Makeup for an Old Tomboy

You all probably know by now that I am a new grandma!!! I can't believe I am actually allowed to say that, but yes. It's true. I feel like it's a gigantic rite of passage, and an honour, and more joy than I thought I would be allowed.. but yes, the wheel is turning as it should. And I am growing older and my children are now having children. As it happens, as it should. So be it.

My moon cycle ended when I turned fifty, or rather, the bleeding part of it, because of course I am still led by the moon and she still affects my body. But the miracle of bleeding every month has passed, and it passed with a dramatic few months when every 23 days or so I would lose what seemed like a bathtub full of deep rich blood.

I gained a lot of extra weight after I had my fifth child at 44. I was miserable, and I was eating too much and badly. I was lonely and out of my element. I felt trapped and disgusted with myself. The younger smarter woman would have left the trap she found herself in, but the older and slower one didn't.

But it was fine, because then I started to run, and run, and run until in 2018, on Mother's Day, I ran 26.2 miles. I felt great! I have always been the type of person who wants a physical challenge: back when I had a farm and four little boys I would always be physically busy. Even being a birth companion is physical. But running long distances is the best! So I just kept running. Every day.

But then Covid happened, and although I kept on running, I entered into a new phase of my relationship with my body.

Maybe because I was always running alone. Maybe because I hurt my foot so I had to take a break. Maybe because my Covid stress came out this way, but I started going through the same kinds of feelings many of us go through as girls when we start to reach adolescence. I remember being so terribly shy; so embarrassed about myself; so uncomfortable with my new breasts.

And suddenly, at 64, my infernal mask started giving me a rash on my face that looked suspiciously like my teenage acne. I started feeling self-conscious when I was out running, sure that people were looking at me and wondering why the plump older lady was lumbering down the street with a running watch on. The nightmare of adolescent self-consciousness started to mix and match itself around in my head, until I realized that I had the answer.

I've never worn a lot of makeup. My mother wore it, but she never passed on any tips. I went through a heavy black eyeliner look when I was a hippie, and then when I flirted with punk. But mostly I love lipstick. I've always worn it - every different color from the lightest pink through deep red to almost purple, and a lighter orange for the summer. 

Covid meant that my lipsticks all disappeared into a drawer. I was wearing it for a while at the beginning until I realized that lipstick plus mask makes a mess. I've been going out every day into the world feeling somehow... naked? 

That's what Covid has done to us. We're all feeling naked, or something close to it. Threatened, maybe. Either by the virus itself or by peoples' reactions to it. People are acting wonderfully and awfully. The best of us has come out, and the worst. Our reality has been jolted, as it is when we go through a life change like puberty, pregnancy or menopause. We've been pushed out of our daily routines, our habits, the familiar ways we used to interact with people.

So I feel self-conscious and weird. So does my friend and my neighbour, and even the young woman at the gas station. We're wearing our masks, and no lipstick, and many of us have gained some weight especially around the belly because of our extra high cortisol levels.

But I think I am seeing a little pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel. I see people interacting in different ways, and trying to create a new, better place for us to live. Of course, I could equally go the darker way and note how much more oppression and repression and basic bullshit there is, which is undeniable. The social media have made us worse as a species, not better. But let's say things are getting better. Let's say every "smile with the eyes", every kind act, every time someone went out of their way in the tiniest way, let's say those little things did add up to a mountain of change, and let's say we are moving to a new er and better "normal". 

Most birth journeys include pain, or at least a few moments of .... to call it discomfort is to minimize it ... ok, let's call it intensity. Most of the birth journeys I have witnessed have had several of these moments: before, during and after the child is born. Maybe this is a time of birthing change. Maybe we are birthing a new world, and the intensity and transition that we all feel is part of it.

But lipstick helps. 

