At The Age Of (Insert Big Number), She Realised...

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Lucy Jordan. “Who?” said my husband when I shared how she’d been on my mind. I could see his brain whirring. Was this someone I played tennis with on Friday mornings or had bonded with whilst loitering in a school playground? Had I mentioned meeting her for coffee recently? Was she the woman from Pilates with the three little boys who couldn’t eat her dinner because they kept running off in the restaurant? She’d been on my mind too. “Marianne Faithfull,” I said. His face was completely blank. “Lucy Jordan,” I said again. “At the age of thirty-seven, she realised she'd never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair¹”.

I wasn’t thirty-seven but I was about to do face-off with a milestone birthday. On 31 July, one version of me would win, the one who could cope with growing older or the one who couldn’t. Its arrival was somewhat unavoidable. I had to choose my response. “It’s a big one,” said someone who’d done it last year. There was no doubt that crossing demographic borders was bringing unwanted reflection on what I hadn’t done, an increasing sense of mortality, a feeling of time drizzling out. I was bombarded with messages about what happens to middle-aged women. I’d just been to see Barbie. “Gloria’s existential crisis is prompted by the menopause,” said the commentators. The Holland and Barrett advert² wanted me to think about what I’d lost in my midlife. A series of women looked despairingly into the camera and told us what they’d lost - their body shape, their memory, their youth. “I’ve lost me,” said the saddest one. What had I lost? What would I never do? There was quite a long list. I’d never wear a bikini nor anything tight round my middle. I’d lost bone structure and a lot of oestrogen. I wondered why all of my potential unfulfilledness revolved around physicality, image, why that loss seemed so much greater than any other. I’d never be a minister either. I’d just missed the cut-off point for them to get enough preaching out of me before retirement. I wondered why that wasn’t bothering me so much.

I’d done some gentle socialising in the build-up to the big day. Maybe if I said it out loud, it would be easier. I’d started to apologise to people for all the extra holidays I was taking this year. I wanted them to know it was a coping mechanism not an over-indulgence. I’d taken to confessing in religious buildings. I was using the word ‘big’ a lot. “I have a big birthday this year and it’s not forty,” I said to a man as we queued for lunch in a Bible college. His next milestone would take him into his seventh decade. He had more to cope with than me. I was becoming obsessed with everyone else’s age. Did I look older or younger than them? I had nothing to be afraid of really. All the Jennifers were doing well – Lopez, Aniston, Garner, Connolly. On the morning of my birthday, Instagram would show me Kate Beckinsale in a Playboy bunny suit. We’d been born just five days’ apart, but I could never be her. But then was success only having legs up to your armpits? I couldn’t recall any of her films. “You don’t look your age,” said my mother in her happy birthday text. It was hard for her too, having such an old daughter.

I didn’t really remember the last milestone birthday. I had a job and four children under the age of ten. I was just about surviving. Lucy Jordan is trapped in a life of domesticity too. She yearns for more glamour, she realises her dreams will never come true, that she’ll never be young again. They take her away in an ambulance. Her story resonated. There is a rear-view photo of me on 31 July 2013, two girls on either side. I am sitting on the edge of a cliff. We are all looking out to sea. You can’t see my eyes, but I can feel the sense of loss. I hadn’t brushed the back of my hair. Since then, there had been a ten-year process to get me back to the me I deserved to be. Maybe Lucy Jordan had just given up too soon. This time, I wanted to do my milestone my way - no parties, no Facebook wall messages from people I hadn’t seen for thirty years, no cards with numbers, no cake, definitely no balloons. I wanted to be braver. I wanted to be less tired and bored of myself. I didn’t want to be where anyone could find me. I didn’t want to put on an act. I wanted to wake up in a different time zone and not actually be sure when I slipped from one decade into another. I wanted to go to a place like nowhere else. I wanted to be away and experience the joy of coming home.  

I wanted to see the sun rise and the sun set in New York. I wanted to ride in a yellow cab, drink a martini in Bemelmans Bar, wander round Barnes and Noble, eat eggs benedict. I’d leave the rest to chance. The last time I’d been there, the Twin Towers were still standing. When I dug out the blurry photos taken by a Canon PowerShot on the steps of the Statue of Liberty, there they were rising in the background. This time, I’d visit the 9/11 museum. I’d pause to scan the names at the two pools built in the footprint of the original towers. My iPhone would capture Virgil’s quote.

The guide reminded us that alongside the tragedy of that day, we should never forget the hope – the thousands that escaped, the Survivors’ Staircase, colleagues who helped each other to safety, the window washer who used his squeegee handle to break through a lift shaft³. For an hour, I held back tears until I saw the handwritten note. “Do you know an animal missing its human?” it said. I was struck by how some sat and cried, some ran away, some just stood and stared as events unfolded. As he left us at the end of the tour, the guide reminded us to go to the memorial wall, to pick someone, read the information about them, carry them with us in honour of them. As I scanned 2983 faces, I looked for a connection. I wasn’t sure who I was looking for, but I knew I’d find them. When I found her in her wedding dress, it wasn’t right to take a picture. The blurb would tell me she was Kristin, married in June 2001, living with her new husband, Brendan, in Greenwich Village. She was a trader who worked on the 96^th floor of the South Tower. An anecdote from her obituary described how bossy she was, how she told her best friend not to get pregnant yet so they could have babies together. "She said she could see the two of us sitting by the pool, in our ninth month, when you're allowed to have a glass of wine," her friend said. Later, when I could only remember her first name, I googled for hours to find her again. I discovered she was Kristy.

There was a piece written in summer 2002 by the priest who had officiated at her wedding. He would also conduct her funeral mass. “As I left the wedding I thought, ‘and they lived happily ever after’. And they did - for 94 days,” he said.

In the city that never sleeps, I spent my first night awake reliving the horror of watching a woman choke in a steak restaurant off Fifth Avenue. As I listened to her struggle for breath and watched a fellow diner perform the Heimlich manoeuvre, I wondered why of all the eateries in New York, I had ended up there. I was struck by how some sat and cried, some ran away, some just stood and stared as events unfolded. In the city that never sleeps, I spent the second night awake thinking about Kristy. Why of all the faces had I picked her’s? I guess there is always a reason. It wasn’t that her life had run in parallel to mine, it was just that she didn’t get the chance to live hers. In many ways, I’d had the future she’d longed for. So had Lucy Jordan, only she’d thought there was more. There were things I’d never do. There were things I’d done.

At the age of (insert big number), she realised… she was lucky to have everything she has.

In honour of Kristy who never got to celebrate a big birthday, I’d love you to read the piece⁴ about her too. It tells of hope. It is more important than anything I will ever write. “No day shall erase you from the memory of time”.

1. The Ballad of Lucy Jordan

2. Holland and Barrett Advert

3. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-squeegee-handle-became-life-saving-tool-september-11-2001-180951515/

4. https://news.providence.edu/all-we-can-do-is-throw-our-arms-around-god-and-hold-on/