While the ladies bandy posh cocktails and people watch, the warm shower draws my thoughts inwards. Emma's depressed at turning 40. I think of Usha. We'll both be 40 next year, but unlike Emma, neither of us will be able to cobble together eight of our friends for lunch. Hell, not even four of our closest friends, cohorts, co-conspirators. Deprecating jokes about growing older dominated the table, careful to balance the tightrope between celebration and depression, but never an acknowledgement or appreciation of the fortune that allows us to gather together to share this day.
Do you miss it? Not being able to share moments with those who know your history, what you were before your debut as triumphant supermom/hausfrau, those that shared your secrets. Or do the bacchas make all of that redundant? Life needs to be lived, and there's never enough time, but I'll bet there are those brief moments, days when you look around the faces that only know you as the woman you are today, and wonder..... I want you to have it all. The joy that only your bacchas can bring, the love of a husband, friends who've known you forever, new experiences to remember, endless moments to treasure...
I look back at my life and despite the fragments of grief, anger, hurt and disillusion that have littered it, there is only one thing I would change. But even as I wish away the only regret I've ever had, I can't wish away those that stood by me and gave me their strength when I had none. Forty is just a number, and as I shriek at Priya for the umpteenth time about the same bloody things yet again, I'm deeply grateful for my 39, surrounded by those that not just yell at me, but stop to smack me in the head now and again.....
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