I was just supposed to show up and talk with people. It wasn’t my first experience volunteering with elderly folks—I had volunteered for hospice in high school. I visited a man named Gary who, in his removed state of mind, directed an invisible choir, his hands flicking around to the beat in his head, his eyes closed and a smile on his face as he listened to music only he could hear. I loved Gary.
“So, Grant, what do you like to do?” I asked the man at the table I had just met, who was nibbling on his dinner.
It was my first day volunteering at Cove Point Retirement Center. I had shown up. I was talking with people.
“I can’t do anything anymore,” he responded. He told me about his love of Louis L’Amour books, journal writing, and researching about his ancestors on the computer. But now Grant was nearly blind.
“Reading is what I miss the most,” he said. “Sometimes I dream about reading.”
I thought about the hundreds of pages I was required to read for my classes each week, and suddenly I felt ashamed for ever complaining about it.
My mom told me she was surprised I was drawn to old people since I was afraid of them as a child. But as I grew, I became afraid of my peers, and found comfort in the grandparently aura and frailty of old people that disarmed my own insecurities. How can you be afraid of a perm and muumuu who wants nothing more than your presence? I was a quiet girl, better at listening than talking, and perhaps more patient than most. Old name, old soul. With a single question, I could pass the skein and just listen as the yarn unraveled.
After dinner I made my way upstairs to the baby grand piano. I set up my music and placed my hands on the keys. No sweating, no shaking, no rushing to the bathroom. Look how far I’ve come.
I started taking piano lessons when I was in second grade. Practicing was okay, but recitals were torture. The nerves overwhelmed me. Once my teacher required me to play my Christmas recital piece from memory. When it was my turn to perform, I tripped over the keys with shaking, slippery fingers. In the end, though, it was my brain that betrayed me, as the nerves erased my memory and I had to stop partway through. Start again, stop again. Finally I gave up and returned to my seat, cheeks hot and tears threatening.
I didn’t love piano until my parents let me quit when I was a sophomore in high school. I ditched the classical music and scale exercises, and started playing pop music arrangements and easier-than-they-sound pieces from Jon Schmidt. I was addicted to piano then, and craved the moments when I could escape to the bench and play for no one but myself, completely present and without sense of time. At college I reserved a piano room for an hour at a time at the local church building—cheap therapy, and I didn’t have to talk.
Just as I was about to start the song, a man came over in his motorized wheelchair and introduced himself as Leo. He asked me to play a song, and so I began. It was a private concert for Leo and me, though everyone in the room could hear.
“You did a nice job,” he said after the final note faded away and a moment of silence sealed the song. “Now I want to tell you a story.”
I swiveled on the bench to face him and put my hands in my lap. If what this man needed was a pair of ears, I could certainly be that.
“When my wife and I were newlyweds,” he began, “she really wanted a piano. Now, when you first get married, you need everything. But I gave in and bought an old, upright piano for her. We spent a lot of money on piano lessons for all our kids, but I don’t regret a cent. Now I get to sit and listen to them play.” I thought about my dad laying on the living room floor after a Sunday dinner of waffles and bacon, just listening to me play and maybe drifting off to sleep, still wearing his white shirt and tie.
Leo went on to tell more stories—about how he was honest at work when there was pressure to bend the rules, about the multiple religious missions he served, and the other work he had done for his church. I wondered at how, in fifteen minutes, I had made a more meaningful connection with this stranger than any of the many strangers I had met at school.
“I don’t regret one minute of my life,” Leo said. “I’ve had such a good life.”
This was truth—hard-won truth at the hand of life’s complexities—and I could almost feel a zing go through the air as the gravity and sacredness of his words filled up the space between us.
It was magic. It enchanted me. And I still can’t stop chasing it.
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