Can You Colourise My Life? I’m So Sick of Black And White… (What Women Want?)

Jun 15, 2023

“Can I put you down as a housewife?” she said. We’ll come back to this. But first, some context. It’s too hot for dogs. My daughters spent a fruitless few hours on a Tuesday evening searching for a paddling pool in those variety retailers that sell everything from solar lighting to reading glasses to Graham Norton Sauvignon Blanc1. Thankfully, they’re past the stage of splashing. The paddling pool was for the dog. He was suffering in the high temperatures. The plan is to order him a sandpit instead, less chance of it bursting, fill it with cold water, let him bathe for a while, maybe get him a cooling vest to put on afterwards. We are middle-class. We don’t want to be accused of cruelty to animals.

Meanwhile the humans are meant to continue as normal. Most women I know haven’t slept more than two hours in the last three weeks. The weather isn’t breaking but we are. It’s too hot to eat dinner, our brains are wired, we are verging on madness. I wake at 2am, 3am, 4am. My dreams are feverish. I am trying to gather my thoughts into a coherent structure. Who am I? What do I want? My head is stuffed with words, snippets of conversations. There’s something about Meatloaf. It was on the radio, the longer version of that song which can last 5 minutes or 7 minutes or 12 minutes depending on how much airtime is available. It is as if day never becomes night, the wildlife is copulating, birds don’t migrate anymore. They are all nesting in my garden. I hear cats screeching, insects buzzing. I am opening and closing the window. I need air. I need quiet. I have taken my quilt to the dry cleaners. I have no need for it. People are looking half-dead, hotter than a match head2. There is dirt on the back of my neck and in my shoes and I don’t know where it’s coming from. It’s as if the whole world is dusty. I eat a Nutella lolly which is really a dessert because there’s nothing cold left in the shops. I want to perpetually drink beer outside but I’m not on holiday. I don’t remember the summer of ‘763 but I dig out books that scare me about what heatwaves can do to the mind - Penelope Lively, Maggie O’Farrell, Joanna Cannon4.

“I want more than this,” they say, the women that I talk to, the ones at a similar stage to me. They need something to change but they’re not sure what it is. They’re unsettled, dissatisfied. They wonder what fulfilment looks like because it wasn’t to be found in raising children and now those children are leaving and they’re moving into a different season where they might have a chance to do something interesting before they’re needed to do childcare all over again. They’re scared of life continuing like this for the next thirty years. They question if they were sold a myth about the importance of a career. Promotions have lost their appeal. They are overlooked anyway. They know stuff but no-one cares because the men have already grabbed all the profiles and it seems to matter more to them. I tell them about the maid and the mother and the crone that’s grown old5, the limited categories available to us.

They can happen anytime, those moments when they slot you into a category. I was just renewing my car insurance. I’d received my quote. We were going through the motions, same as every other year. I’d re-confirm the details. She’d run it through the system. As usual, it would come out at exactly the same price. “Lecturer,” she said. “Not anymore,” I said. “I don’t work now”. “Can I put you down as a housewife?” she said. “Definitely not,” I replied. There was silence. The options were limited. “Are you actively seeking employment?” she said. I wasn’t asking for benefits, I had a house, I was a wife, I just wasn’t a housewife. But it seemed I had to justify who I was to stay on the roads. I hadn’t done my tax return, I’d earned a paltry amount in the last year, a fraction of my former salary but I was actively seeking more. “Put me down as a self-employed writer,” I said.

The week before, I’d left my husband of 21.5 years at home, travelled with my two adult girls to Palma. The last time I was there, I had a rash, a recurrence of a rare inflammatory disease6 which had hospitalised me on the first anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. My immune system wasn’t working as it should. I was also single, childless, financially independent and young. What would the 1998 me think of the me now? What would the maid think of the mother that’s about to become the crone that’s grown old? Would she think I’d done ok, stayed true to myself? I was none of those things now. A quarter of a century goes so fast. In 2023, I‘d got an upgrade, a mezzanine floor, a ginormous bathtub but the air conditioning had broken down. I realised that I need upgrades in life, excitement and adventure, but I absolutely need the basics too, solid foundations, air, space. I come back with infected insect bites. My immune system is working ok now. My husband collects me at the airport. He gets out of the car to greet me. He makes me parmigiana, pours me wine. He lends me his SOS post-bite soothing gel.

I listen to the Meatloaf song again. It would definitely be hot but he’d run right in to hell and back for this woman. We don’t know what he wouldn’t do for love. It’s one of life’s great mysteries. But there was much he would do. “Can you colourise my life? I’m so sick of black and white,” the woman says. I reckoned that’s what most women want - more colour, a richer, more fulfilled life. So much depends on having the right companions for the journey. When it comes to marriage, I wonder how two people can survive the parenting years well, come out the other side on different pathways and still keep the colour intact.

“Will you hold me sacred? Will you hold me tight? Can you make it all a little less old? Can you build an emerald city with these grains of sand? Will you take me places I’ve never known?7”.

Between the mother and the crone, in the gap with no name, there can be a desperateness, a grappling to become more, a scrabbling for attention, a sense of needing to have one final thrust at life. But is it really more we are looking for or less? I know exactly who I want to be based on who I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be in charge of anything nor Davina McCall in pink hot pants. I’m not a housewife. I’m just focusing on colourising my life somewhere in between.

Questions for you…

(1) Are you too hot?

(2) Is your dog too hot?

(3) Do you need to colourise your life?

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Days Like This with Deborah Sloan

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