No Sweat

You might be wondering how any female writing about aging can fail to mention menopause; often a highly memorable event in a woman's life, unless of course more drastic circumstances occurred involving a hysterectomy.  I have known so many women who traveled one or the other of those two paths, and I know either one can be a challenge, so, like a lot of us, I was bracing for it in equal measures of dread and anticipation of no more periods; the anticipation part happened mostly during the periods. Any men who might wander onto the this blog, hear me now: women are amazing creatures.  We ride a hormonal bucking bronco every 28 days or so for years unless we're pregnant, which is no bed of roses itself. Then we endure unimaginable pain to bring life into the world, only to forget sleeping for the foreseeable future to care for that new life. Once we get sleep back, we have teenagers and there goes sleeping again. And then, maybe there's an interlude in there where things settle down...until night sweats, hot and cold flashes and a bit of insanity kick in. And they call us the weaker sex! Most women have a harrowing tale to tell about their path to and through menopause. But I can summarize my personal story in just a few words: there wasn't much to it.

I began perimenopause at 42.  Nothing at all unusual in that but it caught me totally off guard because by then I was dealing with a daughter in crisis and my own body wasn't my focus. I wasn't sure what was happening at first, but I felt like I'd lost any semblance of control over myself. Every single one of the classic symptoms was there.  Every. Last. One. Much to my husband's dismay. If you don't know what I mean by that, look them up.  You'll figure it out.  Mood swings probably plagued me most of all. Baby, my mood was swinging wild from the rafters. I was literally insane for a couple of days every month for a few months. I woke up a few times drenched in enough sweat to sink the Titanic but that was nothing compared to some of the crazy that washed over me. 

Once I caught on, I was able to get the mood swings under some semblance of control and most of the rest of it sort of dissipated on its own. In all, maybe there were five fun filled months before things leveled out. Again, I didn't think too much about it - I was just glad to get off that particular roller coaster because life was quite the ride in and of itself. I experienced just enough of it with just enough vigor, for lack of a better word, to be able to nod knowingly when someone would complain of having a hot flash or not having slept due to night sweats. But I never had night sweats again. And I wouldn't experience hot flashes again for another four years and then only in passing.

When I hit 46 and the real thing kicked in, it was like a bulb about to go out.  It winked on and off for a bit and then, pop, it was gone.  Almost anticlimactic. The most memorable moment - and I remember the moment so specifically I can tell you precisely where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing at the time - is when I realized I was done with menstrual cycles. Despite all those years of whining and complaining about them and actually looking forward to menopause, I felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy.  I realized that a door was closing on a phase of my life and there was no going back. It's hard to describe or justify how I felt - it's not like I was going to have anymore children at 47. But I guess it was just a very definitive announcement that I was no longer young and I needed a moment to process that.

In the way I have of making a short story long, my minimal experience with all the things a lot of women go through is why I didn't address it right out of the gate.  I guess I feel like I didn't earn my stripes: like I can't claim to be part of the sisterhood. If you feel I owe any of you an apology for not traveling that same uncomfortable path, you got it.  I watched enough of you go through the full experience to accept you earned it.

However it happened for any of us, and whatever sense of regret we might have at the moment, can we all agree that there is one great thing about aging: I don't miss periods. At all.

Simon Floats Up Here

A year ago this past spring, I was driving on my street about to pull into my driveway after caring for my grands and I got something big and black landing in my left eye. Or so I thought it was a foreign object hitching a ride. Despite that being a nearly blind eye, the sudden obstruction was just that and I was a bit nonplussed as I pulled in and started trying to blink the thing out, wondering if some gnat or something got in there. After a while I realized it wasn't a gnat or an eyelash or anything else. It was on my eye. Like part of my eye. So what do I do in response? I Googled it of course. And this time, as opposed to the horrible bulging leg vein, the Internet scared the living crap out of me. I don't know precisely what key search words I used at the time because if I try and replicate it now, I get a different set of results that are much more benign, but that day I was nearly convinced my eye was about to fall out or it was symptomatic of some awful disease OR, the most likely culprit, I had been punctured in the eye somehow.  The reason I mentioned where I was coming from is key to that: I help take care of the grandkids overnight on Fridays. It's a big slumber party for my grandson in particular (I think my granddaughter would rather me not be there because, while it's not that she doesn't like me, it's a sign her parents, whom she likes more, are going to leave) and he builds an elaborate fort/bed for us on the floor in their room and of course we're surrounded by all kinds of things: Godzillas, T-Rex's, Legos, you get the picture.  No telling what I could have secretly impaled myself with during the night. Anyway, longish story short, after some consideration, given it was a weekend, I look up eye doctors who take emergency appointments. Mine did not.  I'll let my arm fall off rather than go see a doctor, but I only have one working eye, so I get more panicky about that area of my body.

