hair

I often do my tweezing in bed. I'm relaxed and I can hold the mirror close to my face (a necessity with my aging eyes). So there I was the other night, lying in bed and examining myself in the mirror. I realized that the gray hairs are increasing in number. Whereas I used to be able to say that I had a few stray grays, now I'm close to saying that I'm starting to gray. I tweezed one of the longer hairs to get a closer look. It was stunningly silver.

But now what? Do I color? Do I stay natural?

Years ago, I worked with a woman who had straight waist-long hair that was more gray than brunette. She always looked old and tired. At the end of one summer, she returned to campus looking 15 years younger, having had her hair cut and colored. I had never realized how much difference hair length and color could make.

One of my current colleagues had long hair that she had colored dark since before I'd known her. Last year, she began to go natural. Her hair is now a beautiful white and it is now chin-length. It looks spectacular. I think she looks younger for having made this change.

Is a hair color decision a statement, or is it just a matter of style? If I color, am I saying that I care about how I look? Is this okay? Does it say that I'm vain? Does it say that I want to look younger, or that I care whether other people might think I look old? Does it say I'm superficial? On the other hand, if I go and stay gray, does it suggest that I don't care about myself at all? Does it say that I'm lazy, or cheap, or old, or boring?

My mother-in-law and her mother both color their hair. I asked my father-in-law about it once, and he said that he doesn't care if his wife colors her hair, that it's her choice. She, on the other hand, says that when she started going gray he suggested that she color it because he wasn't old enough to be sleeping with a granny. I love my mother-in-law and her mother. But at a certain age, does it really make us look younger? Does anyone really think that my husband's grandmother is younger than 85 just because she has auburn hair? Come on.

My mother, on the other hand, wears no makeup and doesn't color her hair. I grew up in a family that avoided doing anything artificial or superficial. The only reason I got my ears pierced is that my dad was in Germany for the summer and wanted to get my mom some nice jewelry. The only thing he could find was pierced earrings, and Mom took me along to the ear-piercing store when she got hers done.

So maybe my decision is not about whether or not to color. Instead, my decision needs to be about whether it even is a decision or if it's just a matter of style.

activia

Is it me, or does it feel a bit it weird to watch Jamie Lee Curtis hawking Activia yogurt and interviewing women about their digestive regularity?  I think I would feel even ickier if I didn't find myself thinking that maybe I should start eating Activia.

Is this what it was like for another generation when June Allyson was in Depends commericials?

pondering womanhood

I've been struggling to come up with something to write about that does not involve my hormones, my now-absent uterus, my ovaries, or even my husband and children. In wanting to write about my life as a woman, these are the things I've written about because these are the things on my mind. But I've been thinking a lot about the wide range of womanhood and womanliness.

I have several friends who have dealt with infertility--some choosing to adopt and some going through painful and emotionally agonizing years of infertility treatments of one kind or another. They are no less women for having not given birth to children or raised children. So when I write about my children, who I connect so closely with my own sense of being a woman, am I implying something about the womanhood of someone who has not had this experience?

I think about my husband. I have a good friend who is the person I vent to about husband stuff. Every "stupid husband" joke that comes around, we end up forwarding to each other. Having my husband is part of how I've become the woman I am--but I still felt like a woman before I met him. Today I found out that one of my hyster-sisters and facebook friends lost her husband unexpectedly. She is no less a woman for having been widowed. The mother of my daughter's friend is also widowed, and she notes on her facebook page that facebook doesn't have a relationship status for "widowed." When I write about my husband, then, am I implying anything about women without husbands?

I still have my ovaries, even though they're not very cooperative. For the past 30+ years, the rhythms of my hormones have helped define how I am a woman. My emotions, my bleeding, my pregnancies, my sexuality, and my hysterectomy have all been connected to what my ovaries have done. Is a woman who has been castrated (had her ovaries removed) any less a woman? There was a fascinating book I read once about the relationship between humans' awareness of time and a woman's cycles. When I write about ovaries and hormones, am I implying anything about women without them?

How do I write about what it means to me to be a woman without implying that I am speaking about all women or that women without my experiences are something other than woman? And what does it mean about a female I once knew who has now become legally and surgically a man?

What makes a woman? Is it strictly DNA? Is it the organs we're born with? Is it a set of experiences? Is it what we do with our lives? Is it simply saying, "I am a woman"?

