Egad…I don’t even remember when I did my backpacking in Europe (Italy and Prague) stint. I think I was 42. I do remember older women were revered, still sexy and vibrant. In the U.S. there is an expectation to be respectable, gentle and behaved. There I saw women who were gracious, handsome and full of life.
I want that for me. I want to be joyous and badass and kind. These are not mutually exclusive.
The epitome of that was a woman in her 50s or 60s on a Vespa. A leather bag between her heeled sandals, sunglasses and scarf trailing in her manufactured breeze.
Your mid-life musings have brought to mind The Ballad of Lucy Jordan as sung by Marianne Faithful….
At the age of thirty-seven
She realised she’d never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair
So she let the phone keep ringing
And she sat there softly singing
Little nursery rhymes she’d memorised
In her daddy’s easy chair
But your Vespa dreams seem so much freer from regrets. Viva Elouise!