How does it happen, though? One day you are that foolish child wearing too much make-up in Biology with a secret crush on your English teacher, and the next? The next, a 50-something year old woman telling her children, or someone else’s children, ‘I used to be just like you.’

And I know I have mentioned it before, but this is one of the reasons I was so moved by the series of portraiture, ‘Reflections,’ by the photographer, Tom Hussy. The feeling of still being that young person inside belied by the bemused older person looking back at you from the mirror mirror on the wall.

But you know, it occurred to me whilst watching another tedious lie on TV about anti-ageing, that I don’t actually wish to return to my youth. I don’t look at my gorgeous daughters and feel twinges of envy that I am no longer them, or flirt with their boyfriends to test out an ageing allure.

Is that why those early morning adverts promising to reverse time irritates me so? The subtext that everyone wants that promise in a jar of returning to the best part of their life. That best part of course being youth. That to look our best is necessarily to look something other than our age?

So, like I said, I was thinking about it, to the concusion that I like being the age I am and will be in the future – God willing. I like being a grown-up with adult powers, and do not feel I have accepted my age because there is no longer a realistic shot at youth.

To hell with that sour grapes thinking.

And I would spend money with the first cosmetics advertiser peddling a good moisturising cream alongside the banner ad:

‘Sod youthful promises – because you’re worth it.’

Hurrah!

Melinda

Photo credit: Tom Hussey

About Melinda Fargo

A monthly columnist for the UK’s largest regional newspaper, The Eastern Daily Press, Melinda Fargo is a children’s services professional, public speaker, writer and latterly blogger since the death of her beloved husband, Bronson Hart Fargo Jr, in 2010. Melinda blogs at HerMelness Speaks…Out, That Great Moment When…, and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post 40 Bloggers.