Dear Grandma Toby and Bess

Dear Grandmothers:

Oh how I wish you were around so I could have asked you important questions about how your bodies worked when you were in your 50's and 60's. It didn't seem important back then because in our family, we didn't talk about things like menopause out loud.

We talked about family dramas, about my kids, about my marriage and divorce, the histories the both of you shared with me about your childhoods but never about what "the change" would be like once I got there.

I'm here.

I want to know if your middles seemed to grow between the time you stepped into the shower and got out of the shower. I want to know if one minute you were happy as a lark in a tree and the next minute wondering if it would make the news if you started to walk eastbound on the west side of the local highway?

I wonder if you craved chocolate one minute and then ran to find the nearest bag of Corn Nuts at the local convenience store the next? I wonder if you threw open the door to the back yard and rolled in the snow, which sizzled under the weight and heat of your body only to run back into the house piling all the blankets you could find on top of the same body that was hotter than the back of a sun-baked lizard in Death Valley only minutes before?

I wonder what advice you both would have given me? I remember when the both of you were in your 50's and 60's and nothing was said at all about menopause. At least I can't remember if it was ever brought up at family events or during phone calls.

Would you have told me to wait it out? Would you have recommended the patch? Would you have sent me to buy some organic supplement?

Or would you have recommended that I just drink tons of water and try to flush it all out?

I wonder.