This is My Body, This is My Blood

Away From Her

The leaves of memory seemed to make a mournful rustling in the dark. ~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The forgetting started a couple of years ago. Names, mostly, then words--common ones--and people I know I know but can't remember how or why. They shake my hand and I smile, finding new ways to acknowledge them without letting on that our familiarity's denominator has somehow taken leave. I wonder if they're onto me, if they see the narrowing of my eyes as I scurry backward into myself, ransacking gnarled limbs of memory, searching for their names?

I now wake each morning with two questions on my lips What day is it? Where do I have to be and when? This is because worry carries itself forward from recent clashes with time and place, the fallout of memory's lack. Like the look on my face when a client arrives and I'm not expecting them because I recorded the wrong date in my planner or worse, correctly recorded it but incorrectly looked at the wrong week when I started my day.

Last night I watched, "Away From Her," a film about a man coping with the institutionalization of his wife, who is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Bridgette Bardot Julie Christie plays the patient, Fiona. See there? You see how it is, how twelve hours can flatten a name, turn it on its side, so all you recognize is the era from which it descended? That's what I'm talking about. That constant chipping of formerly sharp edges. I'm only 48. How can I be losing my memory so soon?

The movie was poignant and satisfying despite the dark topic. The characters were real, flawed people struggling to hold onto love while wishing they could forget the obstacles to that love. The wife can't remember a book her partner has read to her, but she remembers his youthful infidelities. The husband reminisces his young bride's "sweetness and irony" while in denial of her need to enter a care facility. Memory, it seems, is dampened by imagination and wishes.

When the movie ended, I immediately googled Alzheimer's and the ugly symptoms of the disease. I was relieved to discover I'm not senile, just suffering from yet another delightful side effect of menopause: forgetfulness. According to recent studies, it's not a memory issue so much as it's a problem storing (or failure to learn) new information. I want to believe the article, but some of the information I've lost isn't all that new. However, as the article points out, I am pulled in a lot more directions with a lot less capability of following them all than I was in my 20's and 30's so I can imagine my brain is a bit overloaded. Add to that the combined effect of all the other symptoms of menopause and it's no wonder my brain feels fuzzy. I have, in effect, what my friend, Sue Richards, calls "The Stupids".

It's pretty clear what needs to happen in order to make it easier for my brain to record and store information. Attending classes at our local college, for one. Getting better sleep, eating healthy foods, walking, and eliminating stress will undoubtedly help not just my brain, but my whole body function better. As I look over this list, I recognize the biggest culprit: exercise (or lack of it). So with you as my silent witness, I'm making a covenant with myself (and my dogs) to get back into a walking routine. Starting tomorrow today, we'll lace up those dusty sneakers and hit the pavement for at least 30 minutes of brisk walking. If I'm not back by sunset, somebody send a search team. I've either lost my way or, perhaps, found it again.

Aged Whine

The years teach much which the days never knew.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

is this how it starts--
this sliding away of brain cells
like change down the sofa cushions
hidden away in dusty recesses--unseen
but not unmissed?

Take this morning, for instance
reaching for massage oil
you pump liquid soap instead
an easy mistake, maybe
but later you're making a point
--or trying to--about famous people
in politics,when suddenly the name of that actor 
(you can see his face) turns to vapor
before reaching your tongue

you squint real hard as if
you might squeeze the name
from behind your eyelids
well, you know who I mean, you say

it's not just the memory, no
it's the body, this body
once lean and strong and sexy, my god
how it thrilled you to own it
before you began waking during the night
right arm aching, fingers numb
the wood floor like gravel
beneath your bare feet each morning

as you stumble to the kitchen
groaning--ow, ow, ow
no one hears you complain, though
because the bed is empty
no lover waiting for your return
no coffee delivered by gentle hands
no dent left by his body
in the crumpled sheets

and you're okay with it, really
measured it all very carefully
the weight of love against
this solitary life, their neediness
against your need to mold each day
with your own hands, hands that remind you
of your mother's now, folded
across your chest, listening to your own breath
as you wade through a hot flash t
hen bolt upright, eyes wide
Martin Sheen!
   
