Busters. Breezers. Pooters. Tooters

I guess I was in my late 30s when I first became aware of aging. It was when I became a Farter.

Up until that point, for me, farting, or I should say, not farting, was about aspiration and achievement. My dad farted. My mom farted. My brothers farted. My sister farted. I did not.

I associated farting with the fact that my dad regarded boxer shorts--just boxer shorts--as acceptable attire. I associated farting with the fact that we ate dinner at the table without tablecloth or placemats and with a diverse array of silverware, much of which my dad had stolen from the airlines. (Yes, once upon a time all flights included dinner, and dinner came with actual silverware. And my dad stole it all. He also regularly stole silverware from restaurants. We weren't a poor family. We could afford forks. But my dad liked stealing stuff. I think I was in junior high when I first realized that other families did not load up their pockets and coat sleeves with cutlery.) I associated farting with Kool cigarettes and Mogen David wine and clothes from K-Mart and burping and Icecapades and bowling and painting by number.

People that I admired did not fart. My urbane Uncle (by marriage) Rick, who immigrated from the Netherlands and could speak seven languages, did not fart. Our minister, Rev. Van Der Velde, who read the Scripture texts in Hebrew or Greek to prepare his weekly sermon, did not fart. Mr. Groenhuis, who went to work in a suit and tie rather than khaki-like fatigues stamped with his name over the pocket, did not fart. No one on television farted. The articles in Better Homes and Gardens, that I devoured at my grandmother's (my mom only subscribed to the denominational magazine and Moody Monthly), never mentioned farting. The people in those photo spreads, with their matching silverware, unconnected to any airline whatsoever, their placemats, their furniture unmarred by dog hair or jello stains or gouges dating from my brother's pocket knife obsession, never ever farted. And so I did not either.

Until I reached my late 30s. And then, suddenly, came the farts. The gas. The stink. The sound. Oh. The sound. To my horror, I discovered I possessed an unsought, unwanted, unexpected dramatic talent for thunderous, downright symphonic farts. Clearly I was ill. I pestered my doctor. Tried Beano. Researched digestive complaints. Then I joined my sister and uncle (the urbane Uncle Rick) for a holiday in the Netherlands. And, confronted with my farting (we were sharing a room), she said with utter unconcern, "Oh, it's just because you're getting old."

I had no idea. No one had warned me. No one had alerted me that a future of unabated farting awaited.

I dine on placemats. I use cloth napkins. I do not smoke. I shop at Eddie Bauer. I drink dry white wine. I married a man who does not walk around the house in his boxer shorts.

But I fart. My sons, born in my 30s, have no idea that I was once a woman who did not fart. They only know the explosive, embarrassing me. I long for them to see the woman that once was, riding her bike through the streets of Chicago, dodging buses and taxi cabs, charming professors and janitors and politicians--and never ever ever farting.

Alien Life Forms

For me, facing 50 means facing teenaged sons. Strange: my mom at 50 was 7 years into widowhood; she'd already buried one son (well, she didn't do the actual burying, but you know what I mean), married off three more, and was whipping the last one into marital shape; she had reassembled the crib, which was now getting heavy use from the growing crowd of grandkids (eventually 24 but at this point somewhere between 5 and 7), and she had two daughters in college. But then, Mom facing 50 favored "housecoats" for daily wear, shaved her legs only below the knees, and had her hair "done" (teased, ratted, and shellacked) every Friday morning. I love my mother; more than that, I now like my mother (certainly one of the more unexpected and positive developments of the last decade). I admire her greatly. But trying to draw on her life experiences for guidance --well, it's as if I'm suddenly acting in an episode of Doctor Who: what planet has the Tardis brought us to this time?

Of course, I have a great deal of experience in dealing with alien and potentially hostile life forms. I have teenaged sons. Son 1, however, shows signs of evolving into something resembling a human. His response to my first posts seems worth repeating:

mom. what. the. fuck. i just broke my no cursing for a week rule to say that. i am glad you are keeping a blog but menstrual blood? lactating? cant decide whether im too old or too young for that.

