Feeling lonely? Stop by a Grandma Stand for a heartfelt chat

When Nancy McClendon, 71, was asked to sit around exterior in the midsection of the ithiel town square up and dispense wisdom to complete strangers, she didn’t hesitate to say yes. 

“I’m officially old now,” McClendon told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. “What's the use of being old if you can't share from your life experiences?”

McClendon — a.k.a. Grandma Nancy — is a volunteer at the newly opened Grandma Stand in downtown McKinney, Texas. 

During the holidays, people can stop by the bright purple lemonade-style stand, sit across from Nancy or another real-life grandma, unload their problems, ask questions, or just have a little chit-chat.

It’s a phenomenon that began over a decade ago in New York City, and has since taken off in other cities around the U.S. And they may soon be coming to Canada. 

Grandma Stands are staffed by a volunteer network of grandmothers in different cities. But it started with just one — the late Eileen Wilkinson.

In 2012, Matthews was working in New York City, when one of his colleagues walked into his office and closed the door. She told him she’d just broken up with her boyfriend of five years and was having a hard time. 

It was an unexpected display of vulnerability from someone Matthews described as a cool Brooklyn hipster, who didn’t usually let her guard down. 

Matthews had been missing his grandma at the time, and a strange idea struck him. 

“I said, ‘Here's my grandma's landline number. She lives in Washington. You’ve never met her, but she's just full of empathy, and present, asking questions, and she might be a nice one to talk to,’” Matthews said.

“The co-worker responded with, ‘That's the weirdest thing that anyone's ever said to me.’”

Nevertheless, she did, indeed, give Wilkinson a call. The pair made an instant connection. For months later, they had a standing call every week. 

When Matthews saw how much talking to his grandmother lifted his colleague’s spirits, he decided to spread the love. 

He bought a lemonade stand and set it up on the streets of New York City with a sign that read “Talk to my 95-year-old Grandma.” 

For years afterwards, he says, people would stop by and chat with Wilkinson through a video connection on his laptop. 

“I have no idea how many people she talked to through those years, but at least a thousand,” Matthews said.  “She had never had any hesitancy caring and just being present with whoever sat down on that chair.”

Wilkinson died in 2018 at the age of 102. Matthews decided to keep the Grandma Stand going in her honour.

Since then, people have set up Grandma Stands in Denver, Colo., and Omaha, Neb., and others are in the works in Paris and Berlin. Matthews says he’s in talks with people in Canada looking to set up stands in Windsor, Ont., and Edmonton.

The newest stand is a holiday pop-up in McKinney, a small city north of Dallas. City officials there recruited McClendon to work the stand through her local senior centre. 

“My main curiosity was, like, what kind of questions will people ask?”  McClendon said. “And I was amazed. People asked deep things like.”

She’s only done one two-hour session so far, and in that time, she’s already spoken to a father of three who wanted parenting advice, a woman struggling with fertility issues and a newlywed couple with anxiety about their future together. 

“They were concerned about meeting each other's needs and I said that's the beautiful thing about staying together. You have your whole lifetime to, you know, learn about each other,” McClendon said.

Even when she didn’t have any personal experience to draw on, McClendon says it felt good just to listen.

“We kind of know in our gut that we've lost a lot of connection, and true face-to-face connection,” she said. “Which I think is what people find so refreshing [about] the novelty of sitting down in that setting.”

Asked if she has any advice for people out there struggling with loneliness this holiday season, McClendon encouraged folks to tap into gratitude, and seek out connection — even if it feels scary. 

“It takes bravery and courage really to launch out and feel that you can connect with someone, if you're feeling lonely,” she said. “We have to call on ourselves for courage.”

Interview with Nancy McClendon produced by Cassie Argao

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