The Great Outdoors

Until I was 10 years old my family vacation involved a yellow box on top of a yellow station wagon, four kids in the back seat and two weeks at a campsite. I can't imagine how my mother did it but the memory of her boiling water over a campfire to wash yet another pile of dishes has stayed with me. I have never had any desire to camp since. There is something ridiculous about leaving the comforts that thousands of years of evolution have delivered to use an outhouse, wait an hour for a cup of tea, and sleep in a nylon tent on the ground. All the campers out there would say 'I just don't get it'- they are correct.

Family life requires many sacrifices and the one I made most recently was to embark on a family camping vacation. O.k. it was car camping, and yes we had air mattresses, and the provincial park had of all things, flush toilets. But it was still camping.

There are some things I like about camping: The accoutrements, for example, appeal to me. (Particularly the stainless tumbler for the g&t.) The muskiness of campfire smoke and, of course, the toast. Campfire toast is second to none. I relished in the time to read and try my hand at watercolours. But the rest, come on.

Then there's Jill Frayne (I think daughter of June Callwood) who had her mid-life crisis in a tent in northern B.C. and wrote about it in , 'Starting Out in the Afternoon, a mid-life journey into wild land'. She left behind a teenage daughter and long-time partner to canoe through the backwoods with a guide and live for three weeks without so much as toilet paper. She continued on her one, sunburnt and lonely at times, shacking up with a younger man who had seen better days just to break the monotony, and learned to love the ritual of setting up a meager camp and hunkering down beside a small fire in the middle of nowhere. Nice to read - non-inspirational.

Although many things change in l'age, I remain a city girl.

Is it worth living lighter to live longer?

I read an unconvincing book called "Princessa" by Harriet Rubin. Unconvincing in the sense that I'm somewhat persuaded but not thoroughly convinced by her argument that women should not attempt to play "a man's game" because we'll inevitably lose. Instead, she advises, harness the power of our feminine strengths (and wiles) and remain steely eyed. In my view, it is nearby impossible to come up with a winning strategy in what remains a male paradigm, but any advice should help. The career advice isn't what stayed with me.

I was more gobsmacked by the comment that women live longer because they live less intensely. What a damning fate! The truth in that statement is patently unjust and irritates me like a sliver. It's no secret that up until the last 20 years women's use of the healthcare system has been more frequent and for less serious health issues than men. Men save up their usage for middle-aged whoppers like heart attack, stroke or cancer. Men continue to live shorter lives, falling fast and hard when they retire.

L'age moyen delivers a thundering crash to the physical durability men have always assumed. After 40 the aches and pains turn to chronic shoulder and knee problems. They get vicious colds or worse pneumonia. They drink cranberry juice (urinary tract problems?) and stick to one cup of coffee per day. They are gradually becoming careful, conscious of their mortality and how the stats stack up against them. We can joke that once they're over 40 we should turn them in for a younger model but we'd probably still outlive this version. Here again men have the advantage with the trophy wife scenario. Having skipped the painful rise to affluence those broads will live even longer!

With women working full on in the last 20 years, on top of maintaining most of the household management duties, there has been a corresponding rise in heart disease and other serious illnesses among women. Still, we continue to live longer and, among my mother's generation anyway, spend a good chunk of time caring for ailing husbands alone and often unsupported, mirroring their younger lives at home with children.

I had a conversation with two men, one with youngish children. They were in agreement that bike helmets negatively affected the pleasure found in cycling and so neither were in favour of this safety practice. The women, on the other hand, thought less of their own pleasure and more of the responsibility they had towards their children, ageing parents etc. Their role as caretakers superceded the pleasure principle. Is gender or personality at work here?

The question for women in l'age moyen is, should we live harder and more fully now at the risk of dying younger? In short, take off the safety equipment in all its forms. Does it speak volumes that I use the word 'risk' in this context at all?

Is it inevitable that we will book-end our lives with caretaking instead of living for ourselves?

A Middle-Aged Affair

It's always reassuring when an author you love is rediscovered. In fact, by the time you've reached l'age moyen that favourite author may be in for their 2nd rediscovery. In my case this author is Elizabeth Bowen.

The wonderful literary biographer, Victoria Glendinning has just written a book chronicling the 30 year love affair between Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie. Ritchie was a Canadian diplomat posted in London during the Second World War. It was through Charles Ritchie that I first discovered Elizabeth Bowen over 20 years ago. The route to Ritchie began by reading Cecil Beaton's diaries, the noted British illustrator and photographer who began his career in the '20s. Charles Ritchie moved in the same circles. Maybe he captured my interest because he was Canadian, debonair, a great conversationalist,(let's face it, Canadians aren't usually recognized as dazzling society folks) who knows, anyway I quite pleasantly made my way through Charles Ritchie's diaries. He wrote about Elizabeth Bowen with such admiration that I had to investigate further. So, I went to the bookstore and found her paperbacks - sad looking things they were - printed on the cheapest, roughest newsprint and featuring the most trite romance novel-type covers. Happily, the writing was so beautiful and the stories so interesting and quirky that I didn't let the covers deter me from working my way through all the books. Suddenly, she was rediscovered and Penguin reprinted her books with the usual Penguin panache. The BBC gave a couple of her novels the Masterpiece Theatre spin. She assumed her place as a first-class fiction writer. Of course, I felt quite smug for having been loyal to her at her low point.

What has this to do with l'age moyen? One of her best novels is The Heat of the Day which is set in London during the Blitz. It is considered to be a realistic depiction of the experience of being in London during these years. For those of us interested in all things l'age moyen, it portrays the love story between two middle-aged characters, Stella and Robert. The relationship hasn't a trace of naivete about it, and communicates the depth and conviction to ideals, both good and bad, that make l'age moyen so interesting. As a book to reread, its tone and complexity resonates even more deeply now that I'm in l'age moyen.

Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day
Victoria Glendinning, Love's Civil War, Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries 1941-1973.