Of Marigolds and Monkeys

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It's a movie about dreamers. Dreamers in their twenties, and dreamers in their golden years. Noticeably, nobody in between. Well, except for one woman about my age -- too old to dream, too young to dream. Theoretically, anyway.

It's a movie about a hotel (more accurately, some land with a structure upon it) in India where chairs are covered with dust, faucets don't work, rooms are missing things, like doors, and where British guests arrive with all kinds of reservations -- not merely of the booking kind. Their reasons for being there are as uncertain as their departure dates, their vision for the days ahead as vague as whatever led them to their hastily planned arrivals. In various stages of elderliness, they are, each of them, far wiser than they realize, caught up by a life that has suddenly cast them off as stupid, incompetent, simply waiting to become ill and die.

At fifty-two, I saw myself in these reluctant adventurers, adrift, productive pasts irrelevant, futures dictated by the stranglehold of the hands of time. Yet, at fifty-two, I saw myself also in the young manager, the man entering adulthood without an acceptable plan, trying to go forward on a wing and a prayer and an impossible dream. Propelled by youthful energy and plagued by naysayers and other obstacles, both real and imagined, he stumbles along at the helm of the motley crew of elderly British expats, the last beam standing in an otherwise crumbling house of cards. My own youthful energy has been replaced by a middle aged version, one marked by sporadic bursts of motivation with long bouts of lethargy in between. Like the young entrepreneur, I am plagued by naysayers (mostly the ones in my head) and other obstacles (in my case mostly imagined, except for my constant need to nap), yet I have somehow managed to keep my own house of cards from crumbling.

By all rights, I should be in my prime, like the woman about my age in the film, the one who is both too young and too old to dream. Like her, I should be the dream crusher, the person, no matter what the culture, who has learned to be a realist, to protect her young from being, well, young, to ensure that nobody, herself included, does anything rash. The woman who, as a young girl, may have married against the will of parents, and now finds herself on the other side of the altar. Squashing dreams, romance, chemistry. The woman who is still able to turn a blind eye to the reality that, not too far down the road, she will become old like the British guests. She, too, will be relegated to the margins. If she allows it.

After I got past the sentimental weepiness the movie inspired in me (as you might recall, coffee commercials make me cry), it made me realize I need not be either a dreamer or a dream crusher. That, at a still youthful fifty-two, I need not simply "wish," that I can silence the voices in my head that tell me what I cannot or should not do. That, at a slowly aging fifty-two, I need not simply "wish," that I can silence the voices in my head that tell me what I cannot or should not do. That, at a time in my life when at least a few people might still look to me for guidance, I need not rule with a heavy hand (not that I ever did). I've done the math; if I waste too much energy trying to control what anyone else is doing, I won't have much waking time left between naps to do the things I am meant to do.

There are always setbacks. After spending three weeks without a teenager nearby to tell me everything that is wrong about me, I was told only five minutes after welcoming my daughter back to American soil that the bra I was wearing was unacceptable. (No, I had not forgotten to put a shirt on over it.) I was thankful she hadn't seen the dress I wore the day before, the little tube thing that squashed my boobs so tightly into my chest that they may have been poking through my back. My lower back, naturally. And, as much as I love having her home, I am looking forward to a little respite again in a few weeks, one in which I can dress inappropriately with wild abandon and have my nipples tickle my knees if I damn well feel like it. I have a renewed "can-do" spirit, and if anyone out there doesn't want to see my boobs resting where gravity has taken them or catch sight of my flabby ass looking less than stellar in a pair of shorts, stay inside between July 14 and July 29.

I was only half listening the other day when my husband took the floor to speak during the meeting with our attorneys. (I'd like to say at least it doesn't cost anything when he talks, but unfortunately both legal teams were present. Cha-ching, cha-ching.)Anyway, out of the corner of my ear, I heard him saying he just wants to get the damn monkey off his back. Well, the slightly profane adjective notwithstanding, I was touched. A monkey; that's one of the nicest things he ever called me. As it turns out, I wasn't the monkey he was talking about, wasn't even a monkey at all (though he would not tell me what animal sprung to mind, and I had the good sense not to ask).

The point is, though, no matter what the monkey is, I, for one, need to get rid of it. Or them. The things that are holding me back, no matter how adorable they might be. I want to write a book. I don't know if I can, or even will, but I want to stop dreaming about it. So, again, I did some math. And I did some complicated figuring, and I realized that with my limited "awake" time, I probably can't spend as much of it as I would like on my blog (get it? the adorable monkey?)  if I am going to write a book. The space will remain open, of course, and I will visit often, particularly if something interesting happens. But I am going to venture off, more frequently, into my own Marigold Hotel. I will dust off my brain, unclog the pipes, knock down some doors, spend time in a place that is unfamiliar and scary and filled with obstacles, both real and imagined.

I will keep you posted.