The Polar Bear Years

 

About five years ago my friend Kate and I birthed the organization Launch Your Pause. We created and hosted a three-day retreat, Put Some Claws in Your Pause, offering women at all stages of menopause an opportunity to learn about, explore and celebrate all things menopause. A big part of the retreat is the opportunity to be around other women at a similar crossroads.

The truth about menopause is that it is a pause. “Meno” means monthly so technically, menopause is a pause from the meno, or the monthly period we’ve been experiencing over the course of our fertile years. There are so many jacked-up ways that our society has repurposed the concept of menopause. The medical world has done ridiculously little to understand menopause and most women are left to find their own answers to confusing questions about both physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Many women feel like it is a death sentence — thin hair, crepey skin, stomach paunch, sleepless nights with no libido. I know that before I intentionally reframed menopause and turned it into something meaningful and worthy of ritualized attention, I thought about it that way.

This year will be our fourth annual Put Some Claws in Your Pause overnight retreat. We basically do the same thing each year — writing, yoga, meditating, sharing meals and hot tubs and saunas, and rich conversation — but it never gets old. These years are important. They represent our time to pause and reflect. What comes out of this intentional experience is boundless…. if we give ourselves a real pause.

I recently read Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams. The book, a memoir augmented by a fascinating collection of scientific questions and answers about aging and emotions, begins when the author is fifty years old and going through an unexpected, unwanted divorce.

At one point in the book, Williams shares a scene from a conversation she had with an anthropologist about his work with an Inuit woman. After completing his interviews, the anthropologist says to the woman,

“I see everything but the years from when you were 50–54.”

“Oh, I have no words for those years,” she replied

“Why not?”

“In those years,” she told him, “I was a polar bear.”

In “those years” that woman felt different; she felt like a polar bear. I’ve talked to women who feel like they are losing their minds — they can’t sleep, they lose interest in things that used to mean something to them, they suddenly, inexplicably hate their spouses and children. 

The polar bear years are different. These are years when we see women change careers, relationships, and fashion sensibilities. This is the period when women take off and live in another country, or travel cross country in a camper van for a year or two. These are years when, as my friend Molly says, “your give-a-damn is broke.”

The polar bear pause is real and it deserves to be honored, attended to and ritualized. The culmination of William’s wonderful book is her taking a solo paddling voyage for three months. Her vast emotional landscape is mirrored in the terrain and waterways she covers on her journey. She gave herself a well-deserved pause, an honoring of her life stage. 

Though it’s only three days, I hope that the women who come to our retreat get a taste of this kind of ritual. I hope they will feel the symbolism in taking a pause out of the grind of day-to-day life to honor themselves as polar bears for a few days. 

Grandmotherly Love

I read a poem every morning. I used to struggle to read poetry. I wanted to like it but I couldn’t understand it. I committed to reading each poem twice, some stanzas that felt really foreign to me I’d read aloud. 

After many months of reading a poem every morning, it’s like my brain finally speaks that language. I understand what I am reading; I feel movement in my body, in my heart, when I read certain combinations of words. After all this time I finally speak poetry.

This morning the poem (Grandmother by Kate Duignan) was about the author’s memory of her grandmother. The images of a cracked egg, a full moon, a compost bin, and a cake rising in the oven are the anchors of the poet’s memory of her grandmother. Between the anchors are waves of the author’s feelings in the presence of her grandmother— care, affection, comfort, security, and love.

When I finished reading the poem I meditated. Behind my closed eyes, images of my Nana floated into my consciousness. Anchors of my love for her and the love I felt from her moved through my memory — the green square elevator button I pressed to the fourteenth floor, the square plastic tub filled with chilled, peeled carrots in the fridge, her chair in the den where she filled in her crossword puzzles.

And the feeling that came into my body was warm, like a blanket from the inside out, a reminder of the love that existed between us, of the comfort and ease I felt in her presence. It’s a gift when memories show up like that and I thank the poet for bringing me to that sensory experience of love for my own grandmother.

