Here we are, in the full drama of Nature’s act III, where the colours make lots of noise. Big bold shouty crimsons, russets, oranges, yellows and browns all compete to be heard in their flourish of a fanfare, the final shout before they leave the show, exiting stage left pursued by a naughty wind, hamming it up all the way. Autumn resolutely refuses to be upstaged by Spring when it comes to display. She has fat apples and dark swollen blackberries and rosehips and elderflowers to offer as her treasures during this transforming time, when day and night agree to be the same length again, and when:

We put our clocks back and dread the weight of Winter for the first time this year, and then we remember, oh hang on, it ain’t so bad, this means there’ll be candles at dinner time, and we love that …

We cry at Harvest Festivals in junior schools where tiny tots learn about gathering in all the fruit and vegetables grown throughout the Summer by cramming misbought tins of strange beans into shoeboxes that will be given to the elderly or the needy who will most probably recycle them exactly the same way next year. The tables and altars will heave with ornamental sheaves of bread and a cornucopia of berries and fruit, and we will feel fortunate and fed.

Oh, and the unmistakeable smell synonymous with Autumn. What is it really? A mixture of overripe fruit, rotting leaves, fireworks, mud, frost, smoke and rain. Everything seems earthy, probably because wherever there are trees there is now mulch underfoot, nourishing the ground beneath, where beetles and millipedes and millions of other crawlies are gorging on delicious leafy debris. Even fungi are feasting on the sweet rot. It’s so … damn … more-ish …

September is soft, almost sad, and beckons us indoors to start our withdrawal. As the shorter days creep in, so too do we retreat gently, into a familiar seasonal kind of melancholy. The days pull back, we pull in, and we take our comforts in the welcoming warm places inside us. We feel homesick and nostalgic and ready to settle, and let our bums get a bit broad in a comfy armchair. It’s not a surrender, we’re not going to seed, it’s just a rest and a pleasure.

Presently, I am firmly IN this season of my life. I am sixty. When I was a child, I genuinely thought it might be better if everyone aged sixty or over was just … gently, discreetly, killed. Because what is the point of them? They are nearly dead anyway and why prolong the inevitable decrepitude? Well, I didn’t think in terms of decrepitude exactly, but you know what I mean … I thought sixty was ancient, elderly, infirm.

And here I am, alive and really well. Aliver and weller, ironically, than I was in my forties, when I was often considering my age, my place in my lifespan and my uncertain future. I gave inordinate power to anxious thinking back then. I don’t any more. Well, I do less. I think I tired of myself as a constant seeker, I wanted to slide into the role of a finder, instead; it’s more assured, it fits me loads better. In order to do that, I have had to allow myself quietude to reflect and properly re-group, to ‘move my chair into sun’. Only in my fifties have I been calm enough to do that. It’s second nature, which in turn means it’s natural, which in turn means it’s normal.

Perhaps that’s the true purpose of this ‘middle age’? Actually, hang on, when IS middle age?! And how long does it last for? Sixty can’t be middle-aged, I’m surely deluded, otherwise we’d all be living ’til we are a hundred and twenty or something. So, is middle age the actual middle of your life? And if we’re all living much longer, is that say, fifty? Or is it forty? Is it an age or a state of mind? If it’s the latter, I need to do some serious re-thinking because I haven’t felt like I’ve exited middle age yet. And, if I have, what have I entered? OLD age?! Blimey. Heck. And bollox.

You know that moment when you stand back and notice who else is your age? It’s always a tad surprising. I went to a school reunion quite a few years ago, and for a good five minutes I was convinced that my old chums had sent their mums along instead. Here were some women in A-line skirts, tan tights and court shoes. They looked a bit like the people I once knew, but they had morphed into their darlin’ mothers. Not all of them, of course, just a few, but it was shocking. MORE shocking though, was when I caught sight of myself in the mirror, and realized that I was one of them! Maybe not so much with the clobber, but certainly with my mother’s face. Do I really mind? No, my mum had a lovely face. It’s just that, as I remember it, it was mostly seventy-seven years old.

I have been delighted to find that, give or take a few silly years, I am the same age as Ellen DeGeneres, Kim Cattrall, Oprah Winfrey and, oh my goodnessing heck … MADONNA.

That’s THE Madonna, the Mother of Lourdes.

Not any old Madonna, the Mother of Christ.

I mean the actual, real, authentic one, the Material Girl, the undisputed Queen of Pop, the true artist. There are only half a million inconsequential minutes between our dates of birth, so I am taking that to mean that we are virtually twins, and, as such my twin heart breaks vicariously a little bit every time she is age-shamed. She can get older any way she ruddy likes, can’t she? When she was bullied again recently by a bloke in a newspaper, she wrote,

‘How do I know I’m still acting my Age? Because it’s MY age and it’s MY life and all of you Women Hating Bigots need to sit down and try to understand why you feel the need to limit me with your fear of what you aren’t familiar with.’

