Anathema Hindenburg, or, Why Sophia Hates Facebook

Many, many blog post ideas have flitted through Sophia's sieve-like Over Fifty brain during the last month, but none of them stayed around long enough to turn into a bonafide post. This one was begun a few weeks ago, and finally finished today.  Clearly this is a harbinger of unfinished projects to come.  Well, onward.

Sophia, unlike most people, does not have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. She unequivocally hates it, and would love to deactivate her account permanently.  She actually did do that last winter, but her husband Thor more or less forced (nagged) her into returning.  You see, Thor and Sophia have a web design/marketing firm. Part of this business is something called Social Media Marketing, the Next Big Thing in advertising.  Thor has hired a Younger Hipper Person to manage this aspect of the business, but Sophia has to stay on Fakebook--oops, she means Facebook--to monitor this YHP's efforts.

There are many reasons for Sophia to hate Facebook. First, she has very few friends (see earlier post). According to various journalistic sources, the average number of FB friends is about 120. Sophia has 40, and has apparently reached critical mass, for she can't think of a single other person to Friend.  Here's how they break down:

husband: 1
first cousins:  9
second cousins: 2
person married to second cousin: 1
person married to first cousin: 1
graduate school acquaintances:  3
aunts: 1
high school ex-friends:  3
ex-boyfriends: 1
local park:  1
former professional colleagues: 2
mom: 1
brothers:  2
brother's girlfriend/partner: 1
people from her town, one of whom actively dislikes her:  5
stranger who friended her after she left a comment on a Golden Retriever Foundation post: 1
fellow mom/friend who lives Back East: 1
fellow blogger:  1
Percival's former English nanny: 1
imaginary person invented to test online re-invention possibilities: 1
cousin's (now deceased) cat: 1

Sophia is pretty sure one's hoard of Fake(book) Friends is inversely proportional to one's age. People in their twenties have thousands. People in their thirties and forties have hundreds. People in their fifties (usually) have around a hundred. People in their sixties and seventies have only a few dozen. In short, Sophia has the Friend List of a much older woman.  Especially if you remove the names of imaginary, non-human, and deceased "friends."

When she first joined FB, it was kind of exciting. Owing to Severe Dysfunction in her father's birth family, she missed out knowing her many first cousins, who live on the West Coast and are mostly female. So this opened up a whole new world of girlfriend possibilities. However, it soon became apparent that, relative to these cool California Girls, Sophia is a weird intellectual nerd--not a fun, Sex-in-the-City type with a lot of stylish shoes and, well, friends. Over time, her posts and pictures garnered fewer and fewer effusive comments, or comments of any kind. As a result, she posted less and less, finally limiting herself to newspaper articles she found interesting, and status updates on celestial happenings, such as meteor showers.

No one else shared her interest in either intra-galactic doings or the Quirky News of the World, however. Not even her cousin's (now dead) cat. So she quit posting those, too, and resigned herself to being a Facebook Wallflower. A complete and utter Social Network Failure.

Do not weep for Sophia. She considers this Facebook Fail to be a mark of honor. Perhaps this is sour grapes, but if so, she remains in denial about it. She doesn't wish she had been Homecoming Queen, or Head Cheerleader, or Class President. And she seriously doubts that having 1,239 "friends," like one of her younger cousins, would make her a happier or more emotionally balanced person.

But okay, it would maybe be fun to find out. Well, never mind. Not gonna happen. 

In any case, she sees no point in posting status updates about what she made for dinner last night, or how much she hates Lady Gaga/Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck/Lindsay Lohan, or how cool her life is. Her life is pretty cool, but since most of the people on her Friend List are childless, she suspects that cute pix of Percival and Zeus (the dog) seem like bourgeois bragging. Likewise pictures of her hunky 10-years-younger hubby. And since she can't afford to take fancy vacations at the moment, all photos tend to have a backyard backdrop, which makes her look like a provincial plebe.

For the record, Sophia has traveled quite enough, thank you. Once she takes Percival to Europe, she's done with passports. Unless there's a military coup or something, she will live out her remaining days in her native land, where all the signs, jokes, and insults are familiar and comprehensible.

Facebook Undead

Anyway, just as Sophia had resigned herself to using this obnoxious site only for business, something happened. Anathema Hindenberg returned to haunt her. Anathema Hindenburg was once Lorraine Hindenburg, a former professional colleague of Sophia's in her now-defunct life as an academic. Lorraine was, in Sophia's field, a rara avis--a hot-looking professor with tenure.  Sophia admired her, not for her leather miniskirts or toned arms--okay, maybe the latter, a bit--but for her brilliance.  For a time, Lorraine was everything Sophia wanted to be--smart, stylish, and a fabulous writer of Arcane Academic Drivel.

Lorraine had been born with absolutely no sense of humor, however. She wanted to be a Belle Dame Sans Merci, which is to say, an unattainable, brilliant beauty admired from afar by men and women alike. Sophia declined to worship at her shrine--although she expressed her admiration in print. This, apparently, was not enough for Lorraine's attention-starved psyche. She would accept nothing less than full-on sycophancy.

Then, Sophia wrote a book. The book made a pretty Big Impression, and Lorraine was pushed out of the limelight. When time came for Sophia's tenure decision, Lorraine wrote a nasty, horrid letter for her tenure file. It was so nasty that even Sophia's professional enemies realized it was over the top, and declined to make much of it. Sophia's career crashed and burned anyway, but she made sure a few gossipy women got copies of Lorraine's poison pen letter. It made Lorraine look like the jealous harpy she was/is.  It was petty of Sophia to publicize this terrible rant, but it was the only revenge she had.

A year or two later, Lorraine changed her first name to a foreign-sounding weird moniker (that's the first time Sophia has ever used the word "moniker") that apparently means "forest dweller" in Sanskrit. For real. Sophia will call her "Anathema" here, because her new name begins with A, and she is anathema to Sophia. She's also completely off her rocker, as so often happens to humorless people when they fall gracelessly into late middle age. Sophia's evidence for this diagnosis is irrefutable: if you look at Anathema Hindenburg's Facebook page, she lists all her degrees and accomplishments. Professor of Medieval Literature, holder of endowed chair at California Party U. And the fact that she's now a certified Psychoanalyst. Yes, that's right. Sometime after trying to wreck Sophia's career, Lorraine/Anathema decided that her true calling was as a Healer of Psychic Wounds.

Oh, and her last name isn't Hindenburg. It does end in "burg," and have three syllables. But when Sophia thinks of her, she can't help but remember the immortal cover of the first Led Zeppelin album--which is also a pretty good metaphor for Sophia's academic career.

Oh, the humanity.

Anathema reappeared on Fakebook via a former colleague of Sophia's, one of her few remaining academic acquaintances. This woman, a professor at a big southern university, apparently friended Anathema, or vice versa--it doesn't matter. The point is, Anathema materialized in Sophia's tiny little Fakebook kingdom without Sophia's permission. Prior to this, Sophia liked to imagine that Anathema was withering away in a madhouse somewhere, psychically riven with guilt. Or perhaps working at a diner outside of Barstow, or Durango, having Taken to Drink around 2002. Or maybe languishing in a rooming house, her beauty long since savaged by age, disappointment, and shame.  Sophia imagined children mocking the ugly, aged Anathema as she hobbled into her 1999 Ford Fiesta, her short hair now iron gray and spiky, like oiled cotton candy.  In some of these fantasies Anathema has gained about sixty pounds, and her once-toned arms now hang like fleshy batwings. Maybe she's got an old tattoo of a rose, or a Celtic interlace design, but now it's all stretched out and faded so that it kind of loops under those fat, rubbery arms...

