a place that was promised

perimenopause and the pendulum

i told my mom that i think i’m going through perimenopause. i told her while we were lying on her bed, side by side, facing each other and talking in a hushed voice which we always do whenever ethan is in the other room. i’ve been sure about it for awhile, maybe even before i turned 35 but i’ve been more sure about it in the last couple months. i scoot down on the bed and turn on my back as i tell her that my body feels different, my hair is brittle and dry, my cycle has been changing, i’ve been sweating at night, i have spontaneous hot flashes where i frantically fan myself even when it’s 58 degrees outside, i feel my sex drive waning. my mom runs her fingers through my hair as i ask her when she went through menopause and she stops and thinks about it for a minute. she makes a sound that’s in between a sigh and a gasp when she remembers she also started going through perimenopause around 35 and went into full menopause at 41 or 42.

i tell her: it’s genetic, you know. i expect her to tell me i’m being crazy, i’m not like her, i’m reading into these things too much, i’m just not exercising enough or i’m not sleeping enough or no, i’m just wrong. but instead, she asks me what i want to do about it. i shrug and say, nothing, i don’t think. what can i do? i tell her that there is a hormone specialist in florida jeremy’s mom recommended to me years ago when i first got diagnosed with pmdd but he costs $6,000 just for the hormone testing. even if i could afford that, what is the point? there’s no point in trying to control something that has already been written out for me. but as we’re both lying there, mom and daughter but feeling more like peers or friends in this moment, i feel a little sad when i ask her if i’ll start to look old quicker. will i look aged? will i start to look different? will i start to look dry and withered sooner than i should? are you sure? how do you know? she tells me what i expect her to say: you’ll always be beautiful, you’ll be okay. i don’t really believe her but when i look at her and the photos around her bedroom that show her soft freckled skin, the youthful lines that crinkle around her eyes and her girlish smile at various points in her life, i find it a little easier to trust what she’s saying. she tells me what i’ve been thinking all along: there is no point in stressing about what’s already meant to be. besides, she says matter of factly, i would only really feel sad for you if you wanted kids but you don’t.

when i was 25, two years after i got pregnant and had my abortion, a woman held my wrist in her hand and steadied a crystal pendulum over it. this will tell you how many children you’ll have, she says. the pendulum doesn’t move dangling over the soft part of my wrist when suddenly, it begins to move in an exaggerated circle. i hold my breath.

her other hand holds my wrist and her skin feels cool and dry. her fingers are knotted and wiry but strong. she steadies the pendulum again and this time, the pendulum slowly begins to sway from side to side. it keeps going until suddenly it slows down and then abruptly stops. two children, she says. a boy and a girl. i stand there, stunned, as if a secret of the universe has opened up to me. i don’t doubt what she’s saying, i believe every word she says but maybe it’s because it was what i needed to hear then. i needed to hear that i could still have another chance. i would be older, i would be smarter then, it would be with someone who is kind to me, who i’m kind to, it will happen with someone who is good. i was still confused and heartsick over the abortion i had two years earlier; knowing that it was the right decision but having a hard time understanding it all. i wanted to ask her if my abortion counts, if the abortion counted for one of the children i am meant to have in this lifetime but i don’t.

a year later, i’m devastated over a breakup with a man who will never be with me in the way i need him to be with me. i think i am in love with him and i convince myself he is in love with me too by the way he remembered to pack the disposable cameras i gave him before he went on a month long trip to vietnam. i remember telling him, i want to see what you see, i want to see what you wish i could see with you. i didn’t think he would remember to take photos or even if he did remember, i didn’t think he would make the effort to. why would he? i wasn’t even his girlfriend. i was a girl he spent time with on weekends, texted all day with and slept with but i wasn’t his girlfriend. when he came back, he got the cameras developed for me and emailed me a file with the photos. they were the most beautiful photos i had ever seen because i saw what he saw. i told myself that he had to love me. i told myself these grainy, shitty photos proved it.

