A lovely view-group converstaion takes wing

“What are we going to talk about?” asked one elderly resident.

I’d arrived at the local Independent and Assisted Living Facility, a volunteer armed with news magazines for the monthly “News and Views” discussion group. The group gathers every first Thursday to talk about current events, not my favorite topic since I’ve decided to stop watching national news and avert my reading eyes from international crises and health care debates. I had no idea what we were going to talk about—had hoped against hope that one of them would.

“What would you all like to discuss?” I boomeranged the challenge so the ball would be back in their court, a strategy I’d learned long ago while selling advertising. They hemmed and hawed over celebrity hjjinks: What had Tiger Woods been thinking?

“He’s only human after all!” one empathetic woman chuckled.

I turned the page of one magazine and held up for all to see a photograph of the man who had spent years searching for his birth father, only to discover he’d been sired by none other than Charles Manson.

“That would take some getting used to,” acknowledged one wheelchair restricted man who had actually long ago discovered that the father he’d thought to be his, was not. “I may not have always known mine, but at least he wasn’t a murderer!”

Politics and religion had been forbidden after a proposal by one of the group carried the majority vote that such intercourse might make neighboring under the same roof “ a bit dicey,” as a sensitive-natured woman put it. Despite my voiced concern that to omit two such broad categories would leave us virtually nothing to discuss, including the success of Sara Palin’s book, they all agreed to adhere to the policy. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Following a brief interlude of silence during which several hands reached for a brownie on the small round table in the middle of our circle, a quiet woman who had not yet uttered a sound, cleared her throat.

“I have a view I would like to share,” she announced. She smoothed the right side of her white hair that was very long, braided to perfection nearly to her waist. Her eyes gleamed as she surveyed the rest of the group, awaiting their response. When there was none, despite the fact that all eyes had turned to hers, I encouraged—basically my job description.

“Go right ahead—what is your name?” I’d not seen her here before.
“Suzanne,” she glanced at me and explained, “I’ve just moved in; I’ve been her just six days.

The others welcomed her, asked her where she had come from, and offered assistance and companionship—it’s a considerate, caring group who unite based on the premise that none of them have come here expecting ever to leave again. There is empathy for the one who has not yet adjusted, commonality in the vulnerability of little time left.
“My children are happy I am here,” she added, this being the most popular reason for residents having unpacked past life into an apartment either on the Independent or Assisted Living floor.

“So, I have view to share,” she brought us back to her intention. “This morning—and you know I’ve only risen here on very few mornings yet,” she spoke clearly in a lovely British brogue as she chose each word slowly, carefully, awed by the message she wished to deliver. “This morning, when I awoke I felt…well…disoriented and not brimming over with joy. “ Still, she smiled graciously.

“I knew this was going to take some time—you know, before I felt like I really belonged to anything in this room, when suddenly I saw that out my small window there was the bluest blue sky I think I’d ever seen! I was called to that window, don’t you know?” All eyes were upon her now, uncertain as to her state of mind.

“I walked over and looked out, and you know it was just so blue!” I, for one, felt this was to be her point; winter in Missoula, Montana is unforgiving and yields very few clear horizons. Any cloudless vista would be newsworthy.

“And then I saw it—heading straight for my window, overhead, was the most perfect V-shaped flock of geese. They were flying in a flawless V. It was a miracle right before my very eyes. “ She reverently lowered her head.

“That was my view.”

Why, I wondered, would anyone want to discuss any other viewpoint? Sure enough, I was not alone as the conversation shifted. We left world turmoil. Budget crises, and celeb chaos in the dust and spent the rest of the hour chatting about geese and their migration pattern, the trip I’d taken last Fall to Freezeout Lake, Montana where I’d witnessed hundreds of thousands of geese glinting in the sunrise at liftoff from the water’s surface.

“When the light was behind them in flight, they gleamed like strands of pearls,” I futilely attempted to describe such a wondrous scene.

“Pearls of great price,” Suzanne enunciated—and everyone agreed.