Stripes

When I was 12 going on 13 all of my friends got their periods. I was super jealous. My mother called it "becoming a woman", and with a big sister enjoying her woman status, plus the added privilege of owning odd pads and tubes in our stuff-deprived home, I wanted in. Yet I wasn't one hundred percent sure. My mother took Shannon to lunch to celebrate her womanhood, and dangled my future celebratory lunch date under my freckled nose. Womanhood was a really big deal. I wanted the stuff, the attention, the lunch and the boobs, but wasn't convinced I could manage that being a woman business. Women in my family were mythical creatures.

My great grandmother was widowed three very young daughters and a farm. In her anguish she attempted suicide and spent a year in a mental institution, where she used to climb a tree and look out, missing her precious little ones. Then Fern returned to her small town of Garner, Iowa, worked, raised and educated Verna, Ruth and Judy, and later ran for and held a public office. She did that. She survived that.

She was a woman.

My grandmother Ruth married my grandfather in 1934 and on their depression era honeymoon they indulged the limits of decadence and ate just the heart of a watermelon . She wrote a whole book of poetry she called her "scribbles", rode horses, and snorted when she laughed. As a nurse in the early 30's she witnessed women dying from self inflicted abortions, which made her a pro-choice Christian grandmother. She was super wrinkly, and as a little girl I asked her why not get a face lift? She showed me a painting of my grandfather, a Major General, in his uniform and explained that each of his many stripes represented something he had done and that he had earned them. Then she told me that her wrinkles were the stripes she had earned.

She was a woman.

My mother is also an amazing woman, a nurse midwife who spent many years delivering babies for Tucson's under served women always with devotion and respect. She's won a bike race, hikes, paddles, reportedly does head stands and best of all let herself fall madly in love. She has a religious appreciation for humanity. As a 5th grader I was particularly despotic, and one day while waiting for my soccer practice to finish she sat under a tree and read a magazine. There was a boy with Downs syndrome who came to the Anna Henry Elementary School playground after school, and children were often mean to him. I will never forget looking over from our practice and seeing Bubba squatting under the tree with my mom, flipping through the pages of the magazine with her. When practice ended I warily walked over to them, giving my mom the "what in the world are you doing!?!?!?!" look. She hardly looked at me, but kept talking gently and sweetly to Bubba, answering his questions and commenting on the images he found interesting. I am not really sure why this memory is so vivid for me, but that day I knew Bubba was a human being.

She is a woman.

Meanwhile, I got tired of being the only non member of the period club so I made up my mind. I want my period, I am having my period. For my 13th birthday, I "got" my period. My friends were possibly fooled, albeit confused by my enthusiasm. My mother and sister, were most definitely not fooled, despite the red food coloring I spilled on my chonies. I think I remember my mother and sister cackling about that. I importantly carried pads in my purse and used them just for kicks. I kept this up for a whole year. The morning I became a real woman was a little anticlimactic; my friends already considered me a member of the period club.  I got my lunch with my mother at the Good Earth, but at 14, I would have preferred going to Park Mall with my friends.

And life makes me a woman.

While my mother-in-law visited us last year she noticed that I am still an active member of the period club, and commented "I can't believe you're still getting your period!"

I was dumbfounded.

Are you kidding? I could have a baby if I wanted...which I don't! But she got me thinking...maybe I can't.

I have friends who are menopausing and menopausalish, and then there's that older sister of mine, always one upping me. She's got symptoms. Brags about hot flashes, can't sleep at night. So here I am again, waiting to be initiated into the menopause club.

My health practitioner mom checks in with me every now and then, "Your periods still regular?"

I have been more regular than ever before in my life. And yet I'm sure changes are brewing, that part of life waning.

And like with becoming a woman, I'm unsure about this deal too. I look ahead and worry about my fitness for menopause and beyond. I notice that women become invisible as they age, and although I think it might be fun for a day, I don't want to be unseen, unnoticed. I look for role models in aging women. I like active, tan, old yogi ladies with real faces, undyed hair and peaceful hearts. How to get there?

Every year on my birthday I say to myself, "OK, this is getting serious now! Time to grow up! Now you are really an adult, it's time to be one!"  

This month my period was late for the first time in a long while. And last night I couldn't sleep for hours, wild awake when I should have been passed out, my mind leaping, "Oh my God, is this it?! It's awfully hot in here, is this a hot flash???" And then this morning, the dawn of my 45th birthday, my period came.

I guess the truth is I need to figure out how to do this and nothing else. Just this thing right now, this day. Care for my boys, get that huge pile of laundry put away, thank the heavens for my family, laugh with Mike.

Today I aim to earn some stripes.

PS I have loads more to say about the old ladies in my life...