Time Passages

 

“Aging is not lost youth, but a new stage of opportunity and strength.  It is a different stage of life, and if you are going to pretend it’s youth you are going to miss it.  You are going to miss the surprises, the possibilities, and the evolution that we are just beginning to know about because there are no role models, no guideposts, and no signs.”  Betty Friedan

Talking with some friends and acquaintances not too long ago I did something I’d not done for a while; I sat back and actually listened.  The conversation bounced from what prescriptions each was taking, what aches and pains they were experiencing and who is likely to be in hospice care within the next few months. I was experiencing the unpleasant one-up-manship that occurs so often when people my age get together.  Each one seemed to feel that “age” was some dirty trick that was being played on him/her.  I sat there absorbing the bad news and complaints until I’d had enough fun for one evening.

Yes, we are aging.  Yes, it is challenging.  No, you don’t have to turn it into an ever expanding monologue every time you meet someone.  There needs to be an “aging etiquette” manual written for us seniors.  Here’s a good start:

Stop using “old speak”.   This self-deprecating dialogue is a symptom of your own feelings of inadequacy.  You may not be 25 any longer, but you still have more to offer than a catalog of your short comings.  Replace the things you believe you can no longer do with things you can and talk about those. 

Understand that “How are you?” is NOT an open invitation for a list of your complaints.  It is a polite greeting that should be answered with something along the lines of  “Pretty good!”  If you are doing well enough to meet and greet people you’re doing better than some.

Books, hobbies, movies and magazines are things to be shared and discussed with friends and family.  Bowel problems, muscle spasms and drug reactions are not great topics of conversation unless you are participating in a medical study.

Are you doing the best you can with what you still have to work with?  Are you getting enough rest, exercise and stimulation?  Take a walk, read a book (or write one!) or listen to music.   Open your mind and close your mouth for a while…you might see or hear something worth discussing later!

It is important to cultivate a grateful heart.    There are so many people of all ages in worse situations than you; don’t waste your energy lamenting the fact that you have so many years behind you.  Celebrate the very moment in which you stand and look to the future knowing you have the same control over it that you have always enjoyed.  Absolutely none.

I’m not suggesting we all become martyrs…”don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine”.  Instead I am suggesting we share the good news first.  I once knew a woman in her nineties who answered every, “Hello, how are you?” with:  “I’m still above ground!” and a big smile.  She was someone I crossed the street to greet every time I saw her.

For a good number of years had the privilege to manage radio stations for a man who made his home in Cleveland.  Radio was a passion, but his real job was as an attorney.  Already in his 70’s when I started working for him, he still practiced law and had his fingers in a lot of things.  As I got to know him I learned about his health challenges, and there were many.  In his 80’s he had frequent hospital stays, a wheel chair and constant pain to contend with, but I never heard him complain.  He never grouched about aging, he simply adjusted his life to be able to continue to do as much as he possibly could.  I will always remember him for his grace and his grateful spirit; he is my role model for aging and I hope I can do it half as well.

Aging is not for sissies; that much is very true.  I have officially arrived at an age that guarantees I will not die young...and I am grateful for every second of it.

 

LIFE IS GOOD

 

 

Food for Thought

Last week I thought I had hit the recipe lottery!  One of the local on-line pages I read regularly put me in touch with a gal I really wanted to know.   She is related to the family who ran a restaurant in town many years ago.   When my husband and I were first married we ate at the Boston Spaghetti House every chance we got.  It was nothing more than a one room hole-in-the-wall that served the best spaghetti I’ve ever eaten in my life.

The years have flown by, but I well remember those early days when we often had too much month left at the end of the money.  But, if we were very careful, we sometimes had four or five dollars left just before payday.  That was plenty of cash to buy two heaping plates of spaghetti, a half loaf of squishy-soft Italian bread and all the water you could drink. 

The moment you pulled into the parking lot of this tiny place the smell of garlic and onion and oregano curled its way into your nostrils.  My stomach would begin to make noises usually associated with whale distress signals as I anticipated the delicious meal ahead. 

