When I was a lot slightly younger, I’d often spot a gaggle
of middle-aged women in a bar. It was always the same. They’d be the loudest. Cackling and heckling. Tipsy and giddy, ordering silly cocktails and knocking ‘em
back with gusto. Dancing like loons. Laughing with their heads thrown back, showing their teeth. I’d see them and I’d think. ‘Ag shame hey. How sad. How
mortifying.’ I’d wonder how on earth they could behave that
way. To me, their social abandon was cringe-worthy and
just, like, totally uncool.
Now 15 some years later. I am one of those
women. I am the middle-age romper I once scorned. I get all tarted up with my
friends. We do our nails. We pluck our eyebrows. And our chins. We tuck our
wobbly bits into our spanx and blowdry our hair. We giggle like schoolgirls. We
drink frivolous cocktails, make random toasts and flirt with the barman. We
dance to music we don’t understand, but we dance anyway. We cry with laughter until
we need to go to the loo. Often. On account of the pelvic floor thing. And at
the end of the night, when we’re staggering back to our hotel on unsteady high heels,
screeching and talking over each other, we’re deliriously and drunkenly happy.
Happy to have spent a great night out together. With great food, ridiculously
over-priced prosecco and shameful dance moves.
They say that youth is wasted on the young.
It is. The older I get, the more I understand just how much. I wish I could go
back to my twenty-something self. To the uptight madam who was
so desperate to fit in she simply faded out. I’d tell her to lighten the hell
up. I’d tell her to worry less and enjoy more. I’d make it mandatory for her to order a round of pink sparkly drinks, talk
nonsense, laugh at nothing, kick off her shoes and hit the dance floor. I’d
tell her to embrace her youth and all the freedom and opportunity it
represents. And to smile and wave at the marauding troop of middle-aged women as they totter past her on their big night out.
Most Saturday
nights I’m tucked up at home. In my pajamas. On the couch. Binge-watching Gilmore Girls. My old faithful laundry basket next to me like a trusty labrador while I untether tights and pair socks. My
husband on his laptop, earphones in. My children asleep upstairs. This picture
pretty much represents the standard order of weekly domesticity. Weekends
are rarely different.
But every six months or so, my girlfriends and I grab a gap. Away from the socks and tights. Away from our husbands
and children. We simply take time out. To romp. To let go. To dance like no one is
watching. And it’s glorious. A cherished moment amidst the routine of motherhood,
marriage, work and everything in between.
And when I'm out with the girls and I pass an anxious looking
young ‘un clutching her drink at the bar, pulling down at her dress, fiddling with
her hair and trying her best to make aloof look attractive, I make a point to catch her eye and smile. I do my best to exude a friendly how-fun-is-this vibe. Naturally she pretends she doesn't see me, whips her head in the opposite direction and angles her body away so fast it's like I flashed her my C-section scar or something. But then that's the young for you. What do they know anyway? I take comfort in the fact that in a decade or so when she's enjoying a long anticipated night out with her girlfriends and she's got a houseful of kids and a husband with his earphones in, she'll embrace a good ol' middle-age romp.
Just like I do now.
Just like I do now.
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| True story. |
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| Truer story still. |