Can you see Sophia's Sicilian showing?  Do not assume that, had she the power to make any of this real, she would have failed to use it. Oh, no. She is no other-cheek-turner. Were she endowed with some magical ability to visit ill on her enemies from afar, she would revel in it.

Alas, Facebook ruined all these cathartic, healing fantasies. Anathema lives on, and has many more friends than Sophia.  She is still successful, and even if she's barking mad, she's got tenure, so there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Sigh.

Life in the Tropics

Until recently, Sophia was inordinately proud of the fact that she did not suffer from Hot Flashes. Whenever her female acquaintances complained of this uncomfortable, indecorous eruption of the body, she would shake her head in sympathy, secretly certain that her lack of Hormonal Heat Waves was the sign of some deep-seated superiority, or perhaps the triumph of feminism over biology. Sophia did not feel herself to be Bound to her Body, as History had decreed woman must be. She was too educated and hip to patriarchy's tricks to ever succumb to this Postmenopausal Misfortune.

Until this summer. Yes, it's been hot, but Sophia cannot attribute these quasi-tropical heat waves to the weather. Uh-uh. Because this thing starts from the inside, happens really fast, and then recedes like a super-hot Tidal Wave of Sweat.

Ergo, it is a Hot Flash.  When these flashes occur, it is as if Sophia has been harboring a secret tropical world under her skin. A third-world vacation spot, if you will, where hot, muggy breezes are likely to sweep in without warning, knocking over her beach umbrella and sending her fancy cocktail glass tumbling across the sand, followed quickly by her copy of Love's Sizzling Sweatfest, or some other lowbrow Beach Read. When this happens, she must stop whatever she's doing and bow down in humble obeisance to the Goddess of Late Midlife, for She is surely angry about something.

Worst of all, these little impromptu getaways sometimes happen in the middle of the night. Now Sophia has heard tell of women who soak their sheets when this occurs, but so far, there hasn't been anything that drastic. But it's still pretty awful.

Sophia imagines, at these moments, that the repressed underclass in her colonialist vacation spot has had enough, and are now taking up arms against their oppressors. She pictures Havana, circa 1958 or thereabouts. The music is great, the drinks are flowing, but the party is about to end. Castro's insurgents are on the march, bringing the End Times to Cuba on a wave of sweltering heat. Batista and Michael Corleone are retreating back to Florida, and taking all the fun with them. Sophia's body, like Cuba, is now a fun-free zone, where all there is to do is mop one's brow and go to Dreary Communist Party Functions.  No more rum punch or Cuba Libre's.  No rock and roll. No sexy dancing dresses. Nope, just the boring, moralistic, occasionally sweaty regime that is Late Middle Age.

Arrgh!  Surely this isn't all there is!  Surely the last years of Sophia's life will not be just frowning sternly at younger people, preaching to Percival, and waiting for hormonal heat waves to recede. Surely there are a few more parties to be had. A few more wild, madcap moments of colonialist fun, before Old Age gathers its armies and takes over the government.

Sophia, as a former Far-Leftist, is enjoying this counter-revolutionary metaphor.

In fact, she is going to buy herself a Fruit Hat and a ruffly skirt, and say the Hell With It. It's hot, but that's no reason to throw in the towel.  She intends to use that towel to wipe away the sweat, then kick back, light a revolutionary cigar, and enjoy what's left of the show.

Denial at the Cellular Level

Sophia reads between 4-6 newspapers online every day. She is a reading addict. Although some people seem to withdraw from intellectual engagement as they hit middle age, Sophia suspects she may be in the grip of a subliminal panic stemming from the deep fear that she may not be able to read enough stuff before she Checks Out.  She reads newspapers, magazines and novels--of both the high-culture and low varieties. She doesn't read self-help books, however. She finds that the advice offered in these overpriced treatises is often so simple as to be obvious and (therefore) insulting.  Sophia is not interested in Finding Her Bliss, knowing The Secret, or embracing some watered-down and historically-sanitized version of Oriental Wisdom. Moreover, she recognizes that Oprah is a marketing genius, but not the reincarnation of Zarathustra.

She prefers fiction or, occasionally, history. At present, she is reading Karin Slaughter's crime thriller, Broken, which she bought at the grocery store, and Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich, which she always meant to read by never got around to. Both of these stories have dead bodies in them, but that's about all they have in common.

So anyway, all this is a preamble for today's discussion of a really interesting series that appeared in The New York Times a month or so ago.  Although it's no longer current by journalistic standards, this series of articles is still trending in Sophia's Cerebral Search Engine. In other words, it's still on her mind.

It's on anosognosia.  You're thinking, what the hell is that? Sophia didn't know either. Apparently, this is a neurological condition whereby a person doesn't realize that something pretty fundamental is Not Right with them. The author gives the example of a really stupid bank robber who thought that if he rubbed lemon juice all over his face, he would not be visible on security cameras. When he was caught immediately after robbing a bank, he was distraught. He had really believed the lemon juice thing.  He was too stupid to realize how stupid he was! This fancy-schmancy Greek word, anosognosia, means something like "not knowing that one doesn't know." The author suggests that, although most people don't believe that lemon juice is some kind of invisibility unguent, they definitely don't realize how ignorant they are about other stuff.

When Sophia read this, she thought immediately of fashion. You know, how some people will wear things that they must think are hot, or elegant, or hip, but just look Wrong and Foolish. These people doubtless look in the mirror and think "my black socks and Birkenstocks are the height of Coolness. I shall be admired wherever I go today," or, "these shredded jeans in a size four look great on my size eight ass. No one would ever guess I'm forty-eight instead of twenty-two."  

Yes, fashion is the Lemon Invisibility Juice of large numbers of anosognosic Americans.

But as just this thought crossed her mind, another followed immediately after, causing Sophia to lose her smug expression. Since a true anosognosic must be completely oblivious to her own stupidity/poor taste/bad manners, Sophia realized that she herself could be a victim of this syndrome and not have a clue. She could very easily be one of these poor black-socks-and-Birkenstock types, thinking she's cool or hip or even still a little bit hot, when in fact she's just pathetic looking to people who are truly cool and hip and hot. Or even pathetic to normal people, including little kids.

Thinking about this made Sophia super-paranoid.

Because when one is Over Fifty, there are so many ways to slip into anosognosia! Just forgetting one's true age for a second can lead to an Anosognosic Moment.  Some danger areas:

Makeup, including but not limited to: sparkly powders and eyeshadows, lip liners (eek! Sophia is terrified of lip liners), dark lipsticks, and (especially) blush.

Miniskirts:  Sophia does not care how great your legs are. If you are Over Fifty, you should not be wearing these unless they are part of some private erotic ritual shared with a husband, partner, or paid companion.

Leather pants, unless you are really an aging biker with a cool nickname you got in your twenties. In that case, Sophia decrees that leather pants are okay.

Bare midriffs, even if enviably toned. Any Over Fifty woman who walks around showing off her navel is clearly in the grip of Severe Anosognosia. This woman expects to be carded in restaurants and thinks the twenty-something waiter is really hitting on her. She has no clue that he's totally hip to her lemon-juiced self-image, and knows that flirting with this mutton-dressed-as-lamb is a sure way to get a bigger tip.

