Serendipity

Last week I had a serendipitous visit to Denver. I went with my husband, Butch, to the LeadingAge conference. Their website describes LeadingAge as an association of not-for-profit organizations dedicated to making America a better place to grow old by advancing policies, promoting practices  and conducting research that supports, enables and empowers people to live fully as they age. Their promise: Inspire. Serve. Advocate.

Butch serves on the board of Morningside Ministries and was invited to attend the conference in that capacity. He went to all the general sessions and to several of the educational sessions. As the spouse, I went to one general session and spent the rest of my time sightseeing and simply enjoying Denver.

Part of enjoying Denver was seeing some excellent exhibits starting with the “Day in Pompeii” at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It is the well-presented story of the tragic day that Mount Vesuvius erupted engulfing the city in ash and lava. We exited the exhibit by walking through a display of plaster casts of people and animals who died in that disaster.

On the final day of the conference, I walked to the Denver Art Museum to see Becoming Van Gogh, the story of the artist Vincent Van Gogh and his training and development into one of the world’s greatest artists. I got to the museum around 1:30. Since I had not made a reservation the earliest time I could get in to the exhibit was 3:00. But it’s a big museum and the admission to Van Gogh got me into the other exhibits. The woman from whom I bought my ticket suggested that I start on the 4th floor and work my way down to the 2nd floor and the Van Gogh exhibit.

I took the elevator up and when I got off the elevator I saw that the 4th floor housed African art. I love anything about Africa so I was glad I had taken her advice. It was there that I serendipitously encountered the artist El Anatsui. He is a living artist who works in recycled materials. Having visited Uganda I saw first-hand how Africans re-use everything. But I was surprised by what El Anatsui does with recycled things.

The pieces that were the most fascinating to me were hangings of what looked like an unusual type of fabric. Reading the title blocks I learned that the fabric was indeed unusual; it was bottle caps. But bottle caps doesn’t describe it correctly. When I think of bottle caps I picture a round metal cap with a fluted edge that is taken off by twisting or with a bottle opener–church key, if you’re of an older generation. These bottle caps were of aluminium and the metal went down over the top of the bottle and encircled it, like a liquor bottle.

There were several pieces hanging in the Denver Art Museum each one strikingly beautiful in its own unique way. Time and again I had to go close to make sure it was just bottle caps; they looked so much like fabric.

A video of Anatsui at work and talking about his art was playing in a sectioned off corner. I sat and watched each one. The metal fabric hangings came about in a serendipitous way. Anatsui had a trash bag of these bottle caps lying around his studio for a month before he decided what to do with them. He flattened them out and “sewed” them together with wire. Then he pieced them together like quilts. As he strolled through a recycling business in Africa, he talked about finding old things and re-purposing them into something new and different. I was astonished that what he said about his art was reminiscent of what the keynote speaker had said that morning at the LeadingAge conference.

The speaker was Joseph Coughlin, director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab. He said that at this time in America a person turns 63 every 7 seconds, the baby boomers of which I am one. As we retire we are faced with a life much different from any time in the past. People are living longer and in better health than ever before. Retiring at 60 or 65 or even 70 results in a person of fairly good health with many years left to live. And there’s the real possibility that 75 will be the new retirement age. Longer life presents many challenges: staying in good health and finding enjoyable ways to stay occupied. Therefore, many retirees are reinventing themselves, turning avocations into vocations or going back to school to retrain for another profession. As a result, the second half of life is as fruitful as the first half.

Serendipitously, on an afternoon in Denver, I saw bottle cap art, listened to the artist’s words as another speaker’s words echoed in my head. My own trepidations about retirement were relieved as I saw in a clearer way what retirement can be, not discarded bottle caps in a trash bag, but a beautiful new metal tapestry. It won’t be Anatsui who fashions this tapestry, but God himself. In the hands of the Master, the last part of life will be even more fulfilling, even more beautiful than the first part.

May it be so serendipitous.