I Used To Be Magic And Now I Am Not

Photo by Malvestida on Unsplash

“Can I have a Traitors Party?”. The tone was nonchalant fourteen-year-old. There was no eye contact. It was slipped in on a Wednesday when her mother’s mind was elsewhere. But I knew it was one of those moments. If I didn’t immediately pay more attention, things would happen and then there would be those four familiar words, “Mummy said I could”. And so, I asked for details, and I heard Friday and the final and 8.30pm and snacks and beanbags and that there wouldn’t be any more than 25 coming. And I said absolutely not and then I remembered her sister could squeeze 15 into the room and so I said maximum of 10 and she said 20 and I said 12 and she said 15 and then I said, who are these people, and she said all my friends from X [name redacted] and I said you can’t run an alternative Youth Club and she said but they’re all looking forward to it and I’ve arranged it on Snapchat.

I used to be magic and now I am not.

I began to consider the loss of my special powers around a week ago. I live in a house full of squatters that I once manipulated but who now manipulate me. Some of them are in their twenties and occasionally, others whose children have successfully flown the nest and are managing their own laundry, will say things like you’re making it too easy for them which I don’t think is the worst parental crime but in the interests of equipping them to leave, I am starting to deploy them in the kitchen. And so, I provided a recipe, and I tasked one with making dinner, and a lot of hours went by and there was a haze of smoke and her dad was roped in to help and by the time the Italian meatballs made it to the table, the tomato sauce had been completely obliterated and she said “How did you do this and a job?”. And I remembered chopping onions and grating carrots and breaking an egg whilst supervising homework and checking my email and hoping no one was looking for me in the office and I’d never really considered myself a domestic goddess, but I was obviously a genius with mince.

And I thought about how I used to be magic because I could make time bend and I’d once fitted an infinite number of things into a day like school runs and meetings and the PTA and reading the Bible and now, I felt exhausted when I thought about the former me, and I wished I could put my arms around her and apologise to her and cut her loose when she was still in her thirties and when I’d reflected on the 2010s, I’d said:

“I learned I could play a game called beat the clock. Playing it involved blending breathless anxiety and erratic driving with a terrible flatness”.

And I thought of all the other ways I used to be magic like being able to make tasks disappear from a to-do list and teleport myself elsewhere when my offspring were scrapping on the pavement and miraculously heal enough after a 2am bug to serve breakfast and feign an interest in excruciatingly dull people and say yes when I meant no and sit through pointless panel discussions and remain upright during long sermons and smile in spite of my internal screaming and survive on less than six hours a night.

Too many of us had absorbed the idea that being constantly busy was the measure of a successful life and we’d sacrificed ourselves on the altar of work because we’d wanted more said Dr Ranjan Chatterjee in The Times. “It’s no exaggeration that this myth is killing us,” he said. “When I see patients who are constantly striving to get another promotion, to earn more money, but who have high blood pressure or poor sleep, I get them to ask themselves: ‘What is enough?’”.

And now I’d moved into the 2020s and I’d lost that marvellous ability to make time stretch and I did creative stuff now and I slept well and I struggled to achieve more than one thing during the hours of daylight, and it was a mystery until I calculated my time-expenditure priorities and discovered that if I was going to continue with my daily outdoor walking and processing habit, I’d need to set aside approximately one-seventh of my week for that alone.

And success, Ranjan said, was really about how you spent your time.

“… for me success is time with family and friends, time to cook and eat properly, time to exercise, time to think, time to be in nature, time to pursue hobbies and passions, and time to rest”.

There was an article this week about Michelle Obama, and it talked about how she didn’t go to the presidential swearing-in and lots of conclusions had been drawn about this like she was trying to avoid George W. Bush, or her husband because he was having an affair with Jennifer Aniston, when maybe she was simply exercising her right to choose how she filled three hours of her life.

“I suspect that the Obamas’ marriage is fine, and Michelle Obama can’t stand Donald Trump and doesn’t want to be anywhere near him. She went to his first inauguration because she had to, but if your spouse has been at a different company for the past eight years, you’re certainly not required to show up at the old home week of the damned”¹.

On Monday, I went to a workshop, and I thought about how I used to be magic because I was able to get dressed and wash my hair and apply my make-up and pull together an outfit and look the part. And this workshop was about how to own the room, and be a brilliant speaker, and be confident about your voice and it was all women which said everything, and one of them admired my trousers, and I lifted my jumper and I showed her the elasticated waist and she got very excited and made a note of where to buy them because we were middle-aged and no longer magically zipped into things. And we sat in a circle and got into pairs, and we had to learn three facts about each other and then report back and I had to go first and I wasn’t sure what was being assessed so I just behaved normally and people were kind about my warmth and intonation and then the facilitator asked me to do it again as if there was an unruly audience and I said I can’t do that because there isn’t an unruly audience here but I did it anyway because I didn’t want to make a scene and someone said I sounded nervous and I wanted to smack her face and say did you know that wasn’t real.

And I thought about how I used to be able to put on a performance. And now I can’t conjure up an inauthentic me anymore.

And on Thursday, when I was reading about The Traitors where winning depended on excelling at performing, I heard there was a storm incoming, and the schools and the supermarkets were closing and the pubs weren’t opening until teatime and the Youth Club was cancelled and no one was travelling anywhere and I presumed that was it, end of, no more party. But then it turned out it was still happening, elsewhere.

And I said, why, and she said nonchalantly, because you weren’t enthusiastic enough about it.

1. Article