Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame

by Olivia Ford

Baking immortalized some of the people she loved the most.

For a moment the future wasn’t somewhere that she feared, a place promising only old age and loss, but instead a place of hope and possibility. It became somewhere she wanted to tread.

“It’s sometimes easy to feel left behind at my age, as if the world has a future and you have no place in it . . . but I hope to discover that there is meaning and adventure still to be found.”

To want something, she realized, was to make yourself vulnerable to losing it.

“I think it’s your last love that really counts.”

“I’m no expert and I certainly haven’t done everything right over the years, but the strongest couples I know have grown together, supporting their partner’s changes rather than harnessing or fearing them. It’s a bit like growing roses—you don’t get to choose exactly which way the stems unfurl, but if you help them climb you get the pleasure of watching them flourish.”

I also know that it’s important to give yourself the time and the love that you give to others. For me, that’s my career, and nurturing that part of myself does not compromise the love I have for them.”

Old age can make us feel like we need to live a smaller life, but Jenny has shown that our dreams have a place at every stage of our journey . . . that they can be achieved because of our age, and not in spite of it.”

“No one teaches you how to spend a lifetime with someone,” she said, clearing her throat. “There aren’t any manuals, there isn’t a recipe to follow, and at times—believe me—I’ve wished there was.” There was a rumble of laughter, propelling her to continue. “To say that I’ve made a few mistakes in my marriage is an understatement, but what I have learned is that sometimes it is our mistakes, our greatest failings, that are the real tests—opportunities to get to know each other better, to put the word love into practice, to watch everything break into a thousand pieces and to glue it back together again.”