My Take: Growing Older: Barefoot and Preg… Er, Menopausal !

There is nothing pleasant about growing older, but, as my dad used to point out, "It beats the alternative!" Barefoot's recent article about his traumas in this regard - "Time. Age. The Drippy Faucet" was an excellent and very humorous look into the issue from a male perspective. However, I felt the need to present the female side of the story, and to point out to dear Barefoot (and males everywhere) that, traumatic as the loss of hair may seem to men, it really is quite a slow and painless process in comparison to some of the aging rituals that women must face. To that end, and without for a moment meaning to trivialize the traumas that we ALL must face as we grow older, I have written the following letter in response to Barefoot's article:
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Dear Barefoot,

My boy, my boy!! You lament about turning 40, about losing your hair, about "trying to have a positive outlook about growing older…"

Trust me, my son, you will never (as will no man!) understand what it truly means to grow old, because you will never, ever, ever have to go through menopause!! Tell him, ladies! Ah, to lose my hair and be done with it! Shave your head if it bothers you that much!! If it's good enough for Bruce Willis, for Vin Diesel, for Telly Savalas … it's good enough for you - it is just hair, my man!! After all, while you are losing hair, we (unless we are lucky, and many, many are not) arrive at the end of the ordeal having lost some of our internal organs!

No, Mother Nature is far more cruel than Father Time, although she does seem to have borrowed a trick or two from the old man. For one thing, she has learned to take her own sweet time about it when it comes to menopause. She has pre-menopause, she has peri-menopause, she has pauses like you wouldn't believe there are pauses!

She begins to toy with our bodies in our late forties … a hot flash here, a night sweat there. We fall into bed exhausted every evening and sleep like a baby for … oh, maybe an hour and forty-five minutes. We spend the rest of the night wandering through the house like a zombie, memorizing the 1-800 numbers for the late night infomercials, reading that bookcase full of books that we've never had time to read before, falling asleep just before the alarm rings, and then trying to stay awake until bedtime, when the whole routine starts over again.

Our emotions are now our enemies and are suddenly and completely out of our control. The tears sneak up on us when we least expect them. We cry at the Hallmark card commercials. We sob over road kill. We scream at that clueless man sitting in the recliner next to ours … he had no warning … he just made that noise one too many times and ZAP, that was all we could take!! We gain weight, we lose our youthful skin and our luxurious hair. And while you are losing your hair, we are growing hair … on our chins, on our lips, on our …, oh never mind, you get the picture!

And that "monthly curse" - the bane of our existence for the past thirty years - now becomes an unknown entity in our lives. Not unknown as in "not around." Oh, no, it couldn't be that simple!!! I mean unknown as in "what the #$!@* is my body going to do (or not do) THIS month?????!!!!!!" Ok, ok, we won't dwell on that any longer. Not polite table talk, as they say. Suffice it to say, there are more "times of the month" than there are months and those times can go on, and on, and on, and …

But finally, some 3-5 YEARS later, we are … at last … menopausal. The anxiety is over - the anxiety that goes along with going through menopause - as well as the anxiety we endured throughout our lives about getting pregnant, about possibly having gotten pregnant, about NOT being able to get pregnant, or about actually BEING PREGNANT!!! That part of our lives is over and we feel … well, we're not sure how we feel. There is some grief, as well as joy. There is some sadness, as well as relief. And then, if we let ourselves, there is an overwhelming sense of self - of now being able to just be a woman without all that other baggage. No more watching the calendar, remembering the birth control, making choices or taking chances. Time to just LIVE … and yes, dear Barefoot, time to fix the leaky faucet if we so choose … or just let it drip … after all, the cats and dogs have to get a drink someplace, don't they???

The lesson for us all is to enjoy each and every day to the fullest. No regrets about the past, no fears for the future. We all have the same destiny, the same great equalizer in death. It will come for us all in due time - but we need not sit by patiently or impatiently and await its arrival. Go out each day and LIVE!!!