Have You Found Yourself Yet Love? It’s Not Going To Happen In Marks and Spencer….

“Dave says lots of menopausal women become selfish when their oestrogen runs out,” Linda’s husband Steve says in a phone call to his mother. 

“Don’t come crying to me if the kids die in an accident while you are finding yourself,” texts her sister Siobhán IN CAPS.

Linda has just turned fifty. “Isn’t Steve a wonderful husband?” Siobhán (who believes if you make your bed as a wife and mother, you should lie in it) says to her, “to organise this lovely party for your birthday”. But Linda has made her own cake, chosen her own present, wrapped it, invited all the guests and is now clearing up. When she opens a kitchen cupboard and an avalanche of Tupperware falls on her, she’s had enough. She finishes another entry in the notebook where she has logged all her invisible domestic labour over the last twenty-five years, her chore diary where she has detailed all the hours, minutes, and seconds she has spent doing tasks for other people. When she jumps on her old motorbike that she hasn’t ridden for thirty years and heads off to the Forest of Dean, the two teenage children who ignore her and the partner, whose toast to celebrate her many years on this earth, only describes her as a “great mum”, don’t even notice her leave. Linda is in search of three things – her identity, her purpose and a tree she climbed as a child. Aged ten, when her mother dies and her childhood abruptly ends, she puts happiness mementos in a tin and hides them in an oak tree. Now she is going back to unearth her ‘time capsule’, to reclaim her lost hours and minutes for herself and to re-discover her sense of who she is.

I’ve been watching The Change on Channel 4¹, a comedy drama, written and performed by Bridget Christie who has been there and done fifty and is ready to spill the beans. Bridget’s character Linda is menopausal. When she can’t remember the name of the thing you put on your foot over a sock, the elderly doctor who has forgotten to remove his cycling helmet, tells her it’s not early onset dementia, just menopausal amnesia. The memory loss is a recurrent theme throughout the series. “You know, it’s the film with that man with the quiff in it who was in that film with the Australian woman,” Linda says when she can’t remember the name of her favourite movie or her favourite actor or her favourite actress. Although the plot descends into whimsical farce at times with eccentric locals, Midsummer Night’s Dream dreaminess, summer solstice dancing, an annual eel festival, fertility rituals and ‘Pig Man’ who lives in a cave in the woods with a collection of wild boars, it is a poignant and agonisingly accurate story of a woman who finds herself in midlife and has no idea who she is. At the festival, there are stations which mark the biological stages of a woman’s life - puberty, menopause and rebirth. “May all your transitions be joyful,” the festival-goers chant. There is a beautiful moment in the final episode, when Linda puts on the headdress of the Eel Queen and sees what she looks like. “I love it,” she says. She is reborn.

It's the last day of June today. That dreadful song was on the radio². It wasn’t a hot afternoon, the sun wasn’t a demon. The pavements weren’t steaming. In Belfast, they were strewn with pupils and puddles. Their parents were driving all over the place. There was rain and roadworks and road rage. I was reminded of every other end of term, how it has always been about getting stuff done quickly, slipping seamlessly from school mum to holiday mum, unpacking school bags and packing suitcases. On Sunday, we head off on a two-week holiday. Mum’s holiday handbag³ is coming with us yet again. We are privileged to have the opportunity to leave the country and it will mark the culmination of months of planning, invisible labour, guidebooks and google. But I wonder how much I can enjoy a vacation when I am responsible for managing everyone else’s itinerary. “Make sure you back up your emails,” said my friend, “or no one will know where they’re supposed to be”. I wondered about a backup of me.

On the afternoon of this last day of June, I had arranged to meet a new friend in a shopping centre. “I’m going to M&S⁴ to get tea later, let me know what you want,” I said reluctantly on the family WhatsApp group chat, already feeling a mild sense of apprehension. I was entering one on the second busiest day of the year, beaten only by Christmas Eve. My feelings on shopping centres are also well-known⁵. “Battered tempura prawns, chips and chicken goujons, crispy chilli beef and egg fried rice,” they replied. “Maybe a profiterole dessert,” said the one with the sweet tooth. I braced myself. I wielded my basket like a weapon. M&S was just like the roads - chaotic, complicated, customers driving over each other, gridlock. “I’m stressed trying to find all this stuff,” I typed as I checked the list of orders. “The prawns will be near the other battered fish stuff like fish cakes. The crispy beef and egg fried rice is in red packaging and is near the other Chinese and Indian stuff,” one helpful child replied. She sent me a photograph of the prawns. I was struggling to find any of it. “I’ve found the profiteroles,” I typed proudly. “Make sure it’s the one that has three profiteroles in it and chocolate mousse and is quite small. It will be with the single portion trifles”. “She’s getting a stack,” I replied. The shelf with the chilli beef was empty.

“I’m crying in M&S,” I typed on the group chat after wandering hopelessly for ten minutes trying to locate the prawns. “Don’t worry Debsey,” said my wonderful husband. “Come on home, I’ll pop out and get what we need”.  

“No one forced you to get the stuff,” said the child who was solely focused on the prawns.

“She’s going through the change,” they used to say about those women who suddenly decided they’d had enough of chores and their family and trips around the shelves of M&S. As she enjoys new experiences, finds a community who embrace her, sleeps in, sits alone in a pub and reads a book, Linda is finding herself. Her sister arrives, berates her for her selfishness, her husband tracks her down, douses her in guilt. “Have you found yourself yet love?” is the attitude. “It’s time to come home,” they say. Finding yourself is all well and good but only if you are allowed to. We mightn’t need to run off to the forest but it’s not going to happen in M&S.

Is Dave right? Do lots of menopausal women become selfish⁶ when their oestrogen runs out?

Well, tonight I’m not emptying school bags. I’m just getting stuck into a spare stack of profiteroles…

1. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-change

2. Bobby Goldsboro - Summer (The First Time)

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4. British retailer which serves food amongst other things.

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6. There needs to be a better word for the desire to explore one’s own needs rather than everyone else’s….