The big four-O

I turned 40 this week. 

The big four-O, or as I have been thinking of it, the big four-oh-my-goodness-I-can't-really-be-this-old!  "Age is just a number", people say, and of course that's true.  But this particular number is one that I have come to hate.  I cannot currently say it out loud.  Could I just stick at 39 for a few more years?

Why is this particular birthday so painful?  If life was okay at 39, why should 40 be so different?  And why do I find it so difficult to accept, when so many of my friends are embracing it and simply using it as a good excuse for a party?  Whilst I've been trying to avoid thinking about it at all, I think I know the answer.

There's something about the age of 40 which seems like a marker in a woman's life.  For many years, it was seen as the age after which women could no longer have children.  The end of the fertile years, and thus the beginning of the decline into old age and decrepitude.  The time when a woman is no longer biologically useful.  As a single woman with no children, this makes me very sad.  Not because I necessarily want to have children, but because I'm not ready to accept that the choice is no longer my own. 

I always pictured Father Time as a kindly old chap, with a long, white beard and a twinkle in his eye.  I think I probably imagined him as some kind of cousin of Father Christmas.  Now I'm beginning to wonder if he's really one of the goodies - perhaps the fact that he carries a scythe should have been a clue to his purpose!  Where his Lapland-dwelling relative arrives each year with gifts, Father Time seems to be more a taker than a giver (if you don't count the very generous sprinkling of grey hairs that he's given me over recent years!).

But as I write this, I am wondering if perhaps this bearded fellow is more generous than I give him credit for.  Perhaps this landmark birthday is actually a reminder that life is there to be lived, and that that I should be extracting the maximum I can from it.

And on that positive note, I shall extract the maximum possible enjoyment from the salted caramel chocolate brownie that came my way this morning.  I think that might just help take a little bit of the fortieth birthday pain away.