Mothers who’ve graduated into the role often say that it is pure joy to be a grandmother. As a mother, I wonder what changes I’ll make to be that person to my child’s child one day. I imagine that for many people being a grandmother is delightful because there is the simple joy of watching a tiny person grow into a bigger person without the responsibility of shepherding them there.

But I think there is something more too. Recently I’ve had the chance to babysit a friend’s three-year-old daughter. We play make-believe, we sing, we laugh. It’s a magical respite from the rigor of parenting a seventeen-year-old. With my three-year-old friend, I regurgitate songs from my daughter’s childhood, tunes that bubble from my unconsciousness. I remember singing those songs with my daughter, playing with her in the same way.

And I miss that. I miss playing. I get so many other things from my almost-grown daughter these days. Yesterday we spent an hour in the kitchen talking about the definition of intuition and if there is a scientific basis for the concept. Interesting and stimulating. But it’s not playing. It’s different from engaging with a little three-year-old who thinks everything you do is magic, who needs your care and attention to go potty or have a snack.

Maybe that’s what grandmothers feel. Maybe they experience a coming home of sorts, revisiting that time of maternal purity, a time when the relational baggage from being a mother to teens, then young adults, then older adults, isn’t so weighty and complicated. 

I don’t know if I’ll be a grandmother one day. I hope I will. The memories I have of my Nana, those feelings she showered upon me — love, delight, pure joy — still visit me regularly. I remember her and I’m as grateful for her in my life as I know she was for mine in hers.

Lessons from the Garden

I’ve never been a good help in our garden. I’m a fair-weather gardener — I like to play around in my vegetable garden and mow the lawn but I can’t be counted on to help with the maintenance of weeding. The truth is I’m lazy. As much as I say I’ll commit to helping my partner Nancy weed, I’m a constant disappointment. I can always find something else to do — make granola, watch a movie, finish up “some work.”

Last week Nancy came home from her volunteer job at the local senior center. During her volunteer shift, Nancy was lamenting about the huge weeding tasks at home and asked her co-workers if anyone knew someone who could help her. Alice, a 77-year-old retired psychologist, piped up and said, “I love to garden and I’d love to make some extra money.” 

Alice, came over the next day to help weed. She’d proposed an hourly rate for her work and Nancy agreed. When I went outside for a break I saw Alice wedged up on our rock wall, six feet above the sidewalk, prying invasive plants from the crevices between the sharp mini-boulders that make up the walls of our yard.

Nancy introduced us and Alice told me she was on her second paid gardening gig of the day. Earlier she’d done Silver Sneakers and somewhere in between that she’d run home to let her dog out. Alice said that after being an infant and child psychologist she loved weeding because it was so simple and finite.

The next day Alice came back to weed some more. And she came back again the next day. After the second day of Alice weeding, I said to Nancy, “I want to be like Alice.” 

“Me too,” Nancy said.

Alice is twenty-four years older than me, twenty-one years older than Nancy. She’s old enough to be our mother. It’s not just that she’s fit and nimble enough to climb a rock wall and balance well enough to pull weeds from a precarious perch that makes me want to be like her. It’s her openness, her vulnerability, and her desire to be in the world. So often older people reach an “unworkable” age. They stop being out in the work world and become insignificant, invisible, something we don’t really see anymore.

In our culture, when people become elders we don’t shower them with the reverence that is commonplace in so many other countries. Here, older people are dismissed and ignored, something to be managed instead of honored. 

I’m not an elder yet but I am heading in that direction and I want to be like Alice. I want to take up the space that I’ve earned by living through each day, week, month, and year of my life. I want to be in the world, engaged, and alive.

I don’t know what Alice’s financial situation is. I don’t know if she wants to make extra money to buy gifts for her grandkids (she has many) or if she needs it to pay for groceries. It doesn’t really matter. What I appreciate is that Alice has a side hustle doing something she loves, that she pitched herself to Nancy at the senior center, and put herself out there. I can see that Nancy and Alice are becoming friends. This morning Nancy told me that Alice is coming over to weed again this afternoon. “I’m learning a lot from her,” she said.

