(Late) BLOOMING lovely

I've had an epiphany about the joy of getting older. And yes, you can go ahead and yell, it's about time we called midlife what it is: late blooming!

- DANIELLE WEAKLEY

MY still is recent epiphany involved Nic Kidman. Not too long ago I was havin' a bit of a laugh about Nicole. She was - and everywhere. You cannot turn on a screen without conjuring her with her perfect, immovable hair and slippery-as-glass immovable visage.

Generally speaking, her oeuvre of late involves a Woman of a Certain Age who is Going Through Something but still looks utterly immaculate while doing so. The steadfastness with which she approached these nary-a-hair-outof-place characters rubbed off on her red carpet persona. She was a perfectly poised ice queen, unless of course she was caught whispering sexy sweet nothings into the shell of husband Keith Urban's ear.

But something happened on the way to the end of last year: Nicole Kidman just seemed to lean into the delulu nature of her fame and, in so doing, she did the impossible - she became fun! She laughed at herself. She threw off her vertiginous heels to reach a short awards podium. She commented on the crazy memes about her seal-clapping hands. She joshed with the Gen Z Tik Tok journos on the press tour. She was - gasp! - in on the joke. And all I keep thinking is, it's about forking time!

Life can be exhausting anyway, but there is zero doubt in my mind that it is well and truly exhausting when you are trying to Keep It All Together. When I was in my 20s, I was in planner mode: land job; locate whereabouts of nice boyfriend; move into better rental; don't only read Jilly Cooper; don't go out every night. By my 30s, I was in settle-down mode. My job became a career. My nice boyfriend became my husband. I became a mom.