Saturdays with Seniors: Wonderful Andrea

I am pleased to introduce Andrea Kelton as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. A retired educator, Andrea has been in the “Me, Myself and I” memoir class at the Chicago Cultural Center for 15 years (another longtime writer in Andrea’s class, Sharon Kramer, has generously volunteered to lead that class via Zoom now).

When Andrea joined our class in 2006, of course I couldn’t see the low vision magnifying reading glasses she wore to read her essays. In 2007 she read an essay about losing a job, and that’s when I learned she’d been diagnosed with a progressive eye disease called uveitis in her twenties. Glaucoma started setting in in 2009, and now she uses assistive technology to write poignant essays like this one.

Loss

by Andrea Kelton

What happened to my crayons? I’d left them on our cement porch stoop, right next to my Queen Elizabeth coronation coloring book. And now they were gone. Replaced by a bright shiny waxy rainbow pool. My astonished six-year-old brain searched for an answer to this puzzle. I never knew a hot summer sun could melt my best Crayola’s. But I didn’t feel sad. This transformation left me with a sense of wonder.

Andrea’s store front, replete with plants.

The fabric of my life is like everyone else’s. Woven with losses, big and small. A favorite necklace or all worldly possessions lost to divorce or fire. My keys. My vision. My ability to drive and my public school teaching career. I’ve lost too many friends to cancer, including Dave. My most precious person in this wild, wonderful world.

But here’s the thing: In every situation, change rose from the ashes of loss.

Like the business Dave and I started after my vision loss set in. All three Kids & Clay storefronts were fitted with large plate glass windows. The counter under the window at our 4901 N. Damon store was three feet wide. I threw pots of all sizes, filled them with plants and arranged them on the counter. The plants loved the bright Western exposure. They grew. And grew. And grew. Two jade plants ended up THREE feet tall and two feet wide. Passersby started stopping in to ask about buying a plant. I had to tell them that I was a pottery studio and not a plant store.

One day a woman came in to Kids & Clay and brought me a plant. When she first bought it, it had fit perfectly on a little table in the corner of her living room. The plant grew and no longer fit. “Do you want it?” she wondered. I took the plant off her hands and suggested she buy a silk plant for that corner. It wouldn’t grow. It wouldn’t change.

On this planet, life is change. And change is transformation. So both life and loss are change. Both life and loss are transformation.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to accept change. Trying to live one day at a time. Trying to enjoy the moment. In the hopes that someday I will return to that magical six-year-old mindset when change left me filled with wonder.