Age without limits
My grandmother, Margaret Hughes, became a grandmother at fortyfour, and that very moment she seemed to fit the role perfectly. She never shuffled around in a floral bonnet with a cane; even in her later years she kept a tidy, dignified appearance. I remember one afternoon we stitched a brightred dress for a doll together. I was thrilled and asked her if she would ever want such a dress. She laughed and said, Oh, Im a grandmother, arent I? That Im a grandmother echoed through every part of her life. As soon as her first grandchild arrived, she slipped into the expectations drawn by society and her own ideas and lived within them to the end, just as most women around her did.
I often hear people in their forties complain about how much life has thrown at them and how hard it is to live in an age of constant change. Yet it is precisely that generation that has shattered the old borders, the customs, and the fixed notions of age. Imagine for a moment calling a woman barely over forty a grandmother. She is still a young woman, not yet a senior. She may not be a spring chicken, but she is still a woman whose mindset leans toward youth rather than the opposite.
I tried a new remedy and my hearing came back after four days; the doctor recommended it. In todays world you can only guess a womans age, sometimes struggling to work it out from the surrounding clues. I often sip my coffee in a tiny café on a side street of Manchester, where the barista, a petite, graceful girl named Poppy Collins, already knows my favourite order. We exchange a few light words; she looks like a recent university graduate. One morning I walked in and saw a towering, broadshouldered man, almost two metres tall, standing beside her. I wondered whether he could be her boyfriendshe looks like a pocketsize fairytale figure. He leaned over the counter, kissed her, and then, in a deep voice, asked, Darling, could you lend me a couple of hundred pounds? If someone had told me she was his daughter, the surprise would have been far less startling.
What is remarkable today is that every woman can decide how she wishes to appear and what age feels comfortable to wear. She may opt for braids and bikiniarea tattoos, skyhigh heels and plunging necklines, trainers and ripped jeans, lemonyellow blouses, slim skirts and jaunty hatsfor every season. Red dresses, even mini ones with daring back zippers, are welcomed without a raised eyebrow or a dismissive gesture. And if anyone does raise one, she simply does not care.
There is also a familiar saying: If youth only knew, if age only could. That phrase has vanished. The middleaged generation has bleached it away like a stubborn stain on a white tablecloth. We now know a lot, yet we can still act with vigor. This extraordinary cohort drifts between the old, who push away with fear, and the young, who watch warily. The ship sails on its own, thrilled by the adventure.
The most important realisation I have reached only recently, and which I gladly share, is that age does not narrow possibilitiesit expands them. We no longer need to search for ourselves; we have already found each other and now polish our crafts or try new techniques that bring joy and satisfaction. We no longer feel the urge to mingle with everyone, letting strangers into our lives. Our task now is to keep close those who beat in rhythm with our own hearts. We can afford the luxury of pleasant companionship, not merely the necessity of interaction. In love and intimacy we seek quality, having learned that quantity can never replace it, and we can easily grant our younger selves a hundred extra points.
We no longer rush children to grow faster, because we have seen how quickly that happens naturally. We aim to savour their childhood, filling it generously with the things we missed. We have long understood that money cannot buy happiness, health, or loyalty, and that the road toward a goal often matters more than the goal itself. Anyone who cannot enjoy the process is unlikely to relish the result. We have proved this to ourselves, learned from our errors, felt how swiftly time flies. The picture of life is already sketched; now is the moment to add the fine details and graceful strokes that turn a painter into a master and a canvas into a masterpiece.
When you grasp all this, you suddenly realise that right now your possibilities are limitless. You can learn to dance, sing, play the harp, study languages, dive with scuba gear, ride a horse, ski or rollerblade. You can blow glass, drive a car, paint Christmas ornaments, paddle a kayak, assemble mosaics, keep bees, paint playgrounds, mould pots, stitch with beads or iron, bake exquisite cakes, ferment cabbage, or handmake pasta. You can travel and see with your own eyes what you have only heard about. You can adopt a dog named Baxter or take in a third cat called Willow, shoot your own short film or act on stage, move to the countryside, or finally start that lifelong hobby you kept postponing for lack of time. You can lose yourself in a new novel, welcome another child, or simply stroll alone along a park path, disappearing into the quiet, sipping a hot chocolate or lemonbalm tea beneath a gentle mist, savoring every sip as autumn, life, and serenity unfold.
So remember: age is not a ceiling but a horizon that keeps expanding, and with each sunrise we gain fresh chances to shape the masterpiece of our lives.
