Old Age Ain't For Sissies

This work is a result of Fayettesville Arts Councel in North Carolina asking Julia Alvarez to come down and conduct a series of poetry workshops for old people. For three months she sat in the basements of rural Baptist churches, in Sunshine Centers, in nursing homes, and listened. She listened and they told each other their stories and I listened and wrote them down. Julia was taken in by their presence, the music in their voices, the poetry of their lives. There was nothing to teach these people about language. They knew how to handle it with the instinct of people who cannot go to books to be entertained but must capitivate each other with their own words. The most exciting things to talk about were those that had moved so many generations. Most of all the women talked about how they met their husbands. What marriage was like. What men are like. These were women who had not led easy lives, who were within a generation or two of slavery and had slaved themselves to earn enough for their big families. In a society that for the most part ignores the old, their wealth of wisdom and memories brims over unheard. Through these shared lives may we be helped by their vision, rooted by their history, delighted by their lives and given hope by their endurance.