The Day the Circus Came to the Senior Center

My grandmother's senior center hired a small traveling circus troupe for an afternoon in April: two jugglers, an acrobat, a clown named Pepito and a very elderly, very calm pony named Duchess.

I went to visit and found the whole room transformed. Residents who usually nap through lunch were sitting up, clapping, laughing. A man in his nineties volunteered to hold the hoop for the acrobat and did it with total seriousness. My grandmother was chosen to help Pepito with a magic trick and pulled a rubber chicken out of his hat, then screamed with laughter.

Duchess wandered through the room at the end, letting everyone pet her soft nose. One woman who hadn't spoken much in weeks started telling everyone about the horses on her family's farm in Kentucky.

My grandmother talked about it for a month. "A rubber chicken!" she kept saying. "Out of a hat!"