Tuscany Calling.........

Today I realized something. I totally get why some women get on a plane with a one-way ticket to Tuscany. You go through life being busy with work, babies, then work again, only now combined with motherhood and before you know it here you are at middle age, still working, but all of a sudden you are Not Required for Mothering Any More. Just like that. You wake up one day and your beautiful children are teenagers, totally capable of living their own lives, making bad decisions, making good decisions, being irresponsible, being responsible (sometimes) but whatever the situation, they can work it out for themselves, because well, your opinions and advice are so not what they're looking for.

You don't feel middle aged, and certainly don't look middle aged as you remember middle-age looking when your own Mum was there. You've always looked after yourself with suncreeen, fish twice a week, regular facials, peels, two litres of water a day, diet and exercise, antioxidants.............your hopeful mantra is "50 is the new 30." But there's no denying that you most certainly are, all of a sudden, "a certain age."

If this change in dynamic is not enough to get your head around, all of a sudden you find that your own parents are becoming more and more dependant on you as they age. The elderly are becoming so isolated in this world of new technology which they know nothing of and see no need for. So you find yourself doing more and more for them. Then one of your beloved parents declines quite rapidly into dementia, a most cruel disease which robs you of your beautiful, bright, talented, witty, hard-working, loving mother. So you grieve for the person she was as you continue your dutiful visits to the (surprisingly) pleasant nursing home each weekend. And each weekend on the one-and-a-half-hour drive home, instead of planning what to cook for dinner, you find yourself daydreaming about Tuscany...............