A Girl's Garden of Menopause

I forget

I'd heard, of course, that ebbing estrogen can make one forgetful. But, like the other indignities of midlife, I was utterly unprepared for it. I thought: Hey, I've always been a bit absentminded, so no big deal. I've been in training for this my whole life. I might not even notice the difference!

I've noticed. In the past few weeks:

• I forgot that I'd promised to proofread something for a client. For six days.
• I forgot that my husband told me to return a call from my brother. Furthermore, the next day, when my husband was recounting something he'd discussed with my brother, I didn't think: Whoops! I forgot to call Carl. I thought: How the heck does K know what's going on with Carl?
• I forgot I had a blog.

Sorry about that.

My forgetting about the blog (and everything else) is probably equal parts estrogen deficiency and my fascination with what appear to be The Last Days of Life as We Know It. And I've had ample time to ponder and read about The Last Days of Life as We Know It because my business has dwindled down to almost nothing. Which makes me even more obsessed with The Last Days of Life as We Know It. And, more specifically, with what will come after The Last Days of Life as We Know It. Because I want specifics, dammit. I want to know if I will be able to make car payments.  I love my car.

It's driving me crazy that no one knows what's going to happen next. I know what I should be doing. I should be accepting the things I cannot change, finding the courage to change the things I can, and exercising the wisdom to know the difference. In everyday terms, this means I should get some exercise, quit eating recreational carbohydrates, and work on a promotion to remind my clients that I'm out here and (when I'm not forgetting stuff) I'm pleasant to work with.

But what I really want is to build a blanket fort in my living room, crawl in with the collected novels of Edith Wharton, and stay there until it's safe to come out. On second thought, maybe not Wharton. Maybe impecunious heroines on the brink of utter ruin would be even more alarming than CNBC, which is no longer my favorite channel. Maybe a little Seneca instead?

Anyhoo. My wise and spirited guest correspondents have been generous with their time, as you'll see from the posts below. I thank them--and admire them for being able to think about something else, anything else, besides how fast the sky might be falling.

Rider considers the heretofore unthinkable

Rider sent this in last week. Caution: do not read this while you are eating.

As I read Ellen’s blog entry on watching the markets and feeling sheepish as we keep an eye on where our hard-earned money might be going, it made me think of my mother who had the most intransigent “depression mentality” I ever encountered. She saved the plastic bags that things came in, rubber bands that bound vegetables, and small pieces of paper. She wouldn’t part with an issue of National Geographic nor a paperback book. She stored old sheets and worn-out clothing in boxes in the closet in case they needed to be cut up and reused. 

All of this was fine with me but when it came to leftover food, we had our differences. My mother really couldn’t bear to throw food out and she saved anything we didn’t eat in little dishes in the refrigerator. She wouldn’t put plastic wrap on them because that was expensive and wasteful, so as the week went by, little dabs of broccoli, salad, or tuna fish would slowly dry up and become dark, colorless versions of their former selves.  That’s if you were lucky. There were many things that instead developed an interesting green fuzz on them, like gravy or mac-n-cheese or fruit.   

So what, you say! That happens all the time to things that get shoved to the back of the refrigerator at my house. But what probably doesn’t happen at your house is that as you stand in front of the open fridge pondering what to munch on, probably no one reaches past you, grabs one of those dishes, scrapes the offending excrescence off it and says, “It’s fine! Just cut off the bad part.” 

Needless to say, I developed some very odd habits regarding leftover food. I kept track of when things went into the fridge and refused to eat anything that hadn’t been served fresh just yesterday.  If there was a suspicious slice out of the middle of something, I declared myself suddenly not hungry.  Cereal with milk (that I had sniffed) became my meal of choice.

Now I deal with my boyfriend’s finicky 11 year-old. She turns her nose up at anything that isn’t pizza, a cheese quesadilla, or a roasted potato and all I can think is, “You’re lucky I don’t serve you 7-day old meatloaf.” 

But who knows? Maybe in these new “Dow Below 10,000” times I will do what every woman dreads doing. Maybe I will become more like my mother….

Debby on dance

Debby, my good friend and loyal guest correspondent, submitted this delightful entry on September 28. I am publishing it on October 13. I am a bad person.

I am a Dancing Fool. It’s true.

