Forty Candles

“Wow!” It’s my birthday again. This year, I’m going to be pretty old. I was born in the year of the Tiger, so that makes me forty. I’ll have to order a huge cake to fit all the candles. Better still, I’ll ask the baker to print the words, “Happy Birthday” in gilded sugar, on a chocolate square, placed at the centre of the raspberry-mousse gateau…

My guests are all younger than me. I’m the oldest one in my group o f friends. That makes it hard. I guess I ought to stop comparing myself to younger people. Surely, I’d feel a lot better about myself if I stopped trying to be a size 10, or could handle the way that my flesh has began its slow but inevitable transformation. When I’m by myself, I must face the terror of time advancing as I examine my reflection in the mirror. There is no cheating. Don’t shudder, because you’re next. The same devastation is going to take place in your life too. The tragedy is that it’s happening to me first.

It’s not that I’m having a mid-life crisis, exactly. It’s more like an identity crisis. I mean, who am I supposed to be like? What insights are supposed to have revealed themselves to me? What material possessions am I expected to have accumulated? And what about those lines on my décolleté? Am I supposed to book in for a Botox session?

The thing is: I’m on my own and there’s no one out there that I can relate to, no one to turn to. I mean, fundamentally, I’m a natural kind o f woman and I’d be inclined to carry my age with a certain pride. Sure, I’ve stuffed up plenty of times but overall, I’m pleased with myself. I just wish I could enjoy it. But being the oldest person I know well, is turning my attitude towards the aging process I’m undergoing, more like stunned disbelief.

That’s the trouble with not knowing any “old” people. I mean, for me, they’re just don’t fit into the picture. For example, I can’t relate to my old school buddies. They inhabit a musical time warp (don’t get me wrong: I still like King Crimson and Frank Zappa), and they feel entitled to patronize anyone under thirty-five. I look at them across the other end of the bar: they have grown up together, slept together, made kids, divorced and re-married and swapping each others partners and children, but they still all drink in the same old places, play backgammon, go sailing and think they know where it’s at. I simply cannot relate.

Truth is, there ain’t no one like me out there. Please, any childfree woman, in her forties, who rides a scooter to work, who has a career and a younger husband, raise her hand. See: I knew it. I’m on my own. If you’re about my age, you probably have a family or are trying to have one before your time’s up. Me I don’t fit into that standard. If on the other hand, you chose not to have kids, you would definitely qualify as a minority group and, if on top of that you even had a man in his twenties, well, then your would have to have a lot of guts.

It’s my birthday next Sunday and I’ll be turning four+O. Hmm… I envisioned myself as having mastered the art of being fabulous and attaining a certain poise. Instead, whenever I stand before a mirror, I stare in horror and disbelief at a devastation that I do not recognize as my own. Gone are the days when the beautiful woman reflected in the shop-window, caught me by surprise. Today, I mourn the glossy chestnut shine of my hair. I realise the smooth elasticity of my limbs has gone forever. Overnight, I’ve turned into someone else. These are my hands, yet a bunch of lines is etched across them.

What traumatizes me isn’t that I’ll never fit into size 8 jeans again. It’s that my cherished wardrobe has turned against me. My favourite clothes and the accessories, which only last year seemed funky, now look ridiculous and undignified. I must make peace with this new shell. I keep remembering how I was: simple, natural, vital. How did I get stuck inside this alien body? I’m disoriented and scared. Is there any way to halt this metamorphosis? I feel like I’ve just traded in a brand new sports car for a second hand station wagon.

Sure, I could go to the gym, gut I’d rather spend the money on a set of new diamond earrings. After all, these days nothing makes me feel sexier than wearing expensive things. I’ve learned to walk in very complicated high heels, and I’ve found a fabulous tailor that makes any clothes fit my shape perfectly. And I invest in beauty big time. I’m a high maintenance woman now. Good-bye bargain-basement bulk vitamin E cream. I’ve changed. I believe I can buy a few extra years in a jar. I believe in women’s magazines. I believe in spending money on myself and investing in quality accessories. I get my roots done regularly, I have weekly manicures and pedicures, I have massages once a month, I do yoga, I get plenty of fresh air, I always walk up the stairs, I eat biological food and I’m going to the gym.

Until recently, my excuse for not exercising was that, as an artist and an intellectual, Lycra just didn’t fit my image. But today I’m more honest. I recognize that the reason I don’t look good in Lycra is due to my addiction to 75% Gran Cru chocolate. I once saw a documentary on an 80-year old yoga teacher who was as flexible as a rubber band. She said that the reason she was so nimble was that she’d been practicing yoga for 20 years; in other words, she discovered the discipline in her 60s. So there are no excuses, because it really never is too late.

This summer I bought three new bikinis and a seasonal ticket to the local beach-club. So, no more hiding from the sun in board shorts and a men’s shirt. This summer I’m coming out and showing off all that hard work and discipline. This year I will begin to reverse the averse effects of time. Because I’ve made a decision, from now on, I’m going to get better and better all the time...