Another year wiser…..
It’s my birthday this week!
I will be forty nine years old. 49 laps around the sun … 49 Februarys …my last year pre half a century.
I’m fairly sure those of you who have reached middle age will understand the feeling of WTF and how is that possible-ness. And those of you who haven’t … but think you understand… just wait.
However..
I have never been one of those people hung up on age… I don’t dress my age or behave my age … I’m just me. Age itself doesn’t bother me and I certainly have no intention acting my age any time soon!
The passage of time is the bit that freaks me out …
I don’t have children but people tell me that bringing up children is such a whirlwind that suddenly they are grown and you arrive 15 … 20 years later wondering where on earth that time has gone and who you are now …
I don’t have children but I did have a now closed jewellery school that occupied my every waking thought and kept us in a whirlwind of continuous motion for 18 years….. so I also feel that immense disappearance of time.
I still think of Al as my new boyfriend … I’m not being cute ... I actually do … and yet we’ve been together for 21 years! That’s how fast that time has sped by.
So I was going to write a blog post about turning 49 and how age is just a number… blah blah blah …
And then something happened.
I was contacted by a friend from university… someone I’d not heard from for over 25 years.
He reached out because he’d heard that another one of our group of friends was unwell. We planned to get a little group together and have a zoom chat with our friend as a surprise to cheer her up.
One day, before we had fully organised this, I contacted our friend myself.
It was extraordinary.
I couldn’t believe I was messaging this beautiful soul that had been so close so many years ago.
So much life had passed since….such a lot of daily routines, magical moments, marriage, birth, careers, art, heartbreak and love … school runs, books read, movies watched.. hairstyles changed …
.. since we were young and free, with all that still to come…
..since we were wandering through the cold sunny streets of Madrid and Barcelona in February , drinking cheap wine from cartons and enjoying the first taste of the freedom of travelling while we studied our Art History degrees.
We didn’t know where to start .. how to do do ‘how are you?’ After 25 years ? So we made bullet points …
Career
Location
Travel
Husband
Children
More career
It was magical …. Still us, and yet not.
Just a week later, I got the tragic news that my friend had passed away. None of us had realised she was so unwell , she was so positive and excited to hear from us that we all believed she was managing … not well, but managing .. and that we’d see her in our zoom chat.
Now I’d like to say…. and I’m sure you’re waiting for me to say .. that I had a magical awakening to the concept of the brevity of life and that from now on I will be living every moment like it’s my last ..
But I didn’t …
Instead, I found myself experiencing a massive sense of gratitude…
I am so incredibly grateful to be here, right now.. to have made it this far. To have reached 49.
I cherish every single grey hair (I have many!)
…every single crease and wrinkle, a permanent etched memory of an experience…, a unique moment that happened in my life only.
Grateful for the body I inhabit … it’s scars, bumps and wonkiness… testimony to my falls, scrapes and adventures..
I have acquired wisdom, knowledge.. and inner confidence. A level of peace that I wouldn’t have recognised at 23.
The comfort with which I can now expose my deepest creativity, the world as I see it through my jewellery and art, authentically free from concerns about what people may think of me. (finally!!!!!)
I can breath in..
Breathe out.
And love.
I am grateful for the people I have in my life ... my husband, my family and friends that I still get to chat, laugh and smooch them (the ones it’s appropriate to smooch … obviously!)
The people I have just met, the wonderful friends I’ve never met (yet !) and those that I’ve known my whole life.
Those rare people that shared a childhood with you and who can still make you snort tea through your nose because you’re laughing so hard when they send you a video of a cat having a dream.
I am grateful that I still want to ask for jewellery tools for my birthday because I love what I do so much … even though this is my everyday job and Al thinks I’m weird.
I am grateful that I was able to message and chat to my old friend from Uni. Just once.
I don’t plan to grow old gracefully, but with fire, passion, curiosity and resilience ... each day striving to be the best version of myself.
Grace. Adventure. Passion and Fire.
I am excited for the year ahead … to be 49 .. whatever that means … I will cherish it... growing as a person and as a business.
I hope you’ll join us as part of our beautiful community and see what happens next!
I will leave you with this poem written for me by my oldest friend Janine, who I have known since we were 4…
A long time ago, a friendship was born,
But much more than that, a bond was formed.
Two little girls, one blonde, one dark,
Saw in each other, a little spark.
They nurtured that spark into a flame,
Kept it alive, wouldn't let it wane.
Their lives would, at times, in different directions go,
But always, always, there would be that glow.
Sometimes it would flicker, sometimes it would roar,
But at all times they knew what that flame was for.
All these years later, that flame is still there,
Reminding them both that each other care.
A constant warmth kept safe and quiet,
To be fanned into fury when they require it.
Some fires dwindle and turn into ash,
Others burn brightly and are gone in a flash.
Our fire keeps burning, and will never end,
You will forever be my lifelong friend.
January 2021
Janine Eady
From my heart to yours …. and for my beautiful friend Non.
