It Was Simple

I'm home after four weeks abroad with 34 undergrads. Home to my lovely husband and bright boys and lovable pets. Home with my good bed and thick towels and uninterrupted internet access. Home (amazingly) to temperatures lower than those baking much of the United States these last few weeks. 

Home. No more lengthy headache-exacerbating bus rides listening to America's Future discussing  where they drank last night, what they drank, how drunk they got, where to go to drink tonight, what to drink, and how drunk they hope to get.

Home. So why am I incredibly out-of sorts, ill-tempered, cantankerous, downright bitchy?

Perhaps it's the fact that I'm on Day 2 of the 17-Day Diet. Sadly, four weeks in the company of 34 undergrads is not good for the Facing-50s waistline. Every day one wades through mounds and mounds of french fries and gummy bears and candy bars and potato chips. . .  But, no, this bitchiness is more than just hunger, more than the grumpiness induced by having to forego bread and wine and chocolate. (Although, gotta admit, seeing those words in stark print-- bread and wine and chocolate, I am doing without bread and wine and chocolate -- sheesh, it really is enough to send someone over the edge, isn't it?)

Still, more than diet is at work here. I'd love to blame jet lag, but as an incurable insomniac, I've lived most of my life in a state of chronic jet lag, and actually I think I'm fairly good at it.

So, nope, not a matter of food or sleep deprivation. Instead, I do believe I am suffering from the loss of simplicity. Life for the last four weeks has been stunningly simple: a small suitcase, a series of barebones hostel rooms, breakfasts of tea and toast, and best of all, a packed and inflexible schedule. Everyday I got up and knew what I had to do and when I had to do it. I did it. And then I went to bed. Few decisions, limited choices, and oh! glorious bliss! no self-flagellation at the end of the day. No "I shoulda coulda"s.  No wondering at how little I achieved. No guilt at chapters not written, errands not run, chores not completed and checked off the List. No sense of failure because I didn't make phone calls or dinner or love.

Just me, Irish history, and 34 hungover undergraduates.

Simple.

Pale Tongue

I have a pale tongue. I didn't know that my tongue was paler than most; I guess I haven't paid much attention to tongue coloration. I know now about my pale tongue because my acupuncturist told me so. Yes, my acupuncturist. I now have an acupuncturist. And I am now ingesting massive quantities of Chinese herbs. I feel so totally alternative, like I should dress in flowy, ankle-long, brightly colored skirts and hiking boots while I grind my own flour. This plunge into alternativity is motivated by my never-ending quest for relief from chronic daily headaches. Western medicine has failed me; I turn to the East.

But back to the tongue. Turns out possession of a pale tongue is Bad. So Acupuncturist Guy is hopeful that sticking me with needles and plying me with herbal concoctions will help with not only the headaches but also clogged sinuses, insomnia, menopause, depression, and my inability to understand football. OK, not the last one.

Am I hopeful? Hmm. Over the last several years I have worked with many a hopeful medical-type person, ranging from the Svaroopa yoga therapist to the neurologist, the sleep specialist to the TMJ dentist to the chiropractor, the osteopath, and the deep-tissue masseuse. I have learned much. I have spent much. And still I am more of a Headache with a person, than a Person with a headache. "Hopeful" means "full of hope" and I can't say hope is sloshing over my brim, but still, yep, there's a bit of it swirling around in the bottom of the cup.

Old Lady Yoga

Today I returned to yoga class after a long hiatus. This is not tone-your-butt and streamline-your-thighs yoga but rather gentle yoga. Stretch and be at peace yoga. Old lady yoga.

Even so, I'm really bad at it. I have never been flexible--physically, I mean. (OK, right, probably any other way either.) When you sit on your mat with your feet straight in front of you and the instructor says to fold forward as far as is comfortable, well, my torso remains at a 90 degree angle to my feet. Everyone else, even the actually old old ladies, collapse on themselves, nose to knees, like living dinner napkins. Me, I'm like a textbook illustration of a right triangle.

But I'm also really bad at the mental/spiritual part of yoga. I'd like to be a good, deep-breathing, at-peace-with-my-innerness yogi; I really would. I do regard our materialist, empirical way of looking at the world as limiting and impoverished and I do absolutely believe that meditation and yogic practice and mindfulness would enrich my life. It's just that I fail so completely. I try, I really do, but when my yoga instructor, a petite cutie with a headful of dark curls and the right blend of intensity and laid-backedness, tells us to look through our third eye, I'm sorry, I'm blind. I'd settle for third eye near-sightedness, but no, I appear doomed to total blindness in my third eye. And when she instructs us to breathe into that space we've created between ourselves and the breath around us, there I am, floundering, peering wildly to my left and to my right, trying desperately to find that space I've created but, damn, it's just not there. And at the end, when we lie in our savasana pose and she guides us through relaxation imagery, and I'm supposed to be floating through the cosmos, sigh, I'll admit it, I'm composing my grocery list or trying to figure out what went wrong with that lecture this morning.

