The Best Day

A snapshot of just how much the USC Davis School of Gerontology's Wellderness Workshops at the Ahmanson Senior Center meant to its participants
By Jonathan Riggs

     “I like your ribbons,” Emily Loynachan, a Human Development and Aging junior student said, sitting next to the thin, older woman in a red shirt.
     “Thank you,” Carolyn Kelley said, her hand shyly touching the matching ribbons woven into her twin ponytails. She slid off her matching flip-flops. “I’m here for the first time.”
     The two continued to talk quietly as the other participants of the USC Davis School of Gerontology’s Wellderness Workshop began to file in to the Ahmanson Senior Center’s senior ballroom: in total eleven women and one man of a certain age.
     Some were dressed to exercise-purple tights, oversized glitter t-shirts-while others wore street clothes-black socks, white button-up shirts, jeans with a butterfly patch sewed on.
     One by one they, like Kelley, removed their shoes-heavy loafers, silver sandals, black sneakers studded with jewels-and took their places on thin blue mats on the wooden floor. Some chatted about astrology, prayer, losing weight; others sat quietly, focusing, enjoying the sunlight, the calm.
     They came for the final Wellderness Workshop, a series that ran for six weeks at the Ahmanson Senior Citizen Center from July 9 until August 13. Created by gerontology grad students Seema Prabhu and Asher Davison to enhance creativity in the senior population, each workshop lasted about four hours and included a free lunch as well as structured events like yoga, watercolor painting, poetry writing and a drum circle.
     This ongoing relationship between the USC Davis School of Gerontology and the Ahmanson Senior Center represents a partnership forged between the USC Davis School of Gerontology and the Expo Center by Dean Gerald Davison and Steve Soboroff, chairman of the Friends of the Expo board. The Wellderness Workshop was the latest of the Davis School’s outreach efforts to the local community.

BODIES, REST AND MOTION
     To begin the day’s session, Prabhu turned on some New Age music and took her place at the front of the class. She led the class in a series of meditation and breathing exercises, designed to prepare the body for what was to come. As the students sat with their eyes closed, Prabhu walked around, adjusting a hand here, straightening a leg there, whispering encouragement into an ear and patting a shoulder warmly.

“Keep a smile!” she said, the gold fringe on her sari catching the light as she walked the rows. “It’s difficult, isn’t it, to smile while exercising, but let us try as best we can.”
     Starting with gentle exercises for the hands and wrists, Prabhu took the class through movements meant to strengthen and work every part of the body: the head and neck, shoulders, the hips, knees, legs. She encouraged students to make noises, to be silly and creative and free, to imitate various animals: a cat meowing during a back stretch; a lion roaring during a breath exercise.
     The pace was fast, surprisingly intense-and yet everybody laughed, tried their best, took breaks when they needed them and offered up supportive comments to each other.
     “Become aware of your body-the body takes care of you every day,” Prabhu said as the class meditated again. “Become aware of your breath, your thoughts. Become aware of your feelings, become aware of yourself. Take a deep breath, and let go.”
     As the meditation finished, Prabhu got everyone back on their feet and dancing: moving to the music gently at first, just enjoying the capability of their bodies.
     “Make friends and dance,” Prabhu called, as she and the other leaders mixed in with everyone else, shaping new groups as everyone smiled, laughing and moving to the music in a million different ways, everyone separate, yet together all at once: joyful and light-hearted. “Life is music!”

SHARING A MEAL
     “I want to learn more about yoga techniques, especially when it comes to pulling weeds in the garden,” said David Drake, the sole male member of the class, over lunch. “It was a kick.”
     “It was invigorating,” Mary L. Patterson, a sporty-looking woman with a beautiful singing voice threw in. “The whole program is life-giving. It makes you want to get up and do something.”
     Carolyn Kelley ate carefully, listening to what the stories other people at her table told. Rosalie Tatum, an older African-American woman with glittery flowers sprouting out of her sun hat and chunky turquoise jewelry, was talking about an outfit she’d made famous back in junior college in 1962.
     “I had a one-piece black jumpsuit I wore with a belt made out of bones,” she said. “Everyone would tell me, you better not let a dog catch you!”
      The whole table laughed and the talk turned to vacations past and future, museums and art and a million other things the participants had seen or made—or still wanted to.
      As lunch wound down and everyone began migrating to the tables set up for watercolor painting, Carolyn hung back, slicing a cube of cantaloupe.
“I’m enjoying myself immensely,” she said, looking around, before confiding something quietly: “Today is my birthday.”
     Yes, she had plans for later, and in a perfect world, she wished she could be spending it at Disneyland-but at the ticket prices she remembered from her childhood.
     “Mardi Gras could be fun, too,” she said, smiling to herself as she stood up to join the rest of the group for painting. She turned, and over her shoulder, added: “Or maybe Knotts Berry Farm. At least when all the kids are back in school. I hate to wait in lines!”

