Middle-age Musings

So today, I’m 35. When I was 15, the thirty-plus age bracket seemed an eternity away. A category reserved for grown-ups. With proper jobs, cars and kids and stuff. I could no sooner envisage myself in this group than I could as life as a policewoman or butcher. I also remember thinking that thirty-somethings must have all the answers. They’d figured out this life business. Because with age, comes wisdom, surely? That’s what they tell us. Finish school, they say. Keep your head down and work hard so you can go to university, they say. Education is key, they say. With it, the world will be your oyster, they say.

I stuck it out at school (with a few well-documented wobblies) and got through university. And a decade and some change later, there’s not so much wisdom. In fact, I seem to have undergone a process of reverse wisdom. When I was 18, of course I knew it all. At 20, I could’ve run the UN; I had answers to all the world’s problems. And my knowledge grew directly proportionate to the volume of wine I consumed. 
The older I get though; I seem to have fewer answers and a lot more questions. No matter how much wine I drink. And it’s a lot.

The only wisdom I can remotely stand by is that life is one ever-changing rollercoaster. Where one minute you love the rush and you feel like a rockstar and the next minute you feel rather queasy and you worry that you might just actually puke in the lap of the grumpy guy seated next to you. And he’s well groomed with not a hair out of place. And he has all of his hair. So he clearly doesn’t have children. So he’s not at all familiar with puke either.

As Lennon said, life happens when you’re making other plans. As a know-it-all teenager, I had a life mapped out that bears little resemblance to my current reality. I was going to marry Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze or Brad Pitt. One of these leading men would arrive in an F14 straight from the set of Top Gun, teach me some Dirty Dancing and take me to a place where Legends of the Fall are made. I had it all worked out. Also, I wasn’t going to get married. We’d consciously couple and live a busy life with lots of parties. Children weren’t really a part of the scene either. Career-wise, I’d planned on being a psychologist. Or a magazine editor. We’d reside in Umhlanga with a white picket fence. And possibly a waterfall. I’d dress in tailored suits and wear heels.

Turns out, I was happily married by 25. To a man I’d met at 17. And he’s neither a Tom, nor a Patrick, nor a Brad. He’s a Tim. By 30, we were thrilled to be pregnant with our second child. At 35, I now have three children under my belt along with a livid red c-section scar that reminds me of how my body successfully (or unsuccessfully if you're one of those natural birth earth mother types) carried human beings to full-term. My physical badge of honour. Career-wise, I do did (and hope to again) work in magazines. Not as an editor though. As a publisher. We live a continent away from Durban. In a terraced house with no white picket fence. I do not own one tailored item of clothing. Also, I only wear heels for weddings. I literally own two pairs.

Tom Cruise came out of the Ron Hubbard cupboard screaming Scientology and got a little creepy. And he stayed rather short. Patrick Swayze danced his way to heaven – may God rest his beautiful soul. Brad Pitt is married to the epitome of female human perfection and they have enough children together to start a school. Point is - he became very domestic, very quickly. And therefore got distracted. I turned out to be not such a good listener. Or very sympathetic. And I’m rather psychotic. So good miss on the psychologist gig then. I’ve discovered that editing a magazine is bloody hard work reserved for the most talented of folk. Making money on the business side is a lot easier for a slacker like me. Ok, so by living in the UK, we may not get the Umhlanga Lighthouse or the views across the Bay of Plenty, but Windsor Castle and The Great Park are breathtakingly beautiful. Literally millions of people flock to see these sights every year and we pass them every day. That's pretty cool. I've come to realise that picket fences are pretty useless – aesthetically pleasing perhaps, but with very little actual function. Like garnish that you can’t eat. Or plastic fruit. So no big loss there either.

And as far as not getting married or having children, well I’m esctastic that I paid no heed to a silly teenage Sally and her ridiculous rules for life. I married my best friend who makes me laugh until I pee myself (it happens way too often these days…three pregnancies wreck a pelvic floor) knows me better than I know myself and who’s the rational counterbalance to my chaotic and hysterical. 
And my three children. The feral little beasts who are both marvelous and mortifying…they keep it real. And real-life beats fantasy any day. I’m living proof. We have an insanely busy life – with lots of parties. They just happen to be children’s parties where Elsa and Anna come out to play in various adaptations or Spiderman and the rest of the superheroes trample cake into the floor and fling themselves around on a bouncy castle until someone cries, wets themselves or pukes. Or any/all combination thereof.

Come to think of it, nowhere did happiness feature back in 1995 when I was daydreaming about life during accounting class. Grownups would harp on about happiness all the time, "Go on Sally - go forth on your journey and be happy." I ignored the happiness part and focused on the go forth part. To me, seeking happiness simply wasn’t important. Certainly not enough to dream about. Being educated, sure. Knowing all the answers, definitely. Wearing heels and smart clothes, yes, yes, yes. But happiness…not so much.

Sitting here now at 35, married with all my children and my car and my grownup stuff, I’m can honestly say that I’m happy. I’m ridiculously stupid. I'm journeying my brains out. I’m very thankful that I never wear tailored clothes and seldom have to toddle in heels. And I genuinely couldn't ask for more.

Here’s to the next 35 years of riding the rollercoaster of life, seeking the highs, navigating the lows, sharing the journey with friendly folk, avoiding puke (mine and other’s) and hoping there’ll be some more wisdom gained along the way. But I ain’t gonna hold my breath on the last one. I've learnt that much.

25 year old Sally. Happy and stupid. At my Hen's Party belting out Ice Ice Baby to a restaurant of people. Yes, I had a plastic glass plaster of paris'ed to my hand. Yes, those are heels. No they weren't mine.