I suppose an 18-year-old male faced with his mother's bodily fluids is a bit like the typical Christian faced with images of Jesus farting. God made flesh. Mom as sexual. Too alien?

The Cheerleader and the Fat Kid

Facing 50 means facing the body. My body. That's the thing about hot flashes. It's not the discomfort so much as the sudden interruption, the body shoving its way into the conversation. The hot flashes remind me of my short, ill-fated breastfeeding career: You're standing in the office, talking with a colleague, all intellectual and professional, and suddenly there's that tingle and the hardening and then the warmth of leaking breast milk. You trust the nursing pads packed into your enormous nursing bra and you keep talking, but the center of your attention has shifted--to that demanding, out-of-control body.

I suppose it would be different if my body and I actually got along. But we have a long and hostile relationship. To illustrate: In the course of about a month several years ago a series of medical professionals told me:
1) that I was unfortunate in my saliva. Up until that point I had no idea that some people had lucky spit. But not me, evidently.
2) that my bowel movements were inadequate. This one was a shock. I mean, I was used to feeling inadequate as a wife, as a mom, as a scholar, as a friend. . . but as a pooper? I didn't even know there were standards to be met, let alone that I was failing to meet them.
3) that my vulva skin was abnormally thin. Of course, thin is usually pretty good, but not, it turns out, when it comes to vulvas. One wants a plump vulva.
4) that my breasts were unusually lumpy. Geez. Keith never complained.
and
5) that the way my body reacted to medications was surpassingly strange. The doctor who delivered this edict was mightily miffed, by the way. In my experience, doctors do not find anomalies intriguing; their scientific curiousity is not piqued. Nope. They just get pissed off.

So. I look at my body the way the junior high cheerleader regards the fat kid who rides the same bus. (For once, I get to be the cheerleader.) Mostly I ignore it. Sometimes I snub it. There's the occasional bout of bullying. And I am, like, totally not amused that this fat kid is now sitting in my, like, seat you know? and like, totally talking to me.

God of menopause

In 145 days, I turn 50. (I meant to start this chronicle at the 150-day countdown. Oh well.) It seems an experience best shared, so here goes. The thoughts and adventures of a somewhat bemused woman on the brink of her second half-century.

Yesterday I was lecturing about the ways in which Catholic and Protestant cultural identities diverged in the wake of the 16th-century Reformation. One of the main points was the greater physicality of Roman Catholicism--the emphasis on the beauty and ornateness of the church building; the centrality of the Mass as a physical, recurring act; the doctrine of transubstantiation with the actual transformation of bread into body; the role of images, etc. etc.--versus the Protestant emphasis on words, books, literacy. It was a very good session-- one of the best I've ever had in a large (150 student) lecture class with lots of student interest and engagement. . . . and yet. . . . Perhaps I'm just overly anxious, a practicing Protestant endeavoring to do right by Catholicism in a heavily Catholic area. But I did feel that the students made an utterly unconscious assumption: words/literacy = modern = good= right.

So that night, walking the dog, I found myself lecturing to an imaginary class, trying to explain what Protestantism had lost by chucking that physicality. "Think about it," I declaimed to phantom students. "Confession to a priest, the actual act of talking about where you've gone wrong with another human being. Psychologically sound, no matter how you regard the doctrinal underpinnings. And think about the core of Christianity. Incarnation. God made flesh. Flesh. Raw meat. Pretty physical stuff. A God who puked. Whose feet stank. Whose stomach growled. A God who knew about hair tangles and hang nails and belly button lint. And snot and pus and shit. And sticky menstrual blood--"

Whoops. And my fantasy class dissolved, as did my pedagogical concerns and any interest in the physicality of Roman Catholic religious culture. Instead, it was just me and God. Well, and the dog. But forget the dog--there I stood, confronting the limits of Christianity. Incarnation. God made flesh. But male flesh. God made male flesh. A God of sweat and nocturnal emissions and pissing games. But not of bras soaked with leaking breast milk or high-pitched giggles or yeast infections.

Or of hot flashes or bizarre chin hair or the inability to remember ordinary words or the punch in the gut when you realize no stranger will ever look at you that way ever again.

I think I need a menopausal God.