In the last year, I’ve started a new job in a new field and I know I’ll need to put in some good time to really master this new area of work — may ten years, maybe twenty. The idea isn’t so daunting when I think about Alice. I’ve so often thought about professionally winding down. Sixty-five has this magic meaning. “Only twelve more years,” I’ve often thought to myself. 

But maybe I should be thinking about winding up if I want to be like Alice. Even if I retire from my “job-job” at sixty-five, I want to keep engaged like Alice.

Nancy said that after meeting me Alice asked her, “So, does your partner not like to weed?” Nancy said, “No.”

But after meeting Alice, I might reconsider my stance on weeding. 

Bathing Suits and Big Boobs

 

Last week my seventeen-year-old daughter and I sat down to do one of our best-loved activities. After dinner one night we hunkered down at the dining room table with our favorite cheesy catalog —  Venus. No matter how many times we cancel the catalog, Venus comes in the mail every few weeks. It has really ridiculous fashion — styles that might be common in other areas of the country but to us Pacific Northwesterners, the clothes on the models look like something you might see on showgirls at a country-western theme park.

The game we play is that we each have to choose one item on every page that we’d wear. We laugh and tease each other a lot, imagining her wearing those red shorts or me wearing the leopard print mu mu. It’s an easy connecting time, one I relish because it’s simple and playful, a time to suspend other conversations about school or chores or life. When all the pages in the catalog have been seen, we recycle the catalog and go our separate ways.

Looking at the catalog the other day my daughter commented on a bikini. “That’s not actually so bad,” she said, “I’d wear that.” It is incredibly rare that my daughter will let me have anything to do with her fashion choices. The Venus catalog happens to have a whole line of swimwear for women with big boobs which means that they make the suits in cup sizes that actually fit. My daughter and I are both tall and long and we both have big boobs which often makes finding the right fit difficult. 

I jumped at the opportunity to help my daughter choose some suits that fit her body. “Why don’t you choose a bunch and then return what doesn’t fit.” I’ve spent years of my life ordering multiple styles and sizes to fit my long thin body with seemingly randomly place big boobs — usually, the case is that things are too big in most places and too small for my boobs. 

Buying bathing suits when you have big boobs is different from buying bathing suits when you have little boobs or even medium boobs. You have to think about support and coverage. And as a general rule, the suits are conservative and matronly, like the kind you get at Land’s End. I was thrilled that my daughter liked some of the bikinis in the Venus catalog. Maybe she’d find one that truly “fit.” My daughter’s bikini tops always feel a little bit too revealing for my comfort. But again, she’s not like me. She’s not trying to hide. She’s trying to embrace.

While we looked at the bikinis together, we were both looking for suits that would fit. In my mind that meant, completely cover-up, maybe even hide her big boobs. That’s my story. I’ve spent my life trying to hide my big boobs. 

As my daughter perused the bathing suits on the pages, she selected those that weren’t cut to hide or minimize her breasts. She chose suits that small or medium-breasted women might choose, but that came in her cup size so would actually fit. I kept pointing to the sporty ones, like jog bras that would hide and hold. But she wasn’t interested. She chose what she liked, what all the other young women her age are wearing. 

Wikipedia describes Venus as the goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity….. and victory.  Venus is also often represented by naked breasts, as a symbol of all of those traits. I didn't embrace all the "venus-like" qualities that came with my breasts. Those things scared me and made me want to hide. But my daughter has a different perspective and I'm so grateful. And relieved.  The bikinis from the Venus catalog haven’t come yet. I hope they will fit my daughter and I hope she’ll be happy. But even if they don’t fit I think my daughter has already won. She loves her breasts. That’s a victory. 

The NRA Almost Took Me Down

 

Driving home from work last week I heard the news of the Uvalde shooting. “14 kids,” I heard the announcer say. A flood of nausea hit me and I slowed down, looking for a place to pull over. It was too much. Too much like watching the World Trade towers come down was too much. Like the Columbine shooting was much. Like Sandy Hook was too much. 

