The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

The Other Half

Tomorrow is M.'s fifty-first birthday. Fifty-one. That's unbelievable to me, as well as it is to him, and we talked tonight about how strange getting older is, how quickly things tend to move when you're doing so many things you'd rather not be doing.

For the most part, our life together is pretty good, but as is my way, I focus on what isn't right. I am still looking for a suitable job, but have to admit I haven't been at all aggressive about it, because as loathe as I am to admit it (because society tells me I should be loathe to admit it), I prefer being home, doing home-like things. I like to cook, and I love to clean my house and stare at it when it's pristine and lemony. I love to read in the backyard under the poplar tree, and I like to pull dead heads off the flower stems in the garden. I love poetry in the bathtub, and films in the dark while savouring a Snickers bar. I love breathing in the late summer air, which still smells pretty, and I like to do the laundry when I have new detergent to experiment with. I like to make coffee, and making my daughter's bed, and I even sort of enjoyed scrubbing the jets in the bathtub with a toothbrush. It's all on my terms, and it all works to make my life some semblance of what I'd always wanted it to be.

It's not like I didn't have aspirations for myself, or that I still don't. I was a good worker, and I was loyal. I've had two jobs in my life and ended up in a management position in both of them, so I'm given to the idea that I'm something of an authoritarian figure, even if I don't mean to be. I like things done properly, and have a hard time with anything less, but that puts more pressure on me than it does on anyone else. I suppose this is why I struggle with anxiety and panic, because I like control and it always fails me. In my house, it's mostly on my terms. The laundry smells like lilacs, and right now, the kitchen smells like tacos (I had a violent craving for them today, chopping tomatoes and shredding cheese, but the avocados were hard and mealy, and it ruined it all for me), and the living room is deep red. M. doesn't give much trouble by way of yielding to my tastes, but occasionally he gets huffy and sulks, mostly at Christmas when I defy his request for multi-coloured lights and tinsel in favour of a co-ordinated tree, which he thinks is odd. He might be right, but it never matters enough to me to change.

I like to cook, but not for other people, and I like to write, but I like to write my own words. I don't hold up well under criticism, I'll admit to that, so working was hard, particularly in management, because as much as most people think managers are the ones doing the criticizing, there are many self-important, holier-than-thou people standing over them reminding them daily that they aren't effective at what they're doing. Nothing is ever good enough, you're never tough enough, not easy-going enough...and so on. Then, you have to deal with 'peers' who are just as controlling as you are, and you'll disagree a lot, not because of legitimately different views, but rather because it's all about the power struggle, the desperate need for approval, and soon the argument becomes about the act of arguing, rather than the issue.

But this is not about that.

At fifty-one, M. is still a handsome man, at least through my eyes. His hair is still blonde, reminding me of golden thread and visions of Rumplestiltskin for some odd reason, and his skin is a lovely honey brown from the sun. His arms are still forceful looking, and he's as lean as any twenty-something I've ever known. He still loves music, has developed a bizarre appreciation for Russell Brand, and right now he's completely into Coen brother films. When I was a child, my grandparents were in their fifties, and I can tell you that there is a huge difference between a fifty-something from the 1970's, and one from today. I'm not sure how age has managed to slow itself in today's people, but it has. It used to be that anyone over fifty had gray or white hair, and wore glasses and suspenders, or surgical stockings. They used to have grandchildren, many of them in fact, and they ate boiled hamburger and potatoes, with white bread and butter on a separate plate. They drank whiskey or bourbon in rooms that smelled of stale cigarettes, and ate digestive cookies as they slurped their tea from mismatched mugs with a chip on the rim. Even the way they spoke was different, with words from a bygone era and an accent that seemed to have some sort of British influence. My aunt Winnie, in fact, had a distinct Bostonian accent, despite living her life nowhere near it. It was old Toronto, my mother said, and the accent was part of that neighbourhood, one she never left for the most part of her life. It seems as though accents are indicative of your neighbourhood, as well as your age.

