Birthday Pressure...

I was feeling contemplative today. I have my birthday almost at the door. My last birthday before the big birthday next year. I was contemplating how different our lives are nowadays. It's subtle yet permeating. If anyone saw me having dinner with my parents, as I do each Sunday night, they would think uh-uh, parents, daughter, similar values and upbringing etc. I think though, of how different my life has been to theirs. In the big general stuff, not so much - we have grown up and lived in the same country, and for the last 14 years we have lived 15 or so minutes drive away from each other, we are anglo causasians, we have always been employed. But I turn 40 next year and I don't feel like I've done a lot in that time. I've studied, worked, been through a marriage, travelled, had various relationships. At the same age my mother had been married for 20 years. She was raising two daughter aged 16 and 13. Her husband was successful in his career, she was deeply involved in the community, helping many people. She had returned to paid employment 4 years earlier and was starting to carve out a career for herself. To me it seems so much! She'd almost finished 'doing her bit' and she was only my age!! How different our paths are. For all that I live in this fast paced modern world, working remotely for clients around the globe, I still feel like a child. My mother, who has just retired as a CEO with a staff of 70, comes and cleans my house on Fridays because I'm so busy!! But I just can't seem to figure out what I'm busy doing... I feel like maybe I'm going to get to 40 and all I will have done is shopped and gone on some woeful dates!

So have we not grown up? I suspect in some respects that is the case. And while in some ways it's quite a pleasant thing to maintain a child's place in the world, I don't know that many of us have asked for it. At almost 40 I think I would be happy enough to have a couple of kids about to start high school. I think it would give me something of the correct perspective I sense that I am missing. At this stage I feel like I'm stuck in some weird dichotomy, whereby I have nothing and everything to worry about. Nothing in that, day-to-day, it's really nothing much more than do I and the dogs have something for dinner. The answer is usually yes (leftovers courtesy of Mum more often than not...) so problem solved. I worry about any family member or friend who is going through a rough time, but I'm not responsible for anyone. It's just me and the dogs. A pretty simple existence.

But then on the other hand I am a single woman trying to earn a living in a pretty tough world. Trying to pay a mortgage and what seems like ever-mounting bills all by myself. Even just the administration of my life seems too much for one person, keeping track of who my insurance is with, when the car is due for a service, running my business. On top of that the societal (or self-imposed, I'm really not sure which it is) pressure of being single. I know we are all sort of okay with it but you only have to look at what a big business single people have become to sense it's not okay. It's like we're not okay with the state of our planet and so 'green' products have become big earners. Likewise we're not comfortable with single people of a certain age and so dating sights, books and who-knows-what-else have become huge money spinners. Then add to this the glaring fact that the version of my life that has been hovering before me, ever since I was a little girl playing with fat-ankled Barbi, is just not going to come to fruition. There simply isn't enough time left. If I really put the skates on I might be able to cobble together some vague semblance of that dream but goodness, what a lot of stress! Where would I start?? And then there's the even more distant future. Once my parents have gone, who will be there for me? Who will visit me when I'm older? Where will I go? What will I do? Before I know it I'm looking down the barrel of Bridget Jones paranoia, with images of being discovered half eaten by Alsatians (dogs I presume, not citizens of Alsace).

From as early as I can remember in my childhood my parents had a sizable network of friends, all married, all with children. They got together for card games, dinner parties and other events, at least once a week, sometimes in large groups, sometimes more intimate gatherings. All we children would be stowed away to sleep wherever there was room. It seemed to always be summer. They were fun and rich days.

At an older age than my parents were then, out of all my girlfriends 3 are married. One has children and one is about to have her first. The rest of us are single. And these are not friends that I've made because I'm single. Some of them I've known since I was a child, others I went to uni with, yet others I've collected over my 20 years of adulthood.

It really does strike me as amazing how different my mother's and my lives are. Especially when she and I are so similar in lots of ways. It would be interesting to be able to experiment. I'd like to be able to swap and give my mother my life as it is now. I suspect that she would do so much more with it than I am. I suspect that she is actually a much more 'modern' woman than me.