I couldn’t find a place to pull over so I kept driving, willing myself to listen to the announcer’s voice, to try and understand this newest situation. I was interrupted by the thought that, at that moment, my daughter was still in school. “This could be her,” I thought “or my niece or nephews or any number of other kids in my life who I love and care about.”

My chest constricted and my ears got hot. I focused on the road, less than a mile until l got home. In my panic, I knew there was nothing to be done. I couldn’t rush to my daughter’s high school and pull her out of her class to protect her. She is just another kid, another vulnerable human in our devastatingly violent country. “One day it could be her,” I thought, “or Nancy”, or my mother or one of my sisters or brothers or one of my friends.

And then a new feeling came through me — a toughness, like a scolding teacher, one who might say, “Life isn’t fair.” I thought to myself, “I should get ready for something horrific. I should prepare myself.” The risk of this kind of tragedy befalling someone in my immediate life was becoming more and more statistically significant every year, every day. Admitting my utter helplessness in this country of daily massacres took me out of my panic. In accepting this violence as a potential fate of my life, I felt calmer. 

When I got home I sat in my driveway listening to the radio. I thought of my daughter at school, my partner Nancy on the plane on her way home from New Orleans. I closed my eyes and felt myself giving up, imagining what it would feel like to lose one of them. I felt so sad, exhausted, as if covered from head to toe with a heavy blanket of warm sadness.

Some days I wish I’d had more children — siblings for my daughter, a bigger, fuller household. But on that day, listening to the latest heart-wrenching news, I was grateful to have only one. This world has become too dangerous. How would I manage the worry for two or three or four children? With every additional child the probability of random, heinous acts of violence striking one of them increases. 

And as all of this happens, as millions of Americans and smaller communities in Buffalo and Uvalde are grieving, the NRA is meeting, convening about increasing access to guns — more guns, more ways to increase the likelihood that someone in someone’s little world will die a horrible, unnecessary, violent, random death. The answer, some of the convention participants say, is to create better security at schools. What about grocery stores? Subways? Mosques? Temples? Churches? 

When I read the responses that NRA convention participants and presenters offer about the mass shootings in our county, I understand that this is what they want. They want their opponents to give up, to accept that this is the way things are. As they sit with so much power, offering ridiculous, unfounded solutions to gun violence, I realize that we are in even bigger trouble than I thought. A part of me wonders if stupid Donald Trump and all the other stupid gun fiends and lobbyists secretly want these atrocities to happen so that one by one we will give up.

That the feeling I had in the car, that feeling that I should get ready, that I should accept that this is what our world looks like, is not okay. If I’m doing that, how many others are doing it too? In accepting that fate, I am as stupid as Donald Trump and all of the other stupid attendees at the NRA convention and the small number of stupid people who don’t believe in background checks and other basic measures to decrease gun violence. 

Last week I felt myself giving up, letting my sadness and helplessness take me down. But if I do that, if we do that, those stupid gun fanatics win and the violence will keep growing. We have to keep fighting. We have to find it within our tired, defeated souls to support gun control in every small town, sprawling suburb, or big city we live in. We have to.

Intellectually Generous

Last week I went to my stepfather Al’s memorial. Al was a lifelong academic and my mother planned a funeral with speakers who could talk about that realm of his life.

All three speakers shared how intellectually generous Al had been. A former Ph.D. student talked about how Al never put his name on abstracts that she submitted even though he was supervising her experiments. “I didn’t do much work on these,” he’d say, “you did.” Another colleague recalled how much integrity Al had in his work. He didn’t chase multiple grants if he just needed one. 

A few days after I got home we had a staff meeting welcoming a new staff member. I planned an exercise, “flash bonding” that my friend Kate invented. I cut up little slips of paper with questions about our life history and put them into bowls. Then, in pairs, we answered different questions about our lives for three minutes then switched to another person. 

One of my partner's questions to me was, “what do you want to be remembered for?” I shared about my recent time at Al’s memorial and how struck I was by the memories of his generosity. “I don’t know if I am generous,” I said, “but I want to be. I want to be remembered that way.”