But, M. is a completely different kind of fifty than the ones I grew up around. He's playful, he wears jeans or cargo shorts, he makes sexual jokes and reads Vonnegut while I'm trying to drown out his bedside light with my pillow. He scampers, he flirts, he creates and he eats Doritos by the fistful. He wears glasses, sure, but this almost seems natural to him, like he's a guy who is supposed to wear them. He has a 'I wear glasses' personality, the sort of person who has always scrutinized things or locked himself away with a book to read or a model to build. His accent is seductive, a delicious blend of English and French, and though he sometimes uses pretentious language, he has a knack for lightening it up when you least expect it. He prefers PBS to anything else, but has guiltily developed a secret habit of watching Big Brother or Grey's Anatomy with me. Last night, he laughed at me for an hour as I ranted about Sarah Palin's speech, leaving me to it, as I seethed with a mojito in my hand, clearly enjoying the release.

This is not what I knew fifty-somethings to look like. Nothing recognizable about it at all. Perhaps living with someone fourteen years his junior has something to do with it. Maybe it's having an almost-four-year-old running about that keeps him young. I'm not sure. What bothers me, though, is that I have to admit that I never consider his age at all. I unconsciously assume that we're on the same wavelength at all times, and I don't think about him ever being tired, or developing health issues, because in my head, we're the same. Lately, I've been wondering about whether or not we should consider having another child in the future, and then it hit me: he's middle-aged. It's not a pressing issue, and my reasons for not having more are mostly financial, but then it occurred to me that he's a lot older than most fathers with young children are, and that it just might not happen. His reasons for not wanting more are apparently financial as well, but he never says anything about his age being a concern, and I don't press it.

He might get sick one day. It happens, and yes, it could happen to me too, but he's older, and that means that statistically, it will likely be him that develops an illness before I do. Of course, his mother is over ninety and is physically fine, but his dad died in his sixties, and lately I think about that. His friend C. had a heart attack in June, and C. is a surgeon, a health-nut and an exercise freak. He looked to be in excellent physical shape, and then, boom. He has recovered from the attack, but it was obvious that it affected him emotionally, and he's become a strange mix of optimistic and maudlin all at once. His mortality suddenly became a focus, and now he wants to do the things that make him happy, before it's all over. Not a 'bucket list', per se, but rather a kind of 'cleaning house' in which he gets rid of things that don't make him happy in favour of the things he's always hoped would. I think about M. and wonder what makes him happy and what doesn't. I wonder if I'm enough for him, if he's where he wants to be at this stage in his life and if he thinks I'll always be enough. It worries me, because it's an intrinsic emotion with me, and I sometimes find myself wishing I were more so that I could fill in the holes he might feel he has in life. I'm not sure why that is, but there you have it.

I had a hard time figuring out what to get him for his birthday, and don't feel at all confident about it. I wanted to buy something special, like I did last year (rare books, one T.E Lawrence, the other a first edition Hemingway), but financially I had to be very careful. I went to several different stores and was unable to find anything that I thought would be suitable, so I ended up at a book store (usually a safe bet), and even there I had trouble. I settled on the newest Michael Palin travel book, which I hope he'll like, and then headed to the fine foods shop where I bought fruit gums, french jam, a Flake bar, caramel mints and digestive cookies, which true to form, he loves. I plan to take him to a local art gallery which is exhibiting several Group of Seven paintings, and then maybe to an apple orchard where we can pick our own. He's requested fish and chips for lunch, and for dinner I might make curried chicken and rice. I also found a recipe for a vanilla cake that they make at the Magnolia Bakery in NYC, and a separate one for cream cheese frosting, which he requested as well. I never feel like I do enough for birthdays, though. I never feel like I make him feel special enough, or that my gift is good enough, and I'm already feeling like he needs more.

Again, I'm not sure why that is.

I'm superb at finding ways to make myself feel the effects of stress over just about anything. I'm pretty sure it's a talent that's here to stay.

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