Pink Dens, Solo Drives and Becoming an Age

An essay I wrote at almost 34 and after pausing a ‘coming of age’ film ten minutes in.

“I thought you’d appreciate this!” She said.

I did.

It was the first time I’d seen her in four or five years, and the first time I’d ever seen her wearing intense colour. She had truly been the monochrome queen. She glowed. The very specific shade of pink immediately sent me to a time when my hair tumbled way below my waist, my wardrobe was full of pattern and noise, and my main concerns included keeping my tamagotchi alive and never leaving the house without a notebook in case that was the day I wrote my book: (Some things never change.) Back then, there was one outfit, above all others, that made me feel incredible: A pair of electric, cerise jeans with matching, wildly fluffy, jumper. Honestly, I’m grinning remembering it, feeling my way into its texture and remembering the smiles the combination would induce when I took it out into the wild. When my (much older, very stylish) sister offered to take me bowling, I knew exactly what I needed to wear. I decided to go all out and crimp my hair too, leaving thousands of tiny zig zags through my locks, and tripling the volume. It must’ve been quite a scene. Stroking Lucy’s fuchsia, mohaired arm, while she delighted in filling me in on all the huge changes the last year had brought her way, the shoe was on the other foot: I was watching her learn the power of that particular pink.

This is one of those essays that came to mind in a fluid jumble on a walk when I was supposed to be thinking about something else. A series of conversations, during the week before my birthday, lit a fuse, sparking small recollections, illuminating an unexpected ginnel. This will be a messy little walk, but it’s my birthday, so I’m hoping you’ll forgive me.

I cut my hair short when I was about thirteen and, apart from some flowier moments, it stayed that way through much of my teens and twenties. Unconsciously, by 26, I found myself with chin length hair. A year or so later, I cut the back short to appease my desire for the wind to meet my neck, and kept the front long to keep him happy. Three days after our relationship ended, I went to my hairdresser of ten years and cut it all off. While the break up haircut is a well practiced cliche, for me it was a return to a silhouette I recognised. While I’d never look like Lydia did with short hair ’before’ again, short hair seemed like the best place to start growing a new Lydia from. It was a seed I could quietly trust.

My friend Erin has a theory that we are most wholly and freely ourselves when we’re about three years old. If we’re lucky, at such a time when we really feel settled in our skin and the landscape we’ve built, our three year old selves will be very much present and correct in our adult skin. I think about that whenever I meet an adult who seems really at ease, or any three year old.

Nothing about graduation felt like a ‘coming of age’. I was just relieved to have made it through a Fine Art degree that I’d spent being told, repeatedly, that I was not an artist. I don’t remember walking up to the stage to collect my certificate. I do remember laughing, almost deliriously, with my friend Verity after the ceremony. There’s a picture of us hung in my hallway. I look tired and delighted; freed and a little bit terrified. My eighteenth birthday party was brilliant, but in itself it didn’t feel like a ‘coming of age’. I didn’t spend it milking my new legal right to drink or being the centre of attention; I spent it dancing with my college friends, wondering if my school friends were OK, if I was doing a party right and what stories would come back to find me on Monday.

Drastic haircuts, graduations, milestone birthdays: they’re dramatic, photogenic, prestiged. ‘Coming of age’ sounds so final: A destination. “I am here! I have come!” No wonder it’s so easy to stumble across a sense of failure, panic or mistiming. You’re on a motorway and you missed the turning. Shit.

I think I’ve been quite stubborn in holding a special place for events that feel colloquially significant: A coming of ‘an’ age. Always becoming an age. The bit that sticks in the bones is rarely the one you see in a photograph. At least, that’s my experience. Threads woven over time change the shape of a structure, particularly in ways likely to bed in. And even then, they might need some hindsight to emerge in full technicolour. These are the moments that feel like growing into something and noting a shape, a feel or new filigree that lands just so that day, leaving a trace for always. A passing rightness; righter than other days, but not so different from the day before. And definitely not static.

“I lie down on the earth and watch the sun rise through the leaves. My cheek meets the soil, my ear muted against it. But the ground is alive with current. There is a buzzing deep below.”

