The Senior Center

The Senior Center was a beehive of active waiting to die. Bingo but not ballroom dancing. Knitting but not garden expansions. Physical therapy but not yoga and not chi gong, much less mindful meditations sung in four part harmony. The new guy, just growing into sixty-five, asked them How would we like to be remembered one hundred years from now? That doesn't seem likely, I know, but perhaps more likely together than playing Solitaire side by side. I would like to be remembered as healers of The River said a somber SeptemberGenerian woman surrounded by ancient lady friends. No one needed to ask why. We all knew what was coming downriver for future regenerations of thirsty toxined minds with biodiverse bodies. And so we found younger allies who owned property along The River, beginning with the railroad company, and the Mohegans and the Pequots, where a Senior knew a Senior with a well-placed daughter, and sometimes a son of unusual cooperative and long-term focus. Together we planted firs and cedars along polluted and denuded banks, for future generations to manage, harvest for housing and furniture and fiber and possibly even coffins waiting for memories of polluted rivers to die. That was one hundred years ago we started in this regenerative Senior Center, and still going strong as each year a new incoming class of those who finally reached sixty-five joined our river healing project, more recently also producing fruit trees and berries, flax and hemp, mushrooms and nuts and sweetgrass baskets woven by SeptemberGenerians. Women and a few surviving men and some more in-between smiling together at the round cedar table in the back, remembering Elder healers of our barren land and naked River.