Just so you understand, at nearly 49, I haven’t ever established a regular exercise routine. For me, it’s always been about the spurts and fizzles. And despite my best recent efforts to shake up my own status quo, I can still find lots of things I’d rather do than go work out.  My theory of running is that I don’t. My theory of tennis is that I’ll hit the ball back if you hit it to me. I was terrible at volleyball and kickball at camp, and I never played organized sports in school. But I do know how to walk on the treadmill or elliptical, I did learn how to swim when I was little, and I’ve had a few dancing lessons over the years. For a little more than a dollar a day, most of which is even subsidized as a “Wellness Benefit” by my employer, I can walk, swim or dance at this beautiful new gym that I joined this summer.

This gym does most of its organized classes during the week, when I’m at work. On Saturdays or Sundays, if I’m in a spurt rather than a fizzle, I am often lucky enough to find that the studio is empty. The room is very large, has windows for beautiful natural light, mirrors on three walls, and a gorgeous wood floor, with mats piled up for stretching, a rack of free weights, and those big gym balls. To be in the room all by myself is, in some ways, a fantasy come to life—I get to be the star on my very own stage.

When my twin sister and I were little, we were enrolled in a jazz class where we “danced” to Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” At least the music was good, because I’m sure the performance wasn’t.  Then I was in a ballet class in fourth grade, where the whole ballet school was involved in the production of “Cinderella” and my class was the Royal Court. I was banished to the back row when it was painfully obvious that I had no idea what the dance was all about at the dress rehearsal. The only memory I retain from that episode other than utter humiliation is how to do a “pas de chat.” (It’s OK if you imagine the hippo ballet from “Fantasia” here.) We had to take aerobics class for a few weeks in PE in high school, and I learned how to do a grapevine. Somehow, I managed enough physical coordination to be picked as a cheerleader in high school; we didn’t have a cutthroat competitive squad, and I eventually learned the jumps, twirls and arm movements in their proper sequences with pretty accurate timing. They didn’t kick me off, so I guess I did fine. But a few years ago, my sister-in-law and I took a hip-hop class at 24-Hour Fitness, and I was the WORST one in the class-no exaggeration. The instructor would go around giving high-fives to everyone except me. That was a bit demoralizing.

Despite these experiences, I’ve always had a secret desire to be a diva, to front my own band, to have my own show, to be the marquee idol. And in the studio at the gym, all by myself, I can live my dream. I can blast my iPod in my very own ears, and I can dance around the room however I want to, making up all the steps as I go along. In critiquing my own choreography, I see the influences of “Riverdance,” “Flashdance,” and Gwen Stefani, blended with the Pony, the Watusi, the Twist, the Dig. I throw in the occasional jumping-jack scissor move and lots of hip thrusts to work out my middle. I grapevine, stomp, march, and grand jeté from east to west until I’m sweaty and exhausted. It’s an incoherent mess, but it’s a blast.

My new favorite channel is CNBC

Dear Current Events,

I have always approached money and politics with that special, guilty kind of boredom I reserve for the stuff I know I should care about. Until now. Now I am a woman I scarcely recognize.

I am a woman who checks the little graph on cnbc.com several times a day to see how the Dow is doing. A woman who knows what a Dead Cat Bounce is. A woman who watched a full hour of the first presidential debate on Friday. (It wasn't so riveting that we were willing to miss Joel McHale, so we switched the channel.) A woman who was sufficiently well-informed to predict what would happen after the bailout failed in the House yesterday. ("You called it," said my early-rising husband, upon learning from the morning news shows that the package would be revised and resubmitted for another vote.)

I've never felt so grown up—or so sheepish.

Help wanted: Role model; experience necessary, references required

It occurred to me, as I was gearing up to leave a much-too-long comment on someone else's blog, that one of the reasons why I am so gobsmacked by midlife is that I simply never imagined being this age. I mean, I wasn't planning to check out early in a faux-poetic, posturing, live-fast-die-young kind of way. I just never thought about it.

When I was young, I was practically obsessed with whatever stage would come next. When I was in junior high, I thought about what life would be like in high school. In high school, I couldn't wait for college. In college, I had way more fun than in high school. But, by the end, I couldn't wait to be a real, autonomous grown up. It was though I imagined my life in magazines, progressing from Seventeen to Mademoiselle to Harper's Bazaar. When I was in my broke and tumultuous twenties, I imagined working a steady job that would allow me to afford a decent car. When I was dating, I imagined being married. Once I was married, I guess I thought that life would be one Martha Stewart Living dinner party after another. And there the imagining stopped.

