Where Old People Gather

Yesterday when I walked into the senior center where we were having a big meeting about moving the senior center to a new location, the smell of the place hit me in the face.

There were a lot of people there, most smiling, many looking over the bags of beautiful green pears stacked on a table for the taking. “Will you be taking some pears?” the receptionist asked me. She was irked because I’d only partially signed in on the electronic kiosk. “Then you need to tap “Free Food.” I did as I was told.

We made our way to the meeting room where a couple dozen people were already there at least fifteen minutes early. If they noticed the smell, they were being discreet in their dismay. The smell wasn’t choking me, it wasn’t making me want to run hellbent through the hallway to the door to breathe fresh air. It just hung in the air, a miasma, but a telling one.

This was a place for old people.

“We don’t know what causes the smell. Sometimes, it’s not there and other days, it’s really strong.” I’ve heard this explanation before. And I know enough from my long experience with organizations that people can be doing their very best and still produce poor results. Still, at the meeting, people offer up questions and comments about the new place, shiny it seems by comparison and odorless except for the faint smell of sawdust. In asides, several tell me they hate the idea of moving the senior center to a new building, they love where they are so much.

A senior center should not smell. But as importantly, the seniors using the senior center shouldn’t tolerate a senior center that smells. They shouldn’t get used to it. Wave it off. “Oh yeah, sometimes it really smells here.”

It seeps. The smell and the acquiescence. The affection for the smell, to be honest, the coming to regard the smell as homey, part of life. I don’t know what to make of this. Is this the ultimate marginalization of old people, having them gather in places that younger people would flee? Or is this evidence of seniors’ willingness to make do with whatever they have? I don’t know. I just know this senior center smells.

We drive home and I think, I’m in a position of authority here, with my role on the Commission on Aging. How have I not taken up the issue of the stink at one of our senior centers? Who is it that’s acquiescing? But there is just so much now to fight about. It’s easy to forget about the smell until it hits you in the face. And then you remember.

It almost feels overpowering.