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| The mission of the Gibson Center for Senior Services is to offer programs that enable seniors in New Hampshire's Northern Carroll County to live independently and actively, with purpose and dignity. Make a donation to support us to achieve our mission and goals. Why support us? |
Greetings from the Director
When my kids were about ages 6 and 8, we offered to host several runners from far away who were coming to run the Mt. Washington Road Race. On the eve of their arrival one of them dutifully asked,
“How can we have them here – aren’t they strangers?” I thought I originally and cleverly replied – “It’s okay, they are friends we just haven’t met yet.” Surprise to me to find that about a century before, the poet William Butler Yeats had famously said “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.” I was not so clever or as original as I thought.
But, I was right. Some of these strangers became friends who returned annually to our home for about 15 years.
Over my years of having had about 20 different people live in my home as homesharers, I have thought a lot about why and how that works. Like the runners, I am convinced it is because we are starting from what we have in common. We are seeking solid ground of familiarity, establishing what it is we recognize in each other. When I first moved from urban Seattle, I was struck by how the conversations here were so easy around woodstoves, canoes, Subarus, and the right pitch of the roof compared to the Seattleites fussing about Jacuzzi’s, Audis, Starbucks and city building height limits. By definition, if we were living here we cared a lot about similar things.
Gibson Center is a place of welcome. If you find yourself here, you have lots in common with others you meet in the exercise class, on the bus or in the dining room. Meals on Wheels drivers start out as strangers and become trusted deliverers of warm meals. We can reach a hand out, offer a greeting, give a nod. It takes so little to peel off that veneer of stranger and get to the heart of a friend.
Marianne Jackson, MD
Executive Director