Menopausal Mother

    Most people are familiar with the "Five Stages Of Grief" made popular by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in the early 70's. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance are all part of the grieving process.

     While battling a nasty head cold this past week, I realized that these five stages are applicable to what I'm feeling as I trudge through my coughing-sniffling-sneezing phase. I sound like a barking seal and have been holed up in my house for days because the cough is as loud as an air raid siren. No one needs to see me in my ratty bathrobe that has pockets bulging with used tissues. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear this is how a zombie apocalypse begins.

     I've also been taking that "feed a cold, starve a fever" saying way too far. I don't have a fever, so I feel justified in stuffing my miserable, aching self with a stack of pancakes and a warm bowl of mac & cheese. There's a reason these gastronomic pleasures are called "comfort foods." This is also why I'm living in my bathrobe lately….because chances are my jeans won't fit.

     If you've already been slammed with this season's new illnesses, I'm sure you'll relate to these five stages of a head cold:

DENIAL:  "I don't have a cold. It's just my allergies acting up. And the only reason my body aches is because I overdid it at the gym yesterday. There's no way I'm getting sick right now---only two days before my vacation begins. I'll just drink a gallon of orange juice, pop some throat lozenges , and go to bed early. I'm sure I'll be fine in the morning."

ANGER: "Who the hell gave me this cold?!? No one else in my family has been sick. I'll bet it was that guy hacking up a lung behind me in the 10-Items-Or-Less line at the grocery store. This is all his fault. How dare he set foot in public. He may have started a flu pandemic! If this coughing gets any worse, I'm going to put myself in an isolation tank for two weeks. At least it will get me out of doing housework for awhile. I'm far too weak to push a vacuum."

BARGAINING:  "Dear God, if you wipe away these cold symptoms right now, I promise to stop cursing so much at bad drivers. I'll even build a habitat for all the ferrel cats in the neighborhood. Better yet, I'll make dentures for all the elderly crocodiles living in the Everglades. I promise to do anything you ask, if you just make this head cold disappear."

DEPRESSION: "10 days and I still can't get out of bed. According to Web MD, I have a rare disease that comes from exposure to the dust on a rhino's horn. Although I have not been to a zoo in five years and as far as I know, no one on the block has a rhino stashed in their backyard. I'm exhausted and drowning in nasal spray. My gawd, I'm going to die right here in my recliner….in my ratty bathrobe, with two Vick's Inhalers shoved up my nostrils. If I die tonight, the mortician won't need to embalm me because I'll have enough cold medicine in my system to keep my body preserved for years."

ACCEPTANCE: "Okay, I'm not dying, even though I look and sound like I have the Black Plague. I just need to adjust to breathing out of my mouth and having a head that feels like it has been filled with sand bags. At this point, I'd be willing to convert to Scientology if it meant having one phlegm-free day.

     Now that I've been through the five stages of a head cold, I've forgiven the stranger who shared his germs with me at the grocery store, bargained my way into a larger size pair of jeans and decided that there will be no more trips to the rhino exhibit at the zoo.

     It started with a recipe. I misread the amount of flour that was to go into a cake and added too much of it to the batter. That night, I served a frosted hockey puck to my dinner guests. I was certain the mistake was due to my lack of attention while baking. Note to self: Do NOT watch "America's Hottest Firemen" on cable TV while making a cake.

     There were other slip-ups that soon followed….little things I stubbornly ignored, such as squinting while reading a book. Or leaning over the car steering wheel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame just so that I could see the road beyond my dashboard. It wasn't until I backed my van into a telephone pole one rainy afternoon that I knew it was time to face the painful truth: MY MOTHER LIED ABOUT THE CARROTS.

     I really couldn't blame Mom for feeding me an abundance of carrots when I was young. The myth that they help our vision dates back to WWII with the British Royal Air Force. They attributed the success of their pilot's night vision during German reconnaissance missions to the vast consumption of carrots by their airmen. Perhaps if they had consumed mass quantities of cauliflower instead of carrots, they may have needed less fuel to get their planes off the ground.

     It was my love for books---and the fact that I was struggling to read the small print---that prompted me to purchase a pair of glasses from the drugstore (it was either that or buy all my romance novels in Braille). This tactic worked for a little while until everything around me became slightly fuzzy. I had trouble reading the numbers on my cell phone, and instead of dialing my gynecologist, I called the pest control guy to complain about my irregular periods. My typing skills had also diminished considerably, and the emails I sent out were often questioned by the recipients: "When did you start calling your son Zarf?" "What do you mean you ate the dentist?". My husband had already threatened to enroll me in the Helen Keller Institute For Typing if I didn't do something about my poor eyesight. I finally admitted that he had a point when I could no longer tell if I was petting the family cat or my uncle's toupee. It was time to find an optometrist.

