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.

Senior Project

Hey you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, mister blue sky's up there waitin'
And today is the day we've waited for

Mr. Blue Sky, Electric Light Orchestra

People say we're more like an old couple than mother and son, the way we bicker and make up, share a million inside jokes, fight over what goes in the grocery cart. I suppose it's because he's the only male that's stuck around in my life for more than a few months or years--granted more by necessity than choice. Or maybe it's due to the fact that from the instant I first laid eyes on this kid, I understood he was as much my peer as my prodigy.

As a child, J was the kind of kid who would sit cross-legged in the middle of the basketball court during summer camp, his spectacled head absorbed in a book while the other kids danced the ball around and over him. He was the one consistently sent to the office for distracting the class with his jokes, arguing semantics with a teacher, or standing up to a bully with words that sliced as deeply as the punches landing on my son. And he's the the kind of kid you pull out of school a half-dozen times, trying unsuccessfully to find an odd-shaped hole for a many-faceted peg.

He finally graduated from high school this week, thanks to a newly-formed charter school that worked one-on-one with J to help him garner enough credits to earn a diploma. He earned most of those credits at Cuesta College, and now has a year of general ed under his belt, putting him a full year ahead of most of his counterparts. The graduation ceremony was simple, sweet, and unrehearsed. The 13 capped students chose a song to accompany their walk to the "stage" (a semi-circle of chairs on the lawn of the cohousing community). Jacob chose ELO's Mr. Blue Sky, fitting in that for graduation I'd gifted him with 20-20 vision, and it was his first public appearance sans prescriptions lens.

I know my kid loves me, but he's not quick to say so, at least not in words. His way of showing affection is to crack my back when he notices I'm "off" or to pick up an extra pack of sunflower seeds when he's at the store. So I didn't expect much more than a posed photo or an indulgent hug last Thursday. What I got is this: a fitting reward for twelve-plus long years of trying to give J the best education available. What you get today is the gift of J's graduation address, copied below. Bring your hankie, folks.

Wait...I thought I was the juggling act. No? Ok, then (retrieving speech from beneath his crokked cap).

The transition from high school onward never seemed like such a big deal to me. What’s all the fuss about? After all, our schooling isn’t complete, in fact far from it. If you were to ask me, or be forced to listen to me ramble on as you all are, I would say that our schooling ends with a toe tag. There are so many things to discover and explore on this planet--from new sources of renewable energy to unseen species of tropical insects to new planets and stars not yet seen or given a name. Whether we go on to college or find what we love in a simpler life, whether we travel abroad or deeply explore the comforts of home, we will spend the rest of our lives learning the complicated rhythms of the Earth.

So what are we really graduating from? I sat at my computer for hours, unable to write more than a sentence about my graduation (then again, the James Bond marathon on TV didn’t help). I was stumped. Finally, it dawned on me. I think graduation isn’t just a celebration of what we’ve done-- although anyone who has sat through some public school lessons that made eating glass look kind of appealing deserves a medal (and most of us have). No, nearly everyone has endured 12 years of standardized, platform-building schooling that in and of itself is good mostly for celebration that it's finally over.

The real focus of graduation, however, is the glorious recognition and anticipation of all the varied and amazing things we will do in our lifetimes, the things that we’ll learn from here on out-- be it thermonuclear physics, computer science, art, or underwater basket weaving. Raising a family, caring for loved ones, discovering the balance of work and play; from this day forward we each break free of standardized credit mongering and walk our own paths in life, building the tools that you--not the State of California--decide you need, and discovering what it is in life makes your heart sing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "To be yourself in a world that is that constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." Then again, he also said that quotation confesses inferiority, so maybe he wasn’t the best guy to quote.

In closing, no graduation speech would be anywhere near complete without the standard thank you to a very unstandard woman. I spent what often seemed like every day of  1st -8th  grade getting my cheeky butt sent to the office, so my mother got to know a lot of secretaries very well. If it weren’t for my mother’s tireless work, I would never have received such a varied and exceptional education.

Words can’t begin to describe how thankful I am for your constant support and guidance, and the support and guidance I will no doubt require when I need to figure out how to do my taxes, or buy a house, or make pot roast, or take bubblegum out of my couch. If anyone deserves a cool little piece of paper and a nifty hat, its totally you, mom. If Mr. Emerson will allow me to quote him yet again, even if it does confess my inferiority, "Men are what their mothers make them."

At this point he ad libbed, "And now if you'll all indulge me, I've got some flowers here for my mom, and for my teacher, Amy, who put up with a long year's worth of procrastination and nincompoopery from me." Then he produced a beautiful bunch of roses for me and a bouquet of mixed flowers for Amy, and walked them to us one at a time along with warm hugs. There wasn't a dry eye on the lawn.

