Free About Face by Carole Howard Page B

daughter is graduating. Just wine and cheese and friends. Heaven.”
    â€œSeems only fair. You come over on short notice, I thank you. Or maybe you should consider it a bribe in case there’s a next time,” Ruth said.
    In the three years since this group of menopausal women had started their monthly meetings to share information and feelings, this was only the second special session. The first, ten months ago, had helped a member sort through the overload of information about treatment options after her diagnosis of breast cancer, providing emotional support along the way.
    While Ruth thought her reason for assembling the group seemed trivial compared to cancer, she’d asked anyway. Talking to David had convinced her she needed to put up or shut up. Now she had a goal and a ticking clock, as motivating a combination as a wind-up key in her back. The Brain Trust would be a unique source of information, so she’d asked them to help her with “an important work problem.” Four of the five could come.
    Blanche finished her cracker, brushed the crumbs off her leather pants and eyed the platter. “You certainly were mysterious about it on the phone. And now I see video cameras? As my mamma would say, the plot she do thicken.”
    â€œAs soon as everyone’s here, I—”
    â€œDon’t mind me, I’m fine and oh-so-happy to sit quietly and make a pig of myself.” She took a cracker and over-loaded it with cheese, looked at her cheese-mountain, then at Ruth.
    â€œToo much cheese, right?” Before she received an answer, she put another cracker on top of the cheese. “There, that’s better.” She put her hand on her belly and said, “Ruth, I promise to name my pot belly after you.”
    As curious as Blanche was, Ruth was eager to hear her input, since she was an uncommon intersection of two-feet-on-the-ground common sense, new age spirituality, and a bit of vanity. Plus she was the only African-American in the group.
    Ruth walked around the room, fluffing cushions, lighting lights, and closing curtains. She made sure the two video-cameras covered the couch, the loveseat, the overstuffed armchair, and the wooden rocking chair she’d brought from the den.
    Charlie and Sarah arrived within a minute of each other. Blanche got up to join in the hugging. They complained about the busyness of their days keeping them from seeing one another more often, caught up with each other’s lives, commented approvingly on haircuts, weight-loss and jewelry, and headed greedily for the table with the cheese.
    Ruth-the-marketing-executive saw the group of four, including herself, as an iconic collection of various middle-aged shapes and sizes. Their unifying force was menopause. Some were “only” peri-menopausal, the run-up to the main event, feeling all the symptoms but not yet eligible for chemical relief, others were in the throes itself.
    The great divide was between those who believed menopause was a natural wisdom-enhancing part of life, and shouldn’t be medicated as if it were a disease, and those who held that wisdom was fine but suffering was not, especially if medicine could help. Whatever their beliefs about menopause, though, they helped each other in the way that women do well.
    When Ruth returned from depositing coats, the chatting was in full swing. Blanche was finishing the story of her mamma’s not realizing that “Blanche” meant “white” in French, or she’d surely have picked another name. Sarah was telling how she called her first private therapy patient by the wrong name and he was too timid to correct her and the subject of his timidity carried them through the next few sessions. When she sighed and put her hand on her chest, she realized she was still wearing her ID badge from today’s pro bono work at the Rehab Center—”Hello, I’m Sarah and I want to help you”—and removed