41.
41
It’s neither here nor there as a birthday but it sure did come around quickly. “Again?’ said one kind client today, “it was only just your 40th!”
It has flown by. Maybe it’s because I missed the original 40th celebrations due to Covid lockdowns, I eventually arrange a dinner for friends in the October. (Not quite the weekend away in Tasmania eating and drinking ourselves stupid.) Maybe though it is just as everyone says – the years get faster and faster the older you get.
I’m drinking champagne in a proper champagne glass in a stylish cotton dressing gown, pyjama pant matching combo in front of my delightful gas fire. I have country tunes playing on an integrated Sonos system – it’s playing throughout my house, whichever room I’m in – same tune!
It’s probably the half bottle but seriously – get me. Matching pyjamas! Champagne! I’ve proper adulted. I’m happy to be at home on my own on my 41st birthday. I did the same for my 39th and 40th but this time it really is fine. Because I bought these pyjamas to do exactly this. Drink good champagne in them in the house I own.
I’ve owned houses and pyjamas before but only in part. This time – all me, on my own, my money, my house, my pyjamas. The house only has one bedroom, it’s perfect for me. No one else. Me. I have a whopping great mortgage and it’s all mine and it feels great. My money, my debt, my house, my pyjamas and my champagne.
I got a promotion; a job I think I could have done 8 years ago but I’ve got it now.
I haven’t dated.
I have decided not to have a baby.
And I bought a house and a matching cotton pyjama pant dressing gown combo.
I’m 41 and I’m having a gathering tomorrow – not a ‘party’ – that’s just too much pressure. I’d have to buy ice if it was truly a party. Nothing screams party like bags of ice.
From my brother for my 41st birthday:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Wild Geese. Mary Oliver
