I am a woman of a certain age and character. Ok, so that means I’m starting to think of myself as “getting older”. This comes on the heels of a conversation with my other daughter about the term “middle-aged” and exactly what birthday that entailed. She said 40s. Me, already 55 and feeling spunky, disputed that I was almost “middle-aged”.
Then Covid happened, the world stopped, and I began the arduous process of disentangling my work persona from my private persona. I was a Teacher with a weekend life, until I sat in my house for hours with the computer on, Google link live, waiting for interaction with my students. What were they doing? Most, honestly, were sleeping. Some were working–Covid, the great equalizer, promoted all the part-timers to essential work status while the rest of us cooled our heels. One day I played hookey from my electronic vigil and went out to the garden. What’s the point of having a smart watch to monitor my email if I don’t take advantage of its alert function? That glorious day freed me from my imposed exile from myself. On a warm, sunny day, why was I sitting inside? The death of the Teacher began that day, but the woman I was neglecting was born.
Then my mom died. Now, after 7 years of rehearsal and 19 months of actual, I can type that line without dissolving. Can’t dwell on it, but I can say it out loud. Revelation from this experience? Food = comfort. New awareness that whenever I feel uncomfortable, my buddy is sugar, in any form including the crunchy, salty stuff. I eat one meal thinking of what I’ll eat next. I’m working on that.
Then between these 2, menopause. I guess. They took me, kicking and screaming, off of birth control, and my body said, “Oh, hey, it’s time to be old!” and slid to a rock. bottom. stop.
But hey, now it’s time to talk about all the plans I have for my final unit, which are amazing and awesome and mind-bogglingly brilliant, and which I’ll begin organizing as soon as I go down to the dryer and fold that load, then bring it upstairs to scoop up another to put into the washer, then wander through the kitchen for a drink and come out with a Reese’s. They were on sale because Easter’s over so I bought 2 bags to bring to work for the kids but still haven’t admitted that they’ll never make it out of the house. On the way back to this article I dusted the treadmill, thought about getting on it, then realized all the work I still have to do and I go back to work tomorrow. And hopefully the neighborhood violence has slowed down or moved on, because I’m tired of driving in to see police cars parked outside the front door.
There was a point to this, I promise–right! My ADD. I haven’t been diagnosed yet, but while on vacation I noticed, to some disturbance, that I can’t pay attention to what I’m doing, because the birds are building a nest in the awning and the start of that song reminds me of another song that I can’t remember the name of so I spend 20 minutes searching Spotify’s entire Alan Parsons catalog only to remember it was a Kansas song. Tell me you’ve had this. Tell me it’s natural, or computer-based, or anything other than early-onset dememtia. The last time I read an entire book? Grad school. Watched a tv show? Farscape, but that’s wrapped up in trauma that I still don’t want to talk about. Watched a movie? The last Disneyfied Star Wars, whatever, they can suck it.
I need a nap.
Tribelet of Hoodlums 