Now of course there's a danger here, too. Because one can become so worried about being anosognosic that one begins to dress like a grandma. Which is sad in another way.

Pondering this, Sophia realized that a certain amount of anosognosia is necessary for survival and happiness, however illusory.  In order to be truly At Peace, she thinks, the Over Fifty woman must at once know, and not know, that her hotness days are over. She must eschew bare midriffs and lip liners, for sure--but she can still make a leap of faith--or hope--and show a bit of leg, the shadow of a still-impressive cleavage, or a nicely-shaped derriere.

It also helps to have a mate who shares one's anosognosia. Sophia's husband Thor, at appropriately intimate times, invariably tells her she's sexy and even beautiful. He does not say "still sexy," which earns him points. (And other stuff, which Sophia shall leave to the imagination.)  At these times, Sophia often wonders if Thor is crazy or deluded.

But now she knows the truth: in a good relationship, anosognosia is contagious. In other, more familiar words, love is blind.

For those of you who are still looking for That Special Someone, here's some advice. Don't try to find a man who loves you as you are. Sophia has had those, and they do not foster spiritual growth. Or domestic bliss, or even long-term stability. These guys encourage one's worst tendencies. Sophia herself developed a serious drinking problem in such a relationship.

No, you should find a man who loves your illusions of yourself. A man who will be your lemon invisibility juice as you attempt to carry out a reckless bank robbery. Or perhaps an ill-advised career change. He will have his own self-delusions, of course. But you won't be bothered by them. You'll encourage his psychotic ideation, as he encourages yours. You'll be like two halves of a broken mirror--both hopelessly estranged from reality, but perfectly in sync together.

Sophia thinks there may be a self-help book in there somewhere. In fact, she suspects that writing self-help books is the ultimate expression of anosognosia. Which proves that self-delusion isn't only comforting...it's also big business.

Just ask Oprah.

Girlfriends

Sophia has no real girlfriends. She has female acquaintances, but that's about it. A lot of Weird Events in Sophia's life contributed to this dearth of female companionship, but now that she's Over Fifty, she would really like to fix this problem. Because this can be a lonely time of life, and men are--well, men. Good for lots of things, but Discussing Life's Transitions is definitely not one of them.

Sophia understands men, and is comfortable with most of them. But women remain a mystery to her.  She has four brothers, and no sisters. Sophia's mom didn't have any sisters either, so she was no help in this Understanding Other Women thing. Sophia moved a lot as a kid--she went to 14 grade schools--so making friends sometimes just didn't seem worth it. Saying goodbye was just one more sad thing to deal with as they loaded up the moving van.

Violins, please....

As a teenager, Sophia never worried about being popular. She was a rugged individualist. Besides, if a girl is popular with guys, other girls will want to hang with her. Sophia has always been popular with men. Not because, as some women have assumed, she was Easy. Sophia was/is by no means a sexual prude, but she has always had Standards.

Okay, almost always. The years 1975-77 shall be stricken from the record.

Sophia was popular with men because she was decent-looking (but not scary beautiful), and, more important, a professional big sister. Adult men, fearful of being Mama's Boys, adore women who fit the big sister mold. Unlike many of her sex, Sophia understands the radical simplicity of men. She knows exactly how far you can push a man to clean up his act, and exactly when this becomes an exercise in futility. She knows when they are too wrecked to be Saved, and doesn't try. She knows what men need, and what they really, really don't want. This accounts for her many marriage proposals (5!) and happy married life.

Um, for the record, Sophia didn't accept all five proposals. That would have been crazy.

But that's not what she wants to talk about here. Today's topic is Why Sophia Can't Make Girlfriends.

When she still had her Big Professional Career, other women wanted to hang with her because she was successful, and, yes, attractive--because being attractive meant men paid attention to her, and her female colleagues were hungry for male attention. Of the professional sort. Sophia worked in a profession with a lower percentage of attractive women than the population as a whole, so having symmetrical features was, in some situations, an asset. In others, of course, it was a Huge Liability. But Sophia is not going to blame her professional implosion on something as superficial as looks. It's not like she was earthshakingly beautiful, or anything. And in any case, the End of Sophia's Career was more complicated and nuanced than that. But that's a subject for another post.

But to the matter at hand: at this stage in Sophia's life, not having women friends has become a cause for lamentation. Sophia is lonely, and men aren't good at talking about much of anything but sports, work, and (occasionally) politics. All this is interesting in its place, but it's not really a bonding experience. Sophia would love to have a girlfriend with whom she can sort out this weird business of being Over Fifty.

In today's post, she will attempt to disentangle this whole problem.

First, there's the Mystery of Woman. Now, Sophia is a feminist. For many years she was a Professional Feminist, which is symptomatic of the problem. Because just as Marxists don't really understand economics, feminists have no real clue about women.

Growing up almost exclusively around men, Sophia internalized much of their stupidity about females. She often finds that women have labyrinthine depths she simply can't fathom. Many women, for example, are good liars. Sophia herself isn't half-bad at it. Men, on the other hand, are rotten liars. Those men who lie well, owing to some accident of genetics or sociopathic parenting, usually end up being criminals, politicians, or some combination of the two. But most men simply aren't theatrical enough to lie convincingly. Their eyes get all shifty, or they make jerky hand movements, or their voices change. Good lying requires a certain amount of multitasking, and women, owing to their historical lot in life, tend to be better at that. Men who lie invariably get caught. Sophia can never understand why so many women are duped by cheating husbands--because if Sophia's husband ever cheated, she'd be onto him in a New York minute.

But some women lie when (Sophia thinks) it would be easier to tell the truth. Yes, I tried to call you but you weren't home (were too). Yes, I sent you a letter, but it must have gotten lost in the mail (does anyone believe this one anymore?). I really like your skirt-dress-handbag-new haircut, although you didn't ask for my opinion and really I think you look cheap-fat-hard-old. Yes, I really care about you, and about All of Humanity. But isn't Sally a bitch, and don't you think Ellen's put on weight?

Now, Sophia understands why women are this way. Intellectually understands, that is. Women have been forced to live with so many irreconcilable contradictions for so long, that duplicity became necessary to social survival. Women have to Be Nice, but secretly compete with one another for men and attention and all the rest. Women have to suppress their sexual desires in the interest of Being Nice, and thus resent women who decide that sex is fun, and morally no big deal. Women are constantly criticized, either explicitly or implicitly, and are thus really really insecure about their looks, their intelligence, their parenting skills, their husband's love, and fear/resent women who seem less insecure about any of this stuff. Women are trapped in the hell that is The Private Life, but must have a Public Face. All this leads, inevitably, to mendacity.

But here's what Sophia doesn't understand. Women fib about stuff that doesn't matter. Women flatter one another excessively, although it's apparent to all parties that most of this flattery is insincere. And this is the scariest part. Unlike men, women will look you straight in the eye while feeding you utter unreconstituted horseshit on any number of topics. What is one supposed to say to this? Sophia has tried several tactics, but the one that really doesn't work is honesty. "Well, Cheryl, it seems to me that your assertion isn't quite accurate..." Never say this. Because this will make women hate you.

Men will lie, but seldom to your face.  This doesn't make them better. This makes them moral cowards. But it is easier to tell when they have something to hide. Unless they fall into the sociopathic/criminal/career politician category, as mentioned above.

