Déjà vu
Why is that all rites of passage in our house are marked by my wife walking outside in the middle of January with her top off?
Take her latest two topless forays. The second-last one occurred 18 years ago, around midnight. The most recent was an early morning dash last winter. Despite the difference in hour and the intervening 17 years, both incidents were remarkably similar. The temperature was the same, my wife’s expression was the same, and so was the fact that in the days leading up to both escapes she had threatened to kill me if I tried to touch her. Oh: In the first case, she was six months pregnant with our third child. In the second, she was six months into menopause.
Sleeping on the couch
For a man, the similarities between pregnancy and menopause are so dramatic that you could easily coin an all-purpose term to cover both milestones: pregnopause. The wild swings in core temperature that accompany pregnancy, and menopause’s infamous hot flashes, might feel subtly different to women, but for men they have the identical effect: “Your hands are like ice. Your hands are like ovens. Don’t touch me. I mean it. I mean it. Don’t touch me! You know what? Just get out.” When I heard this little mantra recently, I kept getting my own flashes — of déjà vu.
Mind you, getting out — i.e., going to sleep in another room — is slightly different on the logistical level with a menopausal partner than it is with a pregnant one. With a pregnant woman, odds are good that the other bedrooms in the house will be occupied by small children, and you’ll end up sleeping on a couch; with a menopausal woman, chances are that at least one of your offspring will have left for university or to find themselves, in which case you get to sleep in a bed. But in both cases the outcome is the same: You’re lying on a twin mattress, and you’re afraid.
