I could feel an ovary trying to decide what to do. One hour, I sensed the familiar and oh so annoying twinges that meant ovulation was on its way (followed by two weeks of PMS in her various forms). The next hour, all was quiet as if they were finished. So one day, I decided to start talking to my ovaries. Yep, talk to them. I think impending menopause was confusing them as much as it was confusing me.
“Thank you,” I told them. “The babies were darling.”
“Thank you,” I said a little later, “but now you can rest.”
They needed to understand that their work was done.
My older friends kept telling me that once you get through it, menopause is great. No more PMS. No more periods. And so I decided to egg on (pun somewhat intended) the providers of the eggs. I wanted them to know they didn’t need to keep producing the little buggers.
And I wanted them to know I am grateful.
I’m grateful for the memories of those babies and for the years of their growing up, but mostly, I’m grateful for right now. Adult kids are cool. Life in your fifties is too. Ovaries that are going zonky are not.
They finally got the message to quiet down. Every now and then, I still talk to them to say, again, “Thank you.
The egg cups are from my husband Cliff’s childhood. His mom, Vivian Younger, served him soft-boiled eggs in them. Hooray for eggs (of all kinds) and hooray for mothers!
For more about Barbara visit http://friendfortheride.wordpress.com/
Barbara Younger
Barbara Younger blogs from her home in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Along with Friend for the Ride: Encouraging Words for the Menopause Roller Coaster (http://friendfortheride.com), she writes books for children and adults. She lives in an old house with her husband Cliff. and collections of everything from dolls to buttons to bookmarks. She's the mother of two grown daughters and the grandmother to one adorable baby boy!
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Fun story: The girls I work with decided to celebrate a co-workers birthday and decorated her car’s back bumper with tampons attached with string. They hide them inside the bumper so she wouldn’t notice. As she pulled away, they all fell down and dangled behind the car. On her way home, people were honking and smiling and she had no idea of why they were doing this until she got home. There she spied the hanging tampons, who during the ride home, soaked up the rain-sleeked roads and stared back at her in full bloom. While quite embarrassed at the time, she loves telling this story and she loves her co-workers as well.
on October 4, 2011 at 7:33 pm Miss Ellie