Technorati Tags: aging, growing older, memory loss,second half of life,aging, perimenopause, menopause, hot flashes, essay, blog, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, massage,martin sheen,

Watsu Matter With Me?

A few weeks ago I signed up for a Watsu massage from a woman referred to me by my friend and fellow member of Massage Sluts Anonymous, M. She thought I'd love the waterwork but I found it difficult to surrender to the process given my drowning issues. What I did love was photographing the practitioner as she worked with a young woman who's recovering from nerve damage after doctors accidentally knocked her leg out of the stirrup during hip surgery. Watching her was like attending a birth, the way she completely gave into each finite movement in the dance between her body and the body of water that cradled her.

Have you ever felt as though you were swimming against the current, trying unsuccessfully to best a hidden riptide as it pulled you further out to sea?  As though you've completely forgotten everything you'd learned about swimming parallel to the shore until you're out of danger rather than use up every last bit of energy on a futile battle with the forces of nature? The last few weeks have left me keening like a boat with a torn sail. Today it was all I could do just to get out of bed and feed the animals, let alone myself. I don't know if the fatigue stems from emotional backwash caused by recent  transitions or it's a physical manifestation of my tendency to overdo/give when I know damn well I'm running on an empty tank, but I haven't been this tired since I had mono in the tenth grade.

I continue to push myself through necessary tasks but it's like trying to hurry honey off the spoon. Perhaps I need to revisit that pool, take a lesson in the art of flow instead of dog-paddling my way through yet another day of Things To Do. At the very least, I might benefit from sitting in a chair under an umbrella with a view of nothing but my eyelids.

Technorati Tags: watsu, perimenopause, menopause, fatigue,  essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, massage

Immortal Thoughts

I'm wild again, beguiled again
A simpering, whimpering child again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I

Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered by Richard Rogers & Lorenze Hart, performed by Ella Fitzgerald

If you'd asked my nine year-old self what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wouldn't have hesitated to answer, Samantha Stevens. Except for the part where I'd be married to that neurotic Darrin (both of them), I couldn't imagine a better life than twitching my nose to clean the house, flying to the moon for lunch, and enjoying Elizabeth Montgomery's wit and beauty. Plus I'd love having sweet little old Aunt Clara to balance out my bitchy mother, Endora who was too busy being Dr. Bombay's fag hag.

I've long since learned to make my own magic, but today is one of those day when I'd give up a month of coffee in exchange for a few simple nose-twinkles. As often as I'm in denial about the limits of my physical, mental and emotional output, I'm willing to admit that this past week has left me nearly drained on multiple levels and I'm in dire need of a few good spells to clean up my mess(es).

It started with S's announcement that he'd found an apartment (another day, another blog) followed by my habit of processing change via ripping shit up--in this case, the mildewy shower surround above the old, scratched bathtub I can never get clean. While S has been slowly packing up various boxes and making multiple trips to his new studio, I've been picking up heavy pieces of cast iron tub (amazing what a husky college student equipped with a sledge hammer can accomplish in ten minutes) and making multiple trips to Home Depot. Thanks to my bright idea of putting in a galvanized stock tank to replace the old tub, it's taken nearly 20-man hours of hired labor to deal with the wood rot/termite damage behind the shower wall, install wood laminate flooring, change out rusty plumbing, and replace the old crank-out window.

Yesterday, after a full day of clients, errands, and dealing with no less then three contractors (only one of which showed up on time) I kept my promise to take J to the Mid-State Fair. I'm not really a carnival kind of girl, but his buddy backed out and I felt bad for him. We ended up having a fun evening (minus the part where I freaked out and asked to be let off a ride) but by the time the shuttle bus dropped us back at our car, I could barely keep my eyes open to drive home.

