I read a good interview with Martha Stewart, age 81, in AARP magazine. These were some good quotes (takeaways) of hers from the article:
“Aging isn’t something I think about. How old I am, slowing down, retiring – I just don’t dwell on that. People talk about aging successfully, but I think of it as living gracefully and living to the absolute fullest.”
“And I continue to think that the most important part of aging well is to stay curious, to try new things every day.”
“In this life, you have to work at staying better. That’s really all you can do. You work at it.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The other day, my husband and I got our calendars together to try to figure out and schedule fun “empty nest” plans – events, weekends away, etc. It was then that I noticed that our weekends in September were already filled up with plans with one or more of our grown kids. (Plans our kids came up with – not us.) If you are at all worried about loneliness in your soon-to-be upcoming empty nest, don’t be. My friends and family who have grandchildren (and yes, I’m so jealous) always say that having grandchildren is THE BEST. They always say that it is like getting the “dessert” part of raising kids. It’s so sweet and delightful and fun and easy and breezy. With grandchildren, you don’t have the worries, the everyday mundane stuff, the constant responsibilities, and when you are exhausted, the grandkids go back home. Everything that happens with grandkids is easy to laugh off as adorable, lovable, and easily solvable (by somebody else). Interestingly, I’ve been noticing lately that the empty nest also seems to give you the “dessert” part of your own kids, now that they are grown adults, with their own separate lives. It’s a lot of fun. It’s easy and breezy. The worries and the mood swings and having to juggle everyone’s crazy schedules are no longer on my everyday plate. And when we all start to get on each other’s nerves, we all head back to our own homes, to make our own meals, and to do our own laundry. Once you get past the “wow, that whole raising a family bit, it really went by so fast” existential shock of it all, empty nest is truly lovely. And the hatchlings still fly by the nest for visits, here and there, and sometimes even more often than you would think. And that’s when you get to savor being with the “dessert versions” of your own children, and they, too, get to experience the sweetest part of you.
“Desserts are the fairy tales of the kitchen – a happily-ever-after to supper.” – Terri Guillemets
“Dessert is a necessity of life.” – Adrienne Posey
“Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.” – B. C. Forbes
“I love dessert. I can’t be guilty about it because I have to taste everything. I experiment.” – Martha Stewart
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I ripped some pages out of some past issues of Real Simple magazine lately that reminded me of my childhood. One reader, named Anna Polisann, wrote in to the editor, that she now realized that her mom had trained her for 2020, when as a child, her mother told her, “Go find something to do! Learn to enjoy your own company.“
I think that my generation and older generations before mine, often got those same marching orders, many, many times, from our parents. The younger generations seem to have a lot more structured time. Oftentimes, as I was driving my kids from one practice, to another scheduled playdate, to another lesson of some sort, I would question the sanity of what I was doing. It didn’t seem right to keep them, (nor all of us, really) so scheduled up. I remember rationalizing that even though I didn’t necessarily agree with this direction of more structured childhoods, if I didn’t do it, my children would be left in the dust. And unfortunately that was often true. Most of the sports teams in our children’s schools were filled with the kids who had spent their childhoods on travel sports teams, or with intense private instruction. Many kids were taking college level courses, sometimes starting in middle school. I still question if all of the pressures that this way of life brings on to kids is healthy. I really don’t think that over-structuring our children is necessarily good, but at the same time, when comparing generations, we are never comparing apples to apples. I didn’t grow up with a home computer and a cell phone. My parents remember getting their first TVs. Each generation of children experiences a vastly different world, if we really consider how fast things change in technology, and in society.
