The Importance of Listening to the "Unheard" |
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"Listening Presence", written by a friend of my mother, Sandy Smith, encapsulates the importance of the first phase of this social practice art project : I had to go and listen. After crunching the numbers from over 130 online surveys, I knew it was essential to go out into the community and hear from older adults directly. I am passionate about documenting and raising the unheard voices in our community. Our society wrongly discounts many people in our society based on things like race, ethnicity, gender, class, and age. Age is the most universal factors through which too many people get ignored. Not only does the rich treasure of knowledge and wisdom reside in these folks, it turns out, they offer us a new perspective on how to be happier and enjoy our lives more!
I had the amazing opportunity to interview over 40 unique and inspiring older adults in our community (by the end of the project). I attended community sponsored events for Seniors along with going to visit Senior Connections' Friendship Cafés. The Senior Connections Friendship Cafés occur at 27 locations around Richmond, including surrounding counties. They provide a valuable opportunity for older adults to gather, have lunch, and stay connected. They were the perfect venue for my gathering of these stories. I also conducted a few independent interviews. Click below to watch short videos from these 6 wonderful seniors. |
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Video Interviews
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The U-Curve of Happiness
My surveys and interviews reaffirmed some research that I had discovered called the U-Curve of Happiness. This research showed that people's life satisfaction and happiness was greater at younger ages, dipped in midlife, and then actually got to the highest point at the latter end of life! As someone balancing the demands of midlife, I found this very encouraging news! My respondents seemed to agree with this hypothesis.
Other Interviewees:
Hands
I believe our hands are the delivery vehicle of our work, our caring and our creativity. As I photographed my subjects, I also took the time to capture a photo of their hands. My interviewees had worked hard with these hands. They had cared, cleaned, clothed, loved and nurtured with these hands. They also expressed their creativity with these hands. Many were writers and artists with diverse talents. Some were political activists and campaigners for justice. Most of them would not brag about all the work their hands had done. In fact, I usually had to drag that out of them. Many were self conscious about how their hands looked and a bit reluctant to oblige in having them photographed. I asked them to position their hands any way they liked as a way to see how they would express themselves. I think they are all beautiful and represent the dignity of a life well lived.
Little Miracles
Throughout this project, I was struck by how things came together a bit magically. My mother happened to share with me the poem by her friend, Sandy, that kind of summed up what this project was all about. Then, when interviewing Channie at the Oakwood Friendship Café, and I asked to take a picture of her hands, she said she had written a poem about her hands! A small miracle. It is a beautiful poem and I share it with her permission below.
"These Hands (My Story)" by Channie Grant, Oakwood Friendship Café
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You’d be amazed if you only knew
The thing these hands have done From Alabama’s cotton farm To New York City, they’ve come These hands carefully picked the cotton From the bowls so white and fair These same hands bursted the watermelon We grew most anywhere These hand cut the wood For the fireplace and the stove These same hands carried the wood To the big wood alcove With these hands I planted the garden Stringbeans, onions, okra and beets Collard greens, turnip and kale White potatoes and yams so sweet These hands cooked the meals And baked the cakes and pies These hands set the table And swatted away the flies These same hands mopped the floors And washed the dishes clean Rinsing them over and over again Til one could see the shiny gleam These hands swept the yard As clean as dirt could be The broom I used was often made From the branches of a dogwood tree These hands washed the clothes On the scrub board strong and sound The finished clothes were just as white As snow in winter that graces the ground |
And then to New York City I went
To make a better life you see I went to school an used these hands To be the best that I could be These hands learned to type And mastered the keyboard well Letters and memos were produced How they did it I still can’t tell And then the computer came around My mind shivered at the thought That these hands had to learn to use This monster that the Firm had bought I met and married a handsome guy Who is the love of my life Because these hands were so experienced I became a super super wife We were blessed with three children Two great girls and a wonderful boy The hands managed the tasks of motherhood With unexplainable ease and joy These hands are now in my senior years And still going strong and helping others These hands find so much joy and peace In extending love to my sisters and brothers Today I lift these hands in gratitude To my heavenly Father above He is the one who paved the way For these hands to weather the storms And show so much love THANK YOU GOD FOR THESE HANDS! |