Curls and Girls

My hair is developing waves in it. While this may seem like a minor point, it's significant in that I've, for the past forty years, had bone-straight hair. Unless I chemically altered it, which I spent a fair amount of time and money doing.

It's especially noticeable down here in Tampa, the humidity antipode to Laramie. I'm down here with three other gals who typically make up my work team. Two of them are about five years older than I am and are full of "change of life" advice. One's theory is the "curlier as you age" theory. Up until now, though, she's been all about the "gray hair has a different texture and thus is curlier" theory. But, since, I have only a few silver hairs, right at my part, she's generously revised her theory to include my drift to curliness with regularly textured hair.

And I don't mind the waves. Kind of different.

What I do mind is the whole "peri-menopausal" thing. A medical type recently informed me that peri-menopausal includes the 10-15 years before and after the actual Pause. Which means, for those terrifed to do the math, one can have perimenopausal symptoms for, yes, that's right: THIRTY YEARS.

Has anyone else noticed that this comes out to at least a third of a normal life?

I don't buy it. To me, this is like the "we've been dying since the day we're born" view of life. Just because something is a certainty in the future doesn't mean it's already in process. You can move towards a thing without being it. And once you've moved through an event, you don't have to carry it around with you, the tattered remains of it like streamers hanging off your limbs.

Change of life, fine. It happens. Hormones shift, our bodies change. Different physiological priorities.

Now can we move on?