That’s right, sista. Sadly, we are all too unfamiliar with strong, sexually confident empowered older women displaying their assurance as she does, unashamedly.

Now, talk of Madge brings me on to the prickly puffy phenomenon that is plastic surgery. Not that I know if she has travelled that particular route, I haven’t yet received a memo about it, so I don’t really know for sure if she’s had a tidy, but … I suspect so. It’s ABSOLUTELY NONE OF MY EFFING BUSINESS of course when it concerns her, but it definitely IS my business when it concerns me. The awful truth is that when you’re sixty, and especially if you’re in the business of show, it is utterly expected of you to resort to knives or injections in an effort to stem the inevitable tide of age flooding your face with crinkly bits. Thus far I have resisted but I would fight to the bloody death for Madge, or anyone else, to do what we like to our own mug, if we choose to.

EXCEPT. Hmmmm …

DO we choose to? Or are we women all bullied so atrociously much about our appearance that, to fend off the criticism, WE are prepared to voluntarily mutilate ourselves so that we can appear a tiny bit younger? This fleeting and desperate measure means we can stave off feeling ugly or somehow lesser than we are ‘supposed’ to be, for a few paltry months more. As sure as chickens are chickens, and eggs are crow’s feet, age is coming for us all and it’s armed with wrinkles and sag and droop and spread. None of it is pleasant, and when it starts to happen, it’s with alarming speed … BUT … that’s the natural order. That’s what is supposed to happen. Give me that ordinary decay in all its infernal inevitability any day over the monstrous barbarism which presents itself as the eminent plastic surgeons’ apparent ‘skill’. Why have so many breathtakingly beautiful people ended up so woefully injured? And, somehow, we have normalized this. We say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ to folk who we rightly should be screaming in horror for, offering them an ambulance and a good lawyer for the lamentable disfiguring that has been wrought upon them in the name of beauty. For shame. For all our collective shame.

I fear that we have come to accept these vandalized faces as indicators of wealth and status, of someone who is ‘taking the trouble’ to attend to their appearance; of someone who welcomes the attack, despite the result.

If that is so, then I am simply too lazy to attempt to remain young-looking. Or too afraid of the obvious mistakes that clearly happen very often. Look at the poor wretches with the gone-wrong faces! Why are the surgeons not in rat-infested prisons for their heinous crimes?! Instead of driving boasty Porsches?

Of course, I refer to the obvious horrors. I presume that the clever, subtle work is undetectable and thus I wouldn’t know it. Good. THAT is skill. The rest is butchery and I can’t accept that it’s OK, and I won’t pretend, otherwise by the time my daughters are thirty, they will be being given facial surgery vouchers as birthday gifts.

NO.

NO.

NO.

And there’s an end on it.

(Cut to picture of me on a red carpet with a face like a cheap overstuffed button-backed headboard and wearing my fanny as a beard).

Never mind believing that being sixty is practically the end as I did when I was younger, would the teenage Dawn ever have imagined that I would be starting a whole new chapter of my life in my mid-fifties? No. Neither would the twenty-, thirty- or even forty-year-old Dawn. I have always been quite a dogged person. If I make a promise, my sense of resolution firmly kicks in and I remain steadfast. Marriage is a promise, a huge promise, and I didn’t make it lightly. I was an ex-Brownie after all, used to blind dedication. I was determined to make it work, come hell or high water. Then some hell DID come, followed by some high water, and I still lingered. No-one wants to fail at an important relationship, but I decided that instead of thinking of it as ‘failing’ the marriage, I would instead be surviving, and thus bettering my life. The only way to do that was with honesty, kindness and grace, with the odd touch of vitriolic fury at appropriate moments, in the company of the right people. In other words, the way for me to handle this and many other tricky situations is and always has been to face it head on, the Roma French way:

‘The only way out is through.’

While I was doing that, going through the process of hurt and anger and forgiveness, and finally acceptance, SO MUCH was going on for me that I was utterly unaware of. I was gradually, subconsciously, coming to realize such a lot.

I didn’t want to waste another single moment of my life sitting passively in a wrong situation, misguidedly waiting for it to right itself.

I didn’t want to compromise so much that I lost sight of myself a bit.

I didn’t want to ever ignore constant inner instincts, I want to be alert to them.

I want to reassess who and what I deserve, and who and what deserves me.

I want to somehow forgive the mistakes of the past, both mine and other sundry twots, so that the way ahead is lovely and clear:

I want to be like Elsa, and ‘let it go’ (on the understanding that I DON’T want to be like Elsa and have a waist smaller than my neck, otherwise how do you eat doughnuts?).