It was a very good day. I hope yours was, too.

Round Trip

Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light.
Did it take long to find me? and are you gonna stay the night?
Cat Stevens, Moon Shadow

The moon hung like a broken pendulum from an abandoned grandfather clock outside my window last night. I tried pulling the covers over my head but the white noise crawled under the sheets and played a busy highway against the mattress. I closed my eyes and tried to turn the roar into waves the way I do when I stay at a cheap roadside motel, but it didn't help any more than when I stay in an oceanfront inn and the pounding waves turn into cars on a phantom freeway. It's all the same, isn't it? Coming and going. Going and coming.

So I got up. I got up and yanked the blinds, let the light all the way in. Stood there naked in front of the window, daring the moon to drown me in his bluewhite rain. I know it's been coming just as sure as I know winter's buried beneath my feet and one of these days it's gonna burst forth and turn Cerro San Luis green again, so why not welcome it? Yeah. Why not.

Because I'm tired of this swinging door of seasons. I'm tired of saving daylight and holding onto mornings when the evening is inevitable. I'm tired of the goodbyes and laters and maybes. I've had it with watching my life unfold in a rear-view mirror, one hand waving as he shrinks in the distance. The sun does its best to shield me, burn the memories into a smile, but with the darkness comes oblivion--a million pieces of me scattered in the sky like so much nothing.

I stood there anyway. Let the lump of sad fill my lungs then wind its way up my throat, where the soft tones of denial turned into a howl that shook me to the core. I became the highway, the ocean, the nothing and the everything.

I don't know how long it lasted, don't remember the walk back to bed where the cats curled themselves around my legs like bookends. The only fragment that has stayed with me this morning is the last arc of curved light as it rose above the window, leaving behind a soft dent in the sky where I suspect that howl must have landed. I woke feeling hollow, quiet, strangely stoic against the weaving of heart and head as they rally for tactical positions.

I give myself over to my feet instead. They take me to the kitchen, back to bed, to the window, back to bed. Coming and going. Going and coming.

Technorati Tags: relationships, perimenopause, menopause, cat stevens,  essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, endings

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,

Breast of Times

This post is in honor of my Breast Friend, Sue Richards, of Calendar Girl for all her dedicated work and hard-fought battles to promote breast health to men and women everywhere.  I made a vow as a Breast Ambassador to spread the gospel of breast health, so please click on over to her blog and buy a lovely Breast of Canada Calendar for as many people as you can think to endow with this gorgeous and informative gift. Thank you.

Up until my youngest brother pushed his way into our already-crowded house of six girls plus  two parents, I hadn't taken much notice of the difference between my chest and my mother's--or even my oldest sisters' developing bosoms.  In fact, at a mere five years of age I assumed the matching bulges that filled my mother's dresses were God's way of gifting warm pillows to sleepy heads as they nodded off on soft laps.

This all changed the day my grandmother stood over our kitchen table sprinkling starch-water on white sheets and pillow cases while my mom rocked D in her arms. To my utter amazement, she unbuttoned her blouse and  pulled the swaddled lump that was my baby brother against her bare chest. I watched in awe as D  latched onto her nipple like a Kindergarten painting onto a fridge door and suckled for all his 13-pound worth (yes, that was his birth weight!).  My mother and grandmother continued chatting as if neither considered the fat-cheeked new person gumming my mother's breast to his heart's content, was worthy of wide-eyed staring.

Dumbfounded by the extraordinary event taking place in our kitchen, I moved closer to my mother in an attempt to get a better look, but the edge of her blouse concealed both her boob and my brother's face. Undaunted, I planted myself in the adjacent chair, then matter-of-factly reclined until my head was in my mother's lap, under the arm that supported the slurping baby where I had a dead-on view of this most curious happening.  Sure as Sunday, D was sucking on the end of my mother's breast, and as if that weren't impressive enough, my mother suddenly pulled the nipple out of his mouth and flopped him over her shoulder, leaving the pendulous pillow dangling above my face where I-shit-you-not warm, bluish-white fluid sprayed my face.

I jumped to my feet and wiped my cheek with my sleeve as my grandmother cackled in the memorable way that is forever etched into my bones.

"Whatsa matter, Ellie? You want some?"

I shook my head furiously.

"Sure you do. Give her a taste, Aussie." That laugh again.

I felt a warm heat travel up my neck and over my face. In a moment more surreal than I'd yet to experience, my mother pulled me closer and placed my small hand on her bare breast.

"There's milk inside. It's how D gets his food. Same way you and all your sisters were fed."

Still recovering from the blasphemy of bodily fluids that had just coated my face, I was now completely blown away by all this new information, along with the sensory input of my mother's breast under my palm.

As if sensing my thoughts, my mother smiled. "Go ahead," she said. "Squeeze."

