I watched as one wave of people flowed off the train and another wave flowed on—just like the waves at the beach pushing and pulling on my toes. I wagged my feet as I remembered the sensation. I ... [+]
Menopause is an unraveling. All the selves I knew, shed upon the floor in sloughed off skins from which I step out gingerly, naked.
They tell me I am invisible now. Is that another word for free?
Menopause is a portal. I see myself with girlhood eyes again, the girl who pushed high on swings before leaping up into the vast sky, assured in both flying and landing. The girl who climbed trees with scabbed knees and devoured the world with all of her senses. Girlhood gifted to me again, but shot through now with the force of decades of wisdom and living.
They tell me the loss of the male gaze diminishes me. Why, then, do I walk so large and laughing through the heights and valleys of San Francisco? Shedding the gaze that settled on my breasts and restricted my steps at the age of twelve can only be liberation.
They tell me that when the pencil-point eggs cease to tumble through my body that I am in decay. Yet, all around me, decay is just another word for transformation.
The redwood stump is ablaze with bright green ferns and wiry saplings, its roots kept alive for centuries by the veneration of the tall youth that surround it. I, too, am an ancestor in training.
The oldest of the Hawaiian islands is the most lush and beautiful, with tropical forests and waterfalls. My body is a garden running riot and wild, growing out of bounds, embracing both autumn and spring.
Mushrooms feed on decay and turn it into medicine. I am medicine—for myself and all whom I invite to touch and taste me.
I share menopause with orcas and other whales, our cousins who took to land and then thought better of it and returned gladly to the sea. They sing songs and lore and good hunting to each other. Every leader of the pod ascends through menopause.
Invisible? Invisible to whom, I wonder?
The girl within me smiles a smile that shows all her canine teeth.
I am not invisible to myself, or to those who love me.
Invisible like gravity, perhaps—the force that holds this world so powerfully, so tenderly, together.