Celebrations
It’s all happening this year – a whole bunch of friends, schoolmates, will celebrate their fiftieth birthdays through the year. The requests for birthday videos (Keep it snappy! Make it funny!) are pouring in and the stress is beginning to show on those of us who would much rather stay out of the limelight.
Think about it. A video recording is for posterity. The birthday boy/girl will always…ALWAYS…have irrefutable proof that:
a) you can’t sing. Or your ability to hold a note is about the same as your capacity to hold the liquor.
b) you’ve got a bloated face from last night’s pity party. Refer (a).
or/and
c) the lack of hair on the pate is not a sign of graceful wisdom. Nor is the grey slicing through the formerly jet black locks. It’s just more proof that we are fifty years old. Fifty!!
We’ve known each other at least forty years…we were chaddi buddies, crying on the first day of school…we were sandpit mates, jungle gym dosts. Bruises, lunchboxes, childish crushes, we shared all these. Now we swap stories of health scares and unhappy marriages. We leave the happy stories, of high-achieving children and lucrative boardroom deals, for our Facebook friends. Within this group, we rip away the bandages and the masks, reveal our deepest insecurities and fears. Is it because we have seen each other through years of childish vulnerabilities that we now see in each other an anchor in stormy seas?
We call each other by long-forgotten nicknames, each more insulting than anything we’d use on the friends of our adulthood. We are reassured by the jibes, the needling, the sly innuendo. This is the precious price we pay for knowing each other longer than wives and husbands or children. We are school siblings and now we are all teetering on the edge of a new adventure – growing older together. We are lucky, we haven’t yet lost one of our numbers. But that day will come too. When mortality hits us hard, we will comfort each other with tales of his escapades, her eccentricities.
But enough morbid foresight. For now, this is a year of many celebrations. We marvel at those of us who kept true to our fifteen year old selves – those of us who made good on all the shining promise of our youth. We silently empathise with those of us who drifted away from the straight and narrow – no one can deny that temptation came to us all. We acknowledge that the stars of our school days -the heroes and villains – are very different people today, while the ones who worked quietly in the background, the set painters and costume makers, are the ones we look to for guidance and leadership these days.
We are: happily married, feminist, single, childless, driven by career and ambition, lazing on a beach somewhere, divorced, regretful of past relationships, over weight, greying, balding, in great shape, not a hair out of place, exuberant, depressed, quietly going out of our minds, picking up the pieces, finding ways to wake up each morning.
We have become our teachers. We are middle aged, with worries about our ageing parents and growing children. We are rooted in our past and rootless, drifting into an uncertain future. But to all of us, we are hope and comfort. We hold on, drowning together and saving each other without any words. If we only see our baby faces, if we are magically caught in each other’s memory as the ten year olds we were, then we are forever young.
As we celebrate the big 50, I wish for us all: that we have each other’s back through the next fifty years. That we celebrate many more reunions and milestones. That we turn to each other in times of need. That we always show to each other our true faces, never ashamed of our faults and foibles. That we never shy away from hard truths, because old friends are the easiest ones to hear these from. That we laugh and quarrel and argue and reconcile. That we chase each other with walkers and wheelchairs into the sunset of our lives, shouting curses and insults all the way. That we skid into our graves, partying hard and holding on to each other’s hands and memories as we go.