Hats

On the way home from Williamsport, in Allenwood to be precise, I passed this man sitting on his front porch. His front porch was smack up against the road. He's makes these hats and gives them away for a donation for the yarn. He showed me a CD that someone gave him on her travels (below). He said that she sat beside him on the swing and played the guitar for him and sang. Someone from Germany stopped and took the picture in his left hand (below) and sent it back to him with an inscription. It is this hat making that connects him to the world in his old age--he has no internet, so this is how he meets people and interacts with them.

We're terrible at finding useful things for people to do as they age--we tend to have a full-time-career-or-nothing approach to work. My grandfather worked at a funeral home for the past 50 years, until he was 87. During the last decade or so, he mostly just opened doors and greeted people at the viewings and funerals. How many employers would have gotten rid of him years before and hired someone younger to open the doors? And yet, he loved that job, and he loved his co-workers. Chatting with people at funerals kept him connected to the community. We need to look for ways to keep people integrated in the world in productive ways as they age.