From the heart
High achievers are all very well. But slow-grown success brings its own satisfaction, says author Gill Hornby, who didn’t start writing until she was 54
My long-ago wedding is memorable for all the obvious, glorious reasons, but also for this: it was the first time that my parents had been in the same place – actually seated at the same table – for at least 20 years.
They separated back when I was in primary school and, it’s fair to say, neither the divorce nor its aftermath were particularly well-handled. Yet there they were, in a steamy marquee, happy and smiling and behaving themselves properly. Afterwards, I remarked to my mother on this miracle. She gave a pleased little sniff. ‘Yes,’ she replied, rather smugly.
‘I thought I was very mature.’
She was, by then, 63.
It cracked me up. I mean, if you can’t be ‘mature’ when you’re literally ancient, then what’s the point of you? Well, that’s how it seemed at the time. Now that I, too, have become, somehow or other, 63 years old, I can excuse it.
Perhaps, like me, my mother was what’s known as a late developer.
It’s been the story of my life. As soon as my childish self caught the first sign of a milestone, I took a detour at once.
Being born, growing hair, walking…
I was behind with them all.
My school years were no better. After a solid start – which was most unlike me, in retrospect – Iwent happily off the boil from the age of about nine. While my peers grew into themselves, met every challenge and rose to occasions, I joined the awkward squad and just noodled about.
It wasn’t until I started sixth form – so, in football terms, somewhere around the 89th minute – that reality hit and, in a torment of blind panic, I worked like a demon and finally caught up. When that paid off and, to the amazement of all, I was at my dream university, I took my foot off the pedal and accomplished not much.
Of course, for any late developer, the challenge really comes in your 30s and 40s – those decades of reckoning; the peak of your powers upon which history will judge you. When all that potential comes good and you’re finally elected, or appointed, or carting your shedloads of cash to t he bank in a wheelbarrow.
Yes. Well. I occasionally dawdled along the path of a sort of career, but also – cunning move, this one – produced a houseful of babies. Four human shields, with their own milestones and targets, who could distract any attention from the fact that I hadn’t ‘come on’ quite far enough.