I found a place in Greenfield (for those of you not familiar with Pittsburgh, it's not just around the corner from where I live but not so bad I couldn't get there - as a matter of fact I go there all the time because the surviving Imax theatre is very near there). So on a cold, rainy weekend day I drive down there and meet this very attractive young blonde doctor who was as sweet as she could possibly be when she checked me and pronounced it as simply "a floater" which is not atypical for people "my age".  She even asked me, "Don't any of your friends have floaters?" I sort of cocked my head quizzically and said, "I have no idea. It's not something we talk about." That struck her as odd. I guess she assumes everyone old enough for senior discounts talks about whatever ails them all the time (which, face it, we sort of do but I wasn't going to concede that). I shrugged and said, "Nope, it's never come up in conversation." Her answer to that was, "Well, you might as well name it because it'll be sticking around."

So I did. It's/His name is Simon after the Mike Myers SNL character. Because he's a cheeky little monkey.

She warned me to call back if I got any flashing lights in the same eye, which I did a couple of days later for about a day and it stopped, and since I'd overreacted enough for one event, I let it go and it's never happened again. And, like she also told me would happen, I grew used to Simon.  He's there and I see him floating around in there sometimes, most notably when I'm very tired, but for the most part, I forget about him. What he is in actuality, for any of you lucky enough not to know from first hand experience, is a shadow caused by clumps of collagen (there's that word again) floating in the vitreous (goo, in short) in our eyes which changes as we age.  I feel cursed by collagen actually: too much of it here, not enough there so I've got bulging veins. Collagen, you suck.

Anyway...fast forward to not long before Christmas when I decided that since she was so nice not to make me feel stupid for overreacting, I'd give them my business. I go down there and her partner, another young, highly attractive blonde (I have a hard time telling them apart actually), sees me, and I tell her about Simon and why he's named that.  That amused her, which I'm glad about but what was not amusing was the fact that by then she could tell I've started developing cataracts, which, again, is not uncommon for someone "my age". Nothing I need to be worried about just yet, but as we learn, not just yet turns into now all too soon. But it's not now, so I'll worry about it when I need to. I'm grateful that Simon didn't turn out to be Pennywise...

...but what is scary is how fast he came on. I woke up one morning and he wasn't in my life. And literally with a blink of an eye he was and presumably always will be (at least I'll never be alone).  The realization that I'm not in control of the things beginning to pop up with my body was the real horror show. I suppose I never was and that none of us are, but still I feel like my body has a different agenda than I do suddenly, and I'm not quite sure how I get it back in line.

All in Vein

Let's take a break from philosophical musings to ask the question of whomever designed us: what the hell?!

I managed to get through my 60th birthday with little to cringe about. I had decided if I couldn't beat it, I was going to meet it head on and celebrate getting here. My daughter and her family made sure it was a wonderful day despite it falling right during the heart of the pandemic, but it helped that I was pretty much what it had always been only with some gray in the hair and lines on the face and wasn't worried about any major changes happening to me without my consent. But in the ensuing three years weird things have started to happen. For no particular reason that I know of. Are these things happening to you? There's so much, it's not going to make it into one post, so let's start with the one that makes me the craziest during the summer - my legs.

For one thing, I've noticed any bug bites, cuts and scrapes take longer to heal these days. I know that happens to folks as they age - my mother-in-law was frightening proof of that a couple of weeks ago. I was caring for her by myself when she got a scrape on her finger  She bled like her finger was coming clean off, not just subjected to a minor incident most of us would shake right off.  But it bled and then bled for a few days off and on.  Not the time to discover you're out of bandaids, I have to add. And of course it's because her skin is like parchment due to her advanced age, plus I'm sure some medication side effects.  I had just gotten to the point of taking off the child proofing we had around the house as my granddaughter is past really needing it, but one wonders if maybe that isn't who really needs bumpers on corner objects.

Anyway, I'm not even close to that same camp, but I do understand that we head in that direction as we age. But still, starting last summer, my legs looked like I'd been in a fight and lost about half the time. I was doing some of the mowing last year and that's where most of the abuse came from.

Fast forward to now and I'm not able to mow as much since I'm with my grands Friday evening/Saturday, so my left leg looks pretty normal. The right leg on the other hand looks like a map of Middle Earth and Mt Doom is looming somewhere up on my inner thigh. 

I've always had visible veins; my Irish skin is sometimes so translucent the veins look like they're just right there barely below the surface. But trust anyone who has ever tried to take blood from me, looks can be deceiving, so maybe it's just how it is for people like me, and anyone with some actual skin tone has a better time of it, but it's certainly not attractive. So of course the first thing I do when I started noticing it was to Google it. Normally that's a recipe for panic. According to the Internet, every little possible change we see is our personal Armageddon. Except this time. When I wanted some reason to run screaming to a doctor to have the offending map removed from my leg, I find site after site saying usually there's no cause for concern. Or that it's a natural result of decreased levels of collagen. I should walk 30 minutes a day. Carly and I walk roughly 45-minutes unless I'm home alone with my mother-in-law in which case I still get the work in running up and down stairs trying to take care of her and work at the same time. Plus 45-minutes five days a week on my Peloton. Not sure how much else you want if I'm still going to hold down a job too. I should drink plenty of water, the Internet tells me. If 70 ounces roughly a day isn't enough for you, what is? I take a daily vitamin for women over 50, but maybe I should take Vitamin K. No wait, this article says Vitamin E.  How about a dose of STFU, Internet? Bottom line is, I think unless I find a pot of gold at the end of some rainbow to afford non-medically mandated surgery, this is the new me. I invested heavily in Bermuda shorts and light-weight full length pants for the summer and have more or less decided this is my new reality. 