PAINTING A PICTURE
     The group settled around two tables, each with a fresh piece of white paper, a brush, and a palette of watercolors.
     “I love this part,” Mary Ross said. “It takes you back to your childhood-and you can’t do anything wrong!”
     “I used to paint on t-shirts,” Shirley Westbrooks, sitting to Mary’s left, added. “I love how painting takes you into your own world.”
     Second-year Master of Science in Gerontology student Danielle Hall sat in the center seat, at the point where the two circular tables connected.
     She took the class through another meditation-this one focused on visualizing a perfect location of peace and pleasure—before setting everyone free to dip into the colors.

  “This paint is slushier than last week’s,” someone teased as the gentle sound of brushes swirling in cups of water or flowing across a page blended into Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing softly in the background.
     Palm fronds, trees, grass-green splashed across almost every page, followed by blue: skies, lakes, oceans. Purple mountains drew praise, as did an abstract fireworks explosion, all delicate strokes of reds, yellows, oranges.
     “The music is about to switch from spring to summer,” Asher Davison said as everyone continued to paint.
     “I hope I’ll be finished by fall,” joked Mary L. Patterson, adding some more branches to a tree.
     After everyone finished, each participant shared his or her painting, and the story behind it, to a round of applause. Some were more fanciful than others-a money tree grew in one woman’s garden, next to an outdoor bar-while others seemed to capture something almost impossible to express.
     “I remember when my husband and kids and I went up the coast,” said Lula Grayson when it was her turn, describing what she called a perfect day. Her voice broke as she said, “I remember thinking, ‘could even heaven be more than this?’” She paused for a second, and the room was silent except for everyone’s breathing. “I’ve never been back since.”
     Everyone applauded a little harder for her, and a few women wiped away tears. The feeling in the room changed now that everyone had shared their own personal vision of perfection: a perfect sunset, a perfect lake, a perfect past that could never quite be recaptured, and it made for a perfect moment that held for just a few seconds in the slant of sunlight through the windows.

DIFFERENT DRUM
     Next, everyone moved into the circle of chairs and chose a drum or musical instrument. While some people still joked with their friends and others remained quiet but engaged, there was obviously a connection that hadn’t quite been there before, a camaraderie as evident as the smiles on everyone’s faces or the relaxed way everyone sat, like a family.
      “The only rule is to follow the beat,” Asher Davison said, beginning to tap out a rhythm on a drum: a quiet sound, echoing through the cavernous room. “There is no leader.”

After a few beats, he was joined by the unmistakable coconut-rapping sound of the bongos, and after a few beats, the rattlesnake shake of maracas. Around the circle everyone was looking at each other, braced in their seats, hypnotized, waiting to jump in, like Double Dutch or a swimming pool: until finally, a tambourine. The sound was mesmerizing with all its layers and even the shyest members of the circle began to give themselves over to the beat. Some hit their instruments hard, some gently, slapping or smacking, some with hands, some with sticks.
      Like a conductor, Davison had different groups play at different times, causing some of the more excitable members to practically dance in their seats with anticipation, and the feeling of unity grew, expanded, like the noise they all created.
      Looking at their faces as the percussion in all its imperfections-because of all of its imperfections-came alive, transmogrified into music somehow, something thrilling, the joy on their faces was unmistakable.
We’re creating this, you could almost see them thinking, disbelieving almost, as the music jumped and swayed and like snake charmers became impossible to resist, we are the music. Seema Prabhu’s words seemed to follow, to echo afterwards: life is music.
     It all ended on a beat, with someone’s drum just one second off, which dissolved the tension and caused everyone to laugh, an end-of-a-long-day laugh, a take-your-earrings-off, wipe-your-mascara laugh, deep from the soul, and looking at the faces of everyone in that room, circled but no longer separate, it was obvious even to an outsider that everyone in the class experienced something together that day, something six weeks in the making that meant more than words-or music-could even say.

THE END OF THE DAY
     “I enjoyed this,” Rosalie Tatum said, adjusting her flowered hat as she peered into the depths of her impressive purse. “It was good-especially the socializing. People accuse me of never having met a stranger, and I guess they’re right.”
     It was like the last day of school as everyone collected their things and said their goodbyes: the excitement, the happy weariness, the tinge of sadness.
“What am I going to do with myself next Friday?” someone whispered to a friend.
     Carolyn Kelley, her red ribbons swinging a little looser in her hair, stood back a little, watching everyone else say their goodbyes.
      “I have enjoyed myself immensely,” she said to herself, choosing her words with care. She looked intently around the room at the people she met for the first time today, at the places where they all danced and exercised and painted and made music and laughed together. She looked for a long time, as if she didn’t want to forget.
     “The activities were so stimulating,” she said. “Refreshing: mentally, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.”
      And then, like out of a movie, a surprise.
     The USC Davis School students-Asher, Seema, Danielle and Emily-led the other class members in singing “Happy Birthday,” and the tears that had only just shimmered at the corner of Kelley’s eyes escaped-at least for a second until she quickly composed herself.
     “Participating today-everything today,” she all but whispered, her face aglow, her voice full of wonder, of gratitude and of something else, “This has been my pleasure.”