A Woman Of A Certain Age (2)

Considering Cradle Snatching
Ok so we’ve talked Biological Clocks and flab around the mid-section. Now it’s on to point 3 on the list of Things That Happen To A Woman Of A Certain Age: appreciating the younger men who find one attractive.

First let me define ‘younger men’: ‘younger’ means anyone up to an hour younger than you. (Yes, the rules are stringent but one needs order in this chaotic world.) ‘Men’ means anyone who’s not a woman. Put that together and ‘younger men’ means someone you never took seriously because you assumed they would be juvenile.

So, you’re thirty. And single. And searching, though you act like you’re not. And after attending the wedding of the last guy you know who is older than you, you realize that what was a shallow pool of eligible men slowly dried up into a puddle and then – right before your eyes – into a mud hole.

You’re just leaving the abovementioned wedding reception when your phone rings. *Aargh!* It’s him again. ‘Him’ being the persistent, much-younger suitor who refuses to accept that you’re Just Not Interested. Oh what the heck, I’ll take his call one last time. You answer. And talk. And laugh. And laugh again. (Hmm he’s funny) And smile at something he says (Aww, he’s sweet.)

You hang up and realize - in absolute horror - that you forgot to take some wedding cake home! Ok that’s not what you realize. Just kidding. What you really realize is that the only reason you blew your baby suitor off all this time was that you were being narrow minded; assuming that a younger man could not be your match mentally, emotionally or intellectually. You locked out a whole ocean of potential partners and allowed your ageist mentality to keep you splashing lamely in the shallow pool of older men; a pool that’s now dried up.

It’s definitely a *Eureka!* moment and you go home in high spirits, grateful that your eyes were opened to possibilities, before it was too late.

You get home in a state of excitement and tell your twenty-something year old sister everything you’ve realized.

“Hmm” she says, looking unconvinced. “Younger men. So you’re now officially a spinster?”

A Woman of a Certain Age

Several things supposedly happen when a single woman hits 30:

1. Her biological clock starts ticking (very loudly)
2. She develops the beginning of middle-age spread
3. She begins to appreciate the younger men who find her attractive
4. Family members stop hinting about marriage and ask outright
5. She discovers herself
6. She gets a significant pay raise at work

Okay the last point isn’t necessarily true, but apparently the first five are to be expected. So did any of those things happen to me??...

Tick Tock
Ah, the Biological Clock, that imaginary device whose constant ticking serves as a reminder to women to “Have A Baby Soon, Have A Baby Soon.”

At some point I thought I might have to take my Clock in for repairs – most times it didn’t tick at all, though I did notice a very faint ‘tick tock’ when I saw a bathed, powdered, well-behaved baby. At one point I got worried – shouldn’t I be desperate to have a child? Shouldn’t I be staring wistfully at other people’s children? Maybe my Biological Clock needed new batteries?

Then I met J, then a two and a half month old and suddenly my phone is full of his photos. I clapped enthusiastically when he tried his first mouthful of solid food and celebrated when he tried to crawl. My Clock is working perfectly!

Looking Flabulous
*sigh* A few years ago I remember staring at my cousin's belly with disdain. If it was possible to have a conceited tummy, mine was it. It was flat and firm and looked down on any that was less than perfect.
As far as I was concerned a sagging belly on a woman without kids was the result of indiscipline! lack of self control! gluttony! I was the disciplined one. I was controlled, strong willed and yet, before I knew it I was on the way to displaying the genes I shared with my cousin.

I tried sit ups. I'd wake up half an hour earlier, stuff my feet under the couch in the living room and huff & puff my way through them. I'd read that Destiny's Child did about 300 sit ups a day and used that to motivate myself but I'd usually only manage five and a half before I gave up, telling myself "they do that because they earn their living from looking great. I don't have to"

As my suddenly-snug shirts confirm, I can no longer carelessly reach for one more doughnut and have taken to occasionally choosing tops which allow me the luxury of breathing. No more tight fitting tops if it means I have to walk around Lagos with my tummy sucked in.

Here's a great tip for anyone who wants to hang loose at work, especially after lunch: (assuming you have an adjustable swivel chair)
1. jack your seat down really low
2. pull yourself in towards your desk and...
3. voila! your tummy is neatly tucked away under your desk. Try it, it works. :-)

Bored & Boyfriendless

The old diary I found is so so precious; it captured who I was when I was 22: a skinny young wannabe writer with an exaggerated sense of humour and no boyfriend.

I wrote in the diary when I was bored, when I was happy, when I was frustrated, I just wrote and wrote and wrote.
It wasn’t a proper diary to start with, so dismiss any images of a leather-bound journal and picture this: a faded orange exercise book with “Three Star Big Exercise Book”, “60 Leaves” and “Made in Nigeria by Star Paper Mill” on the cover, with the mandatory metric tables on the outside back cover. Anyone who went to school in Naija knows what I’m talkin’ about!