I want to live comfortably IN my authentic self, no apologies, no faking, live where I am, in what I am.

I want to notice what I have denied myself and work out why, with little/no (all right, some) bitterness.

I want my milkshake to bring all the boys to the yard. Damn right …

I want to hurry up and be better at everything.

I want to work out the right vitamins to take.

I want to finally capitulate and admit that it’s all about the bass … no treble.

I want to ALWAYS live by the sea, please.

So, you see, whilst I was dealing with the difficult logistical surface stuff of a divorce, my heart was faithfully sorting out all of the above and gradually, the confusing haze of trauma lifted, and I had a brighter, happier place in my sights as my focus.

‘In a dark time, the eye begins to see …’

T. Roethke

During my reacquaintance with my newly single self, I had the rare opportunity to plug in properly to my friends,

Ah. My friends.

Thank you, God, or whoever, for all the right stuff they said and did.

The one who MOVED IN WITH ME to be there to listen to every repeated bleating lament.

The one who reminded me that kindness is like a torch; if you shine it into shadowy corners, it chases away the dark.

The one who cooked hot Thai broth for me.

The one who packed me off to the best gynaecologist in town, no ifs or buts. Just in time, as it happens.

The one who lay next to me and whispered, ‘I’m here, I’ve got you, I’ll breathe with you ’til it’s easy.’

The one who invited me to all of their family dinners.

The one who made beetroot cake.

The one who walked on the beach with me, in all weathers.

The one who crawled into my bed to be there when I woke up.

The one who drove 200 miles to say Happy Birthday.

The one who reminded me to say ‘YES’ more often.

The one who reorganized my food cupboards with military precision.

The one who made me a bath with excess bubbles.

The one who told me to butch up.

The one who said we would love each other ’til our last breaths.

The one who dragged me out to watch drag.

The one who told me to treat my heart as if it had been stabbed and let it have time to heal.

The one who bought tickets for Dolly Parton.

The one who read to me.

The one who was almost violent in her ferociously protective advocacy.

The ones who quietly, subtly, became my tribe, and surrounded me with their patient understanding.

All of these selfless souls took the time to support me in so many different, sometimes alarming (!) ways and I was reminded daily that I wasn’t alone, that I am part of a firmament of family and friends, all of us connected inextricably to each other under a big wide sky. They weren’t about to let me fall. Their love shored me up, and touched me very deeply. These people, my beloved friends, are my foundation. These are the relationships that will endure. These are the strong emotional bequests I will certainly try to pass on, on my climb towards the mountain.

Oh yes, that mountain. Here at sixty years old I’m aware that my climb is well underway. In fact, if I stop occasionally to look, I can see that I’ve travelled much further up it and, believe me, the view is starting to be pretty spectacular, even though the ascent is puffing me out!

From this place on the mountain in my life, a couple of things strike me as pretty much given.

By now, I know it is all right to draw some conclusions and to have an opinion, yes, but the most useful lesson I have learnt is that it’s also all right to doubt it and also to change it.

‘Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd’

Voltaire

I also know that most of the stuff in my life thus far that has really pained me, has been because I’ve taken it personally when, on reflection, I really didn’t need to. Note to sixty-year-old self.

I know that at this stage, I can pretty much say, ‘This is who I am.’ A lot of my personal ingredients have already been partially cooked, but I’m not ready quite yet, I’ve still got a slightly soggy bottom.

Nevertheless, ‘This is who I am right now’. Yes.

I know that life is composed of various delights and riches with the odd irksome tribulation thrown in. One of those tribulations needs to be highlighted. It is the curse that is Kummerspeck. Heard of it?

Kummerspeck – the German for the excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, it translates as ‘grief bacon’.

Now let’s get one thing quite clear. I’ve been a big girl and woman my whole life. Sometimes bigger, sometimes less big. Typically, the differing bigness didn’t necessarily correlate to my emotional state. I’ve been bigger when at my happiest and similarly the converse is also true. I simply won’t have it that sadness and fat go neatly together, it’s much more complicated than that …

BUT …

After my mum died in my mid-fifties, I definitely found my comforts in certain kinds of eating I hadn’t hitherto been familiar with, like … the world of melted cheese (on everything including crisps and chicken) and the world of Magnum ice creams (sometimes with melted cheese). Oh lawd. Thanks, cheese and ice cream, for the genuine numbing of grief, but, frankly, that will be all. We’re done here. Move along, grief bacon. I’m going to have the grief without the side order of emotional gristle, ta.

I know, too, that here in my coming sixties when I still have my health relatively intact, is my finest opportunity to kick up some Autumn leaves in my life, have a laugh, learn some new things from the young people around me, enjoy the loud beautiful colours, and be where I belong to be.

Right here.

Right now.

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