Do you ever sense you are in-between something? In limbo? Don’t belong anywhere obvious? That you are waiting for something to happen either good or bad, but you can’t quite put your finger on it? I feel I have left something unfinished, as if I’ve put a half-drunk cup of tea and semi-nibbled biscuit down somewhere, and I just can’t find them, but can’t settle until I do.
I think I can probably blame 2020 for some of this sense of uncertainty and this feeling of unbelonging, but I also believe that, as a woman in the prime of her life – ahem – I am neither one thing nor another, a woman in her fifties doesn’t fit into any niche. I walked with a dear friend last Sunday morning and she called us the Sandwich Generation, which is spot on. We are fillers, squeezed in-between two generations – our parents we have started to parent, and the off-spring who haven’t quite effed off.
Spring-chick I am not, but I still like to wear nail varnish, dye my hair and wear clothes probably a little younger than my age suggests. But I am a far cry from blue rinses and perms, and I don’t own a pair of slacks. I try and join in with conversations about YouTubers and X-Boxers with my sons - but am often cut short quickly if I look too keen; yet I am not ready for re-runs of Gardener’s Question Time on Radio 4 or a daily dose of dozing in front of afternoon TV. I don’t tick the Groovy Grandma box as my sons are just a bit too young to reproduce, nor am I a trendy Yummy-Mummy whizzing around with a cute bouncing baby in a sling, applying lip-gloss, zipping up boots and breast feeding on the go. I am an In-Betweener - and not even funny like the TV show. Rather, I am glossed over like an old magazine, useful only for taking the dog out and cleaning up after her. Oh, and becoming Mum’s Taxi. I’m basically blending into the stereotype I didn’t want to become. I am in limbo. Too old and too young at the same time. I feel as if I am waiting for the next instalment but can’t quite get there as I haven’t finished with Series 1.
There is a certainly a sense of inconclusiveness about life at the moment. 2020 started with an optimistic bang, a punchy spiky looking year; a year where personal goals were going to finally be achieved. Then it just fizzled out. As the year has worn on, we got used to being disappointed, quickly adapting to cancellation after cancellation, accepting each setback with a shrug. 2020 – the year of unfinished projects and incomplete tasks. I feel I am just waiting for the year to end, naively believing that 2021 will let us move forward, shaking our ennui, enabling us to finish what we set off to do at the end of 2019. Would I be feeling like this anyway, regardless of the global pandemic?! Would I personally have felt any sense of real achievement if my son had taken his exams and celebrated end of school with a prom, as was the grand plan? Or if we had managed to get away for our 20th wedding anniversary? Do these things even matter in the grand scale of things? It still doesn’t take away from the fact that I feel have missed a big something and can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.
Is this feeling of unfinished business purely my age though – or are we all feeling like we are waiting for something to happen? As a country here in the UK we are all on the edge of our seats waiting for a possible second Lockdown, as one by one our major cities have restrictions and curfews enforced. The fact we cannot plan anything in advance is making us all feel uneasy about our immediate future. Even Christmas – the one twinkly time of year that makes the cold Winter months bearable – the one light we all want to hold onto, is being threatened. No-one knows how the next few weeks are going to pan out, so we are just going to have to wait and see; poised ready for disappointment. More waiting, more uncertainty. Covid-19 rules are imposed, then changed again, so we have no idea from one week to the next what we can or cannot do. Social lives up the spout, arrangements often scuppered at the last minute - so on the whole we just do nothing – better to stick to a Saturday night Zoom from the comfort of your sitting room in your PJs, than to get all dressed up if you have nowhere to go.
We are becoming a nation of reluctant souls, afraid to book weekends away, wary of future travel, doubting if normal is going to happen any time soon. 2020 won’t budge – so we wait. We feel incomplete, feel cheated of a year. And while we wait, wasting yet more precious time, we feel stuck in the middle. We are neither pre-nor-post Covid. We are in limbo.
© The Real Tilly Fairfax
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