I am the sensible one.
Have I said this before? When I was a teenager, my friends’ parents would decide whether their daughters could attend an event based on whether or not I was accompanying them. If Linda was going, it would be alright, because she was always SENSIBLE.
Surprisingly enough this was not who I wanted to be. It has to be said that it had certain advantages. School life is so much easier if the teachers like and trust you. Good relations with your friends’ parents is not to be sneered at. I never had any problem getting a job reference. But being sensible does not win friends and influence your peers when you are fifteen.
The label, and the persona, seem to have stuck. I have only been drunk once in my life. On that occasion I was safely at home with my husband and no other observers (it’s taken me 40 years to be able to drink gin again). I remain reliable, law-abiding, helpful, unflappable in a genuine emergency. Risk aversion is built into my genes and reinforced by my occupation.
Even so I am not a truly sensible person. I apply logic to every situation I encounter in my personal life, and then run with my heart and my intuition. Getting drunk holds no appeal for me, so I don’t do it. After a couple of hours at a party I have had enough, so I go home. This is not being sensible. It is just doing what makes me feel good. But I spend an inordinate amount of money on a whim; take in someone I feel sorry for when my plate is already overflowing; fall in love with an unsuitable man; leave a good job and go live in another country just for a change of scene – all these things and more I have done without thought, care or regret.
So it was with some dismay I received a message from my oldest daughter (the reformed spend-thrift turned money manager) informing me that the number crunching she had done for me revealed I could not embark on my latest project, because I “needed to preserve sufficient equity in my apartment to afford to purchase a unit in a good quality retirement village”. Now, I know she was trying to be helpful, but (excuse me Laura if you are reading this) my immediate reaction was, “You little shit”.
Because, excuse me, despite currently going on a binge of knitting for my first grandchild, I am not ready to be written off just yet. In fact I have no intention of being written off at all.
One of the joys of getting older and shedding responsibilities is that going with the flow is increasingly easy. For the first time ever in my life, I can do pretty much whatever I like. Of course there are financial constraints. I still have to work for a living. My body will not always do what I want it to do. But the constraints are minimal compared to those of childhood, young adulthood or the child caring years. And as I get older I care less and less what other people think. I suit myself more often. Guilt is shed off. Pleasure is shaped by experiences rather than things, and the things one needs and desires become simpler. Worldly ambition dims.
What remains? Well in my case, I must confess a certain level of vanity. I might be getting old, but I still want to be a good looking old lady. The ambition to learn and grow and make things happen, to travel, to have new projects to explore – all of that is stronger than ever now that there are fewer obstacles in the way. The pace might be slower, but the urgency is greater.
Most importantly, the blood still stirs in my veins, the pleasure circuits are on high alert, and an idea or emotion can flood my brain like a king tide.
So to be told I should be planning for life in a retirement village was a bit of a shock. Apparently I am now at an age where my children are more sensible than I am.
No, I do not want to save my money for a luxury retirement villa.
I want a red dress.
… When I find it, I’ll pull that garment from its hanger like I’m choosing a body to carry me into this world, through the birth-cries and the love-cries too, and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,it’ll be the goddamned dress they bury me in.
(With thanks to Kim Addonizio. Check out her poem “What do Women Want?’ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42520/what-do-women-want )
I am thinking my grandmother must have been looking for a red dress. Maybe she found it here in New Zealand, but I think not. The point about a red dress is that if you know you are looking for it, it does not matter too much whether you find it.