And you have been carrying yours around for fifty years wondering what it was for.
You have raised the people, held the households, carried the ones who could not carry themselves, and done it while the pay slip stayed small. That was work. It is still work. Today it becomes yours, with your name on it.
Fifty is where we begin here, and we begin early on purpose. Five years is a long time when you are building a life of your own, and you have every one of them. You are arriving with the whole of it still ahead of you.
Bake. Mentor. Steady a household. Find a room or open one. Walk back into work being exactly who you are. Take up whichever of us fits the life you actually have on a Tuesday.
Some women arrive with a plan and some arrive for the tea. Both are exactly right. And whichever brought you, the arrangements were built in your favour all along — a Nan keeps every dollar her customer pays her, a Darling pays her Aunt directly, and Esmeralda and LOIS are free on a woman’s side, always.