Forgetting to wear your green-and-white polka-dotted bloomers in front of bleacherfuls of high school students may sound like a bad dream. That nightmare was a reality for Blanche Roberts, one of a dozen Havenwood-Heritage Heights residents to share stories from their lives at last week’s storytelling event.
The moment may have been embarrassing, but the retelling?
“It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time!” said Roberts.
Author Rebecca Rule spent time at the retirement home over the last six weeks, helping students recall and recount their life experiences and prepare them to tell those stories onstage.
“The culminating event was great,” said Rule, “but it was really all about getting here, sitting together and hearing those stories bubble out. I’ve been really moved by the whole experience.”
Rule said she had done other artist’s residencies, but never one as lengthy or comprehensive. The extended stay at Havenwood was made possible by a New Hampshire State Council on the Arts grant.
Event coordinator Cathy Herman said the program was a great way for residents to build bonds and come out of their shells.
“The thing I liked best about this is that it’s deep,” said Herman. “We had some really tender moments with some people. They got to know each other better in a really relaxed setting.”
Havenwood is famous for its annual variety show, but most of the performers on this day were not from the regular crowd of cut-ups.
“We have quite a lot of performers here,” Herman said. “We have a lot of hams, but these are the quiet hams.”
Quiet doesn’t quite seem like the right word to describe 98-year-old Arlyne French.
“People say I was vaccinated with a Victrola needle!” said French regarding her loquaciousness. She told a hilarious story onstage about her children charging admission for neighborhood kids to view a nude painting the family had hanging in a bedroom.
“We’re all from different backgrounds,” French said, “and we all have stories to tell. Everyone has stories – especially old people, because we’ve lived through so much!”
The stories ranged from humorous (David Hale’s particular brand of “Yankee humor” had the audience cracking up) to outlandish (Paula Bradley’s “Tricycle Tale” imagined an anthropomorphic tricycle rolling riderless through the woods) to the downright touching.
The most poignant moment of the afternoon came when Herman recalled Rule’s meeting with resident Ruth Dodge. Dodge had been practically non-verbal for the past few years, Herman said, so Rule tried to coax a story out of her with various potential memory-triggering items. One such item, a postcard from Washington, D.C., featuring a monument with apple blossoms in the foreground, elicited a surprisingly boisterous reaction from Dodge – she reached out and kissed the postcard!
No one knew what that picture meant to Ruth Dodge until Rule returned to the home a few weeks later. She met the Dodge family, who were in town because Ruth had died not long after that session. Rule recounted their meeting to the Dodges; upon mention of the postcard, Ruth’s son pulled out his phone and showed Rule a nearly identical photo he had taken on a recent trip to the nation’s capitol. Not only had the postcard triggered a memory in Dodge, she was able to non-verbally express her love for her son during her last days.
For Herman, seeing the residents experience so much joy in recalling memories made the whole endeavour a successful one.
“When they got up there,” Herman said, “you could feel their energy lift. Seeing them remembering and seeing them get so excited – that’s what it was all about.”
