation and prejudice, meaning there were places where he wasn’t
allowed to enter. Well, it was
their loss I say. Seeing his captive audience, Jack was on a roll and told us
a scary winter story where he was hit on the eye by a snowball having a rock in
it. He said that the kid throwing
it was not aware and though his eye was shut for 2 weeks, he had been lucky
not to lose it. He told us about
his visit to ‘Mount Rushmore’ and how
it was a scary ride to get there.
Well, considering Cary Grant was hanging off the President’s nose while
rescuing Eva Marie Saint, a car ride is nothing!
Gwyn asked me to find some
restaurant to review and l looked on Google Maps and found some bars, pubs, ice
cream shops and juice centers. The
restaurants were either pizza or noodles places and Gwyn said that we would
probably go with one of those since she likes to bring food in for a session. It was almost time to go
and Gwyn gave Jack the cookies to drop off with Larry. She also told him to ask Larry to find someone to interview for the newsletter.
It was great that she was trying to get Larry involved despite his ailment and it's really things like these that sometimes help more than medicine. She announced that December 18th
would be their holiday party and Gwyn was going to bring small presents for the
residents. In my opinion there are
never any small presents... there are just gifts, especially when they mean so much to
the residents in a nursing home. I
left after the most intimate session of ‘What’s
The Word’, but it had been perfect.
It had allowed me to learn more about Jack. Really, who knew that this quiet man sitting in the corner of
the room during Bingo was so interesting and talented? Just goes to prove how impressions can be, and usually are, wrong.
*All the client's names have been changed in order to
respect their privacy
No comments:
Post a Comment