Helga Ovington is leading me to her office in Glen Pine Pavilion, a stunning, modern, glass enclosed space in Coquitlam. There are pool tables, a computer lab, a gym, a movie room, a cafeteria – and throngs of smiling people in each of these rooms, and in the common spaces. The place is bustling.
It is a community centre – a senior’s centre, in fact. And the vibe is hot.
I’m here to meet some of the volunteers who help the joint hum. Helga’s on staff at Glen Pine, and she’s offered to introduce me.
“You should talk to Joan – Joan will give you a tour. Joan’s a hostess today, and she’s one of our most active volunteers. She’s just great – really sharp, funny, you’ll like her. She’d be a great person to talk too, after we’re finished.”
Helga gestures towards Joan as we pass her so that I’ll recognize the gorgeous creature I need to talk too, later.
“Oh hi, Aunty Joan,” I say.
___________
Yup. Joan, the model volunteer I was angling to interview, is my aunt. My great-aunt, in fact. Joan is my grand-father’s sister.
Intrepid journalist that I am, when I was looking for sources – retirees who volunteer – I didn’t even think to start with the people I know.
But I do know (Aunty) Joan, so I know that Helga’s right: Joan is extraordinary. I make a bee-line right for her as soon as Helga and I finish our scheming and plotting.
(Ok, I was scheming and plotting. Helga was helping me in the context of her job. She’s all professional like that.)
___________
Joan and I hug, and I flutter, because I’m so excited to see her.
Aunty Joan is glamorous, you see. She’s stylish, she’s coiffed, her make up is flawless…and I could write poetry about the lines of her eyebrows. I adore a well-shaped brow.
But beyond the surface glow, Joan is radiant. She likes people, and it shows. She knows how to instantly make a person feel comfortable and invited in.
Which she does for me, the following week, when we have lunch at her house.
Joan makes the most beautiful salmon sandwiches, on croissants (croissant-wiches?), and there are fresh vegetables – should I call them crudités in this context? – and hot coffee, all laid out on a beautifully set table in her beautifully appointed townhouse.
(I’ve said it before, about retiree volunteers Dorothy Brovold and Charlie Hartner, but if this is what ‘retired’ and ‘senior’ looks like, it looks pretty damn fine.)
Joan and I gossip a little about our family (I’ll spare you the saucy details) and a picture of her life emerges: group trips to great restaurants, a walking club, rounds of meetings to plan events and contribute to the centre, regular visits with friends, and volunteer shifts as a hostess at Glen Pines.
I ask her how (and why?) this complicated and rich schedule came to be.
Joan tells me the back-story – and I know this story, intimately – that, in part, motivated her to volunteer after she retired.
My great-great grandmother – Joan’s mother-in-law – was famous in our family for the Art of The Guilt Trip.
When you called her, you could count on the first ten minutes of the call to be all about how you never call. When you’d visit, you’d hear about how you should visit more. It would get to the point that you’d have to steel yourself to make the call or the visit because you knew how all your failures to call and visit would be sketched out in living, vivid colour. So then you’d call and visit less.
Rinse, lather, repeat. Vicious cycle, yes?
But my great-great-grandmother was lonely. She didn’t have a lot going on, and she depended on her children and grandchildren and family to entertain her and connect her to the world from which she was slowly, sadly, disconnecting.
Joan remembered being on the receiving end of these guilt trips and resolved never to do that to her children. The more you made your family feel bad for not being around, the less they’d actually want to be around.
So Joan built herself a connected, well-populated life. She volunteers on committees and boards, she organizes trips to hot spots (new restaurants, casinos, race tracks) in the Lower Mainland, and she socializes. A lot.
Recently, she caught herself saying to her son, when he telephoned, “My goodness, it’s been a long time since we talked!”
He said, “Mom, if you were home once in a while to pick up your phone, we’d talk a lot more.”
