Middle age is in the mind

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 15

Middle age is in the mind

A young cartoonist, TRACE HODGSON, looks at middle age. He sees it differently from the writer of the article, JOAN CURRY.

According to my dictionary, middle age is that age betweeen youth and old age. According to Anton Vogt in a recent “Listener,” it is “something that shifts from 30 to 60 as one grows older.” And according to the newspapers, middle age begins at about 25, all men under that age being referred to as youths. •' We all know people

who are middle aged at 20 and others who are young at 80; perhaps it is less a matter of chronology and more a state of mind. .For me, middle age means a host of agreeable freedoms and pleasures as, for instance, getting my mornings back. The other day on my way to work, I passed a woman in a dressing gown pushing a great sulky motor car down a drive. Her son was bellowing instructions from the driver’s seat. If I know anything about teen-age boys, it would be safe to assume that his mother had already woken him up, cooked his breakfast, woken him up again, found his socks, cut his lunch, shouted at him to get out of bed this instant, poured his tea, and defrosted his windscreen. I passed by on the other side and . decided that there was a lot to be said for the dawning of middle age. Middle age is being able to go back to bed with a c'Up of tea and the papen instead of shunting motor cars on cold mornings. It is being able to have a shower instead of shouting at impossible teenagers six times before breakfast. It is haying grown-up children . who leave home but who come back once in a while. It is finding out that you like your children. It is having no grand-children yet, thank heavens. Middle age is having a house which stays more or less as you like it, all the time. It is having a smaller refrigerator with hardly any food in it apart from the left-overs turning gruesome colours because nobody eats them. Middle age is shopping only once a fortnight and having to keep ■ the bread in the freezer. Middle age is roughly

five years on from your fortieth birthday, the day you choked back gritty oaths while other, younger people made jolly, bracing remarks about life begin-

ning at forty. Middle age is realising that life did indeed begin at forty though you may not have noticed it at the time. Middle age is comfortable. It is knowing that family rows are not necessarily the prelude to divorce or mayhem. It is more confident, less touchy; it is also less confident and more touchy, depending on the circumstances. Middle age has seen things change that seemed unchangeable and has discovered that things don’t change much in the long run. Middle age is realising that if you haven’t done it by now you probably never will. Middle age is trying not to believe this. Middle age is earning more income if you’re lucky and using less power, less food, less petrol. It is being able to open most brown envelopes without visible shaking of rhe - hands. It is, however, accepting collect calls frbnpydffspring in far-flung telephone boxes and therefore opening the . post office envelope with shaking hands. It is being able to afford a turkey for Christmas at last and needing only a chicken. It is not. minding only having chicken because middle age is acquiring a sociql conscience and minding a lot about Biafra and Bangladesh and Kampuchea. Middle age is being able to go out without having to find a baby-sitter. It is going out on Christmas Eve without having to sell your soul for a babysitter. It is choosing to go to the movies instead of to a party on Christmas Eve and finding that all the other people in the theatre are middle aged too.

Demonstrably, only the middle aged are free to go out on Christmas Eve if they want to instead of prodding moodily at half frozen.poultry and staying

up till dawn wrapping presents. Middle age is not having to label presents because the one you didn’t wrap is for you. Being middle aged is having a tiresome tendento dish out good advice without being asked. It is being listened to with undeserved respect, even by your children who never listened to you when they

had their own clear, unshakeable opinions. Middle age is that uncertain stage of adulthood that lies between the unshakeable opinions of youth and the different but still unshakeable, opinions of age. Being middle aged is being better at managing things (housework, relationships, crises) or coming to terms with them. The middle aged have learned how to do things properly or to ignore them without feeling guilty. It is being able to choose a new toothbrush of any colour except green, and not having to remember whose toothbrush is which colour. Middle age is fiding out that while your own memory is still as good as ever, your spouse is getting rather forgetful. Middle ageis cutting the

number of allowable calories in half and still putting on weight. It is comforting yourself with the thought that a little padding helps to fill out the wrinkles. Middle age is not really believing this. A woman in middle age is a woman of uncertain age. Until she is forty she doesn’t mind telling. After she is seventy she will tell anyone who will listen. In between she can be quite coy. She can look her age or she can look anything up to ten years younger or older, depending on how she feels. .Being middle aged is finding out that it doesn’t matter much either way. A man in middle age tells people that the girl in the bank, or the supermarket, or the typing pool, fancies him.