Hristina

April 2023.

I walk into the salon where Hris, or Tushi as I call her, has only just started working as a manicurist. While she, despite still learning, does a cracking job of painting my nails in the orange shades I'd picked, we get the gossip mill of the running community turning.

“Hang on, let me tell you the biggest news. I'm pregnant.”

I jumped so hard it's a miracle the electric file didn't take my nail off.

I was happy for her (this would be her 1st child). For myself, I was scared.

“How have you managed to squeeze yourself into the picture this time, Niyo?” – a question Emo asks me constantly, and you'll ask it too. And you'll be right – what have I got to do with any of this, and why would I be scared of some runner's pregnancy?

The thing is, Tushi and I are the same age. We were born 4 days apart – me on 5.12.79, her on 09.12.79 – which means that at the time of that conversation we were both 43.

Life has shown me more than once that I've been blessed with super-fertile eggs which, the moment they get a whiff of my husband, are already busily dividing into zygotes, with no interest whatsoever in what their supposed mistress thinks about it. And after my two children, not wanting a third, the knowledge of my eggs' work ethic gave me no peace for a few days every month.

This state of constant anxiety of mine was temporarily relieved by a little film I watched 2–3 years ago in a well-known obstetrics and gynaecology hospital. As luck would have it, that was also where a well-known orthopaedic surgeon had his consulting room, and I had an appointment with him. While I was waiting to be seen, the screens in the waiting room started playing the educational cartoon in question. Its purpose was clear – to scare women over 35 about how, with every month that passes, they have less and less chance of getting pregnant, unless they immediately use the hospital's services to freeze their eggs while they're still good for something.

The film, as I said, was animated. The female eggs were drawn as soldiers in formation – right at the front were the healthiest, strongest fighters. The voice-over sounded suspiciously like the voice from the newsreels in Second World War documentaries. In a dispassionate, telegraphic style, it informed us that just as in battle the toughest soldiers stand at the very front, so the female body sends out its finest specimens in its youngest years. After 35 all that was left were the ones from the rear of the army – the weak, the sick and the disabled eggs – the Voice added sadly, finally showing some emotion. As proof, animated images of exhausted creatures on crutches, in wheelchairs and with bandaged heads came shuffling across the screen. Apparently that's what the eggs of women over 35 looked like in the animator's mind.

On me, the film had exactly the opposite of the intended effect. I was overcome by the quiet happiness of a woman who can finally give herself over to life's primal joys, undisturbed by thoughts of nappy-wearing consequences. After all, according to the educational material I'd just watched, I had only a few eggs left, barely holding themselves up on their crutches, all of them deaf, blind and without a sense of smell.

That's exactly the inventory my age-mate Tushi should have had, even if she is 4 days younger, and yet just look at her:

“I don't even know how I got pregnant, we were just having fun,” she beams at me, pregnant!

Very worrying! It's not as if there aren't coincidences and similarities between the two of us. Leaving aside the same age and the diagnosis of being a Sagittarius, I also got pregnant with my first son without even realising. For both of us, the fertile daddies were men we'd only just got together with at the time the babies were made, and both of them Cancers. We both started running late, and our running results are close.

The first time I heard about her was through Sasho Nakov, and precisely because of our close results. Nakov, sorry for yet another cameo appearance in my blog, but what can I do when you're such a big influence in my life. At one winter XL, Hrisi had come 3rd over the middle distance, and when they called her name for the podium, the crowd erupted into the wildest applause he had ever heard at an XL.

My faithful ally Sasho was left worried by the level of the applause. He uses it as a kind of popularity meter, just like the old TV show “Who's the Most-Most-Est”. If the applause for my podiums would register a 6 out of 7 on the “Who's the Most-Most-Est” measuring device, Tusheva's had hit the 7 straight off.

Sasho rang me with the unpleasant news that among the oldies there was someone more popular than me, and immediately supplied me with the basic information – her name was Hristina Tusheva, and her results over almost every distance were close to mine. Sasho's phone ended the conversation with an intrigued click. He had discovered a new veteran – as worried as he was for me, he was just as pleased with himself.

He was far from the only one pleased about the existence of Hristina Tusheva. As the confidante of a large number of male runners, I know that Tushi is their wet dream. Perhaps that partly explains the thunderous applause at her podiums. Taking these factors into account, there was simply no way I wasn't going to invite her into my MILF calendar. After all, with the latest news about her, she'd become a MILF-In-the-making.

My original wish was to use some old photos of hers in which she's wearing nothing but a see-through veil on the shore at sunset, with the wind blowing straight at her. For those of you who don't know her, although I seriously doubt there are any, I must point out that when she took part years ago in the reality show “The Mole”, she was indisputably awarded the title of “contestant with the best body”. Other pursuits from her recent past include diving, rock climbing and boxing. Otherwise, by education and official profession, she's an artist.

But Tushi was already pregnant, and as her pregnancy progressed her interest in photoshoots with see-through veils dropped drastically, unlike her interest in pregnancy photoshoots. She told me that for my calendar she wanted to be photographed pregnant. Which, in turn, fitted organically with the delusion that had just developed in me at that very time, that my calendar would be bought mainly by women.