I looked down at the hand that no longer registered as part of my own body and curled my fingers around her flesh. Milk bubbled out from the big brown nipple and onto my mother's aproned knee. I remember thinking this was the warmest, softest thing I'd ever touched in my life.

My brother belted a burp that broke the suspended silence.

"Atta boy!" my grandmother said. "Let that air go, it ain't payin' rent."

My mother tucked her breast back into her blouse and dropped the other before shifting my brother to the opposite side while her mother moved a basket of damp linens to the mangle in the corner of the kitchen. I left a room filled with hissing and suckling and my mother's low hum changed by the extraordinary events I'd just witnessed. As I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, I carried with me a new understanding of how much my mother loved us, and her mother, her.

That night I lay in bed with my hand on my smooth chest not yet knowing the magic I would experience upon nursing my own three children, nor the words a lover would one day whisper upon first caress of my nubile young breasts.

These are the warmest, softest things I've ever touched in my life...

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, breastfeeding, nursing, mothers, Breast of Canada, Calendar Girl, essay, blog, breasts, breast health, writing, writers, mothering, daughters, women, massage

Photo by Lauren Cruickshank for 2007 Breast of Canada Calendar
 

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

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

Fool on the Hill

There are two kinds of bathers in this world: sprinklers and soakers. Sprinklers prefer to stand upright under a pulsating spray, while soakers like submerging their bodies in a pool of steaming water. My wusband was a sprinkler. He can't understand why people choose to "soak in their own filth," as he puts it, over rinsing themselves clean, right down to the last bubble of soap. This makes me laugh. Because the thing is, soakers don't soak just to get clean, they do it for the unrivaled experience of coming as close to being back in the womb as any of us will ever get.

In case you hadn't guessed, I'm a soaker. The photo above was taken when my granddaughter, E, was visiting a couple summers ago. We bathed under moonlight, in the claw foot tub that sits under a sequoia in my back yard, next to the fish pond. She and her mother, A,  are both soakers, as are my son and my other daughter, M. It wasn't unusual to find all of us in the same bathtub when they were growing up. In fact, when I first became a single parent, I purchased a new mobile home, purely due to the size of the tub in the master suite. It was big enough for all of us, and for my youngest, a virtual swimming pool.

I love my old bathtub. S and I light candles on a table next to it, wash each other's backs with scented salt scrubs, lounge under the full moon watching the steam rise into the night while sipping a glass of wine. We try to drag our soak-time out as long as possible, until the temperature cools and the water heater runs out of a fresh supply, before grabbing our robes and barefooting it back to the house.

Once in a while, we splurge on a tub at Sycamore Mineral Springs, where a dozen hot tubs fed by natural mineral springs dot the hilly landscape.Unfortunately, the old redwood tubs were recently replaced by newer plastic ones with lights inside. This, to me, defeats the purpose of bathing under the stars, stealing grace from the exhibition of one's aging body, magnified by ripples of water. Moonlight is much kinder than underwater light bulbs, but you still can't beat the healing properties of hot sulfur pumped straight from the Mother's belly into a little tub under a canopy of Sycamores, where mating owls chase each other in the foliage.

Last month, we booked a tub on a windy mid-week night, while the kid was home on break. One can't walk around the back yard naked when there's a teenager nearby-- especially when one of the naked people is his mother. So we headed for Sycamore with a bottle of wine, a couple of thick towels, and hopes for a luxurious evening out. Lucky for us, we scored the highest, most secluded tub on the hill--well worth climbing five flights of stairs to get there. Dropping our clothes, we slipped into the water and poured a glass of wine, while the wind whipped through the branches above us.

Then the best thing that can happen while you're soaking, happened: a light rain started  to fall. A few minutes later, the lights flickered off, along with the whirlpool jets. The Universe was suddenly dark and silent, save for a mix of appreciative "oohs" and disappointed "awws" from nearby tubbers. I was one of the former commenters, having bemoaned the lights in the first place. Somewhere, a generator kicked in, and the lights/jets came back on. Five minutes later, they went off again, this time to a cacaphony of applause mixed with disgruntled whines.

I, for one, couldn't imagine being disappointed by the sudden gift of darkness and silence. It was back to the way Sycamore Springs used to be in the old days. Except without the jets, in front of which many a female bather has gleefully worshipped in the glory of pulsating water. There's a local saying (okay, I'm the local who said it) that if you had a nickle for every orgasm had on Sycamore Hill, you could buy your own resort. This thought was immediately followed by a flood of sudden understanding. How many of my sister-bathers must have been this close to the Big O, just before the electricity went out. I'm betting at least a dollar's worth.

Which just goes to show you how old I'm getting. I actually had positioned one of those jets against my aching back. That, my friends, is just plain sad.

