Adventures in Aging

Dear Useless Reproductive System:

We have been on quite the adventure you and I. You started messing with me about age 7. That is when I began to change. I began growing up and out. I started becoming more masculine in appearance. My voice got deeper and more booming. By puberty you and I were engaged in full-scale warfare. I started growing my ever-impressive beer belly...without the beer. My face exploded into a magnificent cornucopia of acne-induced nastiness. My voice kept getting deeper and louder although I rarely spoke. The awkwardness you helped induce...combined with many other issues...made me pathologically shy. You taunted me with the physicality of femininity but left me with a masculine countenance that made me most unfeminine. Then the cherry on top...ta...da...you are gay. Oh...thank you so much...that makes things so much clearer and less awkward...especially since you didn't let my brain in on the joke until I was 19.

Moving along...things remained weird and awkward until my late 30's when you started acting up again. I can't remember now what you were up to but I remember finally giving in and going to a gynecologist in Nashville. She took one look at me and told me I had PCOS. That explains that note my doctor wrote that talked about hirsutism without explaining what that really meant years earlier. PCOS...for those who do not know...is Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It means that for a great deal of my life I have been growing cysts on my ovaries that interfere with estrogen production amongst other things. You may wonder about this diagnosis but never fear...we paid several hundred dollars on blood tests to prove said diagnosis. My gynecologist and I then embarked on a journey of frustration and worthlessness. It was lovely.

So...in my late 30's you and I began our journey into peri-menopause. We had fun with timing issues, I began to have to shave my chin every day, I kept getting heavier for no good reason...and on and on we went. Sometime in my mid 40's we reached a kind of truce. You stopped hassling me with those monthly joys and I stopped torturing you with attempts to manipulate your hormonal dance of death. I became pre-occupied with other aches and pains. I became aware of my depression and PTSD. We ignored one another happily for many years except for those random periods of shooting pains that stop a girl dead in her tracks. Thankfully...those come fairly rarely these days.

Now here I am in my early 50's and I feel like we are entering a new chapter in our ongoing battle for supremacy. I have managed to get a handle on my PTSD and depression. My brain and I have reached détente where they are concerned. But now...now seems to be your turn to shine again. I win the battle of the hot flashes with Vitamin E. I don't know how or why it works...it just does. You win the night sweats with your pillow case destroying powers. But I fear I am losing the more important emotional battles with you. For the last couple of weeks or so you have been particularly hostile. I am inexplicably exhausted feeling. I am incredibly irritable. Little things that should not bother me are wreaking monumental havoc on my emotional well being. I am even more moody than normal and soon those who have to deal with me every day may contemplate smothering me with the aforementioned pillow.

If we are entering another and hopefully final stage of our menopausal journey I wish you would let me in on the joke because I am not having fun here. I feel like my ovaries have been taken over by Dementors and my hormones will never know happiness or joy again. I don't like feeling this way. I don't like being angry and irritable and moody and generally bitchy for no good reason at all. This is not fun. I would like you to take your cysts and your extra Androgen and just go. I am tired of the tango. I have never felt feminine but I have never felt masculine either. You have made my life more difficult than it ever needed to be and for that I do not thank you. So let's just stop the bickering and begin the aging gracefully part...okay??

Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present

This Christmas has felt more ghost friendly than normal. I have been re-watching my favorite version of "A Christmas Carol" with Patrick Stewart a lot since this Fall. It has been my election disaster coping tool. This may have something to do with the ghost-like feel of my Christmas this year but who knows...I tend to get morbidly ruminative at this time of the year anyway.

One of the hardest things about growing up is the loss of the generations before you. My mother came along late in the program and I came along late as well and that has made for an odd generational off-set in my family. I never knew either of my grandfathers. I barely remember one of my grandmothers and the other died when I was 17 so even those memories are faded now. It feels like I have spent half my life going to funerals. As a child it was great aunts and great uncles and older cousins etc...As a teen and young adult it began to be uncles. Then came the hardest loss of all...both of my parents at 30.

Christmas has not been the same since I lost my mother. I have not been able to re-capture that same sense of familiarity and warmth. Perchance if fate and genetics had played out differently I would have had grandchildren and that would have made it different but that is all a rather mute point now. Not that I have not had lots of love and friends in my life. I have been very blessed in that department. Somehow...despite all my efforts to be weirdly introverted and awkward I have managed to maintain friendships with a pretty wonderful group of people. And I do have a special Piglet in my life but that's a whole different blog right there.

It's not that our Christmases were all that Norman Rockwell brilliance that one sees on the TV. I was a only child but we were always struggling. There was never much spare money around but mom always managed to provide something. I suspect a particular Uncle played Santa Claus more than I ever knew. I would have liked to have known about it and thanked him but my parent's pride would never allow for that sentiment. It was always just the three of us...sometimes Grandma Clayton would be there but mostly it was just the three of us.

We never got a lot of "stuff". Christmas at my house was always more about the yearly replacement of the practical things we needed for the year. We always received the same gifts every year with usually one or two special things. It was that familiarity and routine that I miss with all my heart. Dad would sit and guess at what his presents were with unfailing accuracy made all the more possible because he always got the same thing. Overalls, t-shirts, socks, underwear, red handkerchiefs, a new wallet and if it was time a new watch. Mom always got sleeveless blouses and polyester slacks in various pastel shades. Socks, underwear and bras and usually one special item like a new coat or a new dress for church or a kitchen gadget of some sort. I always got socks, underwear, a new outfit for church, a stuffed animal of some sort and a special toy. It was pretty mundane stuff but I would give my right arm to do it all over again. Despite the angst and the drama and my dad's ill humor I would still love to feel that way again. We would open presents early on Christmas Eve so mom and I could have our new clothes for Midnight Mass and then off we would go to church. It was nothing special but it was mine. I catch glimpses of memories in my mind with certain sounds and images and smells. It's fleeting and ephemeral and I can never seem to hold it. Ghosts.

