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Plymouth Director of Elder Affairs Conni DiLego offers her perspective on the advantages of getting older.Wow! Talk about headlines! Between the wedding of the century, the floods, the tornadoes and the slaying of our world’s foremost terrorist, it’s pretty hard to catch one’s breath. It seems as though there’s a major event of some kind every day. Thank God the wedding was beautiful. My eyes can’t stand the strain of one more horrible disaster. But it does give one pause for thought now, doesn’t it? When you read of the tornadoes or the floods, do you ever try to truly imagine how it would feel to be a part of something like that? Can you imagine waking up, or coming out of hiding and finding …
I’ve had the opportunity to spend many hours in the company of my Plymouth community in the past few weeks and I have one thing to say about it: I’m impressed. To begin with, I was fortunate enough to work the phones at the recent telethon produced by PACTV for our Japanese sister-city after its terrible earthquake and tsunami. The entire evening was filled with humble compassion from everyone who was either present at the event, called in, or watched from a comfortable chair in their living room. Everyone who participated in any way sent loving, healing thoughts and prayers to their sisters …
For whatever reason, we have been spared the tragedies, both ecological and human, that so much of the rest of the world is enduring at this moment. We are free to go to any store of our choice and buy the necessities for our gardens and our homes and our children. We’re not waiting in line for water. Our children, for the most part, are not starving, our government is not shooting at us, and our houses have not been swept away by earthquake, tsunami or hurricane. My family is still safely where they were yesterday. Certainly there is an economic crisis here. Some of us are still out of work …
I had a conversation recently with someone at the Senior Center. We were discussing telephones. Actually, we were discussing communications today and how things have changed from when we were kids. In the course of the conversation, we remembered the tall, slender, black, metal phones with the ice cream cone shaped ear piece. It had a cradle for hanging the ear piece which also could be used to click for the operator or, used to notify whomever was on the party line that it was time to get off. I don't know if there was an actual time limit on those lines, but courtesy should have dictated …
I had an interesting conversation with my grandson Dave recently about the advantages of being a senior in high school. Evidently there are a few perks earned on the last leg of the K-12 track after completing what seemed like an eternity of “underclassmen” runs. As I listened to him expound on the benefits of seniorhood, I began to realize there was a correlation to the senior life he was describing, and the senior life I’m living. I asked him to jot down a few notes on these hard earned bennies and here’s what we came up with: Grandson: Pile on the snow days! We seniors have a set final day…
