Weathering Winter and my mid 40’s

I haven’t written in this blog in a while. Not since it was winter, and new closures were hitting our municipality, and I was anxious and stressing over the coming winter under stricter regulations. But now we’re halfway through spring, the state of alarm in Spain is ending on Sunday, the cases are way down, vaccinations are going up, and life is getting back to some semblance of normal.

And I turned 45 yesterday. I didn’t do much to celebrate, because at some point the birthdays start coming so fast that you just don’t seem to have the time to mark them in any big way. In the evening, H and I stayed up late playing outside in the warm spring air, and listening to the Beatles. I first fell in love with the Beatles as a 20-something living in a bedsit in Muswell Hill in North London. I spent many evenings playing Rubber Soul (isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?) reading Harry Potter books. If you had asked me then what 45 year old Me would be like, I think I would have responded that I hoped she would be more “together.” The kind of woman who can look elegant in a chic black sweater and dark bootcut jeans. That I would wear good jewelry, and regularly remember to moisturize my face, and be organized about my money.

Basically, that I would have my isht together.

The year I turned 25 was in the final summer of innocence of America, pre 9-11, when we were invincible. I was living my dream in London, working an insane job for a madwoman (Lynne Franks, the inspiration for Edie on Absolutely Fabulous – I was a glorified Bubbles) with an office in Soho, and I got lunch at Pret a Manger, which made me feel very posh. That birthday I went with several friends to Wagamama’s, where I ordered my usual, a number 43. It was a Bank Holiday monday, and we were out late. Eventually, my friend Mark took me to Heaven, a club under the Charing Cross station that, if I went in now, would immediately give me a headache within 3 minutes. But I was 25, and drunk, and danced on tables with lovely gay men until 4am. I also knew that I had a meeting at 9am, but like America, I was young and invincible, and my body recovered from hangovers faster then.

This year I turned 45 in Spain, my sixth birthday in Andalucia. We were supposed to come and stay for a year, but six birthdays later, we’re still walking down La Bola. We spent the morning while Hannah was at school running errands so that we could enroll in the health system here to get the covid shot. We have private insurance, which means we aren’t on the rolls for when our age group comes up since it’s managed by the government health, so we had to register. Which, because it’s Spain, meant making lots of photocopies, filling out forms, and standing in queues. But we got there in the end, and also went out for breakfast and managed a leisurely cafe con leche in the sun.

But the real joy of the day was later in the afternoon while hubby took kiddo to karate and I was home alone. Technically, I was home alone *working* but the sun was bright, and I’d been cleaning the pool earlier so it was calling. In I went, to immerse myself in the still-very-frigid water, and swim laps. It’s been about 8 months since I’ve been swimming, and it felt delicious to weightlessly float around again.

I made some resolutions for the next year, but I’ve come to accept that I’m never going to be one of those women who just have their isht together. I firmly believe that the reason they can stay so organized all the time is that they have too little going on, and I’m not ashamed to say that. If you have time to press your jeans – or see that someone else presses them – you don’t have enough happening in your life.

So this year I am giving myself the freedom to not worry about having my isht together. I’ll embrace my lack of being put together, and the fact that I still eat peanut butter by putting a spoon directly into the jar, and that I am watching The Hills, and that I am not a coffee connoisseur, and I buy cheap bubblebath. But I’m productive, I get things done, I churn out projects, I move about the world (in an admittedly klutzy fashion), and I give great hugs. And that’s enough for now. Maybe when I’m 65 I’ll look elegant in pressed jeans and a black cashmere jumper with lovely gray hair. But I doubt it. I’ll probably still dye my hair weird colors, and eat peanut butter with a spoon.