Wednesday 1 August 2018

Mamma Mia! Here I go again....

"Oh gosh no, I'm not dreading turning 30 at all. I'm looking forward to it, if anything. I got myself in such a state about turning 20, I am not doing that with turning 30. No I'm not. No way. My twenties were amazing, as will my thirties be.'

Oh for the heady days of being aged twenty-nine years and one week old.

Now, of course, I'm twenty-nine years and two months old, and so am having an absolute meltdown about my next birthday.

No I'm exaggerating.

But as time goes on that little voice is starting to creep into my ear.

It's the same voice that tends to make an appearance around New Year's Eve. Did you do enough this year? Have you got good enough plans for next year? And are they actually achievable? 

Now what the sensible voice from age twenty-nine and one week said was this:

1) My twenties have been incredible. They have been everything I wanted and more. There were plenty of times I thought (and was told) that there was no way I could do all the jobs abroad that I wanted to do and end up in a good job at home at the end of it. The fact that I managed to do it- and that I ticked off every country and every job including one in Disney World- is nothing short of absolutely amazing. I am proud and grateful, and changed. I have learnt so, so much in my twenties and can't wait to see what fun and life lessons lie in wait for my thirties.

2) I am incredibly lucky to have made it to twenty-nine years and two months old. There are so many who aren't reaching this milestone with me, or who perhaps had but won't see their next decade, whatever that may have been. If nothing else, my twenties have taught me the difficult lesson of life's fragility, and I should be (and trust me, am) grateful for every single day that I wake up healthy and happy.

However. In the seven weeks that have passed since that sensible voice, several things have happened.

1) I've realised I'm turning thirty. 

I'm not kidding. Or pretending. Or playing grown ups.

I really am going to be thirty. That proper grown up age.

The age that my mum was when she moved her husband and three children into the comfy house that I grew up in. The decade that my mum was in when I finished my A levels and went to university. 

I recently started a new job, and as it's part time and involves working with lots of younger colleagues, I had naturally assumed that everyone would think I was also their age.

How funny. I thought. Nobody here would ever know I'd had a baby. They probably all think I'm seventeen or eighteen like the others. 

The very first person I met (who, I should mention, was seven years old) genuinely asked me Rebecca are you well into your thirties or just a bit? 

Since then I've been asked many, many similar questions, with one child outright asking me so were you born in 1989? (For those of you less confident in maths, yes I was, and yes, it's hilarious and scary in equal measures that a nine year old knew that by looking at my face.)

After one such comment, I came home and looked in the mirror and was shocked to find a twenty-nine year old looking back. How and when that happened I do not know.

2) I've realised that the real grown ups that I know are the same age as me. 

I always assume that the other mums at baby groups who have husbands and houses and baby bags and nice eyebrows and look like they've got their lives together aren't pretending at being grown ups like me, they are actual grown ups.

Then I'll get talking to them and they'll casually mention that they turned thirty earlier this year, or are looking forward to it next year. Or they'll add me on Instagram and be michellejohnson92 and I'll realise they're younger than me.

But that's because I really am their age. And I have a husband and a home and a baby bag (I'm foregoing the nice eyebrows at the moment but perhaps they will miraculously sort themselves out before the big day) and probably look, from the outside, a bit grown up too.

3)  I watched Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.

This really was the turning point, to be honest.

If you haven't seen it yet I must warn you that it is very much about the passing of time so I'd take your tissues and allow ten minutes at the end for quiet sobbing.

According to the film release dates, I'm almost exactly the same age as Sophie- the main character.

She was twenty when the first film came out, and so would be thirty now (in the film they implied she's only twenty five but, whatever, Amanda Seyfried who plays her has aged ten years which is sort of my point) and when she first appeared on the screen I felt a huge rush of realisation about just how much you change in your twenties. 

Not only did she look ten years older (and a lot better, which I think is the general rule no matter what mainstream media will have you believe), it struck me that the excitable, squealy ball of energy from the first film had been replaced with a strong, considered and able woman in the second, and I couldn't help feeling (and hoping) that watching myself back in 2008 and then now would have the same effect.

And that's when I started to feel overwhelmed by the whole thing.

Then the film only went on and on and on about time passing and things changing (just to be clear I absolutely loved the film, it just made me an emotional wreck) and by the end of it I had reverted more or less to the sentimental mess I was about turning 20.

Since then I've thought a lot about how I've changed in my twenties, and about what they've held for me, and I had a moment today sitting with two friends that I met when I was sixteen, and the five children that we have between us, just unable to believe that we have known each other that long. That we have lived so much of our lives together.

Where does the time go?

The other day I brought this up with my ninety-three year old Grandad.

If I feel like time is flashing by and I can't believe my age, how on earth must he feel?

You just can't explain it duck. I don't have the answers I'm afraid. I don't know where that time's gone. I can't believe it, really. 

Me neither.

And for as long as I can remember I've been told to enjoy every moment. To make the most of it, because it won't always be like this. It won't be this fun in secondary school. At college. At university. In the real world. Once you have kids. Once your babies are older. 

And I'm not complaining about that advice. I actually think that advice has made me good at it- good at enjoying every second and not taking anything for granted.

But on the other hand, at milestones like this- that make me overthink the passing of time and want to slow it down- that advice can be overwhelming, because there is nothing I can do. Time passes. And no amount of gratitude or wisdom can change that. If it could be done, I have every faith that my Grandad would have discovered how at some point in the past ninety-three and a half years.

When I was obsessed with turning twenty, I listened to the song Stop This Train by John Mayer on repeat for the entire year- a song about exactly this moment.

And I would replay the same lines in my mind over and over:

Had a talk with my old man
Said help me understand
He said turn sixty-eight
You renegotiate 

Don't stop this train. 
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
Don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand
Honestly. We'll never stop this train. 

But of course, it's never about the age anyway. It's not about the number. 18, 40, 92, New Year's Eve. It's not about how many years have passed since the day you were born, it's about the reminder that time is passing. That things won't always be like they are right now, and that some things that have happened will never happen again.

That it's moving all the time and there's nothing we can do about it.

So as far as I can see the answer seems to be to embrace it.

Continue to enjoy every moment- to find joy in the little things, to make the most of every day. And by make the most of every day I don't mean jump out of planes or go scuba diving (not every day, anyway). I mean- read and write. Savour that first sip of coffee. Enjoy the way Dale wakes up with more enthusiasm than your average Labrador. Take note of the way Squirt looks carefully at which piece of food she's going to pick up in her little pincers and chooses it with relish. Laugh at my cousins or grandparents or the kids I work with until my sides hurt.

Appreciate everything my twenties brought me, and appreciate the person that it's made me.

And look forward to all of the adventures and life lessons to come.

Without, for a minute, wanting to change the place I'm in.

(Except perhaps in the cinema watching Mamma Mia 2. I don't think I can put myself through that again.)