As Though the Sun Came Out

It was 1991, in Seattle, in the neighbourhood of West Seattle.

On a hill stood a large building, built in 1924. People called it The Mount. Older adults lived there and received care.

A team of leaders, including the administrator Charlene Boyd, wanted it to be more than a hospital. She would later put it in one sentence: "We wanted to create a place for people to come to live, and not come to die."

So the team made an unusual decision.

It opened a child-care centre inside.

The first classroom welcomed 12 children.

Others followed. By 2017, there were six classrooms and 125 children, from babies a few weeks old to five-year-olds. Around them today live more than 400 older adults.

Five days a week, the little ones and the elders meet. For music, dancing, art, a meal, a story. Or simply for a visit.

The toddlers travel through the building in a big red wagon, pulled by their teachers.

A resident and a five-year-old girl paint side by side. Another resident loves nothing more than reading to the toddlers. Once a month, a few children and a few residents make sandwiches together for a homeless shelter.

One day, a little girl held a kaleidoscope up to the eye of an elderly woman who could no longer hold it herself.

Near a window, a railing has been installed. A resident in a wheelchair can push up on it, and watch the children play.

For a whole year, a filmmaker, Evan Briggs, filmed these meetings. Just before the children arrived, she said, some residents seemed half alive, sometimes asleep.

Then the children came in. And the residents came alive.

Marie Hoover, the centre's director, describes the same scene. A quiet floor, where everyone is lost in thought. Then they hear the children coming off the elevator.

A 93-year-old resident, Harriet Thompson, put it this way: "Happiness, just plain old happiness."

The children, for their part, are not surprised by any of it. To them, this is normal.

In 2016, 400 families were waiting for a spot.

You might think one group came to help the other. But here, everyone gives something: the elders offer their time and their stories, the children offer their laughter. Ubuntu reminds us that we become human through one another, at every age.

In a building in West Seattle, an elevator opens.

Upstairs, someone lifts their head.

And the sun comes out.