Recently, in conversations with close girl friends we have realised that our discussions have shifted. The most part of our girl talks centre around the changes in our bodies and that of our partners, the impact of those changes on our lives and the health implications. We are surprised, yes, surprised, that getting old just creeps up on you and is a very personal, often unwelcome and sometimes indescribable experience. We are aged between 48 and 58 years old, are a bunch of informed, educated, well read, travelled and cultured girls.
Do not get me wrong, we have never been this self centred and self preservation focused before. We have been there, done that and burnt the t-shirt. We still work harder and smarter and most of us within our collective are business owners. Amongst us a few have done our version of national service - development work, in country and abroad and some continue to do that. We are also very focussed on charity work, because there is a need out there, but most importantly because we derive a lot of joy from giving. Be that as it may, increasingly, we have realised that we have been gravitating more and more into the me-myself-and I-and my girlfriends space.
Some of our mothers are still alive and we were wondering why they never suffered the same ailments that are bedevilling us, never had the operations we have had from hysterectomies, liposuctions to gastric by-passes, never had to tattoo their eye lashes, never taken Prozac, never seen a shrink or even had Botox injections for non- surgical face lifts, yet they look wonderfully young in their 70's and 80's.
We have been asking, how come we did not know that age just creeps up on you like that and in a non- negotiable, very undemocratic fashion, arrests some of your most valued freedoms - like having a tiny waistline and flat stomach and not have to worry about wearing those dreadfully awful spandex tights, we have come to call bambazonke (hold every thing in and tight) - that you have always taken for granted, locks them up and literary throws away the keys.
So two of us with mothers alive, asked, why they never told us these very important ingredients of life so that we could have been better prepared. The mothers both said, they were raised in an era where, privacy was guarded at all costs and most importantly, you were meant to suffer in silence, in fact, there was pride and dignity enshrined in silent suffering. Certainly, a tall order for our girl friend collective.
Privacy, never mind its cousin silence are little known words in the days of our times. Living in a world supposedly signalling the end of privacy and confidentiality and giving rise to a new era of full disclosure, my girlfriends and I are surprised that even with the confines of a nuclear family, when we dare share the details of the body pain, itches or twitches we are experiencing, even our young adult children, with a high propensity for sharing on Facebook, twitter, google, Instagram and you tube, would complain, "Mom, you are sharing way too much information!" It turns out, that even the generation that puts much more of the "social" in social networking is much more discerning what personal information they want to hear...particularly if it is from their mothers.
Where does that leave us, we wondered. The obvious answer is, in the same situation, the same box as those who came before us, our mothers. But, perhaps our mothers bore the silence because their generation whilst ageing at the same pace as us were healthier and better prepared to remain silent.
We resolved that we were not going to be silenced. We were going to be heard, come rain or sunshine. We were not going suffer and die in silence. For us, the dignity and pride our mothers found in that, is elusive.
