Sometimes I wonder what I might have been – you know – like Marlon Brando on the Waterfront: “I coulda had class, I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody instead of a bum.”
But let’s not go for a dip in the pool of despondency. Like Frank sang, I did it my way and I’ve been well loved all my life.
“Didn’t you marry a lovely man?” says my mother.
Indeed I did – even when I broke the toilet at 5am the other morning and it groaned wildly like a mad woman in the attic. So that he had to get up and struggle with the water supply and the pipes and the taps. He was rather saintly, considering.
There was a minor difference of opinion accompanied by shrill early morning hissing – we didn’t want to waken our fella.
The hissing went: “You flushed the toilet.”
“I did not flush the toilet.”
“Oh, but you did, that’s why it is making that noise.”
It reminded me of Bill Clinton not having sex with that woman.
I’m waiting for my mother to add that I married a lovely man because I’m a lovely woman myself, but she doesn’t like to swell my head.
Those Marlon Brando “what might have beens” are common to those of us of a certain vintage.
The careers office in our school was hardly bigger than a broom cupboard beside the senior cloakroom.
There was really just law or medicine. One of my best friends did one, the other did the other. I envy their pensions.
My passion was for French, English Literature and the idea of floating about Dublin in a hippy skirt, reeking of patchouli and spending my grant in the local Mirror Mirror and the Buttery Bar.
After I’d flown my kite for four glorious years and had not a clue what to do next, the careers officer suggested I complete a strange psychological survey to determine a future career.
It came out with the recommendation that I turn to religious ministry. God bless us, I’m not over it yet.
And now I wake up at night and think of the “what might have beens” and how come life has run by so quickly.
Remember the days when the cars had little indicator handles that flipped out at the side of the front doors? Yes, really. Remember when the TV had Andy Pandy and Tales from the Riverbank with a real rat; when there were only a couple of channels but we all watched Morecambe and Wise and remember when it all finished at 12 midnight and the screen shrivelled to a little dot?
Maybe I’m hearing time’s winged chariots at my back because my own siblings are starting to retire. My sister has hung up her work suits and is enjoying a well-earned break. The best card she got read “Goodbye tension; hello pension”.
But she’s taking up mentoring younger people because that is what she loves. She will read all those books that she never had time for and she’s learning Spanish too.
I’m not retiring yet. (See note about envying pension above). But it’s starting to feel that life has whipped past at 100mph and it was only yesterday that I was trending gold headbands with fake flowers in my hair and we were all doing our O-levels.
Clearing out the attic the other day – don’t ask – I happened upon my old French O-level paper – it had a comprehension, a prose to translate from English to French and an essay to write.
The day came flooding back – the exam hall, the soft silence, the sunlight streaming through the windows. I remember coming out of the exam and comparing notes with classmates. At one point in the comprehension, reference was made to “un grand blond” – a tall blond-haired man.
“What was that about the big blonde?” said one of my friends. He was clearly thinking of Bet Lynch in the Rover’s Return. I’m not over laughing yet.
Back then, life was spread out in front of us, a yellow brick road. There were plenty of adventures ahead.
Now I do not like to look back... to see the snuffed-out candles of the glory years. In my head is the insistent whisper that the time to do all those things you ever wanted to do is now.
Never sky diving – but fresh adventures. Maybe I’ll retrain as a plumber, I owe it to our downstairs toilet.
