Maid, Mother, Crone?

                                                                 


                                                                       
                                                                 

All my life I have been frightened of old people. My parents, thankfully,  didn’t turn into old people though both died in their 80’s.

I haven't ever been particularly familiar with old people. In expatriate communities everyone is of working age and younger.

I do remember a kind grandmother I met once, but she had extra toes on her feet so I was a little disconcerted by her. The other Grandmother whom I had spent a little time with, was a shocker. And when I was living in a small fishing village in South Africa the old people ran amok and were in control of the footpaths, the roads, and the entrance to every shop in town. Scary people.

All of which is probably why I was pretty late in coming to the realisation that one day I too would be an Old People. I knew that was the plan of course. Just as I know that one day the earth will no longer exist.  I just hadn’t really spent a great deal of time thinking that either event would occur in my own lifetime.

But the other day I was in a shop peering into a mirror to try sunglasses when I froze in horror: there, snaking out of the middle of my neck, swaying in the summer breeze, was A Hair. Not just any hair but one that Trump himself would be proud to claim: it was the longest hair in the whole world; the blackest hair that has ever been seen and I just knew that everybody at the next International Summit would be talking about it.

The lady behind the counter could not have been nicer, nor more apologetic that she had left the house without being armed with a pair of tweezers.

“Doesn’t matter” I moaned  “when this sucker comes out it’ll pull half my throat out with it.” I looked up at her with tragic eyes “Why does nobody tell us?” I entreated.

I can understand why no-one ever prepared anyone for it back in the day, when the average person was lucky to make it through childhood, let alone old age. Why get anyone’s hopes up? Just skip the whole subject of old age.

But we live in an era where people routinely make it to 100 – yet, no matter how fit and healthy they are, they’re still going to spend a lot of time being old. So I look on doctors noticeboards and see heaps of courses, and info, and programmes and education for being pregnant. Or on drugs. Or pre-pubescent. Or at risk from bowel cancer.

 But nothing there which tells one what to expect as one skips further and further along life’s busy highway.  To be honest, the only things I've ever gleaned about the ageing process concerned control of one’s bladder, bowels and brain. None of which, to tell the truth, being pathways I've been inspired to explore for info. And as neither of my parents was ever plagued with the horror of horrors that incontinence is, I was putting all my faith in good genes.

Back in the shop, however, the woman said that she had been ill-prepared too for the whole process of getting old. She'd observed too that as a general rule we were good to go right up until menopause: booklets, articles, talks, tv programmes made sure that only the people who watch Fox news remained clueless about their bodies up to that point.

  But there, right in the middle of a hot flush and developing a middle-aged belly, we are left to our own devices to figure out the next few decades with only vague ideas of false teeth, incontinence and, obviously, no more sex, to disturb our thoughts for the future.

The lady in the shop also had her own story to tell about a Hair. Not in the middle of her neck, but waving away merrily from her shoulder!  These buggers possess a sense of humour, obviously, and can leap out of anywhere at all on the human body, including those places where one would have considered it impossible for any hair to survive. They are random, spring up seemingly overnight and make you feel strangely like a bag-lady.

We spent a good 10 minutes more discussing the cruelty of being thrust into a rather long period of one’s life with very little preparation and realised it was the last bastion of secret information. Someone had to leak this. We cannot continue to send good men and women down that long life highway completely clueless of what was to come. People had to be told.

And, having come to a conclusion which would solve one of Life’s Great Problems we parted in friendly complicity: we’d found a solution.

Or at least we knew what the solution was. All anyone had to do was to ask us.  Either of us. We held the key.

Until I realised that hanging onto the key ourselves was no different to others continuing to withhold the information. So just as I was once regularly called upon in a small African town to explain menstruation to young girls, I shall take up the mantle of preparing others once again: So here it is: the first snippet from the trenches on what getting old entails: -

It actually starts off ok.  Though, counter-intuitively, getting old-er happens before actually getting old. Getting older happens to the majority of people at about 25.

 Until then you’ve been a baby, a child, a pre-teen, a teen, a young adult, a student/apprentice/junior, and finally an adult. The real thing.  Able to go to concerts every night of the week. Past giggling, public-puking, and saying ‘like’. Mature parent? Newly-wed? A job you love madly but which doesn’t pay well? Stepping up the academic ladder?  Blissfully single? It really doesn’t matter. Because whatever it is that you’re happily doing at this time, and no matter that you still feel the same as you did at 18 inside ; at about the age of 25 people will start telling you you’re getting older.

If you’re not married you should be. If you have a child/ren you shouldn’t be going out; you should be amassing their Education money – up to about post-grad level. You have to know where you’re going by now.

 Time is marching on, “they” tell you. You’re not a kid any more, you’ve got to settle down and face it: you’re getting older now.

Most people tend to accept this ruling as though it were written in stone. Some decide that’s all complete shite and that you’re only as young as you look, and spend the rest of their lives dressing ridiculously and telling people how all the Young Ones consider them part of the gang, and are their best friends. While still others, like me, just dismiss considerations of age and ageing as totally irrelevant. Ever.

But then one day you’ll find The Hair . And there you go: that’s your sign.  Just like, as a girl, that first stain on your knickers is the harbinger of womanhood;  that first Hair is a harbinger that you’ve now crossed from being a mature  chedder to being sharp vintage.

So the journey has started. And no-one has any clear idea of what to expect.

Soul-destroying as the First Hair can be, fortunately you will now be prepared. I may be a few bends further down the track to some of you (yep. Had time to go one or two times around the block, as well). To others I may still be hanging around on ground you’ve already travelled.

But hey, here’s one small nugget of wisdom to guide you through the web of myth and madness about getting old. Now you’ll neither be grossed out by your own body whenever and wherever  the First Hair puts in an appearance; nor will you feel it’s let you down by doing really odd things. It’s just getting old. And who knows what to expect - the day  may come when looking back on the appearance of a hair might not seem too tragic in the light of what indignities may come?

But hey, promise I’m going

tell you all about it!