I'M GLAD I'M 40!

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 13, 9 October 1942, Page 7

I'M GLAD I'M 40!

OPINION OF AMERICAN HUGH TIDE OF THE YEARS I really am! I'm glad I'm forty. I've been Availing to be forty all my life, but I never knew it until now, says a writer in an American paper. When you're young you realise in a vague sort of way that you'll be forty some day, but you really don't believe it until ou stand there with both feet right on the brink—until all the gorgeous years of youth are gone and you can never touch them again, reach out as you will., With me, this moment brought a most unpleasant feeling at first, as though someone had hit me in the solar plexus. It was a sensation of terror such as a poor swimmer has when he discovers suddenly he's over his depth and grabs for a weed. At forty, most of us women grab for a faoial or a henna rinse., I dreaded the coming ol' my fortieth birthday. But it came anyway. And now I love it. New Phase of Life Sour grapes? i don't think so. One day il l'elt young and coltish. The next I was catapulted into a new phase of life. And I find that it's good and that, strangely, I don't feel old, as I'd feared I should. Only when I dash to the mirror sometimes to see what forty looks like, and. to see how much I have really changed from my high school graduate picture, with my hair in a Psyche knot atop my head and, my chin tucked coyly into a nest of white lace—only then do I pcrccive that. I no longer am a sweet girl graduate. Funny how I. hadn't noticed it! As I went by that milestone which seems so much more important than the thirty-ninth or the forty-first, I made these dashes to the mirror many times a day. Surely there were not so many wrinkles just last Avec'k! And oh, that frosty appearance of my hair! For a while I stood with middle aged l'eet planted on the hither bank of a Styx of which there was no recrossing, and looked longingly backward. Youth had been used up. I was in the junk-yard of life.

Then, the shock having passed, } I stopped regretting long enough to tot up the advantages that might be left, and I found them amazingly numerous. Forty, I discovered, is truly the middle, the high tide of the years. We have been building all these years, we who are forty. We have been masons, labouring upon the construction of a house that is. finished to-day. Now we may put it in order, its new, shining, peaceful order, unbroken by nursing babies' fretful wails, wet diapers and endless washings. Now we have debts, and subdebs., The small creature who but yesterday was steamed to the point of extinction with croup medicine administered via the family tea kettle, dosed with an inch of its protesting life. Looking at her, we realise forty is the great time to live.) Forty is Here Well, forty is here and we have learned the faith that, moves mountains. We have the faith that i4suffereth long and is kind." Faith has sustained us all these years and kept us from becoming bitter. Now we . can reap the harvest of those years. Now we can write or sing or paint. Now, if we decide to go shopping, we shop. We can become '"a joiner"—if such is our inclination — and attend conventions, b} r the dozen. We can revel in the unleashing of our long-checked hopes and am-

bit ions. Understanding and Wisdom We have done our duty. We have come to the accomplishing years. Behind is the struggle which tested our strength and increased it mightily, which purged us of selfishness and gave us tolerance and understanding and wisdom. Now is the vigour of full maturity. Ahead is a rich and far-reaching vista fading into a purple haze of beauty. *5o step serenely across the narrow bridge to the forties —the iifties -—the sixties. Cut your hair if you are a woman and. have no:: had the courage to do it" before; get a red hat. If you're a man, buy a loud tie or a dazzling, sports jacket. Forty will not let yyu down if your chin >s up. Forty and onward is the chance life gives you. Yes. I'm g!ad I'm there.