Still, I am happy that I received the “enjoy your own company” lesson. Frankly, I really enjoy my own company. I’m at my crankiest when I don’t get enough time to just be with myself. Ironically, this pandemic situation, while making many people feel “lonely”, actually robbed me of some my alone time and peaceful solitude. At this time last year, my three youngest children all started studying from home, and my daughter still studies at home. My husband has been working from home, for the first time in his career, since last spring, too. It has been adjustment for me, to share the house during the day. When more people are in any one area, the energy is more aroused. I notice this, even in my dogs’ behavior. Energy feeds off of other energy, keeping things more abuzz. I have learned to take rides in my car, or walks out in nature, to soothe my nerves, when the electric energy around me, is just too much.
Another reader in Real Simple answered the question, “What is your favorite book to give as a gift?” Jennifer Waller answered, “Betty Crocker Cookbook or The Martha Stewart Cookbook. I’ve had both for years and still refer to them. There is something comforting about pages with butter splotches and sugar crumbs in the spine.“
I loved Ms. Waller’s last line. Isn’t that the truth? Getting back to the idea of how quickly life is changing all around us, there is a huge amount of comfort in the things that stay the same. Every cookbook, that is worth its weight in gold, has a few grease stains and crumbs to dust off. And that is true for every generation of people still alive on this Earth. I hope that this “well-worn, classic cookbook fact” remains to be a fact of life that never, ever changes. There is great comfort in the classic things in life, which stand the test of time. These things become the steady rocks that we cling to, as reminders that there is still some stability and constants to carry with us, in an otherwise, sometimes seemingly chaotic, frenetic, quickly changing world.
Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
With the holidays approaching, I am guessing that many middle-aged women like me are silently cursing Normal Rockwell and Martha Stewart. I suspect that many of us are starting to wish for the same thing that we wish that Santa would bring us every year. The item that we would like, as a very extraordinary Christmas present from Santa, is a very specialized magic wand that would magically make all of the players in the holiday season behave in their best easy-going, kind-hearted, thoughtful, understanding, non-confrontational way – the very way that we would like for them to behave. This magic wand would magically turn our spouse, our children, our children’s significant others, our children’s friends, our parents, our siblings, our nieces and nephews, our in-laws, our extended family, our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, our pets, the UPS delivery person, the store clerks, the other people in the stores, the credit card companies and Amazon Prime, into everything that we would like for them to be, in order for the holidays to go smoothly and swimmingly.
With all of the advances in artificial intelligence, this technology may not be as far off as we think. We could have a little button on the wand that would put everyone and everything into “happy, congenial, helpful, smooth-going” mode. And if the players aren’t behaving in their best holiday spirit, we could press the pause button on them, like a technological time-out. It would be like the sci-fi show Westworld, only it would be Christmas World.
Of course, the Catch-22, that we controlling, stressed-out, middle-aged female heads of households never think about when fantasizing about these fantastic magic wands, is that the players in our lives would very much like to use them on us. When I get a little too frazzled, I imagine those who love me most, would love to put me on “pause” and shove me in the corner for a little breathing space for all parties involved. Wow, if these magic wands did exist, and everyone was using them, would everything just be frozen in “pause” mode throughout the entire holiday season? Would we all just look like a Christmas village display, frozen in time? Maybe the answer isn’t the magic wand with a pause button, after all. Maybe it’s just coming to a healthy acceptance that during the holidays, the messiness of life comes into acute focus. The family shenanigans, the money worries, the reality of everyone’s frenetic schedules, trying to stay healthy and eat right through temptation, the feeling of grief for loved ones passed, all come to a messy crescendo during the holidays. And when things are messy, many of us middle-aged mommas go into “extra-mode” trying to cover up all of the messiness with ribbons, and bows, and tinsel, and sugar cookies. We try to make it all appear like perfection. Perhaps if we just accept that the messiness is there, and that it is okay that it is there, and it is not our duty to fix it all, we can just let go, and relax. When I’m relaxed, I tend to be more easy-going, kind-hearted, thoughtful, understanding and non-confrontational. When I look at all of the holiday madness through my relaxed lens, things look more charming and beautiful, maybe a even a little Norman Rockwell-ish or Martha Stewart-ish at times.
