I’ll never forget the time my son was struggling through a required economics course in high school. My dad, a former CPA and economic consultant who didn’t live nearby but happened to be visiting, offered to help. I sat them both down at the dining room table, with the best of intentions and the worst of apprehensions.
You see, my son had significant learning disabilities — an “atypical learner” teachers called him — and working with him on any kind of homework was a challenge. Neither he nor my father — called Pop-Pop by his 11 grandchildren because Grandpa didn’t suit his immortal idea of himself — were known for the length of their attention span. Envisioning a train wreck, I wished them well and quietly disappeared from the room.
When I passed by an hour later, they were chuckling and nodding like two gleeful venture capitalists.
“Hey Mom!” my son said. “Remember when you said you didn’t know what supply-side economics was? Want me to explain it to you?”
Now I loved my Dad dearly, but he’d never taken five minutes in his life to help me with homework. I knew he was entirely capable, but with me he was brusque, impatient and hyper-critical. So who was this easygoing, encouraging mentor who’d demonstrated more patience with my son’s circuitous way of learning than his long-suffering mother ever had?
“It skips a generation.”
That’s what my father’s mother — who’d had her own cocky, bullheaded son to deal with — told me at one of our mid-afternoon get-togethers.(She took each of her grandchildren individually to “dunch” every few months, so as to give them her undivided attention.)
“Parents and children judge,” she said. “Grandparents and grandchildren accept.”
I was reminded of her words when I visited a session of the intergenerational program that brings together elderly residents of The Pines of Sarasota Senior Care facility and preschoolers from the campus’ Child Care and Learning Center, through a grant from the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation.
These regular sessions of music, art, horticulture and “Laughter Unlimited,” led by clown Chuck Sidlow of the Circus Arts Conservatory, are meant to be a boon to both populations. After all, studies have shown seniors suffer less depression and better health and children acquire better social and emotional skills when they have regular contact with each other.
Tell it to the researchers. It didn’t take a genius to see the kids were pretty oblivious to the seniors’ frailties and the seniors were pretty charged up by the exuberant antics of their visitors.
“It gives them their youth,” says Sandra de Laferna, the director of activities. I wasn’t sure which population she was referring to.
The wheelchairs are three deep by the time a dozen 3-to-5-year-olds noisily march in, followed by Sidlow who, atypically, is not in full clown makeup and costume. “Hello ‘dere! Hello dere!’” he shouts above the children’s shrieks, stopping to touch his forehead to the crown of several dozing elders, causing their eyes to flicker open in alarm.
“Say good morning to Gramma and Grampa!” Sidlow encourages the kids, turning them to face the residents. The children wave and bow. They don’t remember, but some of them have been coming here since they were infants, wheeled between the chairs in their prams.
“They’re used to this,” says de Laferna. “They’ve been doing this since they were babies. They don’t have any fear of people who are in a wheelchair or are frail or who can’t talk. There isn’t that distance, that reluctance to interact. It’s just a regular part of their lives.”
Still, we’re talking about kids and, as de Laferna notes, “there’s nothing much kids won’t do.” Once when a resident sweetly shared her paints and her young friend responded by sticking out his tongue at her. Appalled, de Laferna jumped up to reprimand the child. But not before the resident exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, will you look at that? How sweet.”
Sidlow asks the kids, “Who’s new today?” Nobody raises a hand. “I guess everybody’s old,” he says in delight, winking to the white-haired back row. Noticing a child sucking a finger, he sticks his thumb in his mouth, then flicks it out with a resounding pop, much to the delight of all ages.
Sidlow’s wife, Noriko, a former concert pianist seated at an old upright nearby launches into the opening notes of the 1926 song “Baby Face.” “You got the cutest little baby-face …”
Thelma, in the front row, taps her black Mary Janes, revealing purple socks. She knows every word. Even the residents who’ve appeared to be asleep before this begin mouthing the words. Old lyrics never die.
When the kids march up and down the aisles, their arms straightening and bending to the tune of “76 Trombones” Helen watches her own right arm lift off her lap as if it doesn’t belong to her. She was the first female trombone player in Omaha, Nebraska, I’m told.
When Sidlow hides a hand beneath a handkerchief, he calls out to Vince, once a master magician. His eyes narrow as he watches, like a critic looking for a mistake.
By the time they get to "Hokey Pokey” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It” roll around, age makes no difference. Everyone’s trying to turn themselves about — even if it’s not possible.
As time runs out, Sidlow shouts,“OK, let’s give Gramma and Grampa a hug goodbye!” The kids scramble toward the chairs.
“Stop! No hugs!” shrieks a frantic preschool teacher. “Wave! Blow kisses! Air hugs!”
It’s flu season.
Still, the smallest boy in the group, the one who never made a peep the whole time, disregards the warning and sidles over to a frail-looking man in the front row, someone he clearly recognizes. He reaches a tiny hand out and places it gently atop the mottled veined forearm on the armrest.
He leans toward the man’s ear and whispers something no one can hear. The man whispers something back. They both smile. Then the little boy pats his arm and walks away, looking back just once to wave.
Like Gramma said, it skips a generation.
Contact columnist Carrie Seidman at 941-361-4834 or carrie.seidman@heraldtribune.com. Follow her on Twitter @CarrieSeidman and Facebook at facebook.com/cseidman.