In Autumn of Life, a Woman Finds Winter Cold Spell Handy

The Boston Herald

My husband calls our bedroom the igloo, though not for reasons you might suspect. The bedroom is cold, so cold that if David Lean were alive he could film all of "Dr. Zhivago" within its confines and never have to deal with the fickle outdoors.

All the windows are open and the wind blows in and the snow sometimes, too, and I, who used to push the thermostat up high and huddle close to fireplaces, space heaters and warm bodies, want nothing to do with any of these. Turn on the fan, please. Pass the ice water. A woman of a certain age is melting. 

I suspect that it was a woman of a certain age who wrote the scene in which Frosty the Snowman, this heretofore cheery, energetic ball of snow, found himself locked in a hothouse one day, wiping furiously at his brow, wondering what on earth was going on. He was a snowman. He was ice and cold, the stuff of winter wonderlands, the stuff of happy songs, and here he was turning into a puddle before everyone's eyes. Frosty the Snowman literally disappears in front of millions of people all over the world, and children everywhere gasp.

But then, what do you know? The puddle reshapes itself and Frosty reappears, perfectly round, perfectly fine, perfectly happy. And the children are delighted, and they shout and applaud this amazing feat of magic. And the story goes on.

But magic it's not. This coming back from a puddle, perfectly fine, perfectly happy (we won't touch round) is the life cycle of the menopausal female.

The good news is that when you are menopausal, you save on heating bills, and clothes (who needs them). And if you leave the leftover chicken on the counter overnight, you don't have to throw it away in the morning.

The even better news, which I am currently learning, is that in a deep freeze, as in the kind we are having now - record-breaking, teeth-chattering, finger-numbing, everyone-is-talking-about-it cold - we, who have our own built-in thermostats, erratic as they may be, are suddenly the envy of all our thin-blooded friends.

"Oooooh. It's too cold to go anywhere," a young friend says. "All I want to do is stay home under the covers and wait for spring.” 

Too cold to go anywhere? No way. The weather is perfect. The wind is our companion. The plummeting temperature is our friend.

"Every night I put on my warmest pajamas and my big, fluffy robe and make hot chocolate and light a fire," another young woman says. 

Light a fire? What for? We are the fire. Put a woman of a certain age in a room and feel how that room heats up.

You see those big, burly construction workers out there in their lightweight jackets while the rest of the human race is buried under layers of clothes? You see the guy in a T-shirt leaning against a wall smoking a cigarette? Well, you see women, too, mature women strolling along, their coats unbuttoned, their necks scarf-free, their faces turned blissfully toward the wind.

You wait long enough and you'll find a good use for everything, my mother used to say. I believed her, but I thought she was just talking about things like the lantern candelabra I bought, which my husband hated. He thought it was big and ugly. I thought it was big and pretty. One day I put it on an end table without its big top, and what do you know, he liked it and so did I.

It's that way with most things, isn't it? You buy a book you start to read and can't get into and you give it to a friend and she can't put it down. A sweater that looked good in the store looks awful at home, but looks great on your daughter. Even the Cocoa Puffs you grabbed by mistake eventually get gobbled up.

But melting? Turning into a puddle in public? I never thought there would be a good use for this. 

And then along came this winter. 

"Nine weeks until spring," someone says, someone I can't identify because this person - male? female? - is wearing a stocking hat and a muffler and a down coat with the collar pulled up and mittens and black pants and boots.

And I, with my coat wide open and my hat on a hook at home, think, nine weeks? That's all that's left of winter?

And I go home and open the window a little wider and turn up the fan.