All of this reminiscing had been brought to you by my experiences this Christmas with a dear friend's elderly parents. When my parents died they kind of "adopted" me as one of their own. At the time I had been friends with their daughter for about 11 years. Now it's been 35 years and the time has flown. They are my back-up parents or my pseudo-parents or my second parents or just the Troll parents. Whatever term I struggle to describe them with to people I meet now. It has been a very interesting relationship. I tease their natural children that I am the "good" daughter. They are very special to me but there is that disconnect there. They treat me as one of their own but I can talk to them differently because I am not their natural child and I don't have all that residual angst in our relationship.

They are 89 now and John has dementia/Alzheimer's which is accelerating at a rapid pace. I was struck this Christmas how being with them was like living with the ghosts of past Christmases and yet dealing with the ghost of the present in that he has no clue who any of us are anymore. I was struck by the idea that we are all like ghosts to him. He carries on and pretends, quite well I might add, that he knows us but he has not a clue. He call his wife of over 60 years by her name but he has no idea who she is to him. He thinks she is someone there to take care of him. I wondered how about how confused he must feel at his children calling him daddy but he has no idea who they are. He obsesses over objects and constantly repeats himself and reads the same thing over and over again. Again...it is like sitting with the ghost of who he once was.

As I was sitting there listening to him drone on and on about a tube of Crest toothpaste I got a sense of the surreal so very strong I almost fled. It was very much like sitting with ghosts. I know that they will not be around much longer but they were sitting right there with me very much alive but it felt like I was looking at their ghosts. It's hard to explain. How do you deal with living people whose spirits seem to have already gone on without their bodies? I still have not processed it all.

What I want to say in my rambling sort of way is be aware of those around you who are struggling. Take a moment to consider all of the thousands of couples like my Troll parents who are battling these issues primarily on their own or within their insular families. Take a moment to check on those elderly neighbors who seem on their own. You don't have to crawl into their lives but just take a second to let them know that you "see" them and make sure they are okay. Recognize that there are those among us living with our own ghosts who need us to remember that they are valued as human beings before they become silent memories.

Adventures for introverts

Introverts have a different sense of adventure compared to their extrovert neighbors. We tend to shy away from the exotic or dangerous and stick to more mundane things that we find exhilarating to us.

So imagine the fun two extremely introverted bears could have taking a drive in uncharted territory. Now...lots of you know my hobby is to drive around out in the country and take pictures of whatever strikes my fancy. It's usually clouds, critters, trees, sunsets, moons, barns...you get the gist. I usually gravitate toward the east and north of Carthage even though I have driven those same roads all my life. There is a comfort in familiarity and I always find something interesting.

But while I was out in Colorado this Thanksgiving we decided to go on a different sort of adventure. You see Colorado country roads are nothing like Missouri country roads. With the exception of far Southern Missouri the roads are laid out in a grid. Everything is pretty much in mile squares. So you know that if you get turned around you can always find your way back. In Colorado there is no grid. There are mountains and there are canyons and there are not so many people in some areas. It's far easier to get lost and turned around.

So we gathered the map and the GPS and we got hot chocolate and coffee and peanut butter crackers and headed out. We picked a county road out by the hospital in Trinidad and off we went. This may seem dull to you but for us it was wandering into the unknown wilderness. We were cruising along following the signs and the GPS like good little campers when we saw a mesa or some such geological formation that caught our eye...so we...gasp...deviated from our route. This is when we spotted the sign displayed above this text and we laughed and discussed the many nuances and humor this sign possessed.

And we kept following the road. It wound around the valley and there would be a house every few miles but no traffic. You see in Colorado there is abundant ranch land and the country roads wander through the ranches. Periodically you slow down to go over another cattle guard and you know you are on a different ranch but it's still a county road. It's a little like going to Oz every time you go over a cattle guard...you just don't know what to expect.

We diligently watched for signs to make sure we were still on the county road and not on private property. Being introverts we are especially respectful of other people's property. We are very tuned into the whole "do unto others" thing. We stopped to take pictures of deer and birds and even came across a large herd of antelope. I love the antelope! It was all so very exciting and we had such a great time.

Then we came to the true introvert gauntlet. We came to another cattle guard and the road looked like it ended right at these people's house. I mean in their driveway. Beth stopped and I looked at the GPS and I said it says it's a road. I know it look like a yard and driveway but the GPS says it's a road. So we pulled forward a bit and since no one came out of the house waving a gun at us we crept forward a little more not wanting to trespass but needing to either go forward or turn around. We both leaned forward and peeked around and finally I said well...go around the garage here because it looks like the road might go on once you get around the garage and low and behold it did!! The county road just ran right through their yard separating their house and barns with just a narrow road. I mean that happens in Missouri but the road is much wider and has fencing and pavement and stuff.

We were so proud. It may not seem like much to folks who don't understand but to two timid adventurers it was like finding Montezuma's freakin' tomb! We continued on until we came out to a main road. From that end you would never have known it was a county road. It had a tiny sign and a big ranch arch over the road that made it look like a private driveway. It was like finding a secret road to Narnia. We laughed and we giggled all the way back to town. It was so much fun! It may not seem all that wild but to wander around in the high desert in a state you are not familiar with (I mean this was not another ride out to Maple Grove) was quite exciting to a driver who is completely...I mean completely...directionally challenged and a passenger who isn't always as brave as she should be it was exhilarating and fun and not something we will soon forget. So forge on introverts of the world. Go out and find new adventures...just maybe wait until this freezing drizzle stops.