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The Ballad of Lucy Jordan

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WE had a rather uneventful weekend, after quite a hectic start to the year 2014, we decided to just have a quiet one at home and it was lovely!  So yesterday I literally popped out to the shops for all of half an hour, sure thing, Barney Simon plays his long lost classics on Jacaranda FM and I get all teary when that Marianne Faithfull classic, the Ballad of Lucy Jordan starts playing. This in a week where Sheryl Crow turned 50 and Jennifer Aniston turned 45…


You see, I have a rather significant birthday coming up, yes, I am turning 37 in less than two weeks, and all of a sudden I wonder when I got to be so old…
and as the poor Lucy Jordan, I too realised I have not driven through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair (Lucy Jordan also wants to ride, I want to drive, what a difference from the late seventies to the now).  And that really got me thinking, when we are in our twenties, we seem to believe with one hundred percent conviction that we are bullet proof and that we will take over the world.  The sky is the proverbial limit and we will have kids and jobs and husbands and weekends in Paris driving around in sports cars. 


What nobody tells us is that the Rand Dollar or Rand Euro exchange rate will be forever against us, and that the cost of keeping two fairly small kids in a good school will far outweigh the cost of plane tickets to Paris.  They do not tell us that Paris smells of pee and that you would rather keep the top up when driving through those streets, if you are lucky enough to actually drive and not be pushed off the road by rude Parisian drivers.  

They forget to mention the fact that whilst Lucy Jordan dreams of a thousand lovers, the average mother is so tired at the end of the work day that she dreams of sleep, uninterrupted sleep.  The average mother with kids under the age of five would rather take a vow of chastity rather than ever fall pregnant again, a thousand lovers my ass.  They never mention that you have to literally get in the cupboard after work, just for ten minutes of peace and quiet before the brood starts their daily ritual of killing one another. 


So before I started to over-identify with Lucy Jordan, I realised that she had options, she could clean the house, or re-arrange the flowers, indicating that her kids were big, no flower arrangement lasts long in my house and cleaning gets done by Sekai.  I can hardly call my mini cooper cabriolet a sports car, but the top can come off and I often feel the warm wind in my hair.  I have been to Paris, yes, Paris France and in all honesty, I prefer the small town of Parys in the Free State to the version smelling like pee.  In Paris France’s defence, I was heavily pregnant when I went there the second time around and nothing smelled like roses, I had also recently given up smoking, so all the French people wearing black sucking on their gauloise just irritated me.


I think Lucie Jordan suffered from premature expectations, Gerhard and I have a plan, work hard, retire early,  I will still ride in a sports car through the streets of Paris / Parys with the warm wind in my hair, kids all grown up, or on the farm with grandparents.  And if Sheryl Crow can rock at 50 and Jennifer Aniston can be gorgeous at 45, it just means that I am not ready for retirement and the streets of Paris just yet. 


At the age of 36.9, Niki van Wyk realised that life only starts at around 37 :) 



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