The woman had decided to end her skin care, makeup, home party business, but her sample cases were not returnable. The products were perfectly good, so she wondered how she should use them. Why not go to a local retirement home and give a free demonstration? She had done it so many times.
Only this time there would be no sales pitch at the end. She went with a friend, and as they unpacked their supplies, carefully spreading them out on a wooden table in the recreation room, aides went to bring in the residents. One by one the women arrived, most in their eighties and one lady, ninety-one years old. Three were in wheelchairs. Two others used walkers. They seemed very old, but appreciative. With heads bowed and hands folded, they thanked the women for coming and for giving them something to do. Both women wondered if they had done the right thing. But as creams, warm washcloths, and mois- they handed out samples of cleansing brightened. How turizers, the ladies pleasant the creams felt on their faces! And as they chatted, ladies weren’t as old it became clear these on the inside as they looked on the outside. For more than two hours, the makeup women applied sexy eye shadow, dabbed on face powder, lined their dainty, shrunken lips with red lipstick. The activities director oohed and ahhed and told them how sultry, how sexy they looked. Those who could still see, strained to look at themselves in mirrors. And they smiled the most wonderful smiles.
There are few nicer gifts we can give an older person than the gift of feeling young again -- if only for a little while.
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
-- Norman MacEwan