One day, lost in thought, I played with a tiny pimple that had set camp under my left chin. Horror of horrors, there was a strand of hair curled so that only I could feel it.
I shaved it off faster than you can say unwanted. Three months later, it was back. Shave. It came back. It has been more than a year. We are now friends. We both respect the routine. She shows up, and like a muse, I play a little with her as I think, then in the evening, I shave.
The other day, I did a cartwheel, to show off my kids how ‘in it’ their mother was. I swear, something moved, some organ in my belly, another in my thighs, and I had to sit for a whole fifteen minutes to allow everything to settle back in its place. If I were in my thirties, these changes would have distressed me to no end.
A stubborn fold at the once svelte back would have meant the end of bare-back dresses. After I worked to shed off two kilograms, the suspicious loose neck skin taught me more about toning up than losing weight. Today, as I look forward to the oncoming golden age, I eat hearty meals, laugh out loud, and completely block out toxic people. If they have not invested in their healing, they must not be allowed to attempt or even think of dumping their bile on me. I cried buckets as I healed the girl in the mirror.
*Joseph Kanja asked me why women in their fifties turn ‘difficult.’ His wife, twenty-five years after marriage is now a ‘defiant, non-submissive woman that he moulded.’ His words, not mine.
Joseph, one of the reasons I am so looking forward to the fifties is because it is the age of calmness. Like the sea in the morning, we forget the storms of the thirties and forties, when life is all about being a ‘good girl – what will -society- think’ kind of a woman.
We break our backs trying to be the best wives, or at least, what we were taught about being a good doting wife, committed mother, and respectable woman in the community. We figure – ala – life is meant for living, thriving, and growing. We dump the rules and focus on being the best versions of ourselves. Scale Mount Kenya? Why not? Take a road trip to Isiolo with my sisters? Bring it on. Wear shorts on a hot day, or any day as the hot flashes do their thing? Amen to that. What’s a stretch mark? We gave enough mental bandwidth to those insecurities and now, we embrace these bodies.
In her fifties, whether you let her or not, a girl enjoys her home-grown curves in peace. After pushing out or getting cut open through one of the major surgical operations, nurturing tiny humans into a whole legion of GenZ revolutionaries, and navigating the oft-complex marital relationship, a woman in her fifties will be difficult to reign in as you did when she was a fresh-faced thirty-year-old people pleaser.
Like the sea, a woman in her fifties is calm, but do not push her red buttons. She has depths that will drown you. She has the power to build up a storm, nay, a tornado, and dump you like the discarded plastic choking our water bodies. We have seen them leave and join their children in the diaspora as the equally aging husband is left trying to figure out which sufuria makes what meal in the kitchen.
Husbands, invest in the wife of your youth now. Invest your love, emotional connection, passion, and above all, friendship before she turns fifty. Marvel at her changed body. She has carried humans in her. She can explain her pot belly. What about you? I am not hating, just wondering, if you did not stretch your tummy growing a whole human person in you, why do you get a tummy bigger than hers? Why would you run after a younger version of her when you are not exactly eye candy to these younger ones?
Grow old together, gracefully, without making a fool of your old selves with such labels as Mubabas and Mumamas. Leave the younger ones to themselves. These guys will make a roast of us, saving our contacts as Wallet, Mobile Money, and such unsavoury names. Go figure.
