JUST THINKING OF PERIMENOPAUSE sends a hot flash down my spine. There was a time I thought I was going to escape the perils of menopause, but now that I’ve come face-to-face with things like travel fans, cooling sheets, and cooling pajamas, I know that not only am I not going to escape, but I’m headed straight for it.
When I started my menopause journey, I gave my mother a huge apology because our family of jokesters did not make her menopause years easy on her. Once, we were driving to Memphis and she said that she needed to buy a drink at our next stop because she had forgotten to take her hormones and nerve pills.1 As soon as she said it, my brother and I started yelling, “Dad! Pull over, pull over! Mama needs her pills!” and Dad made it worse by doing a dramatic speedup to get to the next gas station.
We did help Mom with the hot flashes by keeping our house like an igloo. I’m not sure how low the temperature was, but each time my feet get cold, I’m reminded of home. Not everyone was as accustomed to the freezing temps in our house. I can still see my brother’s girlfriend, who is now my sister-in-love, Shannon, coming over to our house with her very own blanket in tow. “Everybody put your coats on. Mama’s having a hot flash, so we have to turn on the air-conditionin’ on Christmas Eve.”
Oh, how the tables have turned. Mom’s hormone pills have been replaced with blood thinners, and I’m now the one longing to live in cold storage. Even worse, when I go home to visit, Mom has the air either turned off or set to seventy-six. Last year I was helping cook dinner and I asked my mom if we could please open the door because I was burning up.
“Ellen, it’s below thirty out there,” my mom said.
“Ok. I’ll just step outside for five minutes and come back inside to thaw out,” I said.
When I apologized to my mom for the hard time we gave her while she was going through the change, she said, “Well, I gave you a lot of comedic material while I was going through it.”
“Speaking of,” I asked her, “that time you threw the tree out the back door—was that menopause related?”
Each year we bought a live Christmas tree and Mama loaded that tree with lights and ornaments until it begged for mercy. One year, we picked a tree that was NOT up for the job, and it fell over twice. Each time, Mom picked up the tree, and she, my dad, and my brother helped tighten it back into its stand while I helped clean up needles and put the ornaments back on. But when that poor tree fell a third time, Mama had had enough. With the strength that can only come from a frustrated mama, she picked up the tree all by herself, walked it from the dining room to the den, and threw it out the back door. It had taken three people to get it in the house, and ONE MAD MAMA to get it out!
“No! The tree incident wasn’t menopause, and before you start, it’s not because I’m crazy. It’s because I’m colorful.”
And the world needs colorful women.
1 A good Southern woman would never give the name of her actual medicine. Nerve pill gives plenty of explanation.