I headed back out at nine this morning to give three massages, made another trip to Farm Supply only to find the tub they'd promised to fix was still leaking, and still managed to play lose two sets of racquetball at the Y with J. Afterward I took yet another sponge bath due to our current lack of shower facilities then looked around at all the dust and dirt awaiting my attention.  I picked up a broom, made one half-hearted sweep, then promptly sat down and cried.

On Monday evening--the day S officially moves out--a couple of my favorite bloggers are coming down from BlogHer for a brief visit. I'd planned to be the perfect host, show them around our beautiful coastal towns, maybe even do a little wine-tasting, but after this very long week I'm glad I reserved a room at the Inn. Instead of racing up and down the coast, we'll spend a couple days lying in hammocks, grabbing fresh fish off the pier to bbq for dinner, and drinking wine on our oceanfront deck.

Although I'm looking forward to treating both women to nurturing massages, the gift of sisterhood to help replenish my overtapped well will be the real treat. I've never met either of them in person but my intuition tells me I can count on Janeen and Sue to make the dent left by S's departure from my immediate environment a little softer. In fact, what better recipe for brewing up a few magical spells than the alchemy of three women, two nights, and one big-assed ocean under a waxing moon. Better start doing your nose-exercises girls. We've got some serious bewitchin' to do.

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, weight gain, bewitched, blogher, loss of energy, relationships,  essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, massage

Picking and Choosing

So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello.

John Prine (what can I say, I'm on a Prine roll)

J: I figured out why teenagers don't like old people

Me: Because they move too slowly?

J: No. Because they remind us of what we'll become someday. We look at them and think, fuck you, I'm not going to get old and bent and shuffling. Just shoot me when I'm sixty.

Me: Sixty? B is sixty-three and look how young he is.

J: He's old.

At 47, I'm just beginning to grasp the relativity of years. I was two years old when my father was my current age and the same age as J--17--when my mother was 47 (she was a dozen years younger than my dad). As far back as I can remember, I always thought they were old. It wasn't until I was in my twenties and Mom went back to college to finish her degree, that I realized just how young and vibrant she was. My father, on the other hand, was likely born old. He had an old walk, old ways of thinking, and an old heart that was as weak as it was warm. Yet despite his heart condition and her comparative youth, he outlived my mother by thirteen years. Mortality, it seems, isn't determined by years so much as it is by fate. Just ask the ninety year-old woman puffing on a cig who never walks further than the mailbox as the "healthy" vegetarian who doesn't drink anything other than his herbal concoctions drop dead mid-stride on his morning walk past her porch.

Age, to me, isn't about the state of one's health or taking naps or even a measure of years so much as it's a more translucent way of living. Having felt the piercing gash of grief and lived through it, having loved to the brink of brokenness, and having learned the lessons of friendship and frivolity, one eventually takes a conscious step through the invisible membrane between and hubris and humility. This event is not marked by a certain age so much as it is an uncertain promise of tomorrow.

Last week I went berry-picking with two seventy-ish women on a rural farm in Santa Margarita. We ambled down rows of fat oolala berries, they in their wide-brimmed sunhats and me in my pink visor, while a chicken pecked at the ground and goats bleated in a nearby pen. I believe we ate almost as many berries as we put in our baskets by the time we slipped five dollar bills into a slot in the "honor box" and drove back to town.

In the past, I would have considered it much more convenient just to buy the berries, or better yet, buy the pie from Avila Barn. As I push my way through the late summer of my life, I'm learning that older people don't slow down because they have to, so much as because they choose to. Eating home-made berry cobbler still warm from the oven trumps a store-bought pastry every single time. And reaching for a fat blackberry with juice-stained fingers on a sunny Tuesday morning far outweighs a quick pass through the produce section any day of the week.

*************************************************************************************************

I'd planned to end this post here, but as I typed the last sentence, my cell-phone chimed with an incoming text-message from my friend, D, in Canada. His ninety-one year old father is slipping away from this world, a man who once treated me to delightful stories of working on the railroads in northern Ontario over a cup of Tim Horton's coffee. As I raise my morning cup to my lips, I'm thinking of him, and the son who has so tenderly cared for him these past years. This one's for you, D, and in memory of Joseph Dean Baker, railroad worker and storyteller extraordinaire.

