The Gift of Menopause by Annelise Capossela (from the NY Times)<\/p>\n
NASHVILLE \u2014 There are things I miss about being fertile. A waistline. Hair thick enough to hide my pink scalp and skin fitted enough to prove I have bones. Ovulation \u2014 those heady days each month when every cell was vibrating, when just the brush of my husband\u2019s arm against mine could make unloading the dishwasher feel like foreplay. I truly miss ovulation.<\/p>\n
I also miss sleeping. I remember sleep with such fondness. I fell asleep once leaning against the warm knees of the boy sitting behind me at a high-school football game. Back when I was fertile, I could close my eyes at night and wake up eight hours later, sometimes nine, feeling perfectly happy. Behold the bright new day! See how it reaches toward the horizon in all its hopeful promise!<\/p>\n
Now my internal thermostat is broken. I wake up to throw off the covers and lie there, wondering if my beleaguered country can survive the cataclysm that has befallen it, if the Earth itself can survive the convulsion it is undergoing. Feeling old and tired and very worried \u2014 that\u2019s not a recipe for hope.<\/p>\n
For the last few years, my husband and I were living in a dog hospice, caring for the ancient dachshund<\/a> we inherited when my mother died and the ancient hound\/retriever\/shepherd mix<\/a> who helped us raise our sons. This summer we had to say goodbye to both of them. I walk through the rooms of our quiet house now with a constant lump in my throat.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we need to travel more,\u201d my husband said.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we need a puppy,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n All that energy, all that untrammeled wiggling, cuddling, licking love \u2014 a puppy is the very personification of hope. But when I filled out the adoption application for a local animal-rescue organization, their website kicked it back with a note that read, \u201cValidation errors occurred.\u201d The \u201cerror,\u201d it turns out, was my age. Under the field where I had typed \u201c56,\u201d the website had noted (in bright red letters, lest I miss the note), \u201cThis number is too large.\u201d<\/p>\n This number is indeed too large for some things, but I\u2019m grateful to have reached it. I\u2019ve buried too many friends who were younger than I, and I feel more keenly than ever the bounty of this beautiful, temporary life.<\/p>\n The pyrotechnics of youth may be gone, but I have learned that there\u2019s no aphrodisiac like long love, like the feeling of knowing and being known, of belonging to a beloved\u2019s body as fully as you belong to your own.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s easier now to shrug off failure. It\u2019s easier to shrug off most other things, too: missed opportunities, the unwarranted anger of others, fear of looking like a fool. A person who is not afraid of looking like a fool gets to do a lot more dancing.<\/p>\n Why did I ever worry about whether my party dress was enough like everyone else\u2019s party dress to be appropriate without being too much like everyone else\u2019s party dress to be derivative? When bangs were in fashion, why did I ever cut my own bangs with the sewing shears?<\/p>\n I was never a woman who turned heads, but menopause has made me invisible, and I love being invisible. Why did I ever care if strangers thought I was pretty? Worse, why didn\u2019t I <\/em>think I was pretty at an age when everyone<\/em> is pretty? \u201cOh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26,\u201d wrote Nora Ephron in \u201cI Feel Bad About My Neck.\u201d \u201cIf anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don\u2019t take it off until you\u2019re 34.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s menopause or simply aging, but time\u2019s winged chariot has freed me from bikinis, among other things. Life is full of obligations that can\u2019t be shirked, but always there are \u201cobligations\u201d I\u2019m not obliged to do. No, I don\u2019t want to sit on that panel. No, I don\u2019t want to attend that fund-raiser. No, I don\u2019t want to go to that party. The days are running out, faster and faster, and I have learned that every yes<\/em> I say to something I don\u2019t want to do inevitably means saying no<\/em> to something that matters to me far more \u2014 time with my family, time with my friends, time in the woods, time with a book.<\/p>\n For many women, menopause can be far more brutal, but for me even the insomnia has been a kind of gift, if only because the gorgeous world is most gorgeous in the first light of dawn. The songbirds, their fledglings hungry from a long night of fasting, are most active and most garrulous at sunrise. The doe and her spotted fawn have not yet found a cool place to settle under the trees, and the bullfrogs are still booming out their baritone disputes. The webs the micrathena spiders<\/a>have spun in the darkness have not yet been torn by falling leaves and wind. The filaments, stirring in the irregular light, are their own little suns.<\/p>\n The night I learned I was too old to adopt a rescue puppy, I woke in the dark and headed to a nearby lake at sunrise. A host of rough-winged swallows were scooping gnats from the air above the water. Three great blue herons and two little green herons all stood still as sentries on the shore. A raccoon hauled itself onto the bank, shedding a shower of water drops that gleamed like diamonds. A pair of fledgling barred owls demanded to be fed while their sharp-eyed parents watched the ground, waiting for some small creature to trundle through the underbrush. Nearby, a chipmunk was crouching motionless under a fallen tree.<\/p>\n And when I got home, there was an email waiting for me from the animal rescue organization: It said I am not too old to adopt a puppy at all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n — <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Gift of Menopause by Annelise Capossela (from the NY Times) NASHVILLE \u2014 There are things I miss about being fertile. A waistline. Hair thick enough to hide my pink scalp and skin fitted enough to prove I have bones. … Continue reading
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