Menopause often sends you back.
Way back.
To your girlhood.
Since The Great Pause has set in, I’m spending more time reflecting on my early years.
But now is good!
I love writing this blog.
More than any job or hobby, ever.
But about my youth.
In high school I wrote for the school paper.
I had my own column, which I loved writing too.
A few days ago, I dug out the old issues.
Whoa!
My words in The Talisman stopped me in my looking-at-old-stuff tracks.
My column reads a lot like my blog posts.
That’s either good, since I wrote pretty well in high school
Or bad
Since I’m forty years wiser and should be a better writer now.
But I sound almost the same.
I guess the girl really is mother of the woman.
(To paraphrase William Wordsworth’s “The child is father of the man.”)
What about you?
Even though the years have swirled by, are you, in some ways, still the same girl you were long ago?
And does that make you sad, happy, or a bit of both?
The touches of red in this post trace back to one of my favorite elementary school riddles:
What’s black and white and red all over?
The newspaper!
I think I learned the riddle from this book, one of my favorite of all time, Bennett Cerf’s Book of Riddles.
I wish I still had my old copy. Then I could check to see if I’m right. I do know for very sure, it’s got this one:
What’s big, red, and eats rocks?
A big, red, rock eater!
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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