Getting older is about more than hanging on to your long-held and self-centred regrets
It is my birthday today. I am one year short of double the age at which I hoped to be dead had I not achieved my dreams. The rather dramatic folly — and self-centredness — of youth. The casual disregard for the wonders of life. Of life and living.
My dreams remain unfulfilled but I have compensations to die for. I have friends and family. I have a family of my own, miracle of miracles. And I have health. Wealth, not so much.
I have just returned from an evening in London. Although my son is travelling in Europe at the moment, I was able to spend time over dinner with the three beautiful women in my life; my wife and two daughters. Gifts and laughter. My son even sent a message from Budapest.
One of the gifts from my daughters was a pair of slippers. Just a little reminder of how far past that age of projected death I have come. I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
I don’t actually. It’s not a good look on the jeans I wear.
I’m surprised Eliot’s Prufrock doesn’t mention slippers. Perhaps we’ll discover among some misplaced papers in the future Eliot’s great missing lines from Prufrock about slippers and ageing:
I flee the rushing wings of time, that beat / Behind me as I seek the solace of slippers on my feet.
We left our daughters in London. They walked off, arm in arm, towards Green Park tube station. Beautiful and all grown up. Laura and I just watched them go, proud and sad at the same time.
I grow old, I grow old, but I am surrounded by love. I have regrets but no longer any about surviving long enough to have moments like this evening.