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, getting older, berries, relationships, john prine, essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, avila

Can You Hear Me Now?

I don't know if it's menopause-related or if all the those Bible verses I was forced to memorize as a child finally caused a cerebral back-up as I was attempting to etch another telephone number into my memory, but I seem to have sprung a leak. Literally.

It started last Fall as I was driving downtown. The AC in my van hasn't worked for years so when the inevitable hot flash occurs, rolling down the window is my only reprieve from the instant sauna that is my life. Normally the wind is a welcome rush of fresh air, but on this particular day things got a little weird. First, I'm one of those people who has never liked the tongue-in-ear thing (just ask the men  I've dropped who refused to accept this statement as fact) so when I suddenly got that wet willie feeling in my left ear, I immediately freaked, thinking someone just delivered a drive-by spitting.  I can't imagine what people in the other cars were thinking as they passed the swerving driver with her finger in her ear. Wait. Yes I can. I imagine they were thinking I should roll up my window if I don't enjoy the sounds of traffic. Or turn down my damn radio if it's too loud. Or maybe they just thought I was an idiot. But I'd bet a whole box of Q-Tips nobody thought, hmm, her ear must be leaking--I hate when that happens.

An isolated event, you think. Not so, my friend. Over the course of the next several months the ear thing went from a sudden dampness to a regular spigot.  I cannot begin to describe how distrubing it is to experience a sudden warm trickle out one's ear, jamming your finger as far as it will go and still not being able to relieve the accompanying tickle. After several weeks of drainage, I finally dragged myself to the local health clinic where I joined the ranks of other uninsured souls only to be told (three hours later) my eardrums look fine, no infection, not even a tiny bit red.

As it turns out, following 47 years of languishing in the joy of bathtubs, my ears have suddenly decided to take on water, save it for just the right moment, then, gurgle, gurgle, drip, drip. As if hot flashes, declining libido, occasional incontinence, memory lapse, lubrication issues, sagging everything, hair loss, foggy thinking, depression, low energy, and night sweats weren't enough, now my damn ears are leaking. Plus, the one thing that's helped me make it through these godawful assaults on the body-- my beloved claw foot bathtub--has suddenly become an instrument of evil-doing.

Surely this cruel joke called menopause has an eventual punch line where we share a collectivel laugh before going back to the business of being kick-ass women in an ass-kicking world. I, for one, have had enough of the tribulations on the pathway to the golden fucking pond. What's that you say? It gets purse before it gets letter?  Sorry, I can't hear you with these soggy wads of cotton in my ears.

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, hot flashes, getting older, libido, body image, depression, essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, incontinence

You're In Trouble

I refuse to think of them as chin hairs.  I think of them as stray eyebrows. Janette Barber

I can't recall how we got on the subject of incontinence, but as I was giving a massage treatment to my octogenarian client yesterday, she relayed a girlhood story of how she and her mother were out for a walk one evening when they came upon an older woman wearing a long black skirt. The woman, who happened to be peeing on her shoes, pointed at the sky and said, "Isn't it a lovely sunset?" My client's mother later explained that in an attempt to cover her embarrassment, the woman was trying to divert their attention away from the puddle at her feet. From that day on when my client or her mother needed to use the restroom, they simply said, "Isn't it a lovely sunset?"

As I massaged E's back, I suddenly flashed on the day my mother stood in front of an our old O'Keefe and Merit stove, stirring a pan of tomato soup while 3 cheese sandwiches fried on a cast iron griddle. My sisters and I had walked home from school for lunch, and I was in the midst of telling a funny story when my mother suddenly clutched her belly, laughing in that way that sounded like hollow bells. "Stop!" she said. And then to our complete horror, she pissed herself, a yellow puddle forming on the linoleum as we looked on in disbelief.