I wish I could leap unreservedly into the yoga pool of bliss. But that means letting go of the mind and honestly, there's not a chance. The life of the mind--I didn't know those words but good lord, I knew the reality, the exhilaration, the incredible possibility and power of it from the day I read my first book. all on my own: Ballerina Bess, a cardboard-covered book from the racks in the grocery store checkout line that, amazingly, I convinced my mom to buy for me one day early in the fall of my first grade. "I want to jump, said Bess. I want to dance, said Bess. I want to be a ballerina, said Bess." And damn, so did I. Because I was Bess, there, in my mind and I knew, I absolutely knew, standing there in the checkout line, that reading on my own meant I could be and do so much more.

And yet now I know, I do absolutely know, that the inability to shut off the mind explains so much of my insomnia, my anxiety, my limitations as a sexual partner, and yes, my failure at yoga. I would like to be transcendent. And deep-breathing. And able to fold up like a dinner napkin and see through my third eye. And oh, I really would love to float through the cosmos, a tiny speck-- but a totally balanced, mindful speck, a speck that is at peace with one's speckedness and at one with all that is and was and will be.

But really, cosmically, that's as likely as a toned butt and stream-lined thighs.

Birthday

So, today's the day. This is it. I'm no longer facing 50; I've arrived, I'm there, I'm now in my 50s.
Whoa.

It's weird. I really do feel different. As if I'm jetlagged and in a foreign country.

Oh wait. I am jetlagged and in a foreign country.

Which does kind of help with the whole Big Birthday half-a-friggin'-century thing. For one thing, I'm in Ireland and who can be down in Ireland?--other than the Irish, of course. And far from family and friends, cut off from routine responsibilities, I don't feel 50; I just feel, well, jetlagged and in a foreign country.

Although actually, jetlag is fairly routine for me, because chronic insomnia and jetlag are pretty much indistinguishable. Except that jetlag usually means that somewhere along the line you've been somewhere you really wanted to be. Just like the sleep deprivation you get with having a baby is like what insomnia feels like, except at least you get the baby.

Now that I think about it, tho', insomnia does make even the most familiar place into a foreign country; it's just that it's one of those foreign countries you never ever want to visit--say, the Soviet Union, 1954. Stark, cold, grey concrete buildings, all unforgiving angles and relentless drab.

But I, I get to come face-to-face with 50 in Ireland, with its gentle curves and soothing greenness. My dominant impression of Ireland thus far is that of softness. Of course there's that legendary Irish landscape, sculpted and smoothed by centuries of deforesting and grazing and cultivating. But take the lilt of the Irish accent as well: Listening to the Irish speak is like the auditory equivalent of cuddling up on an overstuffed sofa with a fluffy comforter. Or take one of the most common sights in Ireland (at least if you're traveling with a pack of undergraduates)--that of a barman pouring Guinness into a pint glass--the liquid swirls and foams as smoothly as a silk shawl slipping over bare shoulders. Even traditional Irish music--I learned today, courtesy of my music prof colleague--has a softness, a lack of definition, as one tune follows another without break or breath.

It occurs to me that I've spent most of my first 50 years drawing and maintaining clean, sharp, straight lines. Perhaps I can spend the next 50 smudging, curving, blurring those lines. A bit of Irish softness seems in order.

I'll start with another pint of Guinness.

Jaunty

Keith and I spent the weekend in New Orleans with my good friend Karen and her husband. Karen and I go way back, back to Chicago and grad school, back to the Time Before Tenure, the era before House-and-Spouse. We've each moved the other; we've celebrated each other's victories and mourned each other's failures, and now we're both facing 50. (Actually, she hit 50 last month; I still have a few weeks left of my 40s. Just to, you know, be precise.)

Karen is facing her 50s with, well, glee. She's jumped into the research for a new book and thoroughly ensconced in academic life; she's thrilled with her husband and house and dogs; she has a couple of stepkids who are "done and dusted"--out and about and living fine adult lives; she's where she wants to be and doing what she wants to do. She's downright jaunty.

Jaunty. I don't think I've ever been jaunty. I'd like to be jaunty. But jauntiness seems to require energy and ambition, and I have neither. I blame menopause. Menopause is great. It's like teething with babies. "He's so fussy--he must be teething." "He feels hot--I think he's teething." "He's so clingy lately--I bet he's teething." "He's all congested--gotta be teething." Doesn't matter what it is, really, you just blame teething. Menopause works the same, but for middle-aged women rather than babies, obviously.

