Watts all single women want
WHEN the news broke: “Naomi Watts gives birth”, I was tempted to suggest it should lead the next Sky news bulletin.
Not for the extraordinariness of it (she is 38) but for the hope it would give to women who fear they’re staring down the barrel of eternal singledom and childlessness.
Naomi’s proven that it can all be turned around in an instant, that love and a good father can come out of left field even when you’ve abandoned all hope.
Remember when Naomi split from Heath Ledger and it appeared she’d had her day? Our hearts broke for her, not so much for losing Heath, who’d started showing signs of angst and aggression, but for losing a potential father for her babies.
It’s got to be the worst age to be suddenly single (which is starkly different to being already single, because it’s like starting all over again).
It hurts in your 20s, sure, but you’ve still got plenty of time to fall in love all over again and again, and choose wisely the man of your dreams.
I would argue it’s even less painful at 45 when you’ve either already given birth, decided not to, or accept you only have the slimmest of chances.
But to be out on your ear at 35 is to not only grieve the man you’ve lost, but along with it, quite possibly, your final chance at motherhood. You weep for love lost but also for his sperm.
As if that wasn’t gruelling enough for Naomi, she then had to sit back and watch as Heath met someone else, someone in her early 20s, who was snapped barefoot and pregnant in Bondi.
Torture.
It must’ve been worse for Jen.
No sooner had Brad flown the Beverly Hills coop (when Jen was 35) than he became a dad to half the United Nations and bore the world’s most beautiful biological daughter.
Jen thought she’d seen the worst when her ex posed for Vanity Fair with Angelina, some model kids and a beach ball in a vision of retro family-ness, for which Jen accused him of missing a “sensitivity chip”.
Jen went off and became attached to Vince Vaughn, but they broke up. She’s back out there again – at 38-and-a-half.
Did Nicole feel a tinge when Tom’s new young girlfriend (29) gave birth? Is that why Cheryl Crowe adopted when Lance Armstrong got back on his bike?
At 44, did she accept that was her last shot? Are these women tempted to plead: “Don’t leave me. Not now. You might be my last hope?”
Girls in their 20s having babies when they’ve got years to do so, taking the place of a woman who doesn’t, must be hard to swallow for the one who’s left behind.
And so we celebrate Naomi.
A woman who’s orchestrated a U-turn of dramatic proportions, pulled through at the eleventh hour and proven that, though it might seem like you’ve done your dash, there’s still time to meet Liev Schreiber and bear his son. She did the same thing with her career.
Struggled in Hollywood for a decade and, just when she was about to become a yoga master, David Lynch came through with Mulholland Drive and she was off.
I’ve seen it happen with normal people too. A friend divorced at 36, was remarried and a mother by 38.
Another engaged at 37 was pregnant within six weeks. Marcia Cross has just had twins at 46.
But tell that to the woman I know who separated at 39 because her husband fell for a 28-year old.
She’s not feeling too optimistic. An older mother advised: “Hang love. Just have a baby and you can find love later”.
But I choose to hold out for both, if possible. Naomi did, and look what happened to her.