Now these are generalizations. Sophia does not mean to suggest that all humans are congenitally predisposed to prevarication. No, some are honest. And some very few are honest without being mean. These people, of course, are at a higher evolutionary stage than the rest of us. In centuries past, they were called Saints.

Sophia is, most definitely, not a saint.  She can be judgmental, mean-spirited, self-pitying, arrogant, and just not nice sometimes. To her credit, however, she Tries.  She does not gossip (except with her mom), and is an excellent keeper of secrets. She actively tries to be a good person, and to live an examined life. Without being too self-obsessed, of course.

A difficult balancing act, with many, many chances to fail.

Anyway.  Sophia has tried, on several humiliating occasions, to connect with old friends, relatives, or other extraneous females on the periphery of her life. She has not over-shared, but has been (she thinks) warm and forthcoming. On one occasion, she tried to Facebook-friend an old graduate school friend/acquaintance, and was rebuffed with silence. She did not understand this, since she and this person had several mutual Facebook-friends, and had never had any kind of a falling out.  She tried to further communicate with an old high school chum who contacted her first.  Another rebuff. There are several more examples.

This made her sad and perplexed. Then, a Flash of Insight. Recently, an old (male) grad school acquaintance Facebook-posted some pictures from 1989. There was one of Sophia, smoking a cigarette and staring into the distance with a pensive frown. She looked thin, intense, and totally unapproachable.

She now realizes that this is how most women have always seen her. And that it is likely too late to remedy the situation.  So she will make do with her wonderful guys, Thor and Percival, and her male dog, Zeus. And be grateful that she has a cool mom, a lot of books with friendly women in them, and a little bit of time left to meet that Special Someone who might be her new best girlfriend.

Next:  Why Facebook portends the End of Days

Hypochondriaphobia

Sophia is descended from a long line of people who have lived their lives in the shadow of death. Sophia's paternal grandmother was so certain that a dirt nap was imminent that she retired to her bed in her fifties, finding it useless to keep up the pretense of health any longer. As fate would have it, she did in fact contract a malignant disease and died when Sophia was twelve. The disease that finally felled her was not one of the many she had claimed to have over the years, however.  This proved to Sophia that the Grim Reaper is a tricky bastard, and, moreover, that hypochondria is little more than failed magical thinking. Fearing the worst will not keep it from happening.

This logic was lost on Sophia's father, however. For as long as she can remember, her dad has been certain that his aches and pains were actually the first sneaky signs of a lingering demise. He's now almost eighty-two years old, which would seem to lend support to the magical thinking theory. Maybe spending one's life worrying about sickness and death does keep mortality at bay. Maybe what kills people is the surprise.

Sophia, for her part, has inherited a mutation of the hypochondria gene. She's terrified of being a hypochondriac. So whenever she faces a health crisis, or even a routine test, she goes through not one, but two awful phases. The first is the genuine fear that Something Might Be Wrong, and then, like a tsunami after an earthquake, the even greater fear that She's Turning into Her Dad.  At what point, she wonders, does worry or legitimate concern become a pathological obsession with one's health? How many symptoms does one have to Google before mild anxiety tips over into sick self-absorption?

Sophia can only hope that hypochondriaphobia has its own magical effect. That worrying about being a hypochondriac means one isn't.

Throwing a Mastoid

She considers herself lucky that her dad was not an active hypochondriac in the Age of Google. He was, however, a research immunologist, with just enough medical knowledge to torment his entire family with the specter of rare and horrible diseases.

Chief among these was....Mastoiditis.  Never heard of this? Welcome to Sophia's childhood, where mastoiditis lurked in every childhood earache, headache, or crick in the neck. Mastoiditis is the bacterial inflammation of the mastoid bone, which is behind your ear. Feel it. It's that hard bony place where some people like to be kissed. Not Sophia. Kisses in the Dangerous Mastoid Zone are not erotic, thanks to her dad and his utterly bizarre mastoid obsession.

If Sophia had a few thousand dollars to throw to the winds, she might be able to sort this all out in therapy. Blogging, however, is all she can afford.

Sophia's dad had similar weird ideas about cars, by the way. He knew considerably less about auto mechanics than about the human body, but this did not stop him from predicting vehicular doom. In her dad's world, the car equivalent of mastoiditis was throwing a rod.  Cars were always on the verge of rod-throwing, especially when driven by the teenage Sophia. "Stop, or you're going to throw a rod!" Sophia's dad would shout as she attempted to execute some tricky driving maneuver, like passing or parking.

Sophia inevitably felt the urge to throw a rod right at her dad's head.

She never did find out what "throwing a rod" meant, exactly, but it sounded dramatic. She always pictured a long metal bar shooting through the hood as the car careened out of control and her dad yelled "you've thrown a rod, dammit!"

Needless to day, these two bizarre, unlikely occurrences became conflated in Sophia's mind. So now, whenever she feels like some strange disease is lurking in her Over Fifty body, she wonders if she's really sick, or just Throwing a Mastoid.

The Dark Continent

That's what Sigmund Freud, famous psychoanalyst and crazy person, called womankind. In case you're ever on Jeopardy, and the answer is "Africa," you can say "What continent did Freud compare women to?"  You won't win the point, but you will make an impression on the TV audience.

For the first time, however, Sophia has some sympathy for this perspective. Because her postmenopausal body is not behaving as all the books and websites say it should.  It seems her rousing Tae Kwon Do classes shook something loose Down There, and she had a little bitty Menstrual Event. Threw a Hormonal Rod, as it were.  So of course, she goes straight to her computer and Googles this problem. And what do you think she finds? It could be Nothing, or it could be

• Cancer (endometrial)
• Cancer (ovarian)
• Cancer (fallopian--a type she didn't even know existed)
• Cancer (from Somewhere Else)

Eeek! She calls her doctor and makes an appointment. The nurse says they will clear the schedule for her, because this is Potentially Very Bad. Okay, the nurse said the first part, and Sophia inferred the second.  So, a few days later--after much repressed anxiety, which included such fantasies as

• wondering if she should get a video camera, so she can give Percival some Lasting Wisdom to Treasure in Her Absence
• getting angry at Thor ahead of time, for he will surely imply that all serious illness is simply a Failure of the Will
• imagining herself withholding news of her imminent demise until the Very Last Moment, thereby
• making the whole thing lots more dramatic, a la Garbo in Camille
• making her selfish brothers who never call or email feel really guilty
• inspiring others with her courage and selflessness, ultimately generating a made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime Network

--she finally went to her appointment.  A preternatural calm settled over Sophia as she Assumed the Position, and she felt herself surrender her fate to the Will of the Universe.

Okay, not really. But that's what the voice-over will say in the TV movie. Anyway, to make a short story not quite so long, the doctor got out a tiny little laptop computer with a predictably-shaped Wand attached to it. Sophia marveled that this little device did the same thing as the giant ultrasound machines that were a window onto Percival's in utero world ten years ago. The doc explained that these cool portable machines were invented so that medics in Iraq and Afghanistan can look at the injured body parts of our troops in the field. Like most great inventions of the modern era, this one was a direct result of the human propensity for violence on a mass scale.

This little bit of information made Sophia feel guilty for Throwing a Mastoid. Soldiers lost legs, arms, and lives on a daily basis over there. She could surely face a little gynecological uncertainty.

