It’s Never Too Late For A Volte-face Moment

I was glad I changed course and one of the places my volte-face moment took me to was Spain.  I loved this lady, I reckoned she'd had a head banging moment too!

Dad, I think Mum's serious

It was late 2008 when my contemporary life began.   It happened a year or so after my sixtieth birthday when I sank to my knees, drummed the floorboards with both fists and howled with rage.

I'm a nice, quiet, refined kind of gal normally so my behaviour was unparalleled.  The girls rushed to pick me up and I heard Kim say to Mike, “Dad, I think Mum’s serious”.

Are you kidding?  My bum up in the air, banshee curdles and a fist tattoo.  A ridiculous, undignified spectacle.

But I was serious.  I was seriously mad as hell. 

My plan had been vague.  But I hadn't expected Mike to thwart it on the grounds of reason; we couldn't afford it, he said.   Something deep down within me recalibrated and my knees gave way.

Changing course

Fury brought clarity.  Delicate negotiations with Mike; the convincing and the compromises, were not the stuff that I was made of and the raw energy of impulse had floundered.  So I made a decision there and then to declare Unilateral Declaration of Ownership (UDO).   It was a decision of unitary selfishness, but I preferred a title.  Unilateral Declaration of Ownership has a ring to it; an absolution. 

I had rung the bell, whoever wanted to come my way was welcome, but I was changing course.  I would own the situation and own the solution.

Recalibration

I recognised the feeling; I’d recalibrated before, but then I had been single; much simpler.  I had wept into my pillow for weeks, until a flash of insight suggested to me that actively cultivating mildew in my bed, in the high-humidity of a monsoonal Hong Kong, was staggeringly unimaginative.  I've just written about that in my forthcoming memoir. 

The Trigger

The trigger is either the boredom of a depressive wallow or someone telling me I can’t do something.  
The first is a slow, deliberate and satisfying clamber out of the slough of despond, but the second is a wilful,
wicked, wonderful rush to the head.

As I write this I can see the head-banging spot.  It and I have a special connection.  I wonder sometimes if I should paint a little star there or put a brass plaque which reads, Life after 60 started here, or just a cryptic, UDO.

What about you?

Have you had a self-prescribed U-turn, life-changing, volte-face moment?  I don’t mean when life dealt you a
whack in the guts, tragedy or drama, I mean when you reached a dead-end and thought, Stuff this! 
There has to be another way.