Eating out was a special treat in those days; we didn’t have the money required for much more than this spaghetti house.  Although it improved over the years, at that time my newly-wed cooking skills were stretched to the breaking point after I fried an egg and/or opened a can of soup.  Needless to say we really looked forward to this occasional spaghetti dinner.

We spent many Saturday evenings there, meeting friends, laughing and talking and getting on with life.  

As the years passed our family grew, our income grew, but I never outgrew my love of the sauce created in that tiny kitchen at the Boston.  It was brown, not red.  The meat was finely processed but abundant, and the taste was unique.  Try as I might, I was never able to duplicate it. 

I have spent many research hours in cookbooks and on the web searching for a recipe like the one the cook used way back then.  I’ve read every recipe from Bolognese to Italian Gravy…all for nothing.  The end result is always hours of preparation, plenty of money and thousands of gallons of dish water to clean up what always turns out to be a disappointing result.   I’ve found some really good sauce recipes….just not the Boston sauce.  What is the ingredient I’ve been missing?

Then, last week, I connected with this lady and I thought I finally had it!  !  After chatting with her on line, she graciously sent me her Mother’s recipe!  Working behind the scenes, her Mother must have made many, many gallons of sauce for the hungry newlyweds and old derelicts that came through the doors each night. I was thrilled beyond explanation; I had found the Holy Grail of spaghetti sauce recipes.

Larry and I set out that very day to get the ingredients.  The recipe was for a large quantity, but we decided to go ahead and make it that way so we wouldn’t compromise the results in any way!  We shopped and chopped and stirred and stirred and stirred.  I was concerned that the sauce bubbling away in the biggest soup pot I own didn’t resemble the sauce I remembered.  I poo-pooed my own misgivings and kept cooking.

Finally the sauce was done; exactly to the recipe.   I anxiously filled a small dish and took it into my husband’s den.  As he tasted, then tasted again I impatiently shifted from foot to foot.  “Well?  What do you think?”  He was silent; his forehead wrinkled in thought.   Finally I took a sample myself.  No dice.  This is good sauce, but it’s not THAT sauce.   Sigh.

So…I start all over in my search for the delicious sauce we both remember from so long ago.  I froze most of the vat of sauce I just made.  It’s good…but it’s not right.

Maybe that’s what I get for chasing a memory…for trying to recreate the past.  I’ve already read the complete works of half a dozen chefs and pestered everyone in this town trying to find this recipe; I’m much too tenacious to stop now.

If I ever find that recipe I am going to throw the biggest spaghetti dinner that anyone has ever seen.  I promise to feed everyone I know, and anyone who doesn’t move fast enough to get away from me!   It’s my own personal quest.  Everybody needs one, don’t they?

 

                                                                             Life is Good 

 

 

 

Take a Look in the Mirror

It’s funny how our habits change as we age.   When I was a young girl I never passed a store window without checking out my hair…never walked past a mirror that I didn’t primp just a little bit.  Today, I’m just the opposite; with age comes freedom.

My “beauty regime” includes Noxzema, a comb…and my all-important ‘chap stick’.  A quick face wash, tooth brushing, hair brushing and a little eye make-up and I’m on the road again.   I’ve pretty well become a ‘this is as good as it’s going to get’ gal….and I’m okay with that.

I remember once, years ago, a hair dresser (who shall remain nameless) wanted to “surprise” me.  She had always done a wonderful job and, having just returned from a training session, she was full of new ideas.  I reluctantly agreed to let her try something new with my hair.  Keeping my back to the mirror she snipped and slathered and washed and combed and dried while I waited patiently.   When she finally spun me around I had blonde and burgundy hair.  I was sure at some point I had shared with her my belief that hair should only be the colors one naturally finds in nature; evidently she had forgotten.  After I restated the belief she got busy redoing my hair color.   We both learned something.  She learned that purple may not be the best color to use when surprising someone, I learned to always check the mirror!

