I must be a grown up, I have two children who are legal adults and another who looks perilessly close to no longer being my baby.
The irritation I feel when I remember women my age looking into my pram that was bursting with babies, wagging their fingers and saying “cherish them, they won’t be little long”, often rises when I realise they were right – and I am becoming that woman – passing on that message to new mothers I meet.
Yet the irony of being 46 and still pretty clueless on a lot of matters hits me in the face most mornings.
Every time I sit on the loo I’m reminded that my claim to be an adult is challenged by the fact we have lived in this house for almost a year and it has a broken toilet seat for our duration.
I don’t know how to replace a toilet seat, nor who to call to do it for me, or how much it would cost to do for me, so instead, like a petulant child, I ignore it. And as a family we have all worked out how to sit on the knackered loo in a way that doesn’t leave us either sliding into the bowl or covered in our own outpourings.
Younger me, felt this was the sort of stuff I’d grow out of – y’know – when I grew up.
Then other days, I feel old, so bloody old. The kids text me in a language I don’t speak, technology advances at an alarming rate and I simply don’t care for it. My knees hurt when I squat, and my mobility is something I know need to work on rather than take for granted.
I talk to other women, in that same age bracket as me on customer surveys (46-55), and note there is a similarity in our tone (and facial hair). We talk like our life has reached completion, our kids are aging and starting to live their lives, soon we will be awarded the badge of empty nesters, we are the middle aged, stuck somewhere between planning retirement and working our asses off to live the life we want for our family.
I have really pushed this narrative, owned the middle aged mantra and I feel like I’m constantly squeezing my feet into shoes too small.
Because at 46, I am nowhere need ready to embrace a slower pace, to accept that where I am could be my highest point.
So I am changing pace and the narrative,
I’m saying “feck it”.
I’m simply halfway through the film and in no rush to get to the end.
The glorious uncertainty of what is to come is starting to set a fire in my belly; the dream of the woman I will become, the things Ill achieve (as yet unknown) excites me.
I’m done talking about menopauses, empty nesting, feeing old.
I’m a freaking spring chicken compared to some and a fine wine compared to others.
It’s irrelevant,
A wise old soul said, life is a gift and a lesson, and I’m saddling up and I’m ready for both.
Now to get that toilet seat fixed…….