Birthday wish: fix the washing machine

It should be second nature for dads to do their share of chores.

It should be second nature for dads to do their share of chores.

Published Jul 10, 2014

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London - Gracie-in-the-middle, nearly 11, is furious. Angry mini-me has her arms folded, her eyebrows raised: it’s like looking in a mirror from a hundred years ago.

She can’t believe that this year, for the first time, I won’t be spending the evening of my birthday at home with the family. Her fury is loud, illogical and relentless.

“Selfish,” she moans dramatically, as I explain again that I have to attend a work event. Even news of a special birthday brekkie with early morning chocolate cake doesn’t placate her. She wants a full-on, mid-week family get-together, party bags and all. I would be more touched by her over-the-top reaction to this news if she hadn’t displayed the same sense of outrage when we ran out of prawn cocktail crisps.

She’s an emotional pre-teen. It’s how they roll. Our other three children aren’t that bothered that I will be working (we’re having a belated birthday tea soon) - and besides, who “celebrates” their 46th anyway?

It’s a nothing age. There’s no happy giddiness to be found in “rounding up”, and acknowledging I’ve moved into the next box to tick for credit card applications.

This birthday milestone is giving me a prickly restlessness I could do without as the busy end-of-term to-do list pits school events against work commitments.

I’d rather 46 passed without much fanfare - a doughnut and a new seal for the washing machine door are the things highest on my wish list at this moment.

Or if my family are feeling particularly generous, maybe I could have just one bath alone without the toddler and her army of mutant plastic Barbies in it ?

I’ve reached the phase of my life where I’d rather stay at home every night eating jam on toast for dinner and watching Antiques Roadshow than going out to celebrate anything.

Why acknowledge the tipping point into the wrong part of your 40s, the part that feels like time is speeding up and running out? Frankly, I don’t like this precarious emotional edge tinting my daily life.

So fast are the days passing, I dare not take a moment even to glance back over my shoulder at more reckless, carefree times when Madonna was the soundtrack to my life.

Besides, most of those memories are lost in the haze of child rearing, buried by foggy sleepless nights keeping nocturnal newborns alive.

I’ve been in my job as the editor of ELLE for a decade this week and next month my eldest child hits 12.

How did this happen? We’re supposed to feel wiser as we age, but I just feel more confused, especially as people keep telling me 50 is the new 30 (I have never been good with numbers).

Am I really half-way through? Is there going to be enough time left to do everything I want to do before the children commit me to an old folks’ home in my tea-stained leopard-print coat (I am not going down without a fight, I tell you).

I come from a generation of women born in the Sixties who sought success both at home and at work; we’ve been programmed to strive.

Maybe when we reach a few of our goals this mid-life restlessness I’m grappling with sets in. We can’t just “be”.

What next we wonder, as the lines around our eyes deepen and we become ever more invisible to the opposite sex?

“What next?” Mr Candy asks incredulously when I subject him to a bit of birthday melancholia.

He is a firm believer that if we make it to the end of the day and everyone who is genetically related to us is still alive, it is a huge achievement.

“Let’s drink to whatever it is,” he suggests. - Daily Mail

LORRAINE CANDY is editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine.

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