Technorati Tags: hot springs, body image, menopausehot flashes, sexuality, relationshipshot tubs

Boobie Prize

Have you seen the episode of "That 70's Show" where Eric accidentally walks in on his parents having sex, and he's completely disgusted/grossed out/psychically damaged by the image of his parents doing the unimaginable?  There's nothing worse than the moment you see your parents' bodies in a way that separates their grown-up parts from the naive perspective of youth's innocence.

My particular moment happened when I was about eight years old.  My dad took three of my sisters and me to Mackinac Island for a weekend. We stayed in an Indian-themed campground just south of the Mackinac Bridge (both pronounced Mak-i-Naw if you don't want to be branded a touron) that connects Lower Michigan with the Upper Peninsula, or "U.P." as Michiganders call it. They give their bathrooms  politically incorrect names like "Wee-Wee-Tee-Pee" and sell racist souvenirs. Like baby dolls wearing war paint, for instance. On the up side (pun intended), the area is also known for their delicious Pasties, (pronounced pass-tees) which--if you've never tasted one--your life is not yet complete.

My mom and another sister stayed behind that summer weekend to care for my two-year-old brother, whose peter, as we called it, was my first and only penis sighting other than the pictures of statues in our encyclopedia set. (Pictures my sisters and I poured over, until we finally got to see his rubbery little sausage the first time my mother changed D's diaper.)  It was a rare thing for us to get a vacation, given my dad's two jobs as a small church pastor and an inspector for Brunswich Corp., and my sisters and I were delighted not to have to share our dad with a whole congregation of parishioners for a change.

On our first evening of camping my dad built a little fire in the pit where we roasted marshmallows while he sat in a lawn chair reading a newspaper.When my little puff of sticky sugar was perfectly toasted, I looked up at Dad to show off my beautiful prize,  just as he crossed one pale leg over the other knee. I was used to him in navy blue suits behind the pulpit,  so it was weird seeing him in shorts. Even weirder to see that wrinkly bulge hanging out of the fabric, freckled with curly hair, and a bit of pink...oh. my. god. I was looking at me dad's peter. Eww! Eww! Eww! 

I was so shocked, so completely disgusted (while at the same time not being able to take my eyes of the grotesque sideshow), my marshmallow caught on fire. My oldest sister grabbed my stick and blew on the blackened blob, but I was oblivious to the ruination of a perfect treat. Eventually she must have followed my horrified gaze because her face contorted, mirroring my gaping stare. Within seconds, all our marshmallows were burning. My dad leaped from his chair and yelled at his four relieved daughters to watch what they were doing for crying out loud, having no clue how he'd damaged us or to what degree.

You're thinking I'm about to tell you J interrupted me in a compromising moment or walked in on me naked aren't you? Not quite. But he was definitely grossed out and possibly damaged just a little. As any self-respecting blogger in my shoes would have done, I  brought my digital camera along to my mammogram appointment last summer. I told the nurse I was a writer and wanted to document regular torture at the hands of equipment obviously designed by a man. She laughed and said it was okay so long as I didn't take any pictures of her.

I've been meaning to write about mammograms ever since that day, but just haven't gotten around to it. I find other ways to spend my writing time, like learning how to set my screen-saver to display a slide-show from my picture files and....

Stop it. You're getting ahead of me.

Okay, so yeah, J was sitting in the swivel chair by my desk and suddenly a HUGE photograph of my breast smooshed between two plates of glass appeared and before I could distract him, he looked.

Then he screamed.

"Arggghhhh! What is that?"

(Quickly moving mouse to make the photo disappear). "Um, you mean that last picture?"

(Covering his eyes as if he's been blinded.) "Yes! God! It looked like..." He opened his eyes and narrowed them at me from between  parted fingers. "No. Tell me you didn't."

"What?"

"That is not your boob on the screen and you are not posting a picture of it on your blog."

"Well, I was going to write about...I mean...um. What?"

He ejected himself from the chair and walked away, shaking his head. "Dude, that's just messed up."

"But that's my point, " I called after him. "You have no idea how awful mammograms are. That's what's messed up!" Dude?

From the next room, he chanted over my voice. "La-la-la! I can't hear you!."

In a moment of instant karma, the sight of my dad's gonads hanging out of his shorts that summer day suddenly froze on the screen in my mind. I shook my head like a human Etch-a-Sketch, but I just couldn't rid myself of the image.  And now, thanks to the miracle of photo-blogging, you're stuck with this one. (Not to mention I just ruined a moment for all the porn-hounds who got to this entry by mistake).

 

NOTE: Yeah, mammograms are uncomfortable and pancake boobs are funny, but I still get checked every year and I hope you do, too. Please educate yourself on the importance of self-exams and regular screening. --ellie