Without any pop culture promptings to envision a glamorous or exciting or implausible middle age (since we've already covered why More falls short of the mark), it never occurred to me to imagine how my life would be at nearly 50. In fact, I had good reasons not to think about it. My own parents went through immense upheaval at this age. My dad came out of the closet in his mid 40s. His midlife was rocky as hell. But now, at 79, he's in San Francisco, with a partner who adores him and a cellar full of wine. He has his complaints, mostly about old age's affronts to his vanity. But he's still puttering in his kitchen and his garden. I couldn't ask for a better role model.

Then there's my mother. After the acrimonious divorce from my dad, she settled into a cute little house and a decent practice as a psychotherapist. But then she heard a voice from God. I kid you not. A voice from God. She sold her house and spent all her money putting herself through ministerial school. It was not a wise career move. Long story short, she ran out of money; alienated her kids; suffered a devastating stroke at 65; and now lives in a state of baffled, angry resignation in an assisted living facility. I couldn't ask for a better cautionary tale.

No wonder why I find the notion of getting old to be so fearsome! So, dear readers, I'm asking you to tell me a story. Tell me about your mother, your heroine, your neighbor, anyone at all who is aging with grace and aplomb.

Superpower update

A minute ago, in a conversation with my husband, I killed the word, "bee-yotch." Without even meaning to.

You're welcome, America.

The secret superpower of the middle-aged white woman

I was in the car today, looping around a cloverleaf and chuckling about something funny that a friend of mine said on the phone yesterday. She was talking about finding something for her mother. "If I find it, I'll be her favorite. If I don't, so what? I'm the youngest. I'm still her favorite."

Then, in the car, on the cloverleaf, all alone with my thoughts, I said something aloud that I've never had cause to say before. I said: "True dat." Honestly. I--a 49 year-old, Subaru-driving, errand-running, Caucasian female--used the expression, "True dat" in Golden Valley, Minnesota. I have no idea why I said it. I don't even know where I heard it. I don't think it's a particularly good nugget of American slang. I'm deeply grateful that there was no one else in the car to hear it. And I'm more than a little embarrassed to be confessing it here.

But, at that moment, there was a small but perceptible shift in the zeitgeist. "Tru dat" abruptly stopped being cool. It may take a few months for it to fall into full global disgrace. But the damage is done. And I did it.

You can do it too. Simply utter an expression that has bubbled to the surface from youth culture, one that is inappropriate for a woman of your years. You don't have to use it a lot. No one even needs to hear you. Although, if you have teenage children, and say it within their earshot, you can accelerate the process by several weeks.

When I was young, I thought that grownups appropriated slang in a desperate attempt to appear youthful. But maybe they'd already discovered this power--and how much fun it is to wield it.

I wonder if I have any other superpowers?

Rider returns with: Being a handywoman

Yesterday's anodyne post about my boring domestic contentment prompted Rider to submit this delightful piece. (My secret plan worked! Awesome!)

You know, I’m as liberated as they come. I’ve bought my own houses, mowed my own lawn, taken out the garbage, shoveled the walk, paid my own bills ...but somehow, I never learned to fix things around the house.

I come from a traditional family where Dad worked and Mom took care of the family. When Dad came home, Mom served dinner and listened to him talk about his day. On the weekends, Dad was given a list of things that needed doing, and he set about doing them. For a long time, my older brother and father were inseparable. Everything my father did, my brother did with him (only with a lot more mess involved.) But, at some point, my brother realized that playing with power tools required clean up, and that fixing the same broken door and leaky faucet time and again wasn’t that much fun. And at that point, Dad was on his own.

So I started to follow my father around. I didn’t say anything; I just watched. I guess he thought that by watching, I would absorb a few tricks regarding fixing things around the house. But actually, I wasn’t watching the things – I was watching him. I examined the bald spot on his head, how he put his finger to the side of his nose when he was thinking, or put his front teeth on his bottom lip when he was doing something dicey. I listened to him whistle when things were going well, swear under his breath when they weren’t, and berate himself for doing something stupid like dropping a screw down a drain.