But this brief flare of bravery faded instantly as the doctor put a condom on the Wand. Sophia almost giggled with repressed hysteria at this moment, imagining Safe Sex with an Ultrasound Machine. Would the machine call for another date, or just assume Sophia was Easy?

Anyway, a few moments later, the Game Was On.  The pictures were materializing on the screen. Sophia could see them, and they looked just like when she was pregnant, only sans tiny Percival. In other words, she was looking at a blurry gray landscape that resembled nothing so much as a giant dust storm.

The doctor, however, began to show off her training. "Look, there's the lining," she said helpfully. Sophia looked, and saw...nothing but video snow. "Look, there's an old fibroid."  Sophia perked up at this. At last, something to see. An old fibroid. She imagined a tumbleweed rolling across this barren tundra, but saw pretty much nothing.

Finally, ten minutes and several hundred dollars later, it was determined that Everything Looked Normal. Sophia was instructed to go home and call again if she threw another hormonal rod in the future.

So, no video diary of Sophia's Last Months. No Lifetime Movie. No fight with Thor about his insensitivity. No medical marijuana. Sophia had, as it turned out, simply Thrown a Mastoid.

Her fear of death was not justified, but her fear of hypochondria certainly was. She went straight home, endured Thor's "I told you so's" and filed away her genetically-acquired phobias for another day.

In retrospect, she realized one thing. Hypochondria is where imagination goes to live when it has no other outlets. Perhaps she ought to begin writing another novel.

Yes, another. More on this in a later post.

Fists of Fury

Sophia's husband Thor is a macho but enlightened guy. He doesn't need to kill things with firearms, or tell homophobic jokes, or any of that stuff. But he seldom does housework, invariably leaves the toilet seat up, and is extremely competitive in all things. Like most males of his ilk, he lifts weights. Because he's a big guy--about six-five and two hundred twenty or so--he lifts really big weights that Sophia can't even pick up when he leaves them lying around.

His real name, while equally monosyllabic, is not Thor. But Sophia thinks it suits him. Despite his Thorlike physique, he's kind of simple and predictable, which is why Sophia married him. She likes simplicity in fashion, in baked goods, and in men.

Sophia herself is not all that simple, nor is she particularly strong. Nevertheless, she is not helpless. In a verbal sparring match she can whip Thor's muscular ass in about two minutes flat. He doesn't argue with her much, because he's a practical guy, and hates to lose. Taking on Sophia in a war of words can very easily lead to Verbal Armageddon, so he treads carefully around certain subjects.

To satisfy your curiosity, Sophia will list these in a future post.

But because he thinks she's too cerebral--and verbose--Thor is always harping on Sophia to Get Stronger. He is not the kind of guy who likes fragile, helpless women. He would have been very happy married to Wonder Woman, as played by the well-endowed Lynda Carter in the 1970's.

Unlike Lynda, Sophia is not very physically impressive. She has skinny little stick arms and, in recent years, a weak back. Except for her outstanding rack (eat your heart out, Lynda), none of her body parts are anything special. She works out a few times a week at the YMCA, because her Over Fifty metabolism now moves with glacial speed, and must needs be pushed to burn even a few dozen calories.

But she does not Hit Things. Or rather didn't, until last week. That's when Percival enrolled in a Tae Kwon Do class with one of his little friends.  Sophia and Thor went to watch the little martial artists, and were wowed by how cool the class was, and how cute-but-grown-up Percival looked in his TKD gear. As they were watching their adorable child punch and kick other children, Thor happened to notice another class going on at the same time. All women, punching and kicking one another. Thor looked that these strong, ass-kicking women, and at his wife with her stick-like arms. And he had an Idea.

Now Thor isn't much for Ideas, unless they involve ways to make money or fix stuff using only duct tape. When Ideas do occur to him, however, he is pretty much inexorable in his insistence that they be carried out.  And so it was in this case.

"Why don't you take that class?" he said. "You can bring Percival, and learn Tae Kwon Do while he does. It's a perfect set-up."

Yes, perfect, but not for Sophia. Words, not feet and fists, are her weapons of choice. She'd rather kick some philosophical ass than lift her leg above her chest while swinging it backwards.  And anyway, she's pretty sure that move is anatomically impossible for a woman Over Fifty.

But, Thor knows Sophia pretty well. He knows, damn him, that she does not like to back down from a challenge. She grew up with four ass-kicking brothers, and, like Thor, hates to admit defeat. So she agreed to try the class out once. Now what do you think happened?

Sophia loved kicking and punching things! She loved the whole Not Thinking aspect of it! She realized why men like fighting so much. It's unambiguous, and uses very few brain cells. Punch, block, punch. Kick, block, kick. Repeat as necessary until someone falls down and doesn't get up. For millennia, this was all men did during the daylight hours.

For a few weirdly wonderful moments, Sophia knew how it felt to be a guy. The power--and sheer stupidity--of it all was intoxicating. After the class, she began to dream big. Black belts! Trophies! Taking down muggers in a New York subway station! Maybe even beating Thor in a non-rhetorical fight someday (she confesses this image had a little erotic charge to it). Nothing seemed impossible. So she signed up.

Well, it turns out, the teacher of the class was not showing all her cards on that first day. No, once she had Sophia signed up for this Tae Kwon Do boot camp, the gloves were off. Sophia realized what it means to be the only White Belt (read: klutzy beginner) in a class of five youngish women with dark-colored belts who can kick their legs higher than any Rockette.

For one thing, it means coming home with a severe hand tremor from punching a pad repeatedly with her bony little fists. She was certain that she had triggered some devastating neurological disorder, and would have to quit this insanity immediately. But no. Thor, who was on the Boxing Team in college, assured her that this was normal. Even his godlike hands shook like giant oaks in an earthquake after he punched the hell out of someone, he said.

Sophia considered this, and thought it incredibly dumb. Why, she wondered, would someone hit something--or someone--until they developed scary neurological symptoms?

Then she remembered to (Not) Think Like a Guy, and stopped worrying about it. Punch, block, punch. Hit first, ask questions later.

But there are other things about the class that are less easily dismissed. Chief among these is the fashion issue. While skinny little Percival looks cute as hell in his Tae Kwon Do outfit, Sophia does not. She had hoped that, like the other (younger) women in her class, she would look tough and sinewy in the loose black pants, Asian-style jacket and white belt.

This was not the case. Because she is top-heavy (see earlier post) and no longer has a perceptible waistline unless completely naked, she looks like a dumpy black sack tied in the middle. The glaring white sash accentuates her no-longer-Lynda-Carterish waist, and the pants bunch out at the hips. Not a good look for the Over-Fifty, non-athletic body. And of course, the classroom is a veritable funhouse of mirrored walls. The last time Sophia had to do anything in a room like this, she was a sylph-like fifteen-year-old, taking ballet class. She loved looking at herself then. But now that she's Over Fifty, she uses mirrors sparingly, like salt and alcohol.

Moreover, Sophia is pretty convinced these are Fat Mirrors. Any woman over twenty knows that, just as there is matter and anti-matter, there are Fat Mirrors and Thin Mirrors. These are definitely Fat Mirrors. Perhaps the owners of the school thought Fat Mirrors would make female students hesitate to drop the class.

Anyway, because of the Wall of Fat Mirrors, Sophia has to stare at her chubby-looking self in 3D for forty-five minutes, wondering how a once-graceful fifteen-year-old ballerina morphed into this lumpy creature with big hips and skinny stick arms.

