Warnings from middle age

I came across a book yesterday about birth stories. It was a collection of essays meant to convey the beauty of the experience while also owning up to the horror. The premise was that women’s heads get filled with ideas of soft music and dim lighting, their partner standing by their side saying encouraging things, and then the doctor or midwife says “push,” and the baby slides out.

While the baby will come out by hook or by c-section, many of us get only the briefest moment of relief before someone is stitching us up in a place the good lord never intended for sutures and our nipples start cracking. The book sought to right this wrong by injecting a healthy dose of reality.

I believe someone also needs to prepare women for middle age. In recent years menopause came out of the closet, but most of this talk is more medical than experiential.

What I’m interested in is how it feels in the years between youth and becoming an innocuous wrinkled sensible-shoe wearing senior citizen. I’m curious to discern if I am the only fifty-something-year-old woman who woke up to find herself invisible at the very moment I have finally acquired the confidence to be seen. I do not mean physically seen. While I have no quarrel with the myriad fabulous-after-fifty fitness and style gurus, that’s not what’s on my mind.

What is on my mind is how to elevate the wisdom and humor of women who have lived through some stuff, who have lost and gained the same twenty pounds over a decade, and who have finally acquired the insight to eat the damn cookie and get on with it. Getting on with it is the superpower of middle-aged women.

Pelotonpalooza

Can we talk about 2020’s most disturbing and divisive fitness trend of 2020, the Peloton bike?

If you’ve not heard of Peloton, consider yourself blessed. This stationary bike clocks in at $1,500 for the basic model, and who wants the basic model? As IF. So you’re looking at $2,000 + $49.99/month for the accompanying programs that allow you to peddle virtual mountains and fields and, best of all, ride with your friends!

If you’re still not horrified, consider that where pre-pandemic, cache was gained by name dropping the executive with whom you had lunch, in a work-from-home world, you drop the name of the person you went riding with on the Peloton, for example, “Bob sure kicked my ass on today’s Peloton ride* but I’ll get him later this week when we ride again.” These comments make me glad for a mute button to stifle the sound of my yawning.  *it is an imperative that the word Peloton always be inserted 

I know what you’re thinking: this is nothing more than sour grapes. How often have I lamented my late middle age weight gain, my penchant for salty snacks, and my financial state which would charitably be called ‘distressed’ and more accurately ‘wreckage’?  Isn’t it small of me to snipe at others rather than taking a hard look at myself?  Glass houses, throwing stones, etc.

Yes, of course it’s petty, but this, as it turns out, is my strongest writing voice, and we’re obligated to use the gifts the good Lord has given us.

My petulance over the Peloton is less about money or jealousy, and everything to do with loneliness. If a Peloton bike was delivered to my doorstep with a fully paid program membership, it is still likely the bike would become, like stationary bikes throughout time, a glorified clothing rack. This is not about a reluctance to exercise, I’ve been known to get my fit on, I have two marathons under my belt, thank you very much. 

What it’s about is the community aspect of the Pelotonians, they are apparently social creatures, and this is the barrier I could not overcome. I would have no one with whom to go on glorious and challenging pretend rides. The language of community is, to me, foreign, and while I’ve tried immersion learning, reading, and study, I just can’t get the hang of it. In any social interaction I look like a flamingo in a room full of swans. One of these things is not like the other.

Who writes a blog post like this less than a week before Christmas?!  Lighten up, stop your whining, get a grip for god’s sake!  Count your damn blessings!  I am, I do, I will, and my blessings are myriad, but that’s the thing about loneliness, its refusal to be logical, to make sense to anyone other than the person feeling it.   

If you’re reading this while still flush from a recent Peloton workout, good work you! Keep it up, pedal yourself silly. If you’re not a Pelatonian, in the real or figurative sense, come sit by me and we’ll be awkward flamingos together.

With love and butter cookies. – Leah

I Don’t Feel Bad About My Neck

While getting ready for work recently, I pinched the underside of my chin. I have no memory of why I did this, but what happened subsequently is branded in my brain: the skin hung there for a long moment before finally (grudgingly I think) returning my neck to it’s original form. I cannot unsee the Janet Reno-worthy wattle that hung there, will soon always hang there, as parts of my body continue to migrate south without so much as a courtesy note – ‘excuse the mess and unpleasantness while Leah morphs into a white-haired raisin with chin hair.’

I am sure the wattle can be explained by science or genetics or hormones or my refusal to pay more than ten dollars for a bottle of face cream, but maybe…

…the skin is stretched and saggy from all the single-mom years when I carried keys or my phone under my chin, my hands clutching the hands of my children, or groceries, or an ill-fated umbrella that will flip inside out at the first gust of wind. Or…

….it is slack from all the time I spent bending my head over a sleeping baby to smell the magic and promise of her scent. Or perhaps….

….it is the cumulative effect off all the times I’ve walked with my head down in shame or sorrow or shyness and then jerked it back up when my Dad’s admonition to never hang my head suddenly came to mind. Or….

….maybe it’s from craning my neck at the hospital to peer through the speck of glass not covered by the sign that says ‘no visitors beyond this point’ , hoping for a glimpse of my son who is in agony on the other side, because even in those moments I am certain that if he can just see me, or I him, we will be ok. Or…

….it could be from the myriad times I’ve thrown my head back in laughter, so blessed have I been with parents and friends and family who will wrestle humor out of the the most improbable sources. Or…

…it might be from craning my neck to eavesdrop on a group of good friends slinging trash-talk at each other in such a practiced way they can only be the kind of friends who have walked through joy and tragedy and fear together, the kind of friendships I long for but can’t quite bring myself to form. Or….

….possibly (and I hope this is it), it is from all the times I have bent my head in prayer and gratitude for the life I’ve been given and the people I’ve gotten to travel it with.

Unlike Nora Ephron, I will not feel bad about my neck. It is the field map of my life, each crevice representing a blessing or an overcoming or an act of love.