Expectation

by Anna Hope

Much of their lives is still before them. They have made mistakes, but they are not fatal. They are no longer young, but they do not feel old. They still have time, time to look backwards and look forwards. Life is still malleable and full of potential. The openings to the roads not taken have not yet sealed up. They still have time to become who they are going to be.

This is the hard part, the part they don’t tell you about, the down regulation, the menopause brought about in three weeks, your hormones suppressed to ground zero: the day sweats, the night sweats, the constant urge to cry.

Yes, there’s nothing between thirty and fifty, not just in Chekhov, but in everything else. Perhaps in life. Perhaps this is it—Womanhood. The Wasteland Years.

“You must keep ahold of your friendships, Lissa. The women. They’re the only thing that will save you in the end.”

Her mum closes the door softly, and it strikes Hannah, not for the first time, that her parents, whose sphere of life has always seemed so small, so constrained, have mastered the art of kindness.

Their horizons, always so narrow. Their naivety. Their class. And yet they are kind. They love their children, and they love each other still. How do they do it? Did they learn it, over time? The slow accretion of habit, of days built from these small, simple acts?

There is no future to fear, no past to regret, only this, only a series of moments, strung along, like lit globes on a string—there is warmth, there is food, there is comfort.