She also has to grunt "HUUNNNH" when she shoots her fist out, which makes her feel way stupid.

The teacher of this class, Master Jane (you gotta love any sport that lets a woman ascend to the title of "Master") is an awesome physical specimen who is about the same age as Sophia. Yes, it's true! One would think this would be inspiring, but Sophia is not fooled. While Sophia was pulling the string on her Chatty Cathy doll back in the Eisenhower years, Master Jane was back-kicking little boys in her preschool and elbowing bullies in the sandbox. She and Sophia may be the same sex, but they definitely aren't the same species.

The other women in the class are equally alien. They are shorter than Sophia, with fists and feet that move at lightspeed. Sophia feels as if she's moving underwater when she watches these black, red, and blue-belted warrior princesses spar with one another. They are nice to Sophia, treating her with the kind of noblesse oblige that true aristocrats reserve for their inferiors. Master Jane forces some of them to partner with the newbie, which limits their workout considerably. Sophia feels bad about this, but Thor, who is first and foremost a capitalist, reminds her that she is paying the same amount of money for the class as the warrior princesses, so they just have to suck it up.

Sophia loves this about Thor. He never feels uneasy about his place in the world. So even though she's Over Fifty, and will never punch and kick like Master Jane, she is going to stick with the class for awhile. Because she wants to feel that way, too.

HUUNNNH!

Flibanserin

Wonder what "Flibanserin" is? Well, let Sophia enlighten you. Flibanserin is the name of the new "female sexual dysfunction" drug that Big Pharma is trying to sell to the FDA. The drug is supposed to address the (apparently rampant) problem of what shrinks (a.k.a. minions of Big Pharma) are calling Female Hyposexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). When Sophia and Sophia's mom were young, this condition was called "frigidity."  Accusations of frigidity were usually flung about when a young woman, for whatever reason, was not sexually forthcoming (oh, the puns this post could generate!) to the entreaties of a young man in the throes of sexual desperation.  Sophia was once accused of frigidity when she declined the advances of a guy she had just met on a group camping trip. Sophia had asked to borrow his extra blanket, because it was freezing cold. He assumed this request really meant "please screw me in the dirt just inches away from ten other people." Sophia isn't sure how her request came to mean this, but it surely did. When she declined, rather vociferously, she was treated to this query:  "What are you, frigid?" Staggered by the originality of this response, Sophia could not help but laugh. She declined to play this game of chicken. "Yeah," she said. "Now give me the blanket, or don't, but keep your hands to yourself."

Could Flibanserin have helped in this situation? We will never know, since the FDA found that it did not, in fact, address the mystery of feminine desire. Men are still "askin" but women aren't "anserin" this question to the satisfaction of (mostly male) researchers.

Sophia wonders if this part of the name was accidental, or an effort to suggest that Flibanserin will give men the "answers" they want to hear when they ask for sex.  The "flib" part sounds like a conflation of "flip" and "glib," which suggests both a sudden change of mind and an immediate response. The names "Pleaseridemecowboy" and Yesyesineeditnow" were doubtless considered and rejected as unsubtle.

In the face of all this scientific stupidity, Sophia is going to help these researchers out and provide some answers herself. In fact, she is going to propose her own alternative to Flibanserin. It shall be called "Foreplayerin."  It's a drug for men, and it comes with a set of instructional videos.

The videos will instruct clueless men in the fine art of foreplay, a skill that, in Sophia's experience, about 80% of American males completely lack. The pill will, like the anti-alcoholic drug antabuse, cause these men to suffer unpleasant but not life-threatening symptoms should they decide to make a dash for home plate before the fans have even taken their seats.

Yes, Sophia is suggesting that the mystery of feminine desire is not a mystery. It is simply a matter of time and skill. Flibanserin is simply another attempt by men--and their female collaborators, who obviously have internalized the frigidity myth--to speed things up for their own convenience.

Sophia is amazed that none of the many articles she read this past week even considered this notion. She feels as if she's slipped into a time warp.  If she closes her eyes, she can still see Creepy Camping Guy. Only this time, he's not simply accusing her of frigidity. He's smiling, and holding out a little pink pill.

Sophia thinks Foreplayerin will get much better results than Flibanserin. She is waiting for Big Pharma to contact her, so she can help them begin working on it.  In case anyone from Pfizer, or Lilly, or Wyeth is reading, Sophia can be reached at www.getaclue.com.

Potlucks of the Damned

Is there anything worse than an invitation to a potluck?  Okay, lots of things. But potlucks are still high on Sophia's list of hateable trends. Truthfully, an invitation to a potluck should read, "come to a dinner party. We will provide shelter from the elements, you bring something homemade and delightful for everyone to eat. Oh, and if you're a single or divorced dad, just pick something up at the store, and we'll understand."  Potlucks are the last bastion of acceptable sexism--Sophia's husband never ever assumes that a potluck invitation has any implications for him beyond driving and eating. 

And the food!  Julia Child no doubt turns in her grave every time a potluck takes place. You know what it's like. Soggy noodles tossed into cold salads that always have One Inedible Ingredient. Like beets, or raisins, or cashews, or something. Alien Meats in earth-toned sauces. Strange variations on the Enchilada Theme, often miniaturized. Herbs that never taste right, like tarragon. Rubbery shrimp. And then, for the finale, some weirdly-textured dessert, often from the "bar cookie" family.

Tragically, potlucks have become ever more popular as we move into the new century. Sophia isn't sure why this is. The recession? A mass delusion of culinary skill perpetrated by the Food Channel? Anti-feminist backlash? Whatever the cause, it must be stopped. Seriously, potlucks are the Tool of Satan. It's just a short ethical hop from a potluck to a Black Mass.

Sophia gets roughly three potluck invitations every two months from the enthusiastic Room Mothers at Percival's alternative school. These potlucks invariably have things made with quinoa, which gives Sophia indigestion, and many, many amateurish Mexican, Thai, or Indian concoctions. Now, Sophia loves these cuisines. When made by real ethnic cooks, not moms with access to the Internet. Eating this food is like listening to some drunk person butcher your favorite song in a Karaoke bar.

Of course, the obligation to cook is the worst part of the whole potluck ordeal. Now, Sophia can cook. She is half Italian, half farm girl, so she can make a fabulous lasagna or, a kick-ass chicken pot pie, or, if the situation demands, an acceptable stroganoff.

Alas, none of these things is potluck-friendly. In fact, Sophia has gone through her entire repertoire of recipes and found only one that doesn't coagulate or gelatinize after sitting on a potluck table for several hours.

Hummus.

During her college years, Sophia was a hippie. Back in the 1970's, this was not the same thing as being an Alternative Person today.  For one thing, there was no consumerist angle. You didn't have to wear certain brands, drive certain cars, or shop at Whole Foods. Pretty much the only requirements were listening to cool music at high volumes, wearing faded jeans, and occasionally inhaling prodigious amounts of cannabis sativa.

Sophia learned to make her own hummus long before this item was available in the grocery store, or there were such things as Middle Eastern Markets. It is pretty good, but it's a hassle to make, and most people today don't see any purpose in making one's own hummus. The window to impress people with this particular recipe closed in 1990.

