Sometimes I think my mom dreamed of having a daughter for the express purpose of having someone to say the phrase “sounds like early menopause” to.
For at least 10 years, she has been suggesting it after every random symptom I relay.
There is no phone conversation that is safe.
ME: It made me feel really sad and lonely.”
HER: “Sounds hormonal.”
ME: “I feel nauseous.”
HER: “Sounds like early menopause. I hate to say;”
But, no she DOES NOT hate to say.
She loves to say with a burning passion.
It is absolutely her top favorite phrase, replacing her previous favorite, “Is that cow dead,”
which she used at least bi-weekly for the better part of the 80’s and 90’s because we lived near a dairy, and, by George, in that position, “they just don’t look like they’re only asleep.”
Maybe it started when she was about my age, suddenly raising a daughter that now only appeared to ask for $5 and to have a ride to things.
I’m sure, like me now, she was missing the comradery of my younger age.
Maybe she was as desperate for someone to join her on her lonely mid-life journey as me;
So desperate that she would cling to any hint of similarity between us,
be it mood or temperature swing;
So, from very early on, she surveilled for any sign of a hormonal shift in me,
just waiting to connect again, arm-in-arm.
The irritability! It could bind us!
After all, nothing bonds a mother and daughter like a joint reason to complain.
My mother has been telling me “it sounds like it could be early menopause” for at least the last decade.
I am 46 now, and she has been waiting for this moment.
Her time to shine.
It’s Go-Time! Cue the lights!
No more dress-rehearsal.
Her moment – It is happening.
I have actually reached the age.
Later, in her interview, she will shrug her shoulders and say she doesn’t know.
There was just always something about the way the sound of it rolled off the tongue.
Her muse.
Her lifelong pet thing to say.
I might just have the word “perimenopause” cross-stitched on a throw pillow for her bed in a nice seafoam shade. She would, no doubt, nuzzle up to it as she falls asleep, and dream of nodding a knowing nod as some doctor hands a hormone work-up blood work slip to me.
It’s like I became an adult and
“Sounds like early menopause” took the place of my childhood triage questionnaire,
capable of getting to the bottom of absolutely anything that ailed me:
“Have you pooped yet today?” and “How much water have you had to drink?”
I’m sure in the next 20 years I’ll have my own pet thing I do and say.
The girls will all laugh around a Thanksgiving table about it, all of them doing what they love to do most: Roasting me.
I guess that’s part of the beauty of the people we love – The things they always do and say.
It makes up who they are in our memory, even if it’s some crazy, left-field sounding thing.
Maybe one day I’ll think on pre-menopause and smile.
At least I can’t say I was unprepared.
*Pops in boxing mouth-guard*
*bobs and weaves*
I’ve been training for a decade for it.
My mother’s gift to me.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
