Old Friends, New Friends

For the last six months or so, Sydney and I have been visiting our friend Mrs. Norma in the nursing home. Each visit is about the same: when we arrive (which is always dinner time, around five o'clock), Sydney goes to back wall where the extra chairs are and tries to pull her chair over to the table where we sit. I bring her dinner with us and she eats while the ladies and I visit. (Many folks leaving dinner to go back to their rooms for the night seem to find a way to pass by Sydney just to say hello or to shake her hand.) After dinner, we stop and look at the birds in the big birdcage in the main hall where other ladies stop to chat with us (or to just stare at Sydney). Then we go down to Mrs. Norma's room and visit for anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. We know it's time to go when the old lady smokers start their trek down the hall to go outside for the evening cigarette (this seems to happen around seven in the evening). We tell Mrs. Norma good-bye and then stop to see the birds one more time on the way out.

It's only two hours a week at most, and some weeks we can't go (if either of us is sick, we stay away), but in that little amount of time, I can't believe how much all three of us are getting from the experience.

For me, it's helped with my shyness. I know most folks who know me would not think of me as being a shy person, but I am one of those folks who can be super extroverted when around people I know well, but shut down in a crowd of strangers (as opposed to my husband and daughter who don't meet strangers). The idea of visiting a nursing home has been with me a long time. I miss my grandmothers and it makes me sad to think of grandmas without visitors, but until I had Sydney, I just couldn't make myself go. It felt too weird to walk into a nursing home and just talk to people. But walking in with a cute toddler gives an automatic conversation starter.

For Sydney, it has made her very at ease with older folks. In fact, between the nursing home and our church (which has a lot of folks in the fifty-seventy age range), Sydney really just thinks anyone with gray, silver, or white hair must want to talk to her. She has stopped in restaurants to hug old men and will smile and chat with old ladies in the store until I drag her away. Knowing how many children find older folks scary, I love that Sydney thinks they are just waiting to be her friend. She walks around the nursing home saying "hi" and "bye" to everyone, and when they try to shake her hand, she just puts her little hand in theirs without reservation.

For Mrs. Norma, it just seems to make her happy, and there have been days when she's in pain and she claims that Sydney is the best medicine. Which, of course, just makes me so glad that we came to visit in the first place.

When we started visiting Mrs. Norma, I told my mother, who thinks I don't value her wisdom and wit, that it felt strange to be starting a one-sided friendship. I thought I could give more to Mrs. Norma than she could give back. My mother said that she thought I would find that I got back far more than I would give. She was right. Again.