As with most benchmarks of the aging process, I never expected it would happen to me. The first time I peed myself, I was facilitating a dance workshop ala Gabrielle Roth with a group of about eight women on a warm Sunday afternoon. When we reached the "lyrical" section of the five rhythms, I went into faerie mode, skipping my way across the wooden floor to the accompaniment of a Lord of the Dance CD. Mid-song, I leapt rather effortlessly, before landing on my bare feet in the center of several ecstatic women. In that moment I suddenly became profoundly aware of a lowering of my bladder, not at all unlike the end of pregnancy when one's baby drops and settles into the pelvic girdle. Before I could stop myself, I leapt again and this time felt the full weight of the last swallow of morning coffee as it escaped its leaky container.

Deeply grateful for the choice of black tights under my long skirt, I side-stepped my way toward the bathroom with as much grace as anyone who just wet their pants could possibly muster.  Mortified by my sudden loss of urinary faculties, I rinsed my tights in the sink before hiding them in my purse. I was only forty-two years old. Surely this couldn't already be the beginning of my feminine decline into crone-hood. Could it? The horrified face in the mirror said yes, it probably could. What did you expect after giving birth to three children--the last of whom weighed in at ten pounds?

Eventually I gathered what was left of my pride and rejoined the other dancers, making some silly comment about those tights being too constricting and hot. Five years later I can retell the story without blushing every shade of a lovely sunset. 

(You gotta admit this was one of my best--or worst--titles of all time. I kill myself sometimes. Heh heh.)

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, hot flashes, saliva test, dance, body image, dancing, gabrielle roth, essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, incontinence

Waking Life

If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside me, threatening the life it belongs to. "Breathe 2 AM/Wreck of the Day 2005" by Anna Nalick

As the daughter of a literary Bible preacher, I grew up on the "Do as I say, not as I do," hypocrisy of good people with good intentions who often forgot the sermon before the brimstone had cooled beneath their Sunday pot roasts. Even my dad, who taught us never to curse would sometimes mutter, "shit!"  as he pawed at his gravy-tipped tie with a shredding paper napkin.

And here, I wrote a couple books about the importance of writing as personal catharsis, yet how often do I allow my emotions to pile up behind the levee until someone pokes a finger between two sandbags and, poof, here comes a flood? More often than I care to admit, thank you. And just like the nice folks who were warned of the dangers before Katrina, I act all surprised when I suddenly find myself perched on the roof of my heart as the sewage of backed-up feelings threatens to carry me away.

As evidenced by Nalick's title of the quoted lyric, it usually isn't until you're alone with your thoughts when you first become aware of that niggling in the back of your mind. You can't blame the insomnia on coffee or spicy food or menopausal night sweats because this thing that has you wide-eyed in the middle of the night has nothing to do with food or hormones and everything to do with unattended issues. Ain't no pillow fluffing or warm milk gonna fix the kind of wakefulness that stares back at you in the dark like a hungry dog next to the dinner table. The only remedy is between the covers of that neglected notebook tucked into the back of your night stand.

So you creep to the living room, trying not to disturb your lover or the cat at the end of the bed as you slip down the hallway with pen in hand. And finally, you write. You write and you write and you write, until your hand cramps and you notice the first bits of light sneaking up on the shadows. You look down at your scribbled pages, a mess of uncivilized sentences riding up and down the paper as if each word was planted by a different hand, and you can't remember writing them. All you know is the thing inside you, that hard little knot of discontent, has left and suddenly you feel weightless.

So you float back to bed and snuggle against the warm back of your lover who asks if you're okay and you say, yes. And for the first time in weeks, you mean it.

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, hot flashes, journaling, essay, blog, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, insomnia

Photo Credit: Still capture from The Pillow Book

My Big Fat Geek Evening

When my son, J, was no more than six years old, he'd already chosen his bride. Every night he'd watch her glide gracefully across the stage, blond hair swept into a loose knot, teardrop diamonds dangling from her delicate ears as she waved to the audience. When she smiled, he smiled back.  I think he believed she'd been saving that toothy show all day just for him.

"Why do you want to marry her?" I asked him once as we competed to guess the first puzzle.

