Swan Song 2016

So.  The day has come.  You hit the big birthday that dangerously pitches you nearer the Queen's range of  celebrations,  rather than some Sweet Sixteen, Twitchy Twenty-One bash.

I'd been dreading this day somewhat;  kept trying to back-pedal Time:   I've let indulgent friends tell me age is just a number; told my shrink that I'm still trying to recapture my lost youth, reboot the arrested development and live the life I meant to live.  But each morning when I wake and try to rise, my bones tell me "Hey girl, that creak is not the neighbours' floorboards;  it's us."  It takes more than some moments to uncurl from stiffened sleep to upright functioning human.

Entering my bathroom, I am assailed by the plethora of gels, goos, lotions and potions which I had willingly colluded with manufacturers' lies, which claim they will stay, if not reverse the ravages of years. You know you're getting a bit ripe when it takes forever to ablute.  Here are some of the pertinent morning verbs I've got used to:  floss, bleach, sonic-brush, gargle; peel, microbead scrub, tone, moisturise, UV-block, prime, moisturise some more, de-pigment, unblemished, moisturise yet again, highlight, down tone; pluck, tweeze, lift, comb over, tease, tuck under, spray;  trim, clip, Q-tip, buff, polish...  By the you get to the spritz for a final flourish, you're absolutely exhausted. And you haven't even made it to breakfast.

Speaking of which.  Food, which used to be consumed in gleeful wild abandon, is now a serious study based on playing your percentages well - if you plan to hang around the Blue Planet for a wee bit longer.  I've long delearned the practice of a glass of Chablis at any school mums' lunch.  When I last did that I then drove ten blocks home with the handbrake on in the family Chelsea tractor, a distinct stench of burning rubber in my wake.  I'd also foregone any midweek boozy fiesta-ing.  It's just not worth the morning after the night before, when,  bloated and hungover, you'd be in a fug for the rest of the day, chasing your own tail for lack of acumen in any activity from getting breakfast down the children, to dinner down the dog.

Breakfast these days kicks off with a probiotic yogurt drink that helps down a Vitamin D/calcium pill and two tablets of hair growth supplement to counter crown follicle loss. Then I get to whizz and guzzle a green juice - anything from kiwi, kale, to fresh mown lawn for all I know.   The rest of the day I'm kept ravenous, robbed of oldies but goodies which include salt, sugar, butter, cheese, bread, cake, caffeine, alcohol, anything too acidy as well as anything too limey.  There's no way to turn that leads to ultimate good, and the list of the ultimate bad is an endless highway to hell. The worse insult of having eaten lean, green to become a mean, fighting machine - is that I gain weight from eating hardly anything that resembles the normal grub of yester youth.  Go figure.   And it's subcutaneous blubber that resolutely goes south of the border.

Back to today, my big ___-oh.  Was it travesty not to have cake and ice cream, tragedy not to bounce balloons, unwrap gifts galore and hold a bubbly boozy bash?  Well frankly Scarlet, no.  To begin with, I don't wanna be a big __-oh.  Big __-oh is not the new 30, or 40.  But hey, I have two gyrolates sessions a week and can still do the splits.  I skip the lift to walk up and down four floors in my building; and I always trudge doggedly up the left hand side of every escalator on the Tube, without breaking even a shine.   I don't do chocolate, never have.  I down a decaf Americano, black, only to look cool.  I can still put away a couple of super dry gin martinis straight up with an olive (I LIKE olives, and well, you gotta drink the gin to get to the olive, dontcha?) and walk out in a straight line.  But I'm just as likely to order a sparkling water when I'm propping up some bar.  If I'm having dimsum, I can still slurp fish lips and suck chickens' tootsies in a black bean sauce without batting an eyelid. Or nibble a brined pig's ear with my jasmine tea.  That's exactly what my girl gang is going to treat me to this week, in honour of the Big __ - oh.  As for cake and candles?  Nah.  Lactose intolerant with cream or wheat, and you'd have to call out the Fire Brigade when the candles set off the smoke detector.

What of gifts, you may wonder.  Well - I've got everything I could possibly want, and what I want, what I really really want - you cannot buy.  It's the company I wish to keep:  grown up kids who have their own lives to lead, with goals to pursue and dreams to turn into their reality.  We see each other when we wished to, as is right in the cycle of life.  A grandbaby has recently appeared on the horizon:  completely wondrous and eminently huggable.  Grandchildren are your second chance, and that of your children, to make things right between you.  You get reinstated onto your pedestal from where you fell, as your grown offspring, now sleepless and struggling new parents, finally get what you'd been trying to do as their mother. You also get to learn prét-a-parenting in the 21st century;  so much has evolved in theory and practice.  My other treasures are friends who love you so much, they shout at you when you've been stupid;  they may live thousands of miles away, but they are always buried in the folds of your heart.  There are women in my life that I'd known for more than a quarter of a century; friends through much thickness and thinness in the narrative of our lives.  And the cherry on the top is to have my Belovéd, to share life's meandering journeys; sometimes we live in each other's back pockets, sometimes we don't.  I've lived and learned over the decades that this is OK, where relationships go.

What more can a girl ask for then?  I'm probably too old for a new job, but I have learned over the years to keep reinventing myself, so nothing is going to stop me if I had the gumption to apply.  The jobs I do today are nothing like what I did 20, 10, 5, 4, 3, 2 or even one year ago.  I guess I'm now a Jill of some trades and mistress of none.  But that's OK;  I'd keep you on your toes and at least make good party conversation.  

So is it time to grow senile gracefully, accept that you will forget what you just came upstairs for, suffer tinnitus, sport reading glasses, bunions and increasingly bluer veins under papery skin?  Well, this swan's not yet ready to honk her retreat before going mute;  I'm still vainly paddling like mad beneath the showy surface glide.  Life's just too rich, too interesting, too beautiful to give up on yet.  All in all, it's been a chilled out birthday:  thanks to all who celebrated my numbers, sent genuine warmth, and loved me regardless of my bingo wings.  I'll be there for you babes when you hit your Big-Ohs.