Except the thing is, I'm not sure I ever actually had energy and ambition. I used to think I was an energetic and ambitious up-and-comer but honestly, I think I was simply petrified. Scared shitless. Utterly, absolutely, existentially terrified. All that supposed energy and ambition, all the emphasis on achievement was, simply a way of shoring up the barricades, of constructing a fortress behind which I could shelter from the demons of depression and debilitating anxiety. By racking up points, coming out on top, winning the prizes, I kept the monsters at bay.

And then I had kids. And they didn't conform to schedules or slip neatly into file folders or abide by deadlines. My achievements dwindled.

And now I'm supposed to say--jauntily--that I learned of course that other things--motherhood and family, for example--were far more important and that I discovered that I was fine without the prizes, that I had no need of such defences because the demons never existed and the monsters were really cuddly toys.

Bullshit (she says politely).

With the barricades down, in hurtled the monsters. Depression rampaged through my life--slicing, slashing, gouging, biting-- and left me, my kids, my husband bleeding and scarred.

But the point is, as any fan of Doctor Who knows, monsters must be faced. You can't just cower behind the defenses you've erected and wait for the gnashing gashing hordes to go away. Because they don't. They just hunker down out there and eat a whole bunch and exercise a lot and get really strong. So you've got to go on the offensive; you have to fight. And here's where Doctor Who actually lets me down (hard to believe, but true). The Doctor makes the fight seem exciting, damn, even sexy. And it's not at least not when the monsters are depression and anxiety rather than space aliens. It's a fight that's boring and exhausting and goddamned fucking disillusioning and discouraging and just plain difficult. Much more like an episode from The Pacific.

So. Umm. I am not jaunty as I face 50. But I am, actually, hopeful. I mean, if you're hunkered down with the enemy all around you and yet you refuse to admit there's a fight going on, you haven't much chance of winning, do you? Oh, I know I'll probably lose all the same. Still, it's not so bad to go down fighting, is it? (she says, just a wee bit jauntily).

Wishing for a sippy cup

When I die, the epitaph on my tombstone should read, "She needed a nap." It's alarming how increasingly like a toddler I'm becoming. I get very cranky without regular feedings and a good long nap. It would be so nice if someone would read to me and wipe my nose now and then. And gosh, I'd love an animal cracker and a sippy cup of milk. But--the naps. These are not 15-minute power naps. I used to do those, back when I was a productive and ambitious scholar. I kept a beach towel in my office and would stretch out on it for a 15-20 minute nap most afternoons. Got me past the post-lunch yawniness and guaranteed the afternoon's achievements.

I no longer aspire to Productivity and Achievement. Just, you know, being ok. But the big obstacle to ok-ness is chronic insomnia. Now, it is true, the menopause manuals tell you to expect disrupted sleep, sleeplessness, insomnia. But here's where I'm actually at an advantage: I'm an insomniac from way back. Hah! I laugh in the face of menopausal sleep disruption! Go ahead, give it your all, you damned hormones. Or lack of them. Or whatever it is that is doing this shit to me. You can make me sweat. And cry. And forget basic info. And grow abundant facial fur while the hair on my head thins at an alarming rate. But you cannot affect my sleep if I do not sleep. And I do not. Haven't for years. So there.

Well, I do sleep. I nap. Yes, yes, I know, I know. An insomniac should not nap. Very very bad. I've been to the sleep clinics. Been through sleep therapy. Sleep therapies. Tried the herbs. The relaxation exercises. The yoga. The counseling. The warm milk. The deep breathing. The pills. Lovely, those pills. Knock you right out. But the thing is, the next day, you're as tired as ever. God is not fooled. So, I grab the sleep when it offers itself in the afternoons. Survival.

It's a comfort, knowing I've got this part of menopause down. Done and dusted, as the English say. It was the same way when the boys were babies. The sleep deprivation that sends other parents, that sent Keith, down into the Slough of Despond didn't hit me that hard. OK. Yes, it was hard. But it was also just goddamned normal. Well, as normal as life can be when you're an insomniac. Which is pretty fucking abnormal, frankly. Like for over a year, in a really really bad period of insomnia, I regularly checked my car tires for blood, just in case I had run over someone and not known about it. When you don't sleep for days on end, you get a tad, umm, weird.

So, I nap. It's embarrassing. It's the death knell of Achievement and Productivity. It means you provide your 14-year-old son with a giant sign saying Kick Me Here (Mom's asleep. . . . crank up the rap!) But--I'm still here. Sleepy. Cranky as hell. Longing for bed. But still here.