Maryville

Early in the morning on December 31, 1994, I gave birth to twins after spending 3 1/2 months on bedrest. My babies were born at Anderson Hospital in Maryville, IL. We lived in Troy, another small town just a couple miles east of Maryville. At midnight, the moment when 1994 was gone and 1995 was born, I stood in my hospital room, grateful that my bedrest ordeal was over and wondering how I would manage to take care of two infants and a preschooler. My babies were in the nursery, and I was having a cup of tea as I gazed out the window at large fluffy snow flakes falling down. Past the parking lot and across the field, I saw the lights on at the First Baptist Church of Maryville, IL. I was comforted by the fact that there was a church with me as I began 1995.

As my children grew, we made plenty of trips to the hospital for surgeries and broken arms. Over time, we saw a new building grow. The Baptist Church was constructing a new facility, right there on the highway. Every time we went to the hospital, we saw the building's progress. Every time I drove to Walmart or Target, I drove past the church and past the hospital. The year before we moved away from the area, the church building was finished and we saw cars and people there, using the building to serve the people of the church.

This morning, in that church we watched grow, next door to the hospital where I brought two of my babies into this world, a man from Troy, the town where we'd lived for eight years, walked into the church. He lifted his gun and shot the pastor in the chest, right through the pastor's Bible. Two men from the congregation tackled the gunman while others screamed and prayed. The pastor, the gunman, and the two men from the congregation were taken to the hospital next door, which was not equipped to deal with most of the injuries. So even with a hospital so close, the men were airlifted to a hospital in St. Louis, where the pastor died of his wounds.

I've looked through the articles and watched the streaming video. So far, I have recognized no one involved. Yet somehow, I recognize them all. We most likely know people who go to that church. Our own church, with many people we love, is just down the road, on the same highway. It could have happened there, just as easily. It didn't, but it could have.

My heart is aching.

hormones, at my age?

Life has been feeling weird lately. My surgery and initial recovery are behind me. I still have aches and pains and occasional swelling, but I’m not having to be so careful about everything and I generally feel like my days can proceed normally.

At the same time, though, I’ve been feeling completely exhausted. I have no mental or emotional energy to do anything, and physically I just can barely drag myself around sometimes. I can’t concentrate, and I’m forgetting things. Although teaching is going fine, the administrative part of my job has been suffering. It feels like everything is an insurmountable mountain—if I even remember that it’s something I’m supposed to do. I’m not sleeping well, either. It’s hard to fall asleep, and even then I wake up frequently. I feel jittery all the time, and I’m just feeling wiped out.

The other day I was talking with my supervisor. It was very hard to admit how much I was struggling, every single day—especially when I’m in the middle of two big projects and have my annual review scheduled in two weeks. But this is one of those situations where having the difficult conversation was the right thing to do. For one thing, I acknowledged to her that it must be difficult for her to have to be having this conversation with me. Somehow, that was good, because after that our conversation felt more genuine and collegial. The other good outcome is that I realized that something was not right with me and I told her I would be contacting my doctor.

My doctor is leaving the practice next week, but I was able to get in to see her yesterday morning. As we went through a list of all the troubles I’ve been having, we got looking before my surgery and into the past couple of years. Everything I’ve been struggling with is a symptom of ovaries shutting down. It’s possible that this happened in response to the ablation two years ago and that the symptoms have been exacerbated by the hysterectomy. Some symptoms have been masked for several months by other medication I’m on. I had four tubes of blood drawn yesterday, and they’ll be tested for a variety of hormones. Meanwhile, I’m now on day 2 of estrogen pills.

I feel really odd about this. When I was first facing my hysterectomy, I somehow felt like it was all okay because I wasn’t losing my ovaries, just my uterus. I don’t know why this mattered, but it apparently did to me. And now I’m feeling like I’m old and dried up at the age of 44. At the same time, though, I can’t begin to express my relief that this was physiological rather than psychological. I was thinking I was crazy, and learning that my brain fog and fatigue could be part of a larger condition was very healing emotionally.

I’ll go back to see another doctor in the practice in two weeks, and we’ll discuss my blood tests and figure out how long this whole estrogen routine will last. I hadn’t even gotten around to thinking about my views on HRT, and here I am.