Tag: NBC

Can the Rest of Your Life Be the Best of Your Life?

Can the Rest of Your Life

Be the Best of Your Life?

I have spoken many times about the limitations inherent in the whole getting-old thing. Few escape the fun surprises of old age and the many sad days remembering those who have left the party before you.

So what can one do to lift their spirits during this whole aging process?

Let’s face it, most aren’t capable of beginning to train for a marathon or mountain climbing. Still, many can. Of course, it’s possible to do numerous things as we age despite the fact there are some physical limits to what we can accomplish. Yet, and go with me here…the wisdom we’ve gleaned over so the years can help to achieve goals that may have been out of our reach in our youth.

Wisdom doesn’t require exercise. It doesn’t need a 20-year-old body.

As we age and our presence seems to diminish, we grow less and less relevant and our footprint grows lighter and smaller.

So what is the alternative to this inevitability?

Women have known for years we don’t need an invisibility cloak after the age of fifty. It used to be forty but Botox has added a few years to our presence.

Most women are aware that as the years pass so does their ability to attract attention and many have accepted this fate.

However, with the advent of social media, seniors have raised their profile and possess numerous ways to remain in the game.

Coolness is no longer predicated on age or sex. So many have found fun and lucrative ways to add years to their social lives by starting businesses, becoming politically active and checking off items from their bucket list.

So is it boring to just want to live the days quietly and unadventurously? Visiting grandchildren and walking through the park? Baking our children’s favorite recipes and delivering them? Meeting a friend for lunch and living a serene life? Should we feel guilty that we aren’t still out in the world making a difference or leaving our mark on humanity? Is it a sign of laziness to want to enjoy a bowl of popcorn and a Mel Brooks movie festival on a rainy day?

Are we entitled to choose our path and is it a shame to opt for the quiet one? Does the quality of our life depend on how much we do with it? How exciting we make every day? Does it seem like simply living is actually waiting to leave life? Well you sure ask a lot of questions for someone from Detroit, Norma.

So I’ve asked myself many times, what should I be doing with the rest of my life? Is this a time I could be using to live out old dreams, accomplish never-achieved goals or perhaps set a new agenda?

There is that old saw after all about Grandma Moses beginning to paint at 78 years old.

Colonel Harland Sanders was 65 when he started Kentucky Fried Chicken and Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 when she began writing the highly successful Little House on the Prairie series.

I’m thinking that since 50 is the new 40 that 75 is the new 65. With that in mind is there any reason not to jump in and swim to the shore marked unfulfilled dreams?

The new wave in education toward home schooling has led to a new thing called PODS where parents form their own group and hire a teacher. Sort of home schooling on steroids.

Now a teacher can even continue teaching in a new and different way if they choose.

There are so many more opportunities today.

Online work and businesses, influencers, and of course the tried-and-true activities.

Classes in art, painting. sculpting, wine, cooking, Maj Jong or Bridge and so much more to fill the days.

That being said there is a fly in the ointment; COVID slowed us down. Instead of making us race into new endeavors, so many I know have discovered they are content to be at home and puttering about the house or garden just enjoying a quiet life.

Taking into account the options are numerous and more than ever before is there anything wrong with simply choosing to do nothing? Is any guilt attached to slowing your roll and taking life easy? Is carpe diem reserved for those who feel they must fill up every minute of each day with another activity?

After living a life of running here and there, caring for your children and out and about constantly isn’t it perfectly acceptable for one to feel content in solitude? Simply enjoying sitting and remembering or arranging flowers from your own garden in a beautiful vase?

Do we have to be writing a book or is reading one we’ve put off for years enough? For some yes, for others the answer is obviously a big no.

I believe that’s the beauty of growing older, the choices are endless and entirely up to you.

No one judges whether or not you used your laugh, laugh golden years to seek a cure for cancer or you merely took a walk on the beach or in the woods picking berries and baking them into a pie.

Enjoying the crisp air and the beautiful colors of autumn is a right one has earned by virtue of a life lived in fullness and now the choice is ours. Should we do one thing or perhaps both. Do unlived dreams have a right to be brought to fruition just because they lie on our hearts?

Should we be mindful of the ultimate responsibility to ourselves to live life to the fullest? Yet isn’t that degree of fullness up to us to determine?

I suppose I’m addressing my own guilt feeling remiss to achieve what hasn’t been done. Or are some dreams simply meant to be just that…dreams? Not every wish can come true nor should we feel less than for replacing old ambitions with new ones?

I haven’t quite figured it all out yet but I do know I enjoy the quiet days as much as the productive ones so maybe it’s possible to do both. If one feels a desire to do more, they easily can.

Maybe you feel the same or have managed to come to terms with how you choose to carpe diem your life. If you have, I hope every moment is proving to be a happy one.

Here is my recipe for an easy yummy Thanksgiving dessert albeit a bit early.

Pumpkin Blueberry Mousse

With Pumpkin Candy Crunch Topping

1 cup pumpkin

1 cup fresh blueberries

7 ounces of cream cheese

1 ½ cups whipped cream

1 cup powdered sugar

1/8/ tsp cloves

1/8 tsp ginger

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

Mix sugar and cream cheese until whipped nicely.