He looked at me from behind thick glasses as if I were retarded. "Because she wears such beautiful gowns, whaddya think?"

"Oh," I said. "Of course."

His love for Vanna may have been secondary to his love for words, yet I can't help but wonder if his exceptional vocabulary was due in part to his infatuation with the woman in the sparkly dresses. It wasn't uncommon for him to solve the puzzles before me, even back in elementary school, where, like when I was a kid, he won most spelling bees. By the time he'd reached the eighth grade, he'd placed in almost every writing contest he entered. 

Over the years, my son found better things to do than watch Wheel of Fortune with his mother and I found other ways to fill my evenings. As much as I enjoyed playing along with him, now that he's away at boarding school, I no longer fritter away my time watching spinning wheels and silly people who jump up and down upon command.

However, truth be known, my nerdy little boy came by his penchant for word games naturally. Every weeknight around 6:55, S and I meander toward the sofa, as if by accident.

"So, you wanna watch something?" he'll ask.

I shrug. "I dunno."

"Hey look," he says, scrolling through the channels, "Jeopardy! is just starting."

"Huh. I suppose we could watch that."

Minutes later, we're both yelling out answers, cursing our lagging memories, high-fiving each other when one of us beats the contestants. By the time Final Jeopardy plays its last familiar note, my brain is exhausted and my hair hurts.

So, okay, I admit it: I'm a word geek. I love crossword puzzles and I love Scrabble and the only thing better than playing along with Jeopardy!  would be if Alex marched across the stage in an evening gown.

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, game shows, vanna white, wheel of fortune, body image, jeopardy, nerds, geeks, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, weblog

Vintage Whine

"When you hit 50, you have to stop complaining about getting old, the strangeness of it, the fascination, the horror, etc., etc. That was okay in your 40's and 50's, but now that you're old, it's time to shut up on the subject." Garrison Keillor

Last Friday I turned 47. This means that, according to Garrison, I still have three years of whining left before somebody slaps me upside the head with a box of Depends and hands me an AARP card.  Okay, fair enough. But you can bet your blogging butt I plan to suck up every last drop of perimenopausal pity between now and March 3, 2009. Deal with it.

Like for instance, what the fuck happened to my triceps? The other day I was waving good-bye to S, when one of the kitties attacked the swinging flap of my upper arm, thinking it was a play-toy. That is just so unfair. I can still remember (back when I could easily zip all nine pairs of jeans in my closet and I thought only lazy people took naps) how I'd hurry through the frozen foods section  looking as if I were carrying a couple of done turkeys. Nowadays I stand in the middle of the aisle wearing a sleeveless top with a carton of Cherry Garcia held to my sweaty brow, and nary a hint of nipply temperatures.

As if reading glasses and weight gain aren't bad enough, that cute little freckle under my right eye is now officially an age spot, the result of spending hour upon hour at the beach shooting for the perfect shade of Barbie-Doll bisque. God those tan lines were sexy, weren't they? Nothing like taking off your clothes to uncover a white bikini, complete with dangly string lines.

Speaking of which, I recently went bathing suit shopping and, after a hideous one-on-one with the mirror in the dressing room, brought home one of those one-piece jobs with a little skirt like my mother used to wear. I'm not convinced the flirty skirt will do much to disguise one's expanding derriere, but if I ever want to go ice skating to kill the hot flashes, now I've got the outfit.

Nothing I have to say about aging is new, but it's all new to me, and I'm not liking it much so far. From cellulite to wrinkles to incontinence to flatulence* to hearing loss*, geriatric benchmarks aren't nearly as much fun as looking forward to, say, your first sexual experience or driving a car or giving birth. Let's face it, there are a million sucky things about getting older, and since I haven't yet used up my quota, you can bet there'll be more. For instance, I've been trying to figure out a way to slip this in: And let's not forget memory loss!

heh, heh.

And laughing at your own bad jokes.

*The one redeeming aspect of this is that old people no longer hear low frequency sounds, including their own.

Technorati Tags: aging, body image, menopausehot flashes, dieting, Garrison Keillor