Just this week I was getting ready early one morning to chauffeur my Mom to a doctor’s appointment.  I got up early and, as it often happens, had screwed around till the last minute to get myself ready.  I grabbed a pair of jeans from the dryer, raked a comb through my hair and grabbed a chap stick I found lurking on top of the dryer.  I had obviously fished it from a pocket before washing pants or shorts.  It wasn’t my usual brand, but it was handy, so I stuck it into my jeans pocket and left.

If you have an elderly parent you know it’s always an unpredictable thing when you take him/her someplace.  Dealing with Mom, her walker, her purse, and anything else she has to have with her at the time (often it’s a huge flashlight?) I juggled our way into the Doctor’s office.    We sank into chairs to wait for her to be called to the inner sanctum.   

As is my habit, I fished in my pocket for the chap-stick; finding it I ‘mooshed’ it all over my lips, then opened my IPad to read while we waited. 

Finally called into the examining room, we sat again.  Once again I pulled my chap stick out and ‘mooshed’ it all over my lips.  The appointment passed without consequence; in a little over an hour I had deposited Mom at home and I headed in to the office.

In my car I pulled out the old ‘mooshing’ stick and….you guessed it.

Finally, I was settled at my desk.  I hadn’t realized it before writing this, but I obviously have a ‘mooshing’ habit…because I pulled the stick from my pocket and spread it all over my lips again.   This time I got some of the creamy stuff on my finger.  It was blue.  A nice blueberry blue…likely full of antioxidants and vitamins…blue.  Pursing my lips I pulled a small mirrored box from my desk drawer and saw that I had been ‘mooshing’ blue stuff all over my mouth for the past few hours. 

With a deep sigh I realized I had spent the morning dashing around sporting a lip color that is generally only seen in people who have been submerged in ice water and are approaching hypothermia.  My lips were a nice, soft, mooshy, cyanotic blue.  I’m amazed a nurse or the doctor hadn’t started chest compressions on me after having a look at my ghoulish lip color!

I’m sure I bought this stick for one of the grandkids; it may have been left behind from someone’s Christmas stocking or birthday gift.  How it arrived on my dryer is a mystery, but it did reinforce one thing I seem to have forgotten:  Always….always…. check the mirror.

 

                                                                Life is Good

 

 

 

 

Conversation with a granddaughter.....

 

 

Not long ago I was driving to the Dairy Queen with one of my seven beautiful grand kids, Megan, in the back seat.   At the ripe old age of nearly nine, she’s very interesting to talk to.  Somehow the subject came around to super-powers.   If you could have just one, what would it be?

Megan decided invincibility would be her choice.   Someone with that power could never be harmed physically…good choice.  (We didn’t go down the path of kryptonite)

My choice was a toss-up between invisibility and the ability to read minds.  She agreed that both of those would be awesome powers to have.  I asked how she would deal with the moral issues those powers would create for most of us puny mortals?

“What’s a moral issue, Grandma?” Meg queried.

“Well, with great power comes great temptation.  If you were invisible, you could walk into a jewelry store, pop a big diamond ring into your mouth and walk out with it.  No one would ever know it was you,” I explained.

Meg pointed out that people would see your clothes even if you were invisible, and then collapsed in an attack of giggles as we decided you’d have to be naked to make that scenario work!

“How would reading minds give you a moral issue?” she asked.

“If you could read minds you could always win at poker, you could be a star on Jeopardy…things like that,” I said.

“That’s cheating, though,” she countered.

“I agree.  But if you could do it you’d be tempted.   It might be hard to remember that, just because you CAN do something, it may still not be the right thing to do,” I told her.

“I think they should only give super-powers to good people,” Meg decided.

I couldn’t agree with her more.  Now if we only had a litmus test for ‘goodness’, we could make certain only the best of the best had real power in their hands.

That kind of test might prevent us from electing men who send pictures of their privates to women they don’t even know…it might stop politicians from taking bribes and keeping their ill-gotten gains in their freezer…heck, it might even mean that interns serving in the halls of our government were safe from all forms of lechery.  What a concept.

It’s so easy to talk to an almost nine year old; easy to exchange ideas and think through your beliefs.  Maybe Megan should talk to Congress.

                                               Life is Good