On Sunday I turn 40.
I know, it’s shocking – I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to be this old and still get spots. But no one appears to have told my face yet.
Usually I’m a pretty laid back person about my age – it’s just never bothered me how old I am. I don’t see the point – I mean, there’s nothing I can do about it. And I’ve always had the philosophy that you can only ever be as old as you feel.
But 40. It’s weird – it’s a big number, and it seems to be a significant one to my brain. I think it’s the 4 at the front – it just feels ‘bigger’. More grown up.
I do sometimes laugh to myself, wondering how on earth anyone can ever mistake me for one of the grown ups.
But then I realise that to the rest of the world, I’ve probably been a paid-up member of the Adult Club (no, not that one) for quite some time now. For goodness sake, my son is sneaking up fast on being 16, and has this week proudly reached the giddy heights of 6′, and is FINALLY taller than his mother.
And this week I discovered an old diary I was writing when I met the husband. Jeepers I was a shallow, giddy creature (nothing much changed there then). I didn’t think I was feeling particularly old; but reading it, reading about all those things, those places, those people – it all seemed to so very far away. I don’t even remember half of the things I talk about or the people I write of with such gushing affection.
So in the mood of retrospection that I’ve been in this week, when I saw this video from MSC Crociere it totally snuck into my brain and stayed there. It genuinely did.
All those experiences as a teenager? Well, at first I thought I didn’t have very many myself. I was the opposite of a wild child, and I married the man who’s still my husband 5 days after my 18th birthday.
And yet.
I realised that those awkward teen memories, those life-building strong emotions aren’t necessarily about the wild moments. They’re in everything.
They’re the quiet late-night whispered chats on a sleepover.
They’re the first loves.
The first pulsing nightclub.
The first time you got drunk on pear cider and sang to the stars through the roof of a car in the middle of a field (or maybe that one was just mine…).
And they did all make me who I am.
But so did the early years with my children when life was a never-ceasing constant draining whirl of bottoms and burps and laundry and an obsession with sleeping.
And yet, so did the early morning peace on a remote welsh hilltop just a few weeks ago.
As the video says “Life is a Constant Evolution”.
And personally? I am loving that my Discovering Days are only just beginning.
For more information about MSC Crociere, please visit http://www.msccruises.co.uk/uk_en/homepage.aspx