 

Crossroads

I remember in grade seven when all the girls were excited about becoming women. I spent grade six in England where the social girl language was probably different, because I don't remember anything being talked about. There must have been some kind of high-pitched squeaks that I didn't recognize, but when I returned to Canada it was palpable. All the cool girls were wearing plastic go-go boots and training bras. I always wondered what the breasts were being trained for, exactly. I tried one and discarded it soon after, relegated to my dresser drawer along with highly scented deodorant, ugly costume jewelry, and pantyhose. We all waited anxiously for our periods to start, and then complained when they did. My body continued to do what bodies do and it grew and formed in most surprising ways. As it happened, I felt my spirit, my character, the definable part of me changing unaccountably. I was not the common-sensical little girl any longer, I was a nonsensical mix of girl, woman, and beast. "And when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid."

The initiation ceremonies of Junior High took me completely by surprise, the couplings and pairings, the whisperings, the poms poms and bottles. I remember a girl asking me "Do you drink?" I looked at her with astonishment - how could a person not drink? Was this another strange attribute of the Blond Westerner?

I turned away from adolescent drama, made my own way through the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll generation, and slowly became accustomed to being a woman. Childbearing and breastfeeding became part of my life, and when my youngest weaned I was sad but content.

Now, all of a sudden, the body is acting up again. I was always rather slim. 52 kilos was how much I weighed. That was part of me, except when I was pregnant (or that time in London when I survived on Guiness and chocolate cookies)... Now, suddenly, my waist has thickened. My hips are wider. The skin all over my body feels softer. Everything is somehow changing, changed. My body feels like it is not mine any more. I am trying hard to accept it. I think I should build up my abs - but I never used to build up my abs! I look at twenty year-olds and wonder - did I ever look like that? I ask my husband if he still loves me.

And I dream of sailing the Atlantic, or cutting loose, leaving the rat race, not doing the dishes....

Life is constant change, constant wonder. I am always at a crossroads. I wonder what I am going to do when I grow up...

Old Scars

The cesarean section epidemic has been growing in intensity and numbers since the 1970's, in most of the western world, and increasingly in China, India, and South America.

It is a given in most conservative medical circles that the scarred uterus is more fragile during subsequent pregnancies and may rupture during labor. While I do not believe a healthy, though scarred, uterus will rupture without provocation, I have witnessed severe psychological and emotional scars from unnecessary surgery. The World Health Organization suggested in 1985 that a 15% cesarean rate would be optimal. I believe that in countries where mothers and babies and generally healthy (this may exclude the U.S. because of high obesity rates), an optimum emergency c-section rate would be under 5%.

All sorts of shocks and aftershocks have been linked to cesarean sections. Failure to bond, failure to thrive, autism, asthma, breastfeeding problems, PTSD, ADHD, you name it, unnecessary surgery has been implicated.

But what about the effects on a woman as a woman? What about the women who have been having this surgery over the past thirty years? The young ones may mistakenly believe that it is easier on the body for the baby to be extracted surgically; that the low transverse scar just above the pubic bone will heal and remain an almost-invisible thin white line; that urinary and fecal incontinence will be miraculously avoided; that their vaginal muscles will be tight and virginal forever. The middle-aged ones, the menopausal ones, the ladies who have had possibly multiple cesareans, based on the old "once a cesarean, always a cesarean" dictate of the 70's and 80's; these women represent the tip of the cesarean iceberg and their numbers are growing as this rate increases.

Much has been said, especially by men, about the effects of menopause on a woman's emotional state. The old stale jokes abound. But the fact is, that many women start to feel anxious and disoriented about their new status as non-reproductive beings.

I didn't. I have five sons and I am very happy about my contribution to the ongoing human race but I was content to let menstruation go. I do feel ambivalence about growing older - after all, who wants to die? As we age, we do march slowly but surely towards the next big chapter.

So, with the loss of our reproductive capabilities, as we get used to our bodies and ourselves during this phase of life, it is difficult to have to watch the little white bikini line grow into a larger, lumpier line where no matter how many times we march off to the gym, the pleasant softness of middle age insists on bulging unpleasantly underneath and over the top, as if a tight elastic were stretched just above the pubic bone. And it hurts - it still hurts - even after twenty, thirty and forty years.