March 3, 2013 | Age

Eighteen. It’s my second time visiting the bright lights of Wellington. Mum and I are visiting her new boyfriend, Guy. Guy is the first boyfriend she has ever had that I have thought was adequately suited for her. We’re visiting his house, a nice old villa like none I have been inside before. It seems fancy. We’re getting ready to go out, and my heart is beginning to race. I’ve only ever been ‘out’ in sleepy New Plymouth, which has about seven bars and one club. I’ve heard all the stories about Wellington nightlife, and I simply can’t believe that I’m going to be a part of it. I slip on a tight dress that shows off my summer legs. I’ve heard you have to dress ‘nice’ to get into clubs here, but I’ve also heard that if you’re a girl and show enough skin, it doesn’t matter. Whatever, I do look ‘nice’. I team the purple and blue flowers of the dress with some little black flats – ‘I’ve got to be able to dance,’ I think excitedly.

The drink selection is overwhelming at the first bar we go to. Guy tells me to choose anything I want. I'm baffled. I have no idea what to choose, so just get what mum gets. $15 for a cocktail? That’s ridiculous! How can prices differ that much between cities like that? I hope Guy is okay with that, although I guess he must be used to it. Looking out into the street, music blares from the clubs, smoke pouring out and lights dancing. The night is young. It’s another world, and I can’t wait to explore it. I’m eighteen and finally an adult, out on the town. Here I come!

***

James and I went out last night. It was my first night ‘out on the town’ in Wellington since I was eighteen, and a stark indication of the growth that I’ve been through since last being in the country.

“Isn’t the breeze cold, you should put some clothes on!” a voice says in my head as we wander past crowds of girls wearing dresses smaller than the one I wore over three years ago. I laugh uncomfortably to myself, wondering at how boring I have become. But no matter how I scoff at it, the voice won’t be quieted. I hold in my breath and squeeze James’ hand as we walk through another hoard of them squealing in pitches that transported us to a kindergarten playground. As a high-school aged girl stumbles past almost vomiting, the aged prude in my mind couldn’t help but frown inwardly. Who have I become?

The entire time I was in the US, I thought the 21-year drinking age was ludicrous, and made it known. I would tell people that a younger age limit teaches people to drink responsibly, and would be amazed to see 21 and 22 year-olds being excited about drinking to the point of endangering themselves. “That wouldn’t happen back home,” I ranted. Nowadays, Wellington has changed my mind. I do think that people should be able to drink at 18, even earlier, but binge drinking needs be discouraged and can be. James and I were talking about the options as we drove in to go to dinner before the concert. Perhaps if 18 to 20 year olds were only allowed to buy drinks at bars, it would fix some of the binge drinking problems here - at least they would be in a supervised place and couldn't purchase packaged drinks for their younger friends. Plus, a basic beer here costs at least $9 at a bar so cost would be a discouragement in itself for the young‘uns. There certainly never was a shortage of alcohol from when I was fifteen, as there were always plenty of people at school (we thought those people were lucky) who had older siblings who were eighteen. Or there were people who were friend with the seventh-formers. And then I was suddenly eighteen, getting together with friends to down cheap wine from a grocery store before heading into town. It’s what we all did. I guess upon reflection, I never saw the drunken twenty-somethings, as I grew up in a town virtually void of twenty-somethings.

As James and I sat in the old Wellington town hall before this adventure, watching the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain play and thoroughly enjoying it, we felt old. In a strangely wonderful way. I know sometimes the tinge of nostalgia can creep up unexpectedly for the old wilder days, as we drink tea after a night of a couple of drinks. In a way, we feel growing pains, but it’s not all that painful at all.

I used to say I felt like I had skipped my childhood, as I was forced to grow up with the death of my brother when I was four and the divorce of my parents at seven. I wasn’t even good at being a teenager – the party stage only lasted a few months before I was sick of it and hit the books again, on a continual and sometimes painful plight for self-improvement. And now I sit in the early days of my twenties and wonder if the typical 20-somethings are already slipping from underneath me. Truth is, I could happily be an 80-year-old, and simply can’t wait to get there. You can trust that I’m going to give it my best shot anyway. It just seems so blissful – a lifetime of wisdom and love behind you, license to do whatever you want, be it gardening or writing or reading. Maybe by that point the back of my hair will also be wispy so I’ll be all matching and could give up on wigs…or simply wear luscious ones!

I guess being forced to think about children in doing IVF and think about mortality more than I would have ever have had considered can age a soul. I know I’ve done a lot for someone my age, perhaps packed a lifetime of stuff into a short amount of time, but it was certainly interesting to feel disconnected from most of the females my age out yonder.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the fact that I did pack so much into my short lifetime, as that was one thing that would carry me into nightmares when I was first diagnosed. I could envisage my obituary – it just seemed to eerily make sense. I worried that perhaps it was my time… that I had had my shot at life and done it well, and now it’s time to move along. But I no longer think this. Sometimes I feel that perhaps my soul was tired. I’m not saying that the cancer was a lesson that I needed, but I do think that I had tried to pack in an incredible amount and I wasn’t stopping there, I had plans.

Perhaps I needed to stop.

***

My friend Nicola, who I will be seeing next week in my hometown of New Plymouth, wrote me a card with this quote on the front:

“Life is what we are alive to. It is not length but breath. Be alive to goodness, kindness, love, purity, music, poetry, flowers, stars…”

I’m sure I’ve already talked about life being the quality of what it’s made of rather than the quantity, but I guess this also applies to growing ‘old’ in soul. Taking a break from all the madness, being alive to flowers, music and poetry. And tea and baking. I think I’m ready to grow up. In fact, I don’t feel that we really have a choice in the matter. But of course, you can either age with sparkles in your eyes, or let them fade. And so, the image of the slightly frail man with long white hair rocking out to ‘born to be wild’ on the ukulele with his hair swinging is a good one to keep in mind. And, as it will always be important for us all to understand the screams and excitement, I now simply hold on to the memories of the days when the bright lights and beats would summon me into a tantalizing trance.