- Sop, The Den

Newly emerging from various lockdowns, I’m sitting on a padded bench in a darkened room at the Wellcome Collection. London looks different now. It’s the first time I’ve been inside a gallery in months, I’m wearing a mask, we’re all wearing a mask, and the two metre rule is still living in our unconscious. I can be fairly impatient when it comes to artist films, especially if there’s a reel of several to get through, and a wait to get to the one you’re interested in. I sat down with low expectations and was immediately taken to the woods. The artist had been leaving their suburban flat early in the mornings to spend time in a den; a place that felt safe and familiar in the weirdness of being told the outside world was dangerous to them. The artist’s voice had a quality that’s really hard to describe: It was neutral and sturdy. Certain-sounding, but the kind of certainty that comes from having seen and survived some things. No doubt they’d felt those things deeply, but they were choosing not to do that today. I trusted what they were telling me, and I resonated. I noted how I resonated. It was a new resonance. I was used to feeling alongside artists, so how was this different? I sat and let the film loop three more times. Moving images of the artist’s body blurring in and out of the natural environment, dancing, convalescing, relating. Then, bright sunlight. My eyes became a hot and wet. I found the artist on instagram, and scrolled to find a post about the exhibition. I commented: “I’m sat watching this for the third time. Bewitched. Thank you.”

I now know Sop to be a fellow Aquarian. They’re wickedly smart and absolutely hilarious. They make an incredible elixir for sleep that I regularly gift to my Mum, they’ve given haircuts as an art project, and watching their film was the beginning of me recognising that I was someone living with chronic illness. Just a small thing.

Why is it important to celebrate coming of age?

These ceremonies incorporate elements of personal and universal symbols and traditions. Typically, friends and family come together to celebrate the individual or a group of kids, reinforcing a sense of belonging and community support.

- Britannica Kids

As a white female, growing up in England, not part of any particular religious community or cultural tradition, here are a selection of the times an age of some sort has come, so far:

Completing the back-of-the-terrace sack race without breaking my bin liner.

Making friends with the apple tree at the bottom of the garden.

My first period, aged 13.

My second first period, aged 28.

Asking my three-pints-a-year friend to be my new flatmate at 2am.

Feeling myself melt into the paintings during a gallery visit.

Learning to cut my own hair.

Being alone in a wheat field aged eight.

The first fried egg, in my new pan, in my new home.

My first solo drive.

My second, first solo drive, 10 years later.

Saying “no’ to a bad boss.

Receiving an email from the only participant who’d looked deeply annoyed all evening to say how important the workshop had been for him.

Falling in love, with all its edges, to its edges.

Feeling my hand being grabbed to help my partner’s daughter across a wide puddle.

Sending my first newsletter.

A coming-of-age story focuses on detailing the growth of the protagonist from a child to an adult. The majority of these works typically follow pre-teens and teenagers who are traversing into the world of adulthood. This genre of literature has been around for centuries and can be found in children's stories, classic literature, contemporary novels, as well as in movies and television. It's a genre that is applicable to all of humanity, which makes it a meaningful and popular way in which to present various ideas regarding the maturation process.

In many coming-of-age stories, the protagonist will go through a loss of innocence, a journey, transformation/growth, and a change in perspective.

- Study.com

“How’re you feeling about it? Do you know where you’re going with it?”

My hair is grazing my shoulders at the moment, after a year of consciously letting it grow. Erin is well aware that this is new territory: The longest its been since the days of double pink. “It’s a length I’ve been, and there’s so much you can do with it. But I’m also thinking of you growing into it, rather than cutting into it: Like, it’s grown to be like that. For me, I went to a hairdresser and I chopped it, and that’s how it was supposed to be. I wasn’t having to make decisions”, or notice shapes along the way, I thought.

John O’Donohue’s book, Benedictus, contains words for pausing around most things. The poet, philosopher, author and priest died in 2008, two days after his birthday and two months after publishing this book. His passing was quiet and unexpected, so any possible connections with the content or timings of the book are completely serendipitous. But, given that everything O’Donohue writes carries such an acute sense of both immortality and transience, he could permanently have been writing from his first and last day. I went looking for a birthday blessing: There must surely be one. And there was. It’s beautiful. But it felt like something for a day. It’s static.

On the next page was ‘A Blessing for The Traveller’. And that was it. That’s the one I’m having for my birthday. I don’t think John will mind.

For The Traveller

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
 
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
 
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
 
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
 
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
 
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
 
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
 
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

— John O’Donohue, Benedictus: A Book of Blessings