Midlife Unpacked

I’m typing this lying in bed. Resting. Something I’m not very good at.

I’m recovering from quite some surgery. Four hours under the cover of anaesthetic’s deep sleep pall, whilst the somewhat terrifying arms of an otherworldly robot, controlled at a distance by my phenomenal surgeon, sliced 5 precise holes deep into my abdomen, then snipped, suctioned and sewed various parts of me back together.  From this angle, squinting down at my distended belly, I look like I’ve been sprayed with bullets. 

I’ve had an internal renovation. Out with the uterus, and all its lumpy fibroids. Gone with the fallopian tubes. Superfluous to requirements and with the potential to cause far more trouble than they were worth. Various prolapsed organs have been hitched up against gravity’s inevitable pull. The entrance hallway got a revamp too. Front and back. “Positively brand new, if I do say so myself,” grins my surgeon, a glint in her eye. I’d recommend her to everyone.  

Humour and intelligence, my most favourite qualities. 

Bored and stuck somewhere between bedridden and a gentle walk to the kitchen, it could be worse. In my mother’s days they sliced you open in great big swathes, and then no doubt expected you to see to dinner not long after. Even cobbled together, these new additions to my body art work are smaller than the scar from my appendectomy, done 35 years ago. The marvels of modern medicine. What will things look like in another 50 years? 

“You’re getting rid of my first home” Our daughter bemoans.

“You two trashed it on the way out” comes the jokey response from my husband. 

There is that of course, although I’d hardly thought about it until someone else brings it up. The symbolism of a womb. And what it means to be a woman, and how deeply motherhood is tied to that identity, culturally. It lingers with me for a bit. Not because I’m attached to my uterus in any way, shape or form. On the contrary, I think if men were responsible for bearing children, and then had to lug around a piece of useless anatomy that causes problems like iron deficiency, cancer, periods and whatnot, hysterectomies would have been standard operating procedures for the last 50 years. It is women who lean too much into this romanticism.

Not me. I’m done with all that, thank god. My uterus has served its purpose well, and now I’m glad to be rid of it.

As for the shiny new vajajay…

It’s a symbol perhaps of the new stage of life, glimpsed through this first year of empty-nestedness. Freedom. Pleasure. A little less duty, a little more indulgence. Why not, huh?

Over the last week, prone and careful not to move about too much, I’ve been reading. Real literature, what makes you think, as my mother in law might have put it. My friend dropped off three books. I’ve already devoured two of them. Interspersed between teen fantasy, which I have a penchant for. These books, the literary ones, are beautiful. Perhaps the best I’ve ever read. They transport me to different worlds, different times. Words strung lightly together to paint a picture of universal human experience. Oh, to be able to write like that.

It reminds me of the value of reading. It takes you out of your entitlement. Out of your own experience. It is the fodder for empathy. The ability to see the world from another’s shoes. To recognise that, but for the random luck of the draw, there too could go I.

And that is what is so hard about reading decent stuff when you’re busy. It’s emotionally engaging.

It is, so often, a reminder not just of the better angels of our nature, but a dunking into our worst. Our tribalism. Our self interest that perpetuates war, rape, greed, murder. Priests with their fingers in the private places of children. Homophobia, racism, anti-semitism. Misogyny. Classism.

Always, it seems, a good story is situated in environments created by our worst instincts, or our mindless heeding of them. Or in the very nature of life itself. The ever present threat of loss.

It takes time, I think, to read well. You need the mental space to get into the book, to attend to the words. Time then also to let it linger with you, to parse out the implications. To let the characters live a little in your world. Tell you things.

It is much easier to engage with stories of adventure, but no substance. No depth of character. But what a waste to use reading only as a mental check out. Don’t get me wrong, two of the four books I’ve read are poorly written (but cool world building) books designed for a 14 year old. And I just bought the next one too.

But with a focus more on pleasure, I think I’ll commit more time to reading. Real reading.

Like I used to do.

Like so many things about this stage of my life, as I move through peri-menopause and get used to being an empty nester, I find myself coming back to a younger version of me. Rounder. More developed. Wiser. But, a me that has felt absent in the face of the parent version of me. Not absent, quieter is a better word. A little lost.

But here I am, as I said once before.

Next week we start our travels across this great country of ours in Joy de Van.

Sign up to join us along with way:

Onwards,

Sharlene