Recently I’ve been going through old photographs. My parents are clearing out their loft and I’ve been forced, finally, to confront the boxes of A-level sketchbooks and towers of 90s magazines, and let it all go. The photographs, though, are interesting. It’s a cliché, I know, to look back at images of youth and tut at how lovely you were, and how blind to that loveliness you were at the time. But it still shocks me to look at a photo from my teens, covered in black eyeliner at a family seder night, or awkwardly leaning against the stairs in a 50s dress and 80s shoes, and feel that maternal tug towards my old self, and the memory of just how foolish and monstrous I believed myself to be.
This autumn I will turn 44, an age (new research suggests) of “dramatic change”. The study tracked thousands of molecules in people aged 25 to 75, and detected two major waves of age-related changes, first at 44 and then again at 60. When I read this, I got up from my seat and stood for a little while in front of the mirror. I looked at my jawline and thought about ageing.
Youth sometimes feels like a party I went to but was too anxious to actually enjoy. There’s proof I was there, both in photographs and the long, yellow fact of time, but my only memory of it exists as a kind of glanced reflection, or the fleeting smell of perfume. Inspecting the creases beside my eyes I had the weary thought that I should be revelling in this relative youth today, as next year I would no doubt look back at this person with some sad wonder.
But just as it’s hard to appreciate youth when living it, it’s even trickier, isn’t it, to embrace age? You can try, and the trying is worthwhile, but the stories we’ve been told about ageing – they’re not good! And I’m not just talking about appearance, about the frantic race to burnish, inject and stretch one’s face into an illusion of youth, but this is an illustration of the problem.
Why would anyone want to look 50 when we don’t know what 50 is for? Why would anyone allow themselves to look 70 when to be 70 is to be at best invisible, at worst repellent? We have very little idea of what the alternative to youth could look like for a woman. Youth is not just linked to femininity; the two, we learn quickly, are mashed together, squeezed until you can’t really tell where one ends and the other begins.
There is little imagination lent to stories about a woman getting older. After the first stories we are told about the shape of a life, the falling in love, the leaving home, the marriage, the children, what next, beyond maybe shame, loss, grief and a little light humiliation? Once you start questioning this absence of stories, it makes you wonder why – why are we women told to expect so little from the second part of our lives? Could it be (and I do try not to overuse this word for fear of it losing its meaning, but), could it be: the patriarchy?
If more women were vocal and in power, would the transition from young to old be granted more texture and excitement? If we were told stories that taught us how a life beyond middle age included new joys – a new kind of sexuality, and wisdom and beauty, would it be seen as something even to look forward to?
As I get older, and closer, too, to 44, that moment of dramatic change (I am half expecting a bell to ring, a curtain to fall), I find myself scrabbling around for such stories. But what’s also happening is that younger women are asking me for advice, and I find I am able to tell them. And not only do the stories hopefully lubricate these women’s passage towards middle age, but in telling them, I’m seeing things differently.
For instance, a pregnant friend is wavering over a planned C section, and asked me about the reality of labour pain. How bad is it, she wanted to know. And I thought, and I said, yes, it’s real pain, mad weird profound pain, but – it’s also… fascinating? Partly in that you see what your body can do and partly that you see what it can endure, and it changes you. On my way home I thought, perhaps this is the way with the painful experiences associated with old age, too; perhaps they also contain similar hidden miracles that give you power and insight.
Last week, it was reported that the world’s oldest living person, Maria Branyas Morera, had died at the age of 117 years and 168 days. She appears to have lived a great life, right up until the end. One of the things she attributed her longevity to was, “staying away from toxic people”, which is, of course, fabulous advice, but, “I think longevity is also about being lucky,” she added.
I’m not wildly interested in living to 117, but if I come close, I hope I learn how to avoid romanticising youth, how to enjoy the luck of health and how to properly embrace all the freedom and adventures that old age might bring.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on X @EvaWiseman
