Ah, what a joy it is to make it past the goal posts a little ahead of everyone else (I rule out anything to do with physical exercise here - my early years being marked only by a tendency to sit at the starting line crying and finally forcing the rather sticky 'Aggers and Snotters' trophy onto my more than confused parents). After years of making of a good fist on the grade curve, the career ladder and the relationship scale (Beaufort / High wind, moderate gale / Suspicious activity around Scapa Flow some time back in 1991) I have finally dashed through the winner's ribbon well ahead of the crowd.
I have apparently started the menopause at the age of 37.
I have turned up in the Menopausal Meeting Room replete with hot flushes, interrupted sleep, colossal sweats and rapid mood changes in more than good time for the initial presentation. I am armed with a decent suit, stylish-yet-affordable heels, and a flattering shade of lipstick only to find that the break-out session is going to floor me.
I forgot to do the homework, you see. I have no children. No battle scars and babies. No infants, no toddlers and (unless something goes horribly wrong with Mr Scapa Flow '91) no prospect of step-children. This is not, in itself, a problem. I have never wanted them enough to really make the effort that was going to be required. A couple of operations in my early 20s and a quick, sorrowful shake of the surgeon's head meant that that door was closed and life was still there for the living - albeit a life where a late-night search for Calpol was only ever going to feature when we really had drank everything in the flat.
So why has this diagnosis floored me? If I hadn't had it, if I had continued to put the mood swings down to being pedantic and continued to seriously consider relocating to Vostock as a way to manage the hot flushes, would I have chosen to find a way to bring children into my life? Of course not. That decision has been made. The consequences have been discussed, debated and mourned and celebrated in equal measure.
For the moment, I suspect the only way forward lies in that strange sense of mourning I first encountered in my twenties. The odd business of laying to rest those phantom babies and ghostly scenarios that only only ever existed in the quiet moments when the God of 'What If' held sway over reality. I shall commission another marker stone to note a period in time when my lifeline diverged from the accepted path, and I shall find another frame of reference within which to define my future decades. And threaten Mr Scapa Flow '91 with another five cats.
Next post: How many rolls of absorbant paper can one armpit support during a two hour meeting?
