Nadine Williams

Bowl of cherries

My life in this Golden Age of recent retirement is such a bowl of cherries, that each day I choose some other delicious adventure or activity.  While a new fitness routine is the biggest challenge, my time is dominated by “cocooning’’ a return to hobbies and interests of my 20s and early 30s.  This evidently is a trend for baby boomer women to return to handiwork, in my case, triggered by the arrival of the first grand-daughter.  As a young woman, I was a good dressmaker and made many of my own clothes and those of my young daughters.  I have had framed  the tiny baptism gown I made from left-over bridal lace for my first baby,  Serena.  As a housewife and mother, I enjoyed cooking and entertaining and gardening, but all of these pleasurable pursuits were swept aside for the past 28 years of my professional life as a mature-age tertiary student (8 years) and newspaper journalist for the past two decades.  I sold my Necchi sewing machine years ago. Feminism replaced the familial,  and I thumbed my nose at a  woman’s homely role, a fact which irked my mother.

Retirement was justifiably a risky time after an exciting work life, but I planned to do something different each day – and adopting a much healthier lifestyle involving gym fitness two or three times a week was a vital factor.  Despite a top-flight gymnasium in-house at The Advertiser I had never used the facility more than a half a dozen times a year, so building a new lifestyle would be a challenge. I had written so many articles linking fitness and agility with longevity that now I must walk my own talk.

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