Add pumpkin and seasonings

Mix well. Set aside and hip cream until peaked.

Fold all but 1½ into pumpkin mixture. Set aside rest of whipped cream for topping.

Fold in blueberries and pour into parfait glasses or martini glasses. Top with whipped cream.

Place in fridge to set.

Pumpkin Seed Candy Crunch.

Place two tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar in non-stick frying pan.

When melted and combined add ½ cup of pumpkin seeds (Not roasted or salted)

Saute on low heat (watch carefully so they don’t burn) for about five minutes until seeds are nicely coated.

Remove from burner and place in fridge to harden.

When set and butter is hardened remove crunch from pan and chop up into pieces. Not too small but small enough to fit on top of mousse.

Bring mousses back out and top crunchies.

Enjoy!!!

My Grandparents Myself

My Grandparents Myself

Reading the tweets on Twitter about the NBC show Baking It on which I was privileged to be a judge, I was really taken by how many favorable responses us granny judges received. Living in the Hollywood area for so many years I’ve been brainwashed to believe that no one wants to see old people on television, or on the streets for that matter. And I must add that in this town old is considered anyone over fifty.

So you can imagine my surprise when young people were writing so many positive things about we judges, and I assure you fifty is well in the rear view mirror for many of us.

Then it dawned on me that perhaps it isn’t really so surprising after all.

Should I assume that I am the only person that adored her grandparents and had an unbelievable relationship with them, especially her grandfather?

My grandfather loved children so as the first grandchild I commanded all of his attention until my brother was born.

When I was a year old he made me an inner tube out of an old truck tire with a seat attached so he could push me around in the ocean. When we were older he took my brother and I fishing in the everglades and I even remember going to the movies to watch Some Like it Hot with him when he wanted to see his old friend George Raft. He made the best dill pickles and his laugh lit up a room, and in every picture together he looked at me like I was a banana split.

Too many of us are castigated for living in the past and told we must be in the present and looking toward the future. Dwelling on the past is a futile effort and waste of time when we could be living in the now…but is it really?

I say poppycock. That’s right. I said, poppycock.

Some days I drive myself to the Santa Monica Pier and sit admiring the ocean remembering the wonderful times with my grandfather.

Do I feel that these moments are a waste of my time? No indeed. In fact it’s rather the opposite. It’s as if I’m back in Miami Beach laughing and kicking my feet as he pushed me along the waves. I can smell the salt air and feel the sun beating down on me and these memories light me up inside even on the darkest days. How can feeling good possibly be bad?

The grandparent/grandchild relationship is incredibly special and to believe that only old people would want to see older people speaks to an inability to connect with the world and see people for who they really are.

I strive constantly to create memories I hope my grandsons will carry with them their entire lives.

When my grandson was four years old and collecting bugs I was on my hands and knees on the sidewalk helping. Although the sight of a bug made me jump five feet into the air under normal circumstances, when he asked me to secure them for him, my fears floated away on a cloud of pure joy at sharing something together. Although now when I ask if he remembers my fearless bug collecting, the recollection seems to have faded.

Yet I know from experience that many of the memories once lost ultimately reappear in time and although I can’t remember for what reason I called a friend by the time I’m finished dialing the number, my earliest memories of Miami Beach as a young child come back into focus whenever I smell the ocean.

So why are these moments of recollection so important as we get older?

In a study at Cambridge University in 2019 researchers found that “recalling specific positive memories and happy life experiences during adolescence may help teens fortify their resilience and reduce the risk of depression later in life.”

All one has to do to verify this thesis is look on Facebook. Every community has pages of memories from their old elementary or high school and the city where they lived as children. These pages are filled with pictures and images and allow users to share stories and reminiscences from their past.

Perhaps it’s simply the innocence we all crave as we get older, the need to believe the world is still that comfy cocoon we once nestled inside filled with play, fun, holidays and grandparents.

Grandparents signify unconditional love, a safe harbor in an often times turbulent ocean. A place to climb back into arms that may not be as toned or strong as they once were, but feel safe against any invader or frightening force.

We need happy memories to ward off the unpleasant ones that have a tendency to surface unwanted and uninvited. A way to reinforce the belief life is beautiful and things do work out in the end; even when they don’t.

Grandparents are the guardians of our memories. They contain all that is good about our youth, a path toward believing and sustaining hope and forcing us to forge ahead even in most difficult times.

It may be as simple as the smell of grandma’s apple pie in the autumn made with fresh apples you picked for her, the sight of your grandfather’s favorite tree you helped him plant or an old television show you watched together. You didn’t get the jokes, but you loved watching him laugh just the same.  

So I must offer kudos to the producers of Baking It who truly “get it,” and despite the Hollywood hype about the whole 18 to 49 age restrictions on television and movies, they knew better.

When we can look at television or the movies and see something that makes us feel warm and fuzzy it’s a no brainer we need more of it, and that happily includes all of us grannies.