At the Dawn of the Sunset

At the Dawn of the Sunset

One day you are young and the next you aren’t any more. One day your children are tiny babies, lovely toddlers and boisterous youngster all reliant on you and the next day, without any warning, any indication of change to come, let alone, major upheavals, they are adults with their own families concerns and life’s trepidations.

And you? What now?

Ah, for you, me and so many more baby boomers, it is an altogether different story now. It is the entrance into an unknown, grey, daunting zone.  

It is like finding yourself in a mysterious land shrouded by a thick grey mist. Like in a bad dream, you wave your hands as heftily as you can but the mist only gets thicker. Maybe the veil is just in my eyes, I think. I desperately rub my eyes in a pitiful effort to see ahead and beyond, to see with the clarity of yesteryears, the clear blue sky meeting the ocean just across the horizon, the naked mountains or the green-rolling valleys, as far as the eye can reach; a world of hope and promises.  Yes! Your whole life is ahead of you – that is the eternity when you are 18 - and you are going to achieve so much because you can. You know you can and nothing and nobody will ever stop you.

But before you know, those days are gone, done and dusted.

Although the signs multiply every day you do not realize the passing of time. Yet, all of a sudden, there it is, there is no denying it. It is like a reversed epiphany. You suddenly realize something new, but it is not quite what you wished for. Certainly not.

The give aways, are little signs here and there, after you hit 45. 

For me, the very first sign, as I recall it, was a sudden loss of my 10/10 eyesight. I was sitting down reading at the exact spot where I am now writing. 
All of a sudden, I could not see the letters anymore. Everything went hazy and I cannot begin to describe the sheer level of panic that took hold of me at that moment. Of course, I did not think it was the declining of my eyesight linked to age, known as presbyopia. No, I thought I was probably having an AVC or something of the sort. Called my GP, got an appointment, was sent to see an ophthalmologist and the verdict fell like a bomb; the declining had started without any forewarning. That was it. I had to wear glasses for the rest of my life. My attempts turn the clock back by having one of those miraculous laser interventions, fell miserably through due to other complications, funnily enough, linked to the fact that I had enjoyed a perfect eyesight. In other words, I was now going to pay back with interest.

Then, people, everyone, no exception at all, start addressing you as Mrs. X or Mr. Y.  The end of Moidemoiselle or Ms. Yep people, take my word for it. That is a clear and unmistakable indication that you have recognizably and irretrievably, lost your bloom, past your prime and that you now stand on the other side of the fence. Yes that side where you use to see your parents and grandparents. In a nutshell, “the old people”.

Your body, your clothes, your job, your friends and the whole caboodle.

If you are a woman you are confronted with two case scenarios:

    The hormones are wreaking havoc in your body, creating the biggest mayhem.  Apart from the unbearable heatwaves, the uncalled for sweating extravaganzas, the mood swings and other less elegant discomforts, you are gaining weight at sound speed and nothing fits. Worse, the shops do not have clothes for you because, this body, this one hanging below your neck, is not yours, not really. You keep waiting for the old one to come back while patiently and wretchedly sliding into your granny’s clothes. Positively the same you use to look at so scornfully. 

   If, however, despite all or some of the inconveniences of the hormone waltzing through, you have not gained or lost weight, not only do you bring upon yourself the scorching fury of your friends and the sheer hatred of your foes, but worse, much worse, you yourself, do not recognize this new body. Your clothes fit but not quite. Something is really amiss. Is the sagging process, ladies, slowly but, alas, surely setting in. “Need to cover my knees, now. And yes, my shoulders too and, maybe, a bit of my arms. Since we are at it, I might as well put a scarf on. All that skin on my neck… where the heck did it come from?!? And when?” Oh for crying out loud!!!Beats me, all of this.

Well, at this point, you realize that you have started working your way up to becoming a nun and the suspicion, that in some years you will be yearning for “burkinis” to become fashionable, creeps in, with no uncertain sense relief. That will be the last leg, of course.

So now, as it stands,  I hate my body, I loathe my clothes, I detest shopping - which I use to love - and my friends and foes alike, really have it in for me because I failed them miserably. Yes I did. Against all prognosis and odds I did not gain weight.  I spare you the goriest details but will give you a little foretaste, a sneak preview of some vile comments made with the most angelic smiles: “Of course, you do not eat... that explains how you can keep the weight down”, or, “At a certain age, being so skinny does not suit one” and on, and on, and on… It can be trying and exasperating and I must admit that I have had to bite my tongue once or twice not to stoop to the level. GRrrrr… But nonetheless hard and I swear, one of these days, I will climb down that ladder and give some of that foul bile back.

We have all been there, I guess, one way or another. Either too fat or too skinny and never how it should be…  Ah that, the so well-known women's solidarity! Don’t you just love that refinement in the art of "bitchiness"? I have met some of the best. Those sneaky comments about your ex-husband are surely “bitching Oscar winners”.

Men have it easier, I think, and are, probably for the same reason, more gracious towards women undergoing the process. Of course the exception, apart from some veeeeeeery exceptional cases, is their wives. Boy, can they be nasty-mean or what???  The number of friends who have been jilted, after decades of marriage, for someone half their age, often younger than their own children, is dumbfounding. That, I must confess, makes me sick to the core, even if I do not particularly like the woman in question. 

Although we always get to the conclusion at one point or another that it was a real blessing in disguise, a divorce is always a very gruesome process, regardless of your age,-. But after a certain age, I imagine, just when the children have just left, when you may have lost one or both parents, it has to take a serious toll. The callousness with which they walk out on their wives/partners and the irresponsibility of starting a family, often not far from their sixties and even beyond, is just unbelievably stupid and downright pathetic. All in the foolish hope of buying a new lease of life. The number of times I have put my foot in it, mistaking the child by a grandchild, is just preposterous. 

At work, allusions that "new blood" is necessary, burst forth from all directions.

If you happen to lose your job after 50, all hell breaks loose. No matter how rock-solid your CV and experience are, you are in for an uphill struggle.  All that is seen is that you are close or past the big "5 O". Anyhow, these days your CV is screened according to some keywords and your age, I suspect, despite all the laws and regulations.  Human contact? Forget it. Not for the homo numericus.

At a time the your journey, when you should be starting to look into the sunset with a sense of serenity and achievement, as your children have flown the nest, the mist sets in instead and you need to figure it all out again.  Your body, your best buddy, lets you down, some of your friends have lost their kindness – probably at the same place where they found the new crazy hormones - your life partner has legged it, the employment market is shaky and all your lifelong hopes at their absolute nadir.  It is at this point that you realize that life is no longer ahead of you and that the one thing that always mattered, is the one that will keep you going. FAMILY.  

Of course they have let you down sometimes and you have let them down too, most likely without even realizing it. But at the end of the day, those are your roots, your pillars, and your branches. 

Some friends will remain. The steadfast ones who have resisted the trials of time and who, despite the distance, have hung in there through thick and thin. Those are not good friends. They are the best of friends and become family too. If you can count them in the fingers of one of your hands, you are, indeed, lucky.

But for the generation of the baby boomers, the challenges are colossal. In a globalized world, your children are everywhere and constantly on the move to adapt to the market conditions.  You may visit or receive them once or twice a year if you are lucky but, at best, you have 10 months on your own. 

The challenge is how to reinvent ourselves, about re-thinking our lives out of the box, in a manner that our parents did not have to, about recreating that sense of solidarity and give a new sense and purpose which, at the end of the day, is called reaching out for HAPPINESS.