The day of the shoot arrived, and most of us had gathered at the riding stables in Voynegovtsi. I felt responsible for the production – the make-up artist and Krisoka were fussing around “my” MILFs. And some of “my” MILFs, who are, after all, women with professions ranging across the widest spectrum, felt self-conscious in front of the camera lens. Only 4–5 of them behaved as if they'd been born in front of the camera. One of them was Gergana, the September girl and the subject of my next blog. Another was Tushi, 7 months pregnant.

The average calendar participant's session, mine included, went on for around 40 minutes, of which:

1. 10 minutes wondering which pose/props to choose (the stables had a large selection of the standard props, such as hay bales, stalls, farm animals, swings, sunflower fields etc.)
2. 7–8 minutes of uncertainly striking a pose, interrupted by nervous chatter from the model herself, to relieve the tension. Karolina, photographed earlier on, chips in from the side with creative ideas and encouraging remarks.
3. 20-odd minutes of shooting, until we have a set of at least 10 or so good shots from which to choose the final one. Well, if it hadn't been for my “help” with the lighting, where, despite my state of peak concentration, I point the reflector far, far away from the model's face, somewhere towards Vitosha, those 20-odd minutes would have been 15. But all the same, the average process was a long one.

By comparison, with Hris things went as follows:

1. Hris tumbles out of the car with Tomi, in full battle gear. This consists of: some extensions that were very fashionable at the time, “afro” style but waist-length, a colour-coordinated outfit and a firm 7-month bump.

2. I greet her with the news that the only farmyard item left for her is a herd of alpacas. Who, however cute their little faces were, had not been chosen by any of my other models. This was because of their tendency to spit when frightened – a condition which our noisy MILF herd had developed into a painful chronic one in the poor animals.

“No problem,” says Tushi, “we work with what we've got.”

3. Exactly 5 minutes of photoshoot follow. For half of them, Hris has put on that half-bored expression so typical of models.

I'm sure that in the 90s, when Naomi Campbell uttered the cult line “I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000”, she did it with the same uninterested face, unattainable for mere mortals.

For the other 2.5 minutes Tushi switches to a dazzling smile and effortlessly pulls out her perfect angles for Kriso. Her calm has rubbed off on the alpacas too, who, nerves settled, are meekly eating out of her hand.

She came, she saw, she was photographed for 5 minutes and off she went! A pro's a pro!

Oh, I forgot to say that Hris is also a professional model. Yes, giving birth at 43 and being a model for Pause Jeans at the same age, as well as running, diving and climbing at the same age, is not only possible, it's normal.

Which of Tushi's qualities would I like to have, you ask?

Here the answer is very easy: the ease (or at least it looks like ease from the outside) with which she takes on new things and starts over.

As I said, she has done so many different things in her life – rock climbing, diving, boxing, I remember there was something with Kangoo Jumps too. Now she's started working as a manicurist. She's the same in her personal life. When she got pregnant with Kalin, it happened after a break-up with a partner she'd been with for over 10 years.

Life goes on, circumstances too, and Tushi keeps moving forward.

I remember when I was 17, my whole family had gone to visit my godparents in South Africa, who were 45 at the time. My godmother and I are very close, she's like a second mother to me. One day, as we were chatting at her kitchen table in one of the suburbs of Johannesburg, she said to me:

“Niyka, I'm so excited, I'm starting to build my life all over again…”

“What do you mean, starting over at 45????” – however much I loved and admired my godmother, I have to admit that this was the first thought that shot through my head. To the “me” of back then, that was an age reserved mainly for bottling and putting up jars of preserves. When I was a child/teenager, I very often imagined the following sweet little picture, let's give it a title:

“Me at 44”

A fireplace, in front of the fireplace me, with greying hair tied up in a bun, dressed in a dressing gown and a woollen cardigan, sitting in a rocking chair knitting woollen socks for my husband.

How did we get from my childhood idea of the existence of women in their forties to publishing a MILF calendar and a series of blogs devoted to their interesting lives and achievements?

I suppose because of the very examples they've given me. And by “they” I by no means mean only Hristina, or only the women from my calendar. My own mother set me such an example too, when at the same age she radically changed her profession.

From a design engineer who had worked her whole life in a socialist enterprise, she gave expression to her creative side by becoming a hairdresser and starting to work for herself. Only then did she feel fulfilled and satisfied.

The little films tell us that our bodies no longer work; society's attitudes have shaped us so that we imagine that at 44 all we can do is knit woollen socks and bottle preserves. In some cases that's true, in others it isn't. It very much depends on the particular person.

It very much depends on the particular person whether they give in to society's influence, or choose to follow their own path. Which, why not, may one day simply become the new standard.

P.S. Anyway, orders are already pouring in for the MILF Calendar 2025, which there won't be:

But there you go, a few more initiatives like this and a MILF calendar might become something perfectly normal and ordinary.

As they say – TUSH-DAH!