Life, the universe and birthdays

When I turned 30, my father had recently died, it was not a good birthday. In fact, all I can remember of it was inviting a group of my Melbourne workmates, but chickening out and shooting through before they started arriving. As I very shortly thereafter left town and went back to Perth, I never did find out how many dolls of me had been furiously made, and bristled with long pins…

When I turned 40, life was totally different, I was long married to the best bloke you could find in a month of Sundays, living in Sydney, teaching freelance at the Film & TV School and (for me) fairly trim.

When I turned 50, everything was the same but for my working in a different place, my adored/adorable husband was if anything nicer. I’d put on weight. Again. But it was still a lovely birthday as he never gave a rat’s about my weight.

When I turned 60, he produced the birthday meal he’d been cooking me for years, roast beef with yorkshire pudding and a variety of roasted veg and greens, served with his divine red wine gravy. He was, and easily, the world’s no. 1 cook. But as two days later he was diagnosed with lung cancer, it was a birthday remembered mostly for the ensuing aura of confusion.

If you’re wondering why I don’t use a much stronger noun, I have to confess it’s because I threw myself with instant enthusiasm into total denial, and I didn’t understand until almost the last that he was going to die and, presumably, quite soon. In fact, he stayed with me for another 2½ years, and was proud of himself for having done so, as he had every right to be. He didn’t want to leave me, but the choice was never his.

When I turned 70, it was like a blow between the eyes. The light in the world had gone out 7½ years before: I was not still actively in mourning. In his not being there was an element of unfairness that I’d achieved two more years (so far) than he did. But most of all was the unmistakeable combination of those two digits, the seven and the zero. You can fool all of the old broads some of the time, and you can fool some of the old broads all of the time, but you can’t fool yourself, not any more, not for any time at all, that you are now unquestioningly yourself an OLD broad.

Jesus. How did this happen to me? I don’t understand.

Hands up those who’ve said those last two phrases to themselves … Yep, thought so (you can put ’em down again. We all say it to our images on those few occasions we can bear inspecting them. You’re probably more sensible about that than I. I’m such a lazy so-&-so that I only rarely think to slap moisturiser on my face, and my hair’s cut so short that I can brush it without any need to look in the mirror while doing so. Perhaps that’s why those moments of having to consult a mirror invariably cause me to wail those phrases.

There are some concepts that are genuinely hard to (a) grasp and (b) digest, don’t you think? For me, being 70 is currently the most difficult. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not miserable or even depressed about it, I’m honestly more puzzled than anything else.

I remember when I was a kid and my great aunts and so forth would totter about on occasion, and they must’ve been around this age, I believe now. Well, they were goddam ANCIENT, they were AGED, they were OLD LADIES. Remember them?… Of course you do.

OK, so answer me this, did they think like we septuagenarians do these days? Did they have the equivalent of Three Dog Night or The Band running through their heads? Wear jeans? Have all their teeth? (not counting the back molar from which a chunk of ceramic filling has fallen, that’ll teach me to eat day-old toast! Swear immoderately? Enjoy pulling a shot from their Gaggia Classics and admiring the crema with huge pride?

Of course they didn’t.

They didn’t attend rock festivals or get stoned or pick up blokes at parties or live on their own and have great jobs.

In fact, they weren’t within cooee of being as lucky as was my g-g-g-generation.

So. Regretting being 70? … I’d better pull my finger out and realise what a good time I’ve had and might still have, he used to say “Whose nose?!”, and I agree.

image: aziem hassan