Dear Daughters and Sons,
So I mentioned today – whilst out Christmas shopping with my daughter – to the nice young 30 something shop assistant – that I thought being in your thirties was the best time for a woman.
You are young and beautiful and full of energy but by your thirties you have a bit of wisdom so that you don’t pick the wrong men – well not so often anyway.
In your twenties you are still so eager to be approved of.
Forties I can’t comment on because cancer wiped out my 40’s and I was just trying to stay alive.
Fifties I am still going through and the other decades are ahead of me so I can’t comment on them either.
But thirties were brilliant!
‘You can have a great time in your thirties,’ I said.
And my 20 something daughter looked at me with exactly the same expression she had when she was that little 3 year old who trusted me with her whole life and said, ‘But you didn’t do anything in your thirties - because you had us – you were a mumsie'
‘Of course honey,’ I said, ‘every second weekend when you were at your fathers I just sat and waited for you to come back home
‘I never experimented in the kitchen to find the best biscuit recipe for dope cookies
‘I never went to parties in that short little school girl dress, with fishnet stockings (proper stockings not tights) and danced till 4.30 in the morning
‘I never lusted over Mark Kilpatrick until the lusting got so bad that no other guy could sate it
‘I never spent hours trying to sate my lusting for Mark Kilpatrick with other guys – because no matter how hard I tried they just weren’t him but I kept trying anyway
‘I never sat under the shade of the enormous gums at the edge of my dam, watching yabbies bubbles with my girlfriends, drinking champagne and eating freshly baked cookies, while we chatted and laughed about men and sex
‘I never went skinny dipping in that dam either
‘I never cranked up Fine Young Cannibals, drank Cointreau out of an enamel mug and slathered paint around canvasses till midnight
‘I never met Pete at one of those parties, nor invited him back to my place at 4.30 in the morning when finally my lusting for Mark Kilpatrick withered to a thread of nothingness
‘No honey I wasn’t a MILF
‘I never did any of those things and that’s what makes me such a good mum