but he didn’t love me. he was widowed, shut off and only open to a dalliance that teetered the line of any emotional intimacy. he introduced me to his intimidating sister at her palatial home but he wouldn’t hold my hand in public. we walked his dog in the mornings around the city and we made dinner together in the evenings but he wouldn’t define our relationship. we did this for two years until one night, i called him and gave him an ultimatum. he chewed cashews deliberately and calmly as i cried into the phone when he said he couldn’t give me an answer. i could hear the cashews snap and crack under his teeth as i screamed at him to fuck off before hanging up on him. i am heartsick again but for a different reason. i am wild with intense irrational heartache and i feel like i am on fire from being rejected and feeling so unwanted. i find a ‘psychic’ on etsy with 4.5 stars and i reach out to her for a pendulum reading. i am sad and desperate and it’s shameful. she tells me for $30 i can ask 10 yes or no questions. at the time, $30 seems like a reasonable amount of money for the universe to speak to me and soothe the desperation i feel. i ask if he still thinks about me. i ask if we were right for each other. i ask if we’ll end up together. i ask if i’ll have children. she emails me back a week later and tells me yes he still thinks about me, no we were not right for each other, no we will not end up together, yes i will have children. i email her two more times, $60 more dollars, still heartsick and i ask the same questions, just worded differently. but in one email, i ask: will i have two children? she responds that the pendulum says yes.

i meet ethan and sade for dinner on a monday night. it’s a holiday and i expect the restaurant to be busy but it’s not as busy as it usually is. over plates of honey walnut shrimp, fried rice, spinach with garlic and general’s chicken, i tell them about a woman, a young mom, earlier in the day at a trendy coffee spot who asked me to move from the bench i was sitting on so she and her husband, their toddler and the stroller she was pushing with one hand could sit. i tell them that when she asked me if i could move so they could sit, i immediately jumped up and said of course. she doesn’t say thank you. as i waited for my coffee, i felt an inexplicable feeling of anger start bubbling in the center of my stomach. how dare she ask me to move just because she has children? i text jeremy as i wait for my strawberry latte to be called; i am typing furiously. i think women who have children can think women who don’t have children and are of child bearing age should be more amenable to them just because they have children, like they’re better than us, i text him, and most times i am but sometimes i don’t want to be. i am seething as i glance back and see this mom with her grubby toddler and her cooing baby in the black nuna stroller and her husband crammed into the two seater plastic bench. my coffee is called and i walk up to get it and as i walk out, i pass by this family again. i see the baby’s little feet covered in lime green socks sticking out from the top of the stroller, i see her toddler with wet curious eyes standing idly by, one chubby hand holding onto the stroller. his fuzzy jacket is stained with crumbs, his feathery hair is disheveled. mom and dad both look content, despite the chaos it probably took for them to all leave the house together, happy to be spending this morning as a family. i feel something lurch in my stomach, it’s not so much anger anymore but it’s a feeling of something. is it envy? is it sadness? is it understanding that these are things i will never experience? that i will never understand what it feels like to enjoy a cup of coffee on a sunny windy morning with two children i bore from my body, with someone who i love enough to do this with by my side?

years ago, a friend once told me that her three year old son took her face by both hands and looked into her eyes and asked: where did you come from? when she told me this, i was in awe that as a mom, you are gifted the purest of moments. i couldn’t fathom what it would be like to hold a beautiful little being in my heart like that. i couldn’t imagine what it would be like to hear my child ask me such a tender question. i think i would cry. i know i would cry. i have a honey citrine pendulum i bought in new mexico on a wooden stand in my apartment. occasionally, i think about seeing if the pendulum would still say i am going to have two children. but i choose not to. even if the pendulum still says yes, i know that it was revealing a secret of a different lifetime. not this one. i have come to understand that.

people ask me if i’m going to have kids. especially when they know i’m 35. when i say no, they chortle and say oh you still have time, you’re still so young. i tell them that i thought i was going to have kids my whole life, i tell them i love kids, i tell them how i was a nanny for years, i tell them i was good at it, i tell them i never really cared about getting married but i always wanted to be a mom, i tell them my favorite girl’s name is ophelia. but i don’t tell them that when i was younger, i was always worried that someone wouldn’t love me enough to want to have a child with me. i don’t tell them that when i was younger, i was worried the traits i never grew out of would make make it obvious to others that i would be a bad mom. i don’t tell them that now, through time, i’ve come trust myself enough to know that i would be a good mom but i know i shouldn’t be a mom.

i know my body is changing and is preparing to go through the biggest change since puberty. maybe it will be when i’m 40, maybe it will be when i’m 42. i know that as this happens, i’ll still be young but feel old. i know i’ll feel these subtle changes as the years pass and maybe with each year, i’ll go through bigger waves of thinking about motherhood more often. i know there will be more moments of feeling envy and sadness. i know that even if i’m okay not being a mother, i’ll still wish that the first and only time i was pregnant wasn’t so wretched and devastating. i know that i’ll always wonder about the pendulum readings and wonder it really meant.

i know that i’ll think about another life where maybe motherhood worked out for me and even though there might be days where i hate it, all of it, i know i wouldn’t give it up for anything.