The next day, I attended the second part of a two-day training called Leadership for Leads. All of us are in leadership roles and the two-day workshop was meant to help us find our grounding in our positions. When asked about our definitions of leadership one participant said, “being a good leader is helping others rise through the ranks, even if they rise above you.” The facilitator invited us all to think about that idea. Would I be that generous? I had to think about it; it was hard to imagine what that would look like in my current role.

Yesterday afternoon I introduced our new staff person to their role as lead of an intergenerational writing program I started. I hired them to take my place so that I had time to support the other programs I manage. This new hire, literally half my age, was amazing. They were natural, capable, likable, and creative. I thought I would have to handhold them for a few months, but after seeing them in action I think I can set them free to lead on their own in a few weeks.

It was a great feeling to go to sleep last night and know that this program I love will be in good hands. I could step away now and support this young person to learn and grow and develop both the program and their skills. This morning I wrote an email to them sharing how well I thought they’d done and scheduled a meeting for debriefing and planning the next steps. 

I have a feeling they are going to grow this program, take it places I might not have thought to take it and I look forward to watching this process unfold. I’m 53 years old. I’ve had a long, full, professional life. The person taking on the program is 24, at the very beginning of their career. It feels right to sit on the sidelines and cheer them on. I wonder if that’s what Al’s student was feeling when she described him as “intellectually generous.” I really hope so. 

Mother's Day: This Year it Kind of Feels like Bullshit

 

Last week in a class I teach, the subject of mother’s day came up. The teenage assistant who helps me said, “I think on Mother’s Day my mother should celebrate me because when I was born she became a mother.” An elder in the class, a mother, replied, “Then you should celebrate her on your birthday. Do you really want to trade your birthday for Mother’s Day?”

I understand my assistant’s perspective. Being a mother is one of my greatest joys. It’s where I learn the most about myself and humanity. It’s where I am most humbled and most proud. I laugh my greatest laughs and shed my biggest tears in the role of being a mother. I do celebrate my daughter on this day because, without her, I wouldn’t be a mother. 

BUT, that perspective is troubling as well. In the grand scheme, without mothers, the planet would cease to exist. We would have no reproductive capacity. The world would die. So, on this day, on every day is real important to celebrate the mothers. 

Fall down on your knees people and thank the women who brought life to this earth. One day. It’s not much, not enough. 

Yesterday my friend Kate sent me an article, Of Course the Constitution Has Nothing to Say About Abortion in the New Yorker about this current debacle with Roe v. Wade. Here’s a quote:

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is surprised that there is so little written about abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. As it happens, there is also nothing at all in that document, which sets out fundamental law, about pregnancy, uteruses, vaginas, fetuses, placentas, menstrual blood, breasts, or breast milk. There is nothing in that document about women at all.

Take that in. There is no mention of women in the constitution of the United States, but without women, without women who choose to go through pregnancy, give birth, and spend a hearty dose of their life’s energy raising the next generation, this country would not exist.

How incredibly galling this whole debate about reproductive freedom is. And, to reflect on it on Mother’s Day, a day when we celebrate this role — this significant, important, critical, life-giving role — women looking at a dystopic future that looks a lot like the Handmaid’s Tale. 

Being a mother is a joy but it’s also a sacrifice. As a mother, you are always thinking about someone else before you are thinking about yourself. There’s no choice. It’s biological. Even when I don’t want to be thinking about my daughter’s health and safety, even when I want a break, I can’t take it. I’m a mother. I chose that role. It’s in the fibers of my being. Yes, it’s a joy. And it’s fucking hard work.

What about the millions of women who don’t choose this role, who don’t want to be part of this Mother’s Day? Because they forgot to mention us in the drafting of the constitution, these women may be forced to take on a role that is a sacrifice, a role that forever changes their place in the world, their destiny.

Women all over the United States are getting cards and flowers and chocolates, little trinkets to say how important they are on Mother’s Day. But that’s all just junk. What about giving women something that really shows gratitude, something that truly honors this life-giving role? What about choice? That would be a real mother's Day gift.