The South County Senior Center is proposing a new all in one location at 112 Amherst Road, where an existing former office building is located and available for lease. There has been considerable enthusiasm and much work on the part of the director and many others to make this long envisioned project a reality. However my tour of the building and accompanying information left me bewildered and saddened, now added to by the recent news that an override might be necessary. This has resulted in an unhealthy divisiveness between “town and country” and my need to speak up, not to be in opposition but in search of an inclusive solution.
My instant personal reaction to this latest development was “Whoa there! Stop the train I want to get off!” Our country is at war and even though the battle is not on these shores or overhead, we are all experiencing the deep insecurity of not knowing and knowing too much while we tighten our belts. There must be a better way forward that does not cause an override in these times.
This project was conceived in a different time, even a different era, given the latest adventure beyond the moon and the deep dive into microscopic life. New thinking is in order. For convenience we have categorized population by age; infants, toddlers, preschool, school grades, teens and then by decades until the ripe old age of 55 when we become seniors! This fact and the subsequent projected need for services has entered into the planning of a new Senior Center. In my view, it is mistaken in providing human milestones instead of stepping in time with nature. We are still working people until at least 65 and most older people would not regard themselves as “seniors” unless physically impaired in some way. Thus, I find the projection of a larger “senior population” in need of services, questionable, especially in the presence of advancing medicine and increased diet awareness.
Adaptation is the key to my profession as an Occupational Therapist and “doing” or “creating something,” it’s expression. Adaptation is a collaborative process involving many aspects of the lived-in community plus a certain amount of trial, error and imagination, until an adaptive response is found on which to build another. At it’s foundation it is an art and a science. I suggest that such a process of adaptation to fast moving times is possible in this situation. Solutions have only one stop. Adaptations allow for future adjustments, greater flexibility over time and, here’s the rub, strengthen communities. My selfish perspective leads me to believe that resources should be focused on the most elderly, especially the home bound.
After loosing my spouse after 63 years of marriage, and against my scattered children’s good advice, I chose to live alone in South Deerfield because I was familiar with the area and it had given me a good life. It offered a wide variety of useful businesses and services, medical, practical and delectable, to which I could walk, wheel or eventually be pushed, in good fresh air. In so doing I come in contact with people and dogs of all ages, supporting my view, that inter-generational integration is healthy for individuals and community. Community can be defined as a group of people living in the same space or in our case, three unique towns, located in the same Connecticut River Valley.
Or it can be a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals: A less familiar definition is “an ecological perspective, dependent upon scientific knowledge that every living thing has an identity that is dependent on other organisms all of which are unique and have an influence on the whole” … I see this view as an opportunity to adapt our present government-funded senior services to include a more affordable, community based responsibility, that benefits all ages while building strength in adversity.
Meanwhile, science confirms this microscopic but universal interconnectivity every day. We are not apart from nature; we are part of it. The smaller towns are closely in touch with it and and sustain all with their production. Furthermore, I claim that efficiency, (also proclaimed by the proponents of the 112 Amherst Road site), reaches beyond space and time, to opportunity. Each of the towns involved are different, not only in size but in the individuals who live, work and grow old there. Everyone matters. If more space is needed, South Deerfield has spaces that are, or are becoming, vacant. A senior housing project has been considered on the site of an unused church there. If/when such a project goes forward it makes sense that it should be within walking distance of senior services in South Deerfield. Public transport between towns is lacking but why not create our own? The senior center has already achieved one van why not add another? I suspect nature would like that!
I do not have answers only a process. Like the Native Americans before us, I believe it is efficient for individuals to contribute what they can to the common pot of opportunity and take only what they need.
Melissa Perot lives in South Deerfield.