Ten thousand years old

• kateshrewsday

Phil has a favourite saying when it comes to his daughter. He will watch some little thing she has done and he will smile, and he will tell me in a sage aside: “Boys are born and they increase in years accordingly. But women are born ten thousand years old.”

We both marvel at Maddie’s instinct for femininity. She is drawn towards pretty dresses more than I ever was: she can team up a perfect ensemble for a party.  She can persuade and barter like a trader in a street market, but with the delicacy of a noblewoman. She has innate wisdom, and we have absolutely no idea where it came from.

Mother’s day dawned, and Phil had done his job well. He had taken the children out the day before in a top-secret mission. He had bought something lovely from a cosmetics counter which I love. Felix presented a card with origami flowers and a lengthy inscription which had been extracted by his class teacher on a slow afternoon.

Then Maddie handed me a package.

I opened it: it was a small pink bottle of perfume, bought, I surmised, with her pocket-money. It was called Paradise Island and smelt blousy, like a trigger happy Barbara Cartland.

“Sorry it’s not Chanel”, she added. “I know that’s your favourite.”

Tears came to my eyes. I wanted to find the right words to say that this feminine gift, from a daughter to a mother, was better than any international house of style could offer. I think I found a few strangled syllables and hugged her tightly.

It has sat on my shabby bedside table alongside the dictionary of quotations and other weighty tomes.

And this morning, hot on the heels of Mother’s Day, another day arrived: my own.

I am not squeamish about age: I love The Present, and wouldn’t go backwards in case I forgot all I have learned in the process. The life of the mind becomes more and more absorbing: and there is always some new piece of  knowledge, some new theme to tease out of life. The future will always – to voice a platitude – be full of possibility.

So birthdays are generally quite nice.

Except that usually, I have the day free because it’s in the school holidays. This year, I spent it at work.

I love the people I work with. But every job has its tougher times and I am in the middle of one of mine. I woke this morning at  six sharp, head full of must-do’s for the days ahead, and anticipating some serious challenges.

I did not, in short, feel like celebrating. I felt like a decent, self-indulgent bawl.

And then my daughter walked in.

She held a carefully wrapped package and a white flower basket in which sat a scroll.

In the package was one of her great loves: a shoe. A sparkly stiletto pointy-ended porcelain shoe with a purpose. From its highest point rose a metal earring tree.

I have lost all my earrings. This is the perfect excuse to get some more. This was something that Maddie loves, for someone she loves, and it was beautiful to both of us.

Then I came to the scroll.

My daughter is a careful humourist. She spent the first six years of her life observing the jokes we make: outlandish castles in the air, full of story and caricature.

And then she began carefully to craft her own.

We find she is rather good at it. She regularly causes involuntary loud guffaws in the Shrewsday household, and her timing is impeccable. Now she is ten: soon she will outstrip us and begin to write her way into the fast lane.

The scroll I was handed had a picture of my ironing pile. I never iron, and it is a joke in immediate and extended family and friends alike.

It was sketched as a monster. It even had minions: small horned pairs of trousers and t-shirts. My daughter had styled me as a Jeanne D’Arc of the housework, slaying the laundry pile when it gets too unruly.

That daily chore, the packed lunches, is drawn into her narrative: they too are feisty sub-devils, putting up a fight.

But now, my daughter says, I am 44. None of this revolutionary behaviour on behalf of my previously inanimate household will be a problem: because I am even more experienced.

Clever girl. She has carefully analysed her mother’s motivation. She knows how much experience means.

The perfect beginning to my two-score-and-four years.

Life is an adventure. Each chapter, I know in my bones, is more daredevil than the last.

In a few minutes my husband will put his key in the door, and the clan, boy, girl, dog and cat,  will descend on him noisily. We will hand them all over to my patient mother in law and head off for a posh Ascot restaurant.

Bring it on.

30 thoughts on “Ten thousand years old”

  2. What a wonderful birthday. Wishing you rather late in the day a very happy day and may the year ahead be full on wonderful discoveries, treats of love and caring, and laughs that bring smiles when you remember them.

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  3. Bring it on indeed!

    And while you are out, any chance of the birthday baby sitter doing all your ironing? Now that WOULD be a surprise. 🙂

    Hippo Birdie to you. And it’s not long until the holidays. Mine break up tomorrow

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  4. Very Happy Birthday, Kate, and welcome to 44! Definitely more daredevil…give it horns, girl 😀

    I love Phil’s saying about “ten thousand years old”. Maddie is an undisputed master already – how magic to have her and the others spoil you twice over! I hope you’re soaking it all up and that your work stresses will swiftly be laid to rest. All the best for the best year ever, MWAH!

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    1. Thanks Naomi, lovely uplifting comments as always 🙂 I have only just begun to celebrate…I milk my birthdays for all they are worth! Lovely to hear from you. Hope all is going well on the novel front….

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  6. Happy Birthday, Kate. Hope it’s memory making, picture taking, birthday caking, and age faking (if you feel like shaving off a stray year or two).

    Have fun! Love Maddie’s Comic Scroll. 😀

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  7. Happy Birthday Kate.
    Hope you had a fantastic meal out with Phil to celebrate, and not long to go until those Easter holidays …
    On the subject of age, aren’t you getting a bit ahead of yourself? Two-score-and-four sounds better to me!
    Love, Miff x

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  8. I hope your birthday has been spectacular, Kate. It sounds like it began that way, and I hope it was full of many more surprises.

    I love your outlook on life. And I also want to say that it seems like your daughter is just as witty and smart as her mother. 😉

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    1. Than you Maura 🙂 The day was predictably grim, but the evening meal was lovely and for me, school holidays beginng at lunchtime today (Wednesday). So life will shortly be very nice indeed.

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  10. Hope you had a most wonderful day, Kate. Sorry it had to be spent working! I know someone who takes a day’s leave every year on his birthday… 😀

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  11. Big Al had me in hysterics and Maddie made me cry – a very happy belated birthday Kate, may the year ahead fulfill all your dreams 🙂 Perhaps as a gift a trip to the Cairo Museum when all the nonsense has died down, it will blow your mind :O

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  15. happy belated birthday kate! i know i’m way late but read this and hung on to this little bit…

    “…I have lost all my earrings. This is the perfect excuse to get some more. This was something that Maddie loves, for someone she loves, and it was beautiful to both of us.”

    something about those ear dangles – creates such a sentimental moment or maybe it’s the mother in me.
    the daughter in maddie. the vulnerability of getting older. it’s all so beautiful…

    i hope you are enjoying 44!

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