My Fortieth Year

After my recent birthday I have transitioned, as Steve’s Gran would have said, in to my fortieth year.  By this time next year I will have passed the milestone of being forty, which, surprisingly, I’m feeling rather good about.

Of course it helps that Steve turned forty, ahead of me, last year. 

Throughout our lives we spend considerable amounts of time and energy thinking and worrying about our age and aging.  When we’re young we crave being old enough to participate in the excitement of life, but as the years roll away from us we often dream of being young and careless once more.

Of course when we’re in our teenage years, we imagine forty as being that moment in life when we turn the corner, stepping across the threshold into the undesirable world of officially becoming old.  Of having passed the halfway marker, which signals from here on out that we’re resigned to a life of boredom, predictability and a slow decline into nothingness. 

Not that it has to be that way.

Then, when we hit our thirties, we begin to realize that there is truth in what everyone older than yourself says: that you still feel young at heart and that age doesn’t matter.

And so in our thirties we cling to this belief, desperately needing to believe it.

But, by the time we glide into the arena of our forties, we know it to be so.

The truth is that however we choose look at it, time and age catches up with us at some point.

Just the other week Steve took a photograph of me to replace my avatar on twitter and to update the one in the ‘About Me’ section of my blog.  As photos go it was okay, but what I noticed for the first time were the indentation of crow’s feet hovering around my eyes.  Quite blatant for all to see and yet, I feel that I rather like them being there.  They have forced me to reassess myself, to update my own sense of self and in doing so I've realized that nowadays my face looks all grown up, and lived in. 

And ‘lived in’ is good.  Lived in is interesting.

Of course, this is something we’ve all lost sight of in this modern culture of ageless beauty.  But a lived in face says so much; it tells the story of a person’s life experience and wisdom. 

Year’s ago, I came across this anonymous quote, and it has stayed with me ever since, and really feels like this is the way life and aging should be:

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with

the intention of arriving safely in an attractive

and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in

sideways, champagne in one hand, strawberries

in the other; body thoroughly used up, totally

worn out, and screaming, ‘WOO HOO, what a ride!’

The thought of skidding in sideways, having used my body to truly experience life as it should be, and not to play it safe with the intention of arriving in one perfectly, untouched piece, really appeals.

And so a few age lines around the eyes, to me, feel fantastic.

Being a mature student surrounded by teenagers half your age is a great affirmation of becoming older.  And there is no avoiding it.  In a lecture before Christmas, I was one of two or three students who were old enough to remember the original Bob Geldof, Band Aid charity song ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ being played, which my foot tapping to the music, sort of gave away.

Each day, I see their fresh, open faces; their lives untouched by experience; still so open to all those wondrous possibilities that surround them and it leaves me feeling fascinated and excited for them. 

It also leaves me thankful that I am beyond the insecurities and traumas of the teenage years, overwhelmingly content to be the age that I am.  Even if the truth is that those teenage insecurities often stay with us, mellowing in to the comforting fabric of our beings, while we charge towards the middle-aged years. 

And that’s okay too.

Each age, each milestone brings with it its own set of challenges and as we journey forward we carry along with us the remnants of that which we have previously experienced. 

What’s interesting about aging is that it doesn’t feel the way we imagine it will, and we are not always whom we thought we would be when we get there.

The approach of my fortieth is not at all as I expected it to be.  I am not whom I imagined I would be.

As a teenager, I would have predicted and hoped that by the time I reached the age of forty, I would be settled in life.  I’d have a career, I’d be married and would have the four children that Steve and I planned back in the early days.

Yet I’m not.  Other than being married, I’m completely behind schedule.

Somewhere through the decades, we’ve made detours in our lives, taking unexpected twists and turns, and, undoubtedly, life itself has thrown in a few surprises along the way.

So now at forty, I’m not where I intended to be. 

But then I have always been a slow starter.  When I swam competitively I was hopeless in a sprint, but give me an empty swimming pool and I’d happily swim 100 lengths of butterfly without a sprint in sight or a change in pace. 

What I couldn’t have predicted back in my teens is that next year, at forty, I will graduate, hopefully, with an Honor's Degree in Creative Writing. 

That seems significant to me.  It’s a turning point.

Not that I’ve any idea where it will lead me.  I only know that beginning a new chapter at such a pivotal age feels good, and that I take enormous pleasure in this symmetry to my life.

In my twenties I searched endlessly for what I could do with my life.  I’d go to the library in Stafford, in the days when Steve was a student, and pore through the career guidance books in search of something I could ‘become’. 

Now, I will begin this new era armed with knowledge, experience and the hopes of making my dream of becoming a published writer a reality.  And so, if this final year of the Thirties leaves me with any impression it is this: that now is the time to pick up the pace in life.  Now, is the time to dive in and get my hands dirty in making life happen for me.  Life isn’t endless.  And living in that knowledge is a good reminder that there are times when we need to push ourselves harder, to strive further.  To try to sprint even when we know we’re not a sprinter.

This past week, I have been thinking about Beth Scott, the main character in my unpublished novel ‘Unravelled’ and it dawned on me how true her thoughts had been about aging.  Thoughts that I wrote several years ago now, and which as I have caught Beth up in age also apply to me too.

What a fool she had been all these years, believing that when you got to forty-something, you’d have reached an age where you had this kind of stuff figured out.  Beth stood, rubbed her palm across her stiffening hips, and pottered back to the warmth of her kitchen.  Of course, there were the increasing aches and stiffness.  Those accumulating telltale wrinkles, age spots along her arms like splodges of paint.  The thick grey strands she discovered in her hair, and which she swiftly tucked inside her bun. 

She didn’t relish the thought of ageing, who did?  Or the looming prospect of the menopause and all that that entailed.  No, what was bothering her was far more to do with being an age where you began to acknowledge that by now you should have become a grown up: a fully rounded, mature adult.  And that she realized, switching the kettle on for another cup of tea, was the problem.

Do we, will we ever fully feel like a round, mature adult?  Probably not, and perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.

The aging process brings with it a bundle full of concerns, but it also offers us the opportunity to learn through embracing it openly and with grace.  To remember that there is comfort to be found in our worn slippers and nightly mug of ovaltine and in knowing yourself.  Knowing who you are.  Knowing your strengths and limitations.  I happily embrace the downward slide to becoming forty in the knowledge that I have the makings of aging in to a grumpy old woman, and that, like skidding in sideways champagne in hand, not only appeals to me, it sounds like fun.