A noble and bold wish to look at life from both sides of the kitchen table
In a pub in Dingle — I already approve of this opening — I meet a woman from Cork who’s at the tail end of a year long celebration of her 60th birthday. She decided, she tells me, that this was a sufficient milestone to mark it by making all manner of little new ones for herself. So for the past 12 months, she’s been doing stuff she’s never done before.
I can already guess what one of those bold gestures was, as I indicate the tiny diamond stud in her nose — and sure enough, that was one of the first new things. I ask her about the others: some are too personal to share with this nosy parker she’s just met in a pub, she tells me (rightly), but here are a couple of the other ones I remember (I refer you back to the ‘pub’ part of my opening sentence.)
There was a bit of travel. She may have gone fishing (alternatively, because I am in Dingle, I may have gone fishing in a dream and everything got a bit mangled up in my memory). She and her husband swapped sides of the bed for a couple of nights. One day, she sat on the other side of her kitchen table. The day after we met, she was planning on checking off the last item on her list: going to a drive-through McDonald’s. Then we all toasted her birthday by drinking baby Guinness and that would have been that.
Except that because we are at Other Voices and I’m sharing a house with six other people (one of whom has just turned 60), we end up spending quite a bit of time on the Sixtieth Birthday Bucket List idea. The Boy, The Youngest and their respective other halves are all in their 20s so 60 seems several lifetimes — and quite possibly a few dimensions — away. They basically want to walk in space but in the internet class of thing and nobody, not even they, are particularly excited about that.
But The Man, The Sister and I are closer to the zone — even if one of us would have to fire through his list retrospectively — which might be why we’re more affected by this lovely Cork woman’s journey of discovery. What I love about her list is that there’s no swimming with dolphins or skydiving into the Grand Canyon in there — rather, it’s a modest list of small things that somehow have never been ticked off.
If I’m honest, I’m a bit disappointed that such an inspiring initiative ends with a drivethrough McDonald’s and some disaffected youth shouting ‘do you want fries with that’ down a tinny loudspeaker in a car park in Tralee — so that won’t be going on my own list (also, tragically, I think I’ve already done it), but I would definitely consider the nose stud. I’d also like to sit on a horse, I decide, because I’ve never done that and sometimes I have a habit of thinking that not having done something is cooler than having done it which in reality is rarely the case. By a happy coincidence, The Boy’s Girlfriend is an accomplished horsewoman and she immediately volunteers her horse for the task, even though The Boy advises against it because I’m too fat and in that moment I consider adding late adoption to my to do list. I’ve wanted to swim in the Atlantic in the winter for years and to this end, my swimsuit is in my bag, just as it always is for Other Voices. The sun beats down on Béal Bán beach even if we can’t feel the tips of our fingers and conditions are perfect — but once again, we wuss out, and maybe I really do need a roundy birthday to turn aspirations to accomplishments.
The key is to follow the Cork woman’s lead and start small. Our favourite new thing on her list, we all agree, is sitting on the other side of her kitchen table. There is just something about that — a different view, a new perspective, a refusal to settle into a rut or a routine — that captures all our imaginations. And I know that most of us could sit on the other side of our tables any time we want, but there is something wonderful and deliberate about choosing to do it around a big birthday. Joni Mitchell looked at clouds from both sides now but to be fair, she’s loaded. Looking at your own kitchen from both sides somehow seems a nobler, a bolder aspiration. And it won’t give you hypothermia or break your collar bone. I’m already looking forward to it.