They call themselves the YaYa Club, based on a book they read years ago. They meet once a month, taking turns for each member to host the meeting in her home.
When it was Debbie Schweers turn to host the YaYa Club, she was not at home, still in intensive physical therapy to overcome the results of a fall at home that crushed bones in her foot and left her unable to stand or walk.
Undeterred, the sprightly and intellectual lady simply scheduled the YaYa Club meeting for where she was….the Care One at Middletown Care Center on Route 36.
This was the second time Debbie hosted the club at Care One, as she also was hostess last October shortly after her accident. This time administrator Anthony Sessa welcomed the group for their second meeting, admiring their ingenuity and the joy they gave not only Debbie, but other residents who heard of the club meeting in the main dining room.
The book under discussion was Lady Tan’s Circle of Woman, set in China and a novel about a woman physician in the 15 century. YaYa Club members, who always enjoy a meal with their discussions, brought what one would expect thinking members to do……a meal in keeping with the book. Since the book is set in China, the ladies brought wontons, cookies, and noodles. The Care Center provided tea, along with other beverages, and of course there were fortune cookies for dessert. All were served on plates along with napkins in the Oriental theme.
“Our physical therapy department does its work efficiently and thoroughly,” Sessa said, to which Debbie adds her own praise. “But it is especially rewarding when our residents treat Care One as their home and feel comfortable inviting their friends for an evening of recreation and discussion.”
The YaYa club began in 1997 when a few friends who met regularly to enjoy each other’s company liked it when one of them suggested they read books and discuss them at their get togethers. And so the friendship expanded to include not only talk but also greater activity and intellectual stimulation. Now the YaYa Club meets monthly in homes, except for July and August when the meetings are held at the Monmouth Beach and Sea Bright Beach Clubs.
Conversations on the book are lively, Debbie laughs, and stimulating, while members each discuss each other’s view of the book under discussion as well as learn more from each other’s assessments on the topic and its presentation. In the case of the recent selection, all the members loved it, Debbie reported, recalling she had read the book four years ago and had recommended it at that time. Though it wasn’t selected then, when it came up as a possibility once again this year, everyone agreed it was a great choice.
Debbie, who lives in Red Bank, broke her femur in a home accident last October and has been in therapy since. She said when doctors first examined her, “they told me my bone looked more like a bag of potato chips, it was so splintered and crushed.” Unable to put any weight on it at all for two months, Debbie said she and the therapists have made their way through putting some weight on it, then full weight gradually, to the point where now she can stand and walk with a walker for short distances. Today she is walking on parallel bars in therapy and hopeful she will be walking on her own within the next few weeks.
In the meantime, she’s avidly reading the club’s next selection, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, a historical novel based on a 1972 incident when a skeleton was found b buried in the Chicken Hill section of Potsdam, Pa and how it resulted in showing how love on heaven and earth can bring communities together.
In addition to Debbie Schweers, the YaYa Club members are Mara Browndorf, Cynthia Wilby, Tammy Zachs, Karen Hutchinson, Jacqueline Whitelaw, Patty Sullivan, Cathy Klahre, Nancy DelPriore, Suzann Cahil and Pat Flynn.
Some of the members miss meetings because of trips to Florida during the winter, and while Care One has been a great place for a couple of meetings, the members all indicate traveling to Florida to be sure all are present isn’t always an option!