Did anyone *ever* use those conversion tables printed on the back?? “Linear Measure”, “Mass and Weight Measure” and “Capacity Measure” (Fluid Volume) Thank God those awful school days spent calculating are over.

Anyway that exercise book was my ‘diary’ for the month of July 1997. In it I recorded the details of my first Weight Gain Programme and the day I heard Gianni Versace had been murdered. I was still stuck in the East at my Grandmother’s and since I had no friends I spent a lot of my time writing about all the stuff happening around me.

On July 2nd (which was a Wednesday) my mum sent me and a male cousin of mine (“O”) to a town a couple of hours away, to pick up something she had commissioned a local artist to paint. I wrote:

Went with O to look for the artist mum commissioned. The journey wasn’t too long, along the way I spotted a sign with ‘Alliance Francais French Language and Cultural Centre’ on it and made a mental note to stop by on our way back.

The taxi driver on the last leg of the trip was very kind; (we had to change taxis twice) he drove us straight to the artist’s house at no extra charge. We knocked, no one answered so we sat on the steps and gossiped about Cousin N’s second boyfriend. I’m starting to get very worried about the fact that everyone else seems to leap effortlessly from one relationship to another with minimum recovery time in between, while it takes me forever to even find someone to relate to: where are all the men?? I can count all the relationships I’ve had on two fingers.

Anyway, there we were talking when the door opened and a hostile-looking woman with dried out jerry curls appeared in the doorway. Talk about delayed reaction: we’d knocked nearly fifteen minutes earlier. Anyway she lived up to her appearance and hostilely asked who I was. I told her who we were and what our mission was, dispelling her fears that I was a student who was pregnant for her husband or something.
She let us in, put the fan and radio on and handed us photo albums as a source of entertainment while we waited for her husband, who wasn’t back from work.

“Why do people here always assume visitors want to look through their photos?” I whispered to O. “Eh, that’s what people here like” he replied. I certainly don’t like it but was forced to look through black & white photos dating back to the Sixties so as not to offend our hostess who sat at the dining table, staring at us.
Only one photo interested me: a recent one of a very good looking guy who, from the landmarks in the photo, was in England. After admiring his cute smile for several seconds I remembered my boyfriendless state and quickly became depressed. The artist came home shortly afterwards, apparently he has a day job as a teacher. Though he hadn’t started work designing anything, he had taken the photos he’d need to work with. After talking to him for several minutes, O and I got up to leave but the artist forced us to eat ‘oji’. His wife brought out a saucer of kolanuts and garden eggs (we’re too young for this!) and we rushed through the ceremony. I wasn’t sure whether he was praying over the saucer or whether he was giving blessings so I lowered my eyes just in case, and examined my left big toe. I stubbed it on a stool yesterday and it looked like a blood clot was forming.

On the way back to town we got in a taxi with a girl with a beard. Not a full-grown Barry White-ish sort of beard but just short of a goatee.
I stared in fascination; this brings to about two million, the number of women with hairy chins that I’ve seen here in the past month. Immac sales obviously aren’t sky high here.

Witty Words of Wisdom

Still on the stuff I dug out of my old bag of books; I also found an old email I'd printed out, which had some really funny one-liners.

The email had been forwarded to me and though I usually delete forwarded mails on the spot, (especially those annoying, threatening ones that instruct you to forward to several other people or risk developing boils in your armpit) this one was quite funny.

I don’t know where the quotes originally came from but here they are:

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you’ve got their shoes.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a flat tyre and a broken fan belt

Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else.

The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket

If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.

Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.

And my absolute favourite:
Don’t walk behind me, for I may not lead. Don’t walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Don’t walk beside me for the path is narrow. In fact, just f*ck off and leave me alone.

Back to Work...and Chicken Wings

The strike is over.

After hours and hours of negotiations over the weekend, the Labour Unions called off the strike, saying they had reached an agreement with the FG.

Petrol pump price is still N70/litre but the Unions got the Government to commit to no further increases of petroleum product prices for a year. In addition, the FG is not to penalize any worker who took part in the strike.

So that’s it, the mini-holiday is over. No more watching movies til 3am, sleeping til late and all the other mini-holiday activities; it’s back to work tomorrow. I’m already dreading the traffic on 3rd Mainland; I’m sure every man, woman and dog will be on that bridge as from 6am. *aargh*

Now that VAT has been reverted to 5%, those chicken wings had better be back to N500 a portion by tomorrow, or else...

Where There’s a Will…

When you’re cooped up at home for several days because of a strike, what better way to occupy yourself than to go digging into your past.

There’s this huge bag at home that’s filled with books and magazines and journals and all sorts of scribblings from the years when I was young and foolish. For over a year I’ve been meaning to sort out the stuff in it but haven’t had the time or the inclination to.

