I have “Ah Ha” moments in completely useless spots.  You know, places where I cannot possibly act on my revelations.  The grown up equivalent of those I’m just high/looped/tired enough to get that the “fourth dimension is UP, man!” flashes.  I wouldn’t call them epiphanies, they’re more like epihanettes.  They seem to occur while I’m walking along Portobello Road, pulling my stylish trolley.  Or, when I’m swimming and I have to chant the meaning of everything that I’ve just discovered (I’ll share it later) over and over until I’ve finished the swim.  By the time I’ve gotten in the shower, it’s gone. (Sorry, gone, baby, gone, can’t share.) Or, in the car while I’m singing along with “Carry on My Wayward Son.”  Kansas, right, good memory.

I’ve spent the last months occasionally thinking about menopause gifts.  Now and then I have an epiphanini about it all.  Like, why don’t hot flashes happen when I’m on the sidelines of a freezing rugby pitch?  Or, why did I get acne at 50 and totally skip it during my teenage years?  That may be punishment for inventing culottes in a former life.  Why are my migraines back after 30 years free and clear?  And getting carsick, that’s back, too–that may be my defense against the dark arts of driving David practices.  Why does my perfectly polite and appealing husband suddenly make me want to kill him (often when he’s chewing toast)?  My attention span has snapped like a crumbly rubber ban, why is that?  The words I say most during the day?  “Why did I come in/up/over here?”  And, I once had killer thigh muscles.  Why do they look like foie gras?  Maybe it’s all the foie gras I’ve eaten.  Now that’s an epiphanella.

In the car the other day I had an epiphanic (if that’s not a word, it should be) moment.  As a hot flash rolled through me like the tide I thought, “Boy, this feeling is rather like labor.”  Minus the unpleasant side effect of pain.  You feel slightly light headed, you sweat, you swear.  Holy Mother of Pearl it’s ‘The Circle of Liiiiiiife!’  Cue soaring–this is when you really knew Elton John was a charming old queen–music.  Yup, there it was, that damn circle, dangling from my rear view mirror.  You get pregnant and deliver babies, then you get menopause and deliver yourself.  Of course, as I had that not terribly revelatory thought, I had to pull out onto Kensington High Street and dodge a double decker bus.  So, I didn’t take it too much farther there and then.  Later, as I pushed my cart through the market (side bar: I saw a woman with a cart stuffed full of rhubarb!  Stuffed!  She needs a rhubarb intervention.) I fleshed (flashed, flushed) the idea out a tad further.

Basically, with the exception of all the crap physical stuff, menopause should be the pause that refreshes (remember those Pepsi ads?).  It signals–if all is well–that you have your self back.  At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss, you are you again!  Just you.  Sure you have lots of extensions and appendages but the you that started this race at 12,13,14, (I was 16–that ballet thing), it’s the past perfect of the you who will finish it.  You are now future plus perfect in the grammar metaphor that is threatening to reach out and slap me.

You are no longer in service of propagating the species.  You just have to get those offspring through the day alive–or check in with them to be sure they got themselves through the day alive.  And, really, check in now and then, not daily.  The enormous task of hunting, gathering and cooking shed-loads of food should be winding down.  Of course, if you’re like me and had a third/fourth child because you thought, I’m not done yet, you may still be filling your cart with rhubarb, and you deserve it.  The ‘must remember to put tampons in a ziplock to take to the beach where there will be nowhere to do anything with them’, days are over.  Unless you have a daughter of a certain age in which case you’re screwed on oh, so many levels.  The whole standing at the kitchen counter thinking “I feel kind of blechy, wonder if it’s the flu?  Oh wait I know what this is–why don’t I remember from month to month”–that’s done.

So, now that you have your authentic self swaddled and ready for its first close-up, what will you do with it? Will you dip into your creative blow-up pool and hook the duck that has the prize?  Will you read in the tub until the book slips right into the water with you?  Will you write/paint/sing/dance?  Will you run a different kind of race, a marathon that involves proper shoes instead of proper laundry detergent?  (Count me out of that kind of race, I only run if chased).  What. Will. You. Do?  Don’t ask me.  I had a great idea about that the other day while I was picking up the dry cleaning.  I thought, “Oh, if I just–wait, no that’s not it.”  It’s gone.