Charlotte Bauer - How to Get Over Being Young: A Rough Guide to Midlife

Charlotte Bauer is a prize-winning journalist and Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. UK-born, she and her family moved to South Africa in the 1970s. She lives between Johannesburg and south-west France.

Published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2021 by
Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Charlotte Bauer, 2021

The moral right of Charlotte Bauer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Excerpt on page 59: Germaine Greer, 2018, The Change: Women,
Ageing and the Menopause, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 83895 197 9
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 83895 198 6
E-book ISBN: 978 1 83895 199 3

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
2627 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

For Clive Cope, who never let go of my hand.

In ever loving memory of Vicki Wright, my country gal.

November 28 1952 May 7 2019

The bulk of this book was written BC Before Covid.

Reading through the final draft a year after the pandemic flipped our world upside down, I could see how certain themes might now appear utterly beside the point. How could I care about what was happening to my face in the shadow of far graver events? Never mind my flailing hormones and flagging influence, my quest to find the meaning of life after youth, unrealised dreams and restless ambitions, and hovering fears about how Id handle being really old ancient old. Growing old suddenly seemed a priceless gift, one that not all of us would get. Would my loved ones survive? Would I ever get to hug my mother again? In less noble but no less anxious moments Id wonder whether Id ever see my hairdresser again.

Yet even as priorities shifted with the ground beneath our feet and choices Id assumed were mine to make fell away, I knew that the questions I set out to explore in this book remained real and legitimate: life goes on, relationships go on, changes to our hearts and minds and bodies do not come to a grinding halt, regardless of earthshattering events beyond our control. It stands to human nature, if not to reason, that we will carry on arguing and laughing and loving and renewing our vows to mad diets and age-defying elixirs as our big fat funny scary odyssey through the unchartered territory of midlife continues.

One day at a time, by any means necessary.

JOAN RIVERS

There is only one question to be answered in this room, said the couples counsellor. Do you want this marriage or not?

Wed heard he was a fast worker.

Either way, he continued, I can help.

The counsellors consulting room was in a tree-houselike extension at the bottom of his garden. It perched on top of a steep and perilous flight of steps, and I wondered if theyd been made that way on purpose.

Now that he had our full attention, the counsellor said we were going to start off with a quiz. This sounded more fun.

Ready? Here goes. When you attend a social function do you:

a. stick together;

b. split up and do your own thing?

Split up and do our own thing! we shouted in unison.

OK, said the counsellor, if there was a buffet at this function would you:

a. help yourselves;

b. find your partner and offer to fetch them a plate of food?

Help ourselves!

This was almost disappointingly easy.

Right, said the counsellor, last question. If one of you wanted to leave the function early and the other one wanted to stay, would you:

a. agree on a time and leave together;

b. tell the one who wanted to leave to call a cab?

Our hands shot up. B!

Husband and I looked at each other and grinned. It had been a while since wed agreed on anything much, let alone three things in a row.

The counsellor took off his glasses and pinched his eyes. Youre both what wed call Selfish A-Types. Now, lets talk about why youre here, shall we?

A less entertaining hour-and-a-half later, we gingerly descended the steep and perilous steps.

Be careful going down, the counsellor called after us. Theyre slippery after the rain.

As we got into our separate cars to go back to work, Husband said, I always knew you were a Selfish A-Type.

Wed made it out of the tree-house, but we werent out of the woods.

*

Around the time I turned fifty, I got the feeling the universe was trying to tell me something: certain changes Id started to notice with mild concern seemed to be taking on a life of their own.

Being the oldest person in meetings told me so, the way my grown-up children bossed me around told me so, my moods told everybody.

Relationships that had been good suddenly soured and my once rock-solid marriage seemed to be cracking faster than my face.

I was hot, but not in the way I used to be: the only men who looked at me that way any more had hair coming out of their ears or were young enough to be dismissed as perverts.

At first these changes were subtle, erratic and wily enough to make me shake my head and think Id imagined them. It was like being in a scene in one of those crime thrillers where the woman comes home late at night, alone, and notices the bedroom window she locked that morning is open and the curtain is gently swaying except there is no breeze. Every tingling bone in her body is telling her to grab the nearest heavy object and get the hell out of there. But when, a moment later, the cat jumps out from behind the curtain, she chides herself for being silly and takes off her make-up instead. We know something bad is about to happen, but despite all the alarm bells going off, she cant seem to see it coming.

I didnt see middle age coming. Who does? The indignation! The outrage! The disbelief. It began with a series of little jolts and surface wounds, before it got into its stride. The big jolt came when I realised, not so much that I wasnt young any more, but that as far as the rest of the world was concerned, I was old. I had to face facts: youth was a passing phase and Id passed it.

On a scale of One to Dead, Id reached the tipping point. There must be things I could do to stop it. It was time for action.

I made an appointment to see Dr Z, to check if I had any hormones left.

Dr Z was French and had a sense of humour that had won him fans and ex-patients alike. Hed told a friend (honestly, a