A
ABSENCE
Menopause begins with the absence of one’s period. My last period was July 2017, but I didn’t know it was my last at the time. It’s only after a long time passes that you say, Hey, I haven’t had my period in a while. This is unfortunate, because one should throw a party or organize some celebration – not for the end of the dratted period, but for the beginning of this new stage of one’s life.
B
BABIES
They’re 32, 29 and 25, but they’re still my babies.
C
CARCINOMA IN SITU
In 2019, a biopsy revealed that a lesion on my tongue was pre-cancerous, and a fifth of my tongue was removed in surgery. Recovering, unable to speak, I was trying to convey something to my husband, and as my meaning lay hovering, stalled and obfuscated in the air between us, I realized that I already knew that silence, and for too long. Two things were immediately clear: that it was the silence in my home that was making me sick, and that if I didn’t leave, I would die.
See also: Grief; Lawyer
CLERGY
I am a minister. It’s my calling, my passion. Already in middle age, and at a crossroads in my life, I prayed for a vehicle for my voice, and that very morning in church, watching my minister, I experienced the words There you are. A call to ministry. Not what I was expecting, but it is right and good.
D
DESIRE
Which has mainly left the premises, but returns sometimes, surprisingly, sweetly.
G
GRANDCHILDREN
Please.
GRIEF
Anticipated and current. I grieve the eventual passing of my ailing parents. I grieve my future as I envisioned it. My therapist says that when one feels an emotion, one needs to name it, validate it, find it in one’s body, express it, then proceed with coping. This is invaluable advice. When I am blindsided by grief, as I sometimes am, I sit and go through this list. I honour the feeling, knowing that it will eventually pass.
H
HOTFLASHES
I’m used to them now. Sometimes, while leading worship, I’ll have to wipe sweat away from my forehead or upper lip. I like to think that my congregations think that this is from the intensity of my effort, but I imagine they know what’s going on. My brother works for a power supplier. I am trying to convince him to invent some way of linking the hot flashes of menopausal women into the power grid. I love this vision of women of my generation powering the world.
I
IDENTITY
I know who I am now. I do not need to worry about being pretty (though I sometimes do). I have become prone to buying loose, colourful, flowing clothes, because I love how they feel. When I preach, and I hear my voice through the microphone, and I see the faces of those listening, I know that this is what I am supposed to be doing. I know that I need to walk on a trail three times a week. I feel my strength when I paddle my kayak. I know what foods feed me and what ones don’t. I know that I have to journal, that I have to pray, that I need to be in the company of artists, friends and family and that I have to create. I pray that I can do all these things until I pass into the next life.
INCOMPLETE
It is fitting that this encyclopedia is incomplete. So is my memory these days.
J
JOY
I could use a bit more of it.
L
LAWYER
I find myself paying a lawyer $345.00 an hour to dismantle my relationship, which, in family law, seems all about the division of assets and property. This is pretty much the hardest thing I’ve ever done – not the paying, the dismantling. My nature is to create, build, draw things and people into relationship. Sometimes my heart literally feels like it’s breaking.
See also, Grief
M
MINDIMOOYENH
Though I am white and a settler, I found out that this is the word for “old woman” in Anishinaabemowin. It describes one who holds everything together - from the family to the nation. This feels an apt recognition of what elder women do, yet I do not feel honoured in this way in my own culture.
See also, Orca; Mother Tree; Wisdom
MONEY
I am learning about money. I am learning that one’s money can be in the service of the status quo or the world one wants to be part of creating. I am trying for the latter. How did I get to be 58 years old and no-one ever taught me about money?
See also, Questions
MOTHER TREE
Researcher Suzanne Simard has proven that trees take care of one another. It refutes the notion of ‘the survival of the fittest.’ It changes the grand narrative. It feels like I have always known, deep down, the truth of this.
O
ORCAS
Did you know that adult female orca whales stop reproducing in their 30s, but may live until 80 years old? What do they do after they’re finished reproducing? They become the leaders of their pods, the keepers of the knowledge, teaching the younger orcas how to find food, especially when it’s scarce.
See also, Mindimooyenh; Wisdom
Q
QUESTIONS
I ask more of them now. Examples:
If trees growing in the ground are one of the answers to dealing with climate change, why do we wipe our asses with them?
Why is minimum wage not a living wage?
How is it that we have a system where my children may never own a home?
Did we ever vote on this sprawl thing, the same businesses being at the entrance to all of our towns? Did we?
When did the shift occur between powdered and liquid laundry soap, and why?
S
SANDWICH GENERATION
I am the main support for my aging parents and my children sometimes struggle. I am also required to work full-time in order to create the pension that will sustain me (minimally) in my old age. Sometimes there is not enough of me. Shouldn’t there be a pension for care-giving?
See also, Questions
SKIN
Sometimes I will look down at my hands, and I see my paternal grandmother’s skin. The recognition makes me smile, brings me closer to her, though she died a generation ago. I am proud to have my grandmother’s skin.
W
WISDOM
In the Book of Proverbs, there is an image of Wisdom, portrayed, as she often is, in female form:
“Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;”
I read this, and I am taller and prouder. It offers me a sacred orientation to the years ahead. Does not the world need wisdom more than anything?
See also, Mindemooyenh; Mother Tree; Orca
See also, everything everywhere.
Sheryl Spencer ministers in southern Ontario, Canada. She is a member of the first-ever cohort in Creative Writing and Public Theology in the Doctor of Ministry program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. This piece originated as a course assignment, inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life.