Reality is overrated.

Mt. Doom - be glad it's fuzzy, it's not for the squeamish

Next time, I'll introduce you to Simon.

Clay or Stone

Komarovsky: Pavel Pavlovich; my chief impression - and I mean no offence - is that you're very young.

Pasha Antipov: Monsieur Komarovsky; I hope I don't offend you. Do people improve with age?

Komarovsky: They grow a little more tolerant.

My favorite movie since I first saw it is Dr. Zhivago. The 1965 version. Part of the beauty of the material is that every time I watch it things resonate differently with me. The exact same scene that I know backwards and forwards will be a different revelation to me. It all depends upon the life experience I'm filtering it through. When I first saw it at 15, it was the love story that dominated my attention, and I didn't really get the subtext. Later, when I was homesick, it was Zhivago's intense love for Russia and how the two women in his life embodied the different faces of Russia.  I could go on. But no matter what phase of my life I'm in, one scene in particular strikes me differently every single time, and it's the scene in the student cafe when Lara introduces Komarovsky, the older, sexual predator who is her mother's advisor to the young idealistic, yet cold Pasha Antipov, her fiancé. Since I began this blog and took the inevitable look backward to explain my forward, I've been thinking about the conversation the two men have in the cafe and wondered: are we molded in clay or are we chipped out of stone from the time we are young? Are we capable of change as we grow older or are we pretty much a done deal as soon as we leave our parents' fold? And, indeed, do we grow a little more tolerant?

I don't think I'd like myself really if I met young me in some chance setting. I'd recognize that we had a lot in common, but I'd find the younger person high strung, gossipy and so insecure that she spends too much time masking that insecurity with false bravado which I would find grating.  I was a little bit nuts. Maybe more than a little bit. Young me would have told you I was passionate.  But, no, it was nuts. Maybe people with a great deal of passion are all a little nuts, I can't say but I'll cop to it in my case.

The things I hold dear or the overall world philosophies I've had since I was young don't seem to change. Well, not much anyway. I mean, how could I develop a guilty pleasure listening to Fall Out Boy long before they were even born? But I'm a Steelers fan now and always. I love all things on four legs but if they speak dog, then all the more so. In many ways, I'm set in stone. One thing I can point to with absolute pride is I've resisted the prediction I heard more than once, "You'll become more conservative with age." Meaning politically, and primarily from a fiscal point of view.  I have not strayed from my original liberal outlook either socially or fiscally.  What I have done, that I might not have 40 years ago, is accepted as close, dear friends, others who are on the other side of the political aisle from me. Some of you reading this might be among them. As long as you don't trash me for what I believe, I'll respect your point of view. If you want to discuss it, I'll go there if it can remain civil. But honestly I prefer we lean into the areas that made us friends and skirt around the politics. Maybe what my parents always said - never discuss religion or politics - was wiser than I credited at the time.

And I guess what I'm pondering here and posing the question to all of us: are we indeed more tolerant? Or are we like a man named Otto and become grumpier and more stodgy as we age? And are we capable of improving with age like a fine wine or do we at some point sour into vinegar? And can we choose which it will be?

I'd like to think much of my personality has changed and hopefully for the better. I'd really love to tell you I'm no longer crazy. Maybe just a smidge. I suppose we all are. We were raised by imperfect beings in an imperfect world.  It's bound to make us a little off balance. I had to work at it though; it wasn't a "eureka, I've cured all my personality quirks" kind of a thing. One thing about having kids in crisis is we did a LOT of family therapy. I've also done my share of support groups. I'm not sure I would have lost the hard edges without a lot of help, and I still find myself too edgy and judgmental for my own tastes. And opinionated?  Oof, and how!  And - wow - I do have my father's temper, even without his DNA.  All things I'd like to work on. Is it possible? Can I become the better person I want to be? I guess I worry because I spent the recent holiday superbly grumpy at all my neighbors for shooting off fireworks and terrifying my dog. And I thought to myself, "I AM a man called Otto and next thing I know I'm going to be chasing cars down the street yelling they're driving too fast." What happened to the more tolerant part?  

Anyway, back to my characters in the cafe. Fortunately for Lara, she managed to escape both those losers - at least for a time. Oh, oops, that was pretty judgmental of me, wasn't it?

But before she managed all that, she sat in that dingy cafe as Pasha's retort to Viktor Komarovsky was, "Because they have more to tolerate in themselves..."  No matter what age I am, I always find Pasha Antipov/Strelnikov insufferable, but perhaps that is right.