ISOM SYMBOLIC ART

Saturday, January 8, 2022

Hand drawn puzzle.

Hand drawn chair from the archive.

The case of the missing blueberry.

“You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.” ― George Bernard Shaw

Here at The Rockwood very small incidents often become fodder for my personal amusement. Like most of my stories, the “blueberry incident” provides innocent insight in to the process of aging. I have lived here with my wife for nearly two years. It is a place filled with aging artists, educators homemakers and people who have lead very interesting lives.

Lively conversations fill the air each morning at breakfast and in the evening at dinner Two days a week we have a social hour in the early afternoon and we laugh and talk about our experiences and the foibles of the “younger generation.” We also discuss and joke about our “misspent youth”.

This morning a retired college history professor was adding blueberries to his cereal when one of the blue orbs missed its mark and rolled off the table. “I have dropped a blueberry” he said, “we must find it before someone steps on it and falls”. The concierge rushed to the scene of the mishap and four tables of seniors immediately stared at the floor to see if they could spot the missing berry; complicating the matter was a rug pattern and color that was perfect for camouflaging wayward fruit. The room was soon filed with raucous laughter and an over abundance of blueberry jokes That is good aging in a nutshell; laughter and fun each day sparked by seemingly meaningless incidents.