Of course, there is a performative aspect to the potluck dinner. Your potato salad, pasta salad, mystery dumplings or apricot bars are on display.  They will be judged, if only by how much is left at the end. If you have to take a nearly-full dish home with you, know that you have been found wanting in the eyes of the Evil Potluck Gods. Once, Sophia went to the trouble to make a lovely, healthy carrot cake out of the Tassajara Cookbook. Do you know this Hippie Classic? Before Moosewood or the Alice Waters Empire, there was Tassajara. It's some Zen retreat in California, where they follow the eightfold path and bake stuff.

Anyway, this cake was made in a bundt pan.  Sophia loves the artsy shape of things made in bundt pans, although she mostly likes to look at them in cooking magazines, while she waits to have her teeth cleaned. The cake was kind of heavy, as befits a Tassajara recipe--or any hippie recipe of that era. For some reason, Early Alternative Cuisine weighed a ton. You could plug an undersea oil leak with some of the breads and casseroles Sophia and her friends used to eat.

Sophia felt that she should try to impress the Alternative Moms by making something really healthy, so she made this cake. It looked gorgeous--the quintessence of bundt-ness. A perfect Platonic Ideal.

Except, no one touched it. She had to take this semi-divine cake home and throw it in the garbage, because of course she and her family weren't going to eat it. Alternative Carrot Cakes suck. The only kind Sophia and her family like are the sort you get in bakeries, where the carrot-ness of the cake is more of a metaphor, and less of a reality. There are no big shredded carrot pieces in these cakes. And, they're covered in yummy cream-cheese frosting.

Sophia tried to figure out why her cake failed to impress the mother-(pot)luckers, and came up with this interesting historical analysis. In the old days of alternative cooking, we were into purging the memory of all those Betty Crocker mixes, Minute Rice casseroles, and ground beef in gravy dinners. It was all about counteracting the culinary sins of our mothers.

The second generation of alternative cooking is about something else.  Now, it's about what the food is "free of," rather than what's in it. It has to be free of glutens, or trans fats, or dairy, or GMO's, or peanuts. It has to be untainted by Agribusiness. It has to be un-radiated, un-pesticided, unbleached. It has to leave no carbon footprint.

To use a sports metaphor:  food, these days, is all about defense. Perhaps no one asked Sophia's lovely bundt cake to dance because it looked too Traditional. It was not apparent, upon observation, what, exactly, it was free of.

Then again, maybe it was just personal.

Regardless, one thing is certain. If Sophia's good deeds fail to impress whatever divine arbiters await her after this life, she will surely be condemned to an eternity of potlucking, endlessly preparing "dishes to pass" among her fellow denizens of Hell.

Mammography and Melodrama

Sophia's breasts endured their annual squishing and radiating yesterday. Because she recently changed insurance providers, Sophia is not longer being mammographed at the Big University Hospital in her town. Now, her breasts--and all her other parts--are squished, palpated, and perused at a small regional hospital that will accept her new, cheaper insurance.  She was nervous about this, but it turns out that the small regional hospital is kind of cool. The technician, a fantastic woman named Ellen, even let Sophia look at her Breast Imaging. This mitigated Sophia's anxiety considerably, since she is an Information Glutton. Knowledge is power. Lack of knowledge, in medical matters, leads invariably to paranoia and terror.

Sophia did notice a tiny little white spot in the corner of one breast image. It was kind of oval-shaped, like a little grain of white rice. Could this be the Rice Grain of Death? Stay tuned tomorrow. That's when the Dreaded Call-Back is supposed to occur, if it does. In the meantime, Sophia will treat her readers--okay, reader, since she's only told her mom about this blog--to a short mammary retrospective.

The Early Years

Sophia's breasts appeared unexpectedly on her post-pubescent chest sometime in the summer of 1970, and quickly grew to an inconvenient size.  Sophia, who just a week before (or so it seemed) had been bemoaning the scant contents of her training bra, was stunned by this sudden Development. She had, at age 14, decided to resign herself to a life of breast-envy. Sophia's mother was not surprised. Both she and all of Sophia's paternal aunts were endowed like old-time burlesque queens. Along with left-handedness, right-braininess, and a deep-seated hatred of mayonnaise, a formidable rack had been encoded into Sophia's DNA.

Sophia's relationship to this abundance has always been an ambivalent one. In youth, Sophia's wit and intelligence competed with her breasts for the attention of the opposite sex. Needless to say, the rack always came out on top. So to speak. Her breasts inspired adulation, prurient glances, and embarrassing entreaties. They were worshiped as twin goddesses, sought after like mythic golden apples of the sun, and given way too much attention in basement bedrooms and the backseats of cars. Although she had a very attractive face--not, perhaps, as beautiful as that of the Other Sophia, above, but pretty enough--Sophia often found that men addressed remarks to her breasts, as if they were sentient beings. Sophia sometimes liked this, and sometimes lamented it. Less well-endowed girlfriends doubtless found Sophia's laments annoying in the extreme.

A Digression

On a related topic, Sophia recently read an article about a woman who is suing the bank that employed her for something called "looks discrimination." This woman alleges that she was fired because she was too sexy; her hot body was having a deleterious effect on office productivity. In other words, the men in her office were too sexually aroused by her curvaceous presence to get their jobs done. The newspaper printed pictures of her in various sultry poses--all of which suggest that the attention wasn't unwanted.

Sophia was not this kind of woman. She wasn't smart enough to take her 34-D, an unmerited gift from some god with a sense of humor, to the bank.  And while "The Girls" did get noticed, Sophia never got a single thing she really wanted because she was Seriously Stacked.  This may, of course, be due to her complete lack of marketing savvy.

The Danger Zone

Now that she is Over Fifty, Sophia has even more ambivalence about her breasts. Because now they're not only annoying--they're also scary. In the 1930's, unruly cells colonized the breasts of Sophia's maternal grandmother. By the end of that decade she was dead, depriving Sophia of a lifetime of Christmas and birthday presents, cookies, needlepoint samplers, and other grandmotherly stuff.

So every time Sophia has to get her breasts squished and radiated, she freaks out a little, imagining a renegade battalion of cells marching senselessly to their own destruction, and hers.

She also fears--perhaps irrationally--that the increase in breast cancer in recent years is owing to....mammography! The last time she had a mammogram--before this one, that is--the technicians insisted that her right breast be radiated twice, in the interest of Better Imaging. Sophia was certain, after this event, that her right breast was Doomed.

Despite her ambivalence, Sophia would very much like to keep her breasts. For one thing, Sophia's husband is deeply enamored of them. Sophia is not sure if her marriage would survive the loss of her breasts, which have taken on a somewhat mythic status in the mind of her otherwise rational and temperate mate.

Irony

When called upon to do the one thing for which they were presumably created, i.e., feed baby Percival, Sophia's breasts completely choked.  Despite having swelled to twice their (already excessive) size. Who knew one could wear a 42 F? Not Sophia, certainly. When she read about all the pregnant women who were thrilled with their new voluptuousness, she wanted to scream. No one should have breasts bigger than her baby's head. It ought to be a law of physics, or physiology, or something.

But here's the ironic part. Sophia's breasts, their horrifying hugeness notwithstanding, could not produce enough high-quality milk to feed a voracious 8-pound baby. Sophia's mom called this the "Prohibition Bar Effect."  During the Prohibition years, bars all across America were forced to shut their doors and remove all alcohol from the premises. Like these shuttered establishments, Sophia had all the right equipment, but offered nothing to drink.

