Change of Life

When I was a kid, my Mother used to talk about "Change of Life" all the time. She never used the medical term "menopause." It just wasn't polite. And, let's face it, "menopause" is a really ugly-sounding term that certainly doen't encompass the whole thing.

Yet I'm beginning to see that Change of Life happens more when you begin to give up the dreams of young adulthood and decide how you're going to live out the next phase of your life--not necessarily with some biological slow-down.

At least that's what it is for me right now.

I was in Kohl's yesterday, buying new bathroom rugs when certain Facts of My Life whacked me in the head so hard I almost started to cry. Maybe it's the color of the rugs--a very pretty celadon green--maybe it was being at Kohls on a Saturday afternoon when I'm normally on the computer or out walking in the woods. So, I don't know what triggered it, but some ideas I'd mulled over a few times before, popped into my head and and I was sort of paralyzed for a few moments...

I'm never going to marry up. I'm never going to be someone's trophy wife. I'm too short and too fat and too opinionated and too Italian to be that graceful elegant swan that all those Alpha Males want to take with them to the country club. So I can just forget about marrying up and try to make it on my own, with my own pluck and grit and forwardness...

As long as members of my family in New Jersey, my working class Italian family, are alive, I'm always going to be travelling between two cultures and will have moments when I'm disoriented. I have to shift between the WASPY masculine-communication world and the Italian feminine-emotion-communcation world. My friends who are also of the same background, who are doing the same sort of thing, who've also had that envy of WASPy kids and how they do things so easily in the professional world know exactly how I feel. Keeping them as touchstones is very, very important. It's only others who've been there that know what it's like. We can help each other get unstuck, re-oriented, and move forward....

I have met my soulmate. The sad thing is that he came along when I was 43 and had no intention of changing his life, even though he knew it as much as I did. I'm not going to sit around any more and wait for a soulmate because I know who he is, and he'll never be mine...

There won't be any kids. I remember when I hit 40 I said that I'd give myself till 45. Time's up...

Now that time's up on the soulmate and the kid thing, I am free to do a whole bunch of other things. I can move on. It might be tough because most people aren't prepared for someone like me--45 and only 5 years out of college--to be bugging them for career advice and for opportunities. Sure, it would be easier if I were in my 20's--because that's the standard linear perception of how careers are supposed to unfold...

But screw that. Life isn't linear. Life doesn't work out perfect for each and every one of us...and just because life hasn't followed that standard linear path only means that I probably can't be a Paris runway model, but it doesn't mean I can't be a force to reckon with in other mediums....

There were other things, too, that floated across my mind in what were split-seconds--like that life-flashed-before-my-eyes thing. It happened so fast that I think it may have simply been a fully conscious accpetance of what had been sorted thru and coallated by my unconscious over the past six months.

Acceptance is slow--reminds me of sitting and watching roses reach full bloom.

Maybe all those split-second flashes have something to do with why I'm re-doing the bathroom. There's new rugs, new shower curtain, new co-ordinated soapdish-tumbler-toothbrush holder. Soon, there will be new towels. There's probably some mysterious Asian-fate-zodiac thing that's making me do all that--some fung shway thing. Who knows...

It's funny how people often seem to want to find some mystical fate-related connection in their lives to explain an uncommon cultural transcendence or accomplishment. Even Oprah Winfrey and George Bush like to think they've been specially chosen by God for their life missions. It's not enough to just accept that there's no grander mystery other than the realization and acceptance of our true natures. I think, too, it seems more profound to those of us who move beyond the caste, class and station of life that we were born into. The differences in those worlds--those differnces that can be disorienting and headache inducing--and how we have to switch gears between those worlds, gives the impression that something profound's going on.

But I can't dwell on that. What I know for sure is that I have to work very hard because my path isn't linear. I have to slow down and be conscious of the verbal Charm Factor and Manners becasue I'm not a 45 year old swan who will sail thru on her looks. I can't see these things as liabilities inasmuch as challenges--think of it in terms of "let's see what I can do" rather than what I must overcome. Making it fun reduces the angst.

Not that there won't be angst. My family will make sure there's *always* some angst. It's how I handle the angst that will make the difference.

that, too, is a Change of Life.

heck, after all this work, medical menopause should be easy. they got pills for that these days...