     After having my eyes dilated by the doctor, I strained to read a chart that was a mile away and filled with ridiculously small letters. By the end of my appointment, I had two sets of glasses; one for reading, and one for driving.

     It wasn't long before I was stockpiling glasses of various strengths----some for working on the computer, others to watch TV, and another pair for walking the dogs at night. But no matter how many pairs of glasses I accumulated, I lost them as quickly as I lost my socks every time I did the wash.

     Fed up with wearing (and losing) my glasses, I returned to the optometrist's office to be fitted for contacts. I learned how to insert the flimsy lenses into my eyes and returned home, optimistic that I'd solved the problem of my glasses disappearing into the same black hole that my missing socks were orbiting.

     It was all fun and games until it came time to remove the lenses. The harder I tried to slide them out, the farther they slipped under the folds of my eyelids. Panic set in when both contacts disappeared into the caverns of my eye sockets. You know what true love is? A man who uses a magnifying glass and a mini flashlight to probe his wife's eyeballs for missing lenses.

     Ten minutes and two scratched corneas later, I swore off contacts and decided to live my life as a blind mole. My only comfort was in knowing that at least my eyesight was a step up from the rhinos, who are notorious for attacking trees and large rocks due to their poor vision.

     Living life in a blur became too difficult ( I was tired of walking around with bruised knees from walking into furniture) and eventually I caved, buying more glasses along with several pairs of brightly colored contacts. I needed to be prepared in case I was forced to go on another eye expedition in search of my elusive lenses.

     The way I see it, putting up with lost glasses and slippery contacts is worth it to be able to see the world clearly again. And I may add a few more carrots to my diet, just to be on the safe side.

 
     It happens one morning when you wake up, glance in the bathroom mirror and realize your face looks like an un-ironed shirt. You wonder---is it from stress? The kids? Too many libations the night before? You vow to get more sleep, take your vitamins and spend a fortune on miracle face creams. If spackle can fill the cracks in a wall, then an expensive wrinkle epoxy ought to do a damn fine job covering the crevices on your face. Unless, of course, your skin looks like a lunar landing strip. The good people at Lancome have yet to invent a facial epoxy that will fill cracks that deep.


     When I was in my mid-thirties, it was no coincidence that I sprouted my first wrinkle around the time my fourth child hit the Terrible Twos. A deep furrow formed across my brow, giving the impression that I was angry all the time. Or constipated. I began slathering my face nightly with rich emollients that promised to erase my worry lines (and the remnants of a youth spent poolside with a rum runner in one hand and a bottle of baby oil in the other). I was terrified that after all those years of sun tanning, I'd end up with a face that resembled a potato left too long in a microwave.

     Once I reached my forties, the deep grooves that bracketed my mouth were evidence of my inability to defy the laws of gravity. They formed parentheses when I smiled, acting as a dam to prevent the tsunami of cheek flesh from falling forward. As much as I tried to conceal the signs that I was, indeed, a middle-aged woman, the wrinkles on my forehead were Mother Nature's way of revealing my true age like the concentric circles inside a California Redwood.


     There were other unavoidable tell-tale signs that I was well past the carefree days of my youth. The so-called "laugh lines" around my eyes were not funny at all once the wrinkles reached my eyebrows and formed tributaries similar to those near the Mississippi river.

     Now that I've accepted the fact that I can no longer disguise my age behind expensive makeup and creams, I realize that facial wrinkles are the least of my problems. There are other parts on my body that the wrinkle cadets have invaded while I've been busy trying to prevent my face from looking like a peach pit. The other day, I noticed several rings around my neck. Four, to be exact. I now have a neck that resembles a Slinky. How have I missed this delicate area during my nightly ritual of slathering creams heavier than margarine on my face?

     And that's not the only section I've overlooked. I've got wrinkles on my hands now, too. The skin has become so thin there that my veins have popped up like the Appalachian Mountain range. There are also deep creases on my elbows and knee caps, for God's sake. My joints look like a wrinkled rhino's butt. "Excuse me, dear lady at the Lancome counter, do you have any rhino butt wrinkle cream in stock?"

     I prefer to think that the lines on my face show character, not the actual stress of aging or too many summers spent on a beach with a silver reflector beneath my chin. Undoubtedly, I'll be picking up a few more wrinkles along the way, but that's okay. These little creases are the merit badge I've earned from years of laughter and a life well lived.

     And no cream can take that away.