When I was a child, I assumed that by the time I was in my forties I would have achieved certain things. I imagined I would be living a life of sophisticated inner-peace as I breezed around my creative business empire wafting of Eau du Coutts and Cotswolds. Instead, I exist in a primordial soup of chaos fuelled by caffeine and crumpets and what is more, there are important things I STILL don't know such as:
1. How to reverse park
Sorry, but I just I can't do it. It gives me a hurty neck and I get all confused. I have parked blocks away just so I can do a fronty entrance.
(And yes, all the above also applies to sex.)
2. What I want to be when I grow up
I'm not sure whether the lack of certainty here is about not knowing what I want to do, or not being sure what the general signifiers are that one has 'grown-up' and I'd like to know. Is it about having your hair 'done' regularly and acquiring a mortgage? It's certainly not about having kids because that's sent me into some kind of potty-talk induced decline. Plop. You see, the word still makes me laugh and I know I'm not the only one.
So what is it? HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE A GROWN-UP if no one gives you a certificate in assembly to you show that you are? I am a big believer in having something to work towards like a badge or a small engravable trophy. So until the passage to adulthood is made clear to me and broken down into small, achievable goals, I'm not playing. *Folds arms, kicks over toy bucket and sulks.*
3.Which clothes suit me
This may be a natural consequence of Point 2 above, but I have no idea what looks good or even acceptable on me any more. This is partly because my middle-aged body is a stranger to me (as I explain in this blog). I usually go out looking like a cross between Fearne Cotton and Fern Britton;my face, Britton's boobs, Cotton's pegs.
I'd be on my own What Was She Thinking page every week if I were a magazine. I don't have a little black dress that always works, my killer heels do actually make me want to die and the last time I wore something saucy in the bedroom, my husband got the giggles and did a tiny sick in his own mouth.
I used to know this stuff, but it seems that 'the knowledge' fell out of my croissant along with my children.
4. How to save money and be all sensible about investments and ploppy stuff like that
You'd think by my mid-forties I'd have some savings or own some 'stuff' but my net worth has about the same value as an actual tiddler-net from an actual garage. I have put aside exactly diddly, zilch, nada, not a sausage. I like to think that this is because I have chosen instead to invest in skills that I do not have to ever retire from like writing and having v. smart children who I have guilt-tripped into making sure they feel they owe me.
"You will look after yer dear old mum won't you? " I say to my talented girls as I drop my pants and show them my caesarean scar for the 6,000th time.
So, if all you own is one cardigan, a pair of unwearable shoes and a hair dryer, you are not alone my friends.
5. How to accept that my husband really does love me
I just assume that I irritate the hell out of my husband and that at some point he will get fed up and leave me. I press his buttons daily (no, not those ones) in a perpetual test of his love like my 6-year-old smears bogies on my living-room wall to test mine. Even after 12 years of his consistent, patient, steady loving, I just can't relax. Perhaps I just don't really believe that I'm that lovable, or maybe it's because I'm a child of that dreadful hairy 70's era when men did what the fuck they wanted when they wanted with whom they wanted while women were stuck somewhere between liberty and tradition. Why is it that women assume they will be left for a younger, prettier version of themselves, and men assume they will be abandoned for a richer, better provider? Perhaps the old adage is true, that until you truly love yourself, you won't believe that anyone else can. Or perhaps learning to let someone love you is Lesson One in growing-up.