And now, some 40 years later, my brother has just finished building a beautiful screened-in porch at his house, with a beadboard ceiling, lovely electric fixtures, and a stunning mahogany floor. I, on the other hand, had to call my father on Saturday morning to ask him how to remove the rot from a little spot next to the back door. He said, “Well, you’ll need a jigsaw and a drill. Have you got those?” “Um, no,” I said, “What kind should I get?” My father was never very good at hiding his incredulity, so after he laughed, he gave me some tips on the best brands of power tools. He explained about drilling a hole big enough to accommodate the blade of the jigsaw. He described the size of the drill and the size of the blade I would need. He talked about the different kinds of wood I could buy to replace the wood with and what kinds of fasteners I would need. After some additional remediation, he declared me ready to begin. Thank goodness he couldn’t see my face – my eyes had rolled up into my head.

I managed to follow his directions, more or less, and excise the offending piece of wood from my doorframe. And as I did, I contemplated how it was that a perfectly intelligent woman could find such a small task so baffling. I bungled a few things, the way an amateur would, but I had one thing down pat: I put my front teeth on my bottom lip as I tore into the wood with the saw, I whistled when things were doing well, swore under my breath when they weren’t, and berated myself when I dropped the nails through the gaps in the deck. I absorbed a lot watching my father when I was little – it just wasn’t how to be a handyman.

Good news is no news

The problem with having created a cranky blog about middle-aged womanhood is that, if things are going well, I don't have any material.

Almost every afternoon, when the weather is good, Albert the greyhound and I spend a few minutes visiting with a neighbor who waits for us with a pocket full of desiccated liver treats (for Albert, not me). On Friday, she asked me what my plans were for the weekend. So I told her.

Friday evening, we were going to a reading by Julie Schumacher, one of Kevin's professors from grad school. Saturday evening, we were meeting friends for dinner at one of St. Paul's been-there-forever Mexican joints. In between these commitments, we'd be tidying the condo, walking the dog, reading the Sunday New York Times, watching episodes of Spaced, and enjoying a nap or two.

"You have the perfect life," she said.

I scoffed. I sputtered about worrying about money, about wishing I lived in a nicer place. But I knew these were weak arguments. I knew she was right.

It's not the life I thought I wanted. I thought I wanted to be presiding over bipartisan dinner parties in a book-lined townhouse in Georgetown or tending a cutting garden in Connecticut. But the nice thing about being disagreeably close to 50 (ten months and 20 days, if I were counting) is that I'm wise enough to appreciate that, by missing out on the shallow stuff I thought I wanted, I lucked into a deeper, richer, lovelier life.

Rest assured, this clear-eyed, even-tempered, well-adjusted phase will pass.

Flash point

Dear Mother Nature,

Whose spectacularly bad idea was the hot flash? And why wasn't there a movie?

When I was in the fifth grade—hell, when all of us were in the fifth grade—we were herded into the school cafeteria for a private screening of It's Wonderful Being a Girl, where I learned that my carefree years of guitar playing and bowling were about to come to an end. And, of course I wasn't happy about it but, oh well, it was going to happen to all of us and it meant that I'd be growing up and I wanted to grow up, didn't I?

Cinematic harbinger notwithstanding, my passage into womanhood was kind of a non-event. So I guess I assumed that my reproductive years would end much as they began. I'd heard of hot flashes, of course, but I live in Minnesota. I thought I'd be a little bit warmer. It didn't seem like it would be much of a problem. I had no idea.

I haven't had an uninterrupted night's sleep in months. I get flushed and sweaty several times a day. I'm doing laundry constantly—there's no airing a shirt out and wearing it again. This is my reward for 38 years of fiddling with the accoutrements of feminine hygiene and enduring the various tidal inconveniences of menstruation?

A movie would have helped. Especially if it covered the topic of lavender towelettes. Lavender towelettes make it possible for me to move and function in polite society. (Though, given that I work at home, polite society is mostly the aisles of Whole Foods.) I keep them in my car, in my purse, on my nightstand. If I'd had some warning, a couple of years ago, that I would soon be spending a substantial percentage of my discretionary income on lavender towelettes, I would have bought stock in lavender towelettes. And perhaps today I'd be a little less flipped out by the various tidal inconveniences on Wall Street.

So, Mother Nature, I demand that you fire the responsible individual immediately. Or, better yet, I'll organize an angry mob of sweaty, sleep-deprived women and you can simply deliver him or her to us.