On the Monopoly board of women’s lives, there is the Women’s Reproduction corner square, right where Jail is on most boards. Sometimes you are just visiting, early enough in the game when you start getting monthly periods and everything you once knew about how this game was played has just shifted. Can I wear white shorts today? Do I sit out of P.E. or play? Do I tell my boyfriend or wait to see if he notices? Sometimes we’re jailed for a turn or two, sometimes we get by just visiting.
But go around the board a few more times, and the Reproduction corner is more about pregnancy – avoiding the jail of unwanted pregnancies, visiting birth control methods, for others avoiding the jail of cycle after cycle coming, without interruption, never sidelined for pregnancy.
The original Monopoly game goes on and on and on. Economic downturns, small fiefdoms built and destroyed, utilities paid, taxes, penalties and perks. But still we play. We buy a house, such a tiny red thing; or we buy big, the McMansion green hotel.
Now, as I get close to the Reproduction corner, I keep wishing I had the Get out of Jail Free card. I move haltingly down that side of the board, body changes and hormone drop-offs in tow, needing a bit more lube to slide past Virginia and States Avenues, slowing down to look nostalgically at the Electric Company, and, skin drier and thinner, realize I didn’t have a period last month. Hmmmm, I think, as I approach St. Charles Place, the last purple space on the board before the glaring red of Jail. Sure, I get warm sometimes, but I haven’t had the kind of tear-off-my-clothes-I’ve-become-an-inferno-moment I hear from other women. I don’t need a hand-held fan.
Or do I? I drive along in the car, listening to the schmaltzy Christmas music station, and cry. I hear the Christmas Prairie Home Companion podcast, which ends in an audience sing-along of Gloria in Excelsis Deo, and I, too, am singing like the Highest Angel, tears again down my cheeks. I am crying all the time these days. Crying in sheer gratitude at the tiny but overwhelming goodnesses in my life. Crying at other people’s stories of transformation. Crying at my own search for transformation, how hard it is sometimes to be me, only to laugh at the narcissistic insanity of thinking it’s that hard to be me given how much harder other people have it. I’m crying with anger and pent-up frustration, crying at not ever understanding the people closest to me, crying at how often and easy it is to get things wrong. Crying as I try an old yoga pose, as I try to hold a smile on my face in remembrance of research that shows that by the mere act of smiling, people get happier. Crying as I receive a picture from my nephew from 20+ years ago, he on the cusp of adolescence, me fully into adulthood, in a dress I still have in my closet, my hair long and curly and now something I can examine to determine what my natural hair color was, as I no longer remember.
I forget much more than my original hair color these days. I forget books, authors, dates. Promises I make to myself to take a deep breath. Promises not to make the same mistakes I’ve been making for the first 50+ years of my life. I’m looking at the necks of everyone I know, wondering how we will all bear the indignity of our tell. I forget my neck, forget my actual age, feel young and vulnerable some days (and therefore cry), feel young and powerful other days (and, yes, there are tears even for this).
I am still playing. I have a little bit of money in the bank, a small red house that is paid up, and I keep the dream of landing on Free Parking for just a small boost. I dread the card that will tell me to go directly to Jail, don’t pass Go, don’t collect $200. Just head to the little red square, and wait out the life that will keep happening all around me. My literal generativity is winding to a close, and I’m left with temperature dysregulation and tears, all these tears. For the rest of my life, my body will no longer be one from which life can come. All life-giving powers will be from my actions, my words, my kindnesses – or, in a bad moment, my menopausal jail time might exude something quite the opposite.
My days as the race car, the Scottie, the hat, the thimble, even the shoe and the old fashioned iron – these simply won’t fit for the next 50 years as I travel around and around the small world of places I’ve been over and over again. I need Hasbro to make a silver fan playing piece, or a tiny silver bed with covers that can be thrown off and later retrieved in a millisecond, or a tiny silver box of tissues. Yes, that’s the piece I need.
Yep. You said it.