Hollywood hottie Catherine Zeta-Jones with fossilised hubby Michael Douglas. Photo: Getty Images
I reluctantly get out of my bath, which is still steaming from me topping it up with scalding water every five minutes, because if I don’t (get out that is) my brain might end up thoroughly cooked.
I dry myself quickly and walk through to the lounge to throw myself on to the couch, afraid that my veins might burst. I’ve heard that scalding baths can do this even to those of us lucky enough not to have the varicose vein genetics.
My husband sees me and says: ”Christ, what are you — boiled lobster?”
I laugh, because my fair complexion is prone to turning red at the drop of a hat — and my skin is still steaming. I search for a quick comeback, but my eight-year-old son jumps in before me.
”Well, dad, the way you’re so dark when you jump in the sea the sharks say, sorry, we don’t eat burnt meat!” (This picked up from ”dissing” sessions at his school, which are apparently the latest rage.)
”I’ll have you know that Napoleon Bonaparte liked his baths hot too,” I quip back eventually.
”As I’m sure most dictators do,” he laughs.
I can’t seem to get it right tonight.
Our son continues: ”Hey mom, dad is like burnt meat hey.”
He finds himself incredibly funny. I fall next to him and tickle him.
I say, ”And you, what are you, hmm?”
He flops around giggling like crazy and shouts, ”No, man, mom. Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.”
I stop. He looks at me with his big brown eyes and says, ”I’m your sweet-honey-muffin-delicious-peanut-butter-caramello-boy.”
”Yes,” I shriek, tickling him like a demon, ”and I’m gonna eat you all up.”
He runs out the door squealing. Gugulethu Flower, his little brak, runs after him yipping in her sing-song voice.
He shrieks as he goes into his room. ”But the way you’re both getting so old when you go visit Nana she’ll ask if you are my grandparents!”
Huh?
Perplexed and somewhat unsettled I go to our room to put on my PJs.
My husband asks, ”Where are you going?”
I say, ”To get dressed.”
He says, ”Why in the room?”
I say, ”Because you may not have noticed but I don’t walk around nude and I haven’t since our child was born and I didn’t ever lose the 10kgs I picked up.”
A dancer never forgives the changes in her body. It’s a form of emotional anorexia.
He says, ”Okay, so we’re going to start getting fit again.”
I say, ”Haven’t you noticed I go to gym three times a week.”
He says, ”Ja, but still we need to —”
Afraid of what might come next I say, ”You do realise that you are the one getting a boep?”
Now, it’s a hard thing to admit the signs of ageing for a woman — but maybe even more so for a man. And I would hate to repeat the mistake a friend of mine made when she filmed her husband from the back before he would admit to also having love handles — which put him in a morose mood for two days and then had him working out for five hours a day and talking about motor bikes and Porsches. She told me that she was waiting for him to trade her in for a 30-year-old because this is what usually happens. She’s still waiting.
I ponder the validity of this perspective as I pull on my winter pyjamas, which are beginning to feel a bit tighter around the waist.
If relationships did fit into her particular forecast then this is how it must play out.
Men reach 50 and then cast their eyes to 30-year-olds. Their wives of fortysomething are sometimes quite relieved at this stage because they still have a decade left of whatever is in them and are usually bored with their husbands.
They now also cast their eyes to younger men (in some cases even in their 20s). Then the 50-year-old men reach their 60s and their by now fortysomething-year-old lovers are getting worried about having to look after a geriatric and dump them for twentysomething-year-old studs.
The 50-year-old women who have also been dumped by their now thirty-something-year-old studs who are now looking for twentysomething-year-old wives — are left looking to the 60-year-old men who are now probably salivating over 16-year-old girls. In the end we probably all grow old alone and we deserve to with all this confusion and madness.
And now my brain is thoroughly cooked.