I was 9, maybe 10 years old, when menopause first entered my life. Not my own, of course, but my mother’s ― and by extension, the whole family’s.
We were somewhere along I-95, inching our way down the East Coast on a road trip to Florida, when it began in earnest. One minute, my mom was bundled in layers, hunched beneath a fleece blanket and insisting we keep the windows shut tight. The next, she’d be flinging open the car window mid-cruise, letting the cool night air slap her face as glistening beads of sweat broke across her brow. She’d stick her head out like a golden retriever, eyes closed, chasing relief.
My brother and I, in the backseat, adapted on a delay. When she was cold, we sweltered. When she burned up, we froze. It was a strange, synchronized dance of body temperature management ― a sort of familial thermoregulation improv routine. No one explained what was happening, not really. But even then, I understood that something in her body was changing, something she couldn’t quite control.
Now, decades later, I’m sweating through my own kind of storm. I live alone in a New York City studio apartment with air conditioning that hums more than it chills. I wrote this during the hottest heat wave in 10 years, and as I work hunched over my laptop. Trying to ignore the sweat pooling behind my knees, I suddenly thought of her.