Silly, Bouncy Things

Sophia has always found that there's something ludicrous and comic-bookish about large breasts. They are the stuff of comedy, not tragedy. Because really, they look kind of silly, don't they? Unless they're fake, they bounce. One cannot take bouncy things seriously. Once, when Sophia still had girlfriends (more on this later), she and they went to a strip club. There, Sophia saw breasts unlike any she had ever seen before. They were huge, and bounceless. They stuck out like Russian church spires. They made the stripper's head utterly superfluous. Sophia compared her own bouncy, slightly sagging duo to these technological wonders, and  realized that these breasts were a different species altogether. They were perfect, but alien. Inhuman, but beautiful in some weirdly fake way. Fitting objects for reverence, but utterly useless in feeding other mammals. Like Sophia's own breasts, only much, much better!

Still, Sophia's breasts have been constant, if occasionally uncomfortable, companions in the adventure of her life.  She no longer complains about them, even though they are unwieldy, heavy, and mostly useless. In the absence of close girlfriends, they are the best she can do. They aren't judgmental, and they still look pretty good, if one likes that sort of thing. To paraphrase an old Geritol commercial:

My breasts. I think I'll keep them.

The World's Oldest Room Mother

Actually Sophia is not a Room Mother. Her stomach churns whenever she is called upon to do room-motherish things--mostly because she never knows what to talk about with the other mothers. She does not knit, or scrapbook, or bake gluten-free muffins. Sophia's wonderful son, Percival, goes to the kind of school where moms bake gluten-free muffins. Sophia isn't quite sure what gluten is, but she's pretty sure she's not free of it.

Oh, and Sophia was not mean enough to actually name her son Percival. You will doubtless have surmised by now that this is a pseudonymous blog. She does like the name Percival. Just not for a person.

Anyway, Percival is nine years old. Which means that he was born when Sophia was more than a tad over forty. This in itself was an experience. Because when you are An Older Pregnant Woman, the medical profession treats you like a bomb about to explode. Miscarriage, birth defects, preeclampsia, diabetes, premature birth, weak cervix, stroke, insanity...you name it, and the Older Mother is way more likely to get it. Sophia's husband was working in a city with a large and famous University Hospital nearby. Naturally, this is where he insisted Sophia be incarcerated for the birth of His Son and Heir.

Not that Sophia is a natural, homebirth kind of girl. No way. Early on, she realized that drugs were going to be an essential part of getting through the experience of late-in-life childbirth. Sophia's pain tolerance is roughly equivalent to that of an oversensitive two-year-old. A bad headache can make her cry real tears.

In Sophia's birthing class, all the women were asked to hold an ice cube tightly in one hand, to see how long they could endure discomfort. Every one of them held onto those ice cubes as if their unborn spawn depended on it. Sophia watched the water dripping through those tightly clenched fists, imagining tiny little babies nestled deep inside every womblike palm. Inspired by all this bravery, she tried extra hard to hold on to her cube.  Nevertheless, within thirty seconds, Sophia was begging for an epidural.

This birthing class was a surreal experience in other ways, too. The teacher/midwife who taught it was a natural childbirth propagandist. So she showed lots of movies of women giving birth in Natural Situations. Water baths. Rustic cabins. Airport bathrooms. And Sophia's personal favorite, the Amazon Rain Forest. This film was very short. It showed a pregnant Rain Forest Woman walking, then squatting, then whooossh! a rush of water. Seconds later (literally) she holds her hands down there and catches the baby as it slides naturally out. A few grunts, and it's over.

Sophia didn't understand the purpose of these films, since she was quite certain her own birthing experience was going to be nothing like this. What's more, Sophia's husband announced that he'd "had enough" of the class after that, and refused to go again. His comment was simply that he "didn't need to see that."

As for the rest of the pregnancy, it consisted of Tests. Many, many tests to make sure Sophia's egg wasn't defective and her aging body was up to the task. Sophia was swamped with statistics, which she never really understood. A one in seventeen chance of having a Down Syndrome baby. A one is three hundred chance of having a baby with something worse. A one in a thousand chance of having a baby that would end up on the cover of the Weekly World News.

And so on. It was terrifying. When Percival finally arrived--two weeks late, but with all his fingers, toes, and all his internal organs tucked into their proper slots, Sophia felt as if she had dodged about five hundred bullets.

So here she is, Over Fifty, the mother of a nine-year old. Yesterday he entertained a school friend, and Sophia drove the lad home. Little Alfred's mom (okay, not Alfred, but something equally old-fashioned) was about thirty. She had a toddler, and a nose piercing. Or is it a pierced nose? She was very nice, but young enough to be Sophia's daughter.

Sophia is sympathetic to many of the fashions and concerns of younger generations. She has no body ink, but can appreciate a lovely tattoo. She doesn't like rap or hip-hop music, but can understand its allure. People have been rhyming for millennia, after all. There's something viscerally satisfying about insulting someone in a rhyme.  But there are some trends that Sophia simply doesn't get. Chief among these is the fad--mercifully past its apex--of piercing multiple body parts. Sophia had her ears pierced at a department store when she was thirteen. She loves to wear long dangly earrings. But pierced noses, lips, eyebrows and tongues are beyond her ken.

And so, Sophia made what she hoped passed for acceptable chit-chat with this young pierced mom. Then she loaded Percival into the car, put on The Last Waltz, and drove home.

About Sophia

Sophia is over fifty. Not a lot over, but enough that she's started to get used to it. She no longer wears miniskirts, no longer expects to be carded, no longer bemoans the fact that her waistline isn't 23 1/2 inches anymore. And, um, hasn't been for awhile. Sophia still looks good for her age, and no one suspects that she was born when Eisenhower was president. She doesn't remember him, but she assumes he was out playing golf on the sunny California day when baby Sophia first greeted a world that seemed to be populated exclusively by white people who drove American cars and drank martinis after work.

Sophia is glad that the world isn't like that anymore. She's sad that a fair number of people her own age are not glad, however. Sophia's politics are a little bit left of center. They used to be so far left that the center wasn't even visible with binoculars.

But that was some time ago, when she was a wild college girl with Passions. She still has Passions, mind you, but they are smaller and quieter than they used to be.

Sophia is married to a Younger Man. He is not her first spouse, but he is the only one with whom she deigned to reproduce. She has one wonderful child, hatched from the last good egg in her circa 1956 fridge. She is glad she got the chance, at the eleventh hour, to bring this amazing being into the world. This, she thinks, is proof that Grace exists.

Sophia is mostly happy, but she doesn't have a lot of people to whom she can vent about the peculiar problems, questions, anxieties facing her at this odd time of life. Hence this blog.

Sophia will not always write in the third person. But she occasionally has the odd experience of facing a mirror that reflects a stranger. Where, she thinks (for a fleeting moment) is the Hot Babe who used to live in that Looking Glass World? Why has she been replaced by this Moderately Attractive Older Woman?

Because Sophia sometimes feels alienated from her True Self, she will, on those days, pretend she's an omniscient narrator of her own life. It's kind of liberating. In fact, you should try it.

Sophia is happy to entertain comments on this blog, but she will have to moderate them. Because she has another blog, and knows how pervasive the Evil of Comment Spam is, and because she's a bit of a control freak. Rudeness will not be tolerated, but disagreement certainly will be. Sophia is feisty, and loves a heated discussion, provided it Doesn't Get Mean.

Sophia will be back soon, with more of her thoughts on being over fifty.