Dad's chin and Mom's exhaustion: Sarah's thesis on genetics

 

This post deals with female issues, specifically punctuation of all kinds.  Small children, men, and various woodland creatures may find what follows disturbing, horrifying, or hilarious, but for all the wrong reasons.  (Which is just as bad.)  

So a little background on me, for those of you who don't know: I am the child of one of the original home nutritionists.  Oh, I know.  Look at me. My whole aura just screams, "RAISED BY A HEALTH FOOD ADVOCATE."

Seriously, though. My mom, a 1970's housewife living in a small suburb of Flint, Michigan, with no internet, no cable TV, and no money, was howling about food additives  my entire childhood.  See, my brother was really sick as a baby, so spent a lot of time in doctor's offices. A LOT of TIME.  And, during these many visits, she'd pick up a little magazine called "Prevention." (Heard of it?  Of course you have.  They sell it at the supermarkets now. It's housed right above the racks of candy bars.)  She'd read this article and that and by the time I was in first grade she was an expert on things like BHA, BHT, Sodium Nitrate, Mono sodium glutamine,  Blue Lake 7, Red dye 40. I could go on, but you get my drift. (BTW, no seven year old should know how to pronounce Mono sodium glutamine, much less what it is and where to find it.  Why?  Because that seven year old is going to get brutally teased when she shares this information with her classmates.  Or she might be...you know...maybe. Not that I know from ACTUAL experience.)

All this means that while my classmates were happily eating Oscar Meyer bologna on Wonder Bread, I was eating home made meatloaf on whole wheat bread.  And not the soft, lovely whole wheat they have now, no. This was the crumbly, thick, sawdusty and gravel concoction.  While my friends were trading Ding Dongs for Twinkies, I was eating...well nothing. My mom wasn't what you'd call a baker, and also she hated sugar.  (There was one famous rant one night where she tore open all the cabinets in our house yelling, "THERE'S SUGAR IN EVERYTHING!  EVEN OUR SALT HAS SUGAR IN IT!")

Mom didn't stop with food additives, oh no.  She kept reading.  She got to be an expert on everything from electrical wiring to politics to World War II to female health.  She is one of those people who educates herself about whatever it is she wants to know. She doesn't just answer her question...no no. She all but earns a degree in what she's researching.

Also, my mother is, and has been most of her life, exhausted and a little cranky.

I mean, who wouldn't be?  All that label reading!  All that preaching! All that studying and worrying and working and watching and measuring and GACK!

Now, for those who know me, you know I am so very, very NOT like that.   

I mean, yes, I try to eat healthy, who doesn't, but I've been known to look less at labels and more at taste.  I gave up diet soda, not because I read that artificial sweeteners will give me brain lesions, but  because I had to admit...I don't like the taste. When I want to know something I look it up, get the answer, and move on. Or I watch a documentary about whatever, and absorb what I can before I fall asleep. I rarely read magazines, certainly not health centered ones.  I'm not an expert on anything, except possibly Rick Springfield's musical catalog, the film work of Russell Crowe, and speaking "movie quotes" fluently. Other than that, I don't get too terribly riled up about much.

So Mom and I came into menopause with very different attitudes. She knew exactly what she was and was not going to let her doctor prescribe for her. She had read everything about everything a month before her first hot flash.  She got through it without most of us even realizing it was happening.

I, on the other hand, am winging it.  My GYN doc's nurse called me last month to move my bi-annual "let's pop those feet in the stirrups and see what's going on in there" appointment because the doc had been exposed to COVID and was in quarantine. Fine with me. I'm not worried about it. I'm the one who doesn't sweat stuff like regular appointments.  (Just ask my dentist.  Apparently,  my last cleaning was in 2018.  I tried to plead "COVID" but we've been going to the same dentist for about 15 years now and his receptionist knows me too well.)

Anyway, back to the phone call with the nurse. While she and I were rescheduling the appointment, she asked if I had any questions.  I said, "Yeah. I've had this headache for about a month. Is that part of menopause?"

(BTW, the short answer, minus the laughter, is no.  Also, the nurse told me to go see my doctor.  But, in true Sarah form, I didn't. The headache went away on its own.)

Which is why a couple of the symptoms of menopause have caught me off guard. My mother would absolutely have expected the following:

1) Rage during and after hot flashes.

I expect this from my PMS, which is actually PMDD: premenstrual dysphoric disorder.( After Peaches was born I sailed into a post partum depression that went untreated and morphed into PMDD.)  Prior to getting on the Prozac train, my PMDD would make me cheer for the women on "Snapped" as if murder was a sport and the women were my team.  

Now, my post hot flash rage is Prozac resistant.  Someone probably should write a book warning women about this.  Or maybe you all could just pray for Hubby.

2) "Sporadic punctuation" doesn't always mean fewer punctuations or lighter ones. 

Nope. Sometimes it means three punctuations in a month, all super fun, all with extra exciting cramp action. Found that out ON VACATION, thank you very much.  (Try finding proper female punctuation protection in a resort town that's actually 90% closed because 1) it's still COVIDf and 2) it's the off season.)

3)  I smell like...feet.

Like feet.  Gross, cheesy feet.  All the time, no matter how often I shower or wash my hair or power, spray and perfume myself.  I smell like feet.

Had I bothered to ask her, Mom probably would have explained the symptoms to me, and exactly what I could take to alleviate them.  But that would involve turning off the TV and calling her and then listening to all the aches and pains of all the old people she's looking after (Because that's what she's doing to stay young, she's taking care of elderly ailing relatives.)

It's not that I want to be uninformed.  Of course not.  But I've watched my mother study and worry and stress herself into her 70's.  I just don't have that kind of energy.  I can't even say my mom is a crackpot...anymore.  Turns out, everything she was hollering about in the 70's is real:  high fructose corn syrup is the devil.  Red Dye 40 is going to kill our children.  Every time another food study comes out that proves my mother right, I swear she does a happy little dance.  Which is nice because given how informed she is about literally everything, she's not happy all that often.

So my point is this:  My mom, super driven to study, read, and know.  Me, laid back and not driven to gather information as a general rule.

End result:  We're both exhausted and crabby and stressed out.  

My theory:  Stress and exhaustion is inherited, like brown eyes, or my dad's double chin.  So I got his chin, and my mom's exhaustion.  AND THAT IS WHY I TAKE NAPS IN THE AFTERNOON.