Yesterday I finally opened the bag and in its dusty depths I found a notebook dated July 1997, a decade ago when I was stuck in my Grandma’s house and hating it.
The book served as my diary at the time and there’s all sorts of interesting stuff in it. However what stood out for me and really made me laugh is the Will I wrote one night when I thought I was going to die.
It was about 9pm and I was lying on the couch in my Grandma’s living room. I was always lying on the couch in my Grandma’s living room simply because there wasn’t much else to do around there, ‘there’ being my Grandma’s village in the heart of Ibo land. (We’ll get to my complicated family tree one day)

I didn’t speak the language so I had no friends. I was the snooty older one who lay on the couch all day, reading, while my younger brother and sister made friends with the ‘natives’ and spent their days swimming in streams, climbing trees, cooking bush meat over open fires on the farms and generally being real.

I can’t remember where everyone else was at 9pm that night of Thursday 10th July 1997; it wasn’t that late so they must’ve been around somewhere. I wrote the Will because I was going to the British Council office in Enugu the following day and all my mother’s warnings about the treacherous roads and high incidence of car accidents had made me paranoid. (Present day thought: ten years later the roads are still death traps…)

Anyways here’s an edited version of what I wrote in my diary:

“Called the Port Harcourt branch of the British Council to find out if the ’97 edition of the Writers & Artists Yearbook is in the library. The lady who answered the phone said they only had the ’96 edition. Fat lot of use that is to me; I need info on competition deadlines…..I tried the Enugu office but the phone rang and rang so I’ll go there tomorrow. Mum is reluctant to let me go to Enugu alone; I’m 22 for God’s sake! (more or less) The most that can happen is that I’ll die in an accident and I’m not as afraid of dying as I used to be. But I’d better write out my Will just in case…

MY LAST WILL & TESTAMENT (Haven’t had much experience in this but this will just have to do)

I, (my name; on this blog I’m simply zaza) aged 22 (more or less) and being of sound mind do hereby declare that in the event of my death, my paltry possessions should be disposed of and distributed as stated below: (pause while I think hard about what constitutes my estate)

CLOTHING (aka Very Limited Wardrobe)
1) Since I am the shortest of us three, none of my jeans do I bequeath to my siblings (present day thought: I really liked big words when I was younger)
Instead, my jeans should be shared amongst the children in Grandma’s compound. (Pause while I mentally cross out those who do not deserve my old denims)

2) My shirts I dispose of as follows:
Black & white striped shirt – reverts to its original owner, (my brother.) So also my blue long sleeved shirt and gray short sleeved shirt.
Pink sleeveless top – reverts to original owner, my mother.
My turquoise T-shirt I bequeath to my brother, who’s been hounding me for it.
The rest of my shirts and cream skirt I bequeath to my sister.
My favourite black trousers and green silk shirt should be buried with me, thank you very much.

JEWELLERY: none in existence. I am even currently sans earrings.

SHOES: my black slip-ons and silver mules I bequeath to my mother. Since my beige mules are the only things my sister can squeeze her large feet into, they go to her. My clumpy platforms go to whoever’s keen on retro.
My black loafers, my faithful beloved loafers go the way of the black trousers and silk shirt.

OTHERS AKA MISCELLANEOUS:
My bag goes to my sister, and the contents as follows:
Lipbalm: my sis
Nail polish, various shades: my mother and sister
Superglue – goes to my brother
My ‘Z’ pendant either goes to ‘Zulu or to my brother, in case he falls in love with a girl whose name starts with ‘Z’. This is at my mum’s discretion.
Perfume – my mum
Letters, address books and other papers as directed under DOCUMENTS
Green wide-toothed comb, perfect for those knots and tangles – my mum and sister
Tube of Bonjela – to be disposed of at my mum’s discretion
Tweezers – my mum
2 tablets of Valium – my mum
1 lozenge – Aunty Ada (who told me the other day when I visited her that she has a cold coming on)
My mix tape – between my sis & brother, whoever likes Seal, Anita Baker and Mariah Carey the most.
1 diskette containing coursework from my 6 week computer class – goes to whoever wants it
Video club card – my brother & sister (valid until Nov ’97)

*I interrupt this Will to announce that the power just came back on and now I’m listening to jazz on Minaj Radio. The presenter should please shut up and let me listen to the music.*

DOCUMENTS
Comprising address books, journals, notes and letters, including F’s steamy love letters: I’m torn between having them all burnt and having them published as a book. I bequeath them all to my mum. Mum I swear my letters to F were decent, nothing as graphic as his.

The beneficiaries of this Will are mainly members of my immediate family because I have nothing to give my friends, except:

To A and N: copies of the photos we took together in ’94.
To T: the portrait of you that I commissioned as your 21st birthday present, even though you’re now 22. (more or less)

This I declare to be my last Will and Testament, written Thursday 10th July, at about 9pm,
Signed by: Me. Witnessed by: Me. ”

Present day thought: I’ve always wanted to be a writer and even ten years ago I was willing to make the ‘dangerous journey’, risking life and short limbs on treacherous roads to get to a copy of the Writers & Artists Yearbook…

Finding this old diary really made my day and you could say finding it made the strike worthwhile for me in a very personal way.