Write, Pack, Drive...Enjoy!

Mady Prowler, Assistant Director

MECHANICSBURG, PA.  I called Cynthia Morrow, a newly-minted
eighty year old, just after she had managed to pry out the back seat of her van parked near her cottage at Messiah Village.  Messiah is a a continuing care retirement community in Mechanicsburg, PA; Cynthia was preparing for a solo trip to Virginia and the seat was just taking up too much room.

Kathy Silks, one of AARP Pennsylvania’s representatives on the Coming of Age: Central Pennsylvania Steering Committee, and an Explore Your Future  trainer, had sent us a poem that Cynthia had written after taking part in the 4-session Explore Your Future workshop.

I was eager to talk to the author. Explore Your Future workshops provide ways for participants to review their values, passions, and gifts and think about next steps in their lives.  Cynthia’s poem was really upbeat…how does being 80 shape her thinking about the future?

 “The workshop got me excited about what I should … and can do. It was an eye-opener and an incentive,” she said, “Just because we get older, we still have the potential to do things and ‘go for it.’” 

By the end of the workshop, Cynthia found herself yearning to finish the memoir she had started five years earlier. And she created this poem that so beautifully and succinctly expresses her feelings.

To get started on her book, she gathered the many poems she’d written through the years and threaded them through her story of being an adopted child, a married woman with three adopted children, a poet and writer, a nature-lover, a member of Eastern Star (the women’s branch of the Masons), a life-long learner, and a strong, independent person. The finished product is a volume that she will soon share with family and friends after she makes a run to the nearby copy center.

Kathy Silks was wowed by Cynthia and the other workshop participants who were totally engaged in the process. “This was a phenomenal group. The twelve members, ages 62-84, embraced the course and made commitments to follow through on goals they wanted to achieve.“

Kathy went on, “Cynthia was delightful -- her dry and sly sense of humor, with the straight face of a poker player, but eyes that twinkle. She brought so much to the group and inspired me to pursue my writing projects."

Cynthia and I would have talked more, but she had other matters to take care of before her trip; there was the shoo-fly pie to pick up for the relatives in Virginia, some clothes to throw in a suitcase, jeans of course.  Plus plans to make for the next trip… a 600-mile jaunt to Maine with a friend. Her doctor made her promise to take another driver along. But, she didn’t promise she’d let her friend drive…that’s Cynthia’s job.