This story ends with Bob dropping his pants on the edge of a lake in the Adirondacks, mooning a group of people on a motor boat.

My task is to figure out how we got to this moment — Where a 65 year old man  —  dignified, kind, and recognized by our community, friends and customer base as probably the most cordial member of our farm family, would elect to take such an action. 

For certain, he hates motor boats.  

And jet skis.

And snowmobiles.

And atvs.

And any sort of contraption that promotes pollution for pleasure, really.  

But he typically only reveals his ire to close friends and family.  He’s a nice guy, you see.

He wasn’t that way as a child.  As a young boy, he was picked up by the police for throwing rocks at housing developments that were going up in surrounding farmland.  His father was mortified.  He was kicked out of the boy scouts after walking out of a solemn Memorial Day ceremony where all the boys were supposed to stand in formation as soldiers.  He’d just watched a documentary about Hitler, and he was discomfited by the similarities he perceived between the scouts and the Hitler Youth.  Again, his father was mortified.  In high school, he abhorred the brutality of gym class, and simply refused to go.  He liked the lunch lady, so he went to the school cafeteria instead, and helped her cook school lunches.  They tried to give him detention.  They tried to fail him.  He didn’t care.  He still wouldn’t go.   Finally the lunch lady made the case to the school that he should be given phys ed credit for the physicality of kitchen work.  At a loss for what else to do with him, the school administrators relented.  But, once again, he was an embarrassment to his father.

It’s not that his dad didn’t love him.  But there was a way a man was supposed to raise his son back then.  He was supposed to give him a good education so that he could  go to a good college, get a good white collar job, and hold it for the entirety of his life while he supported a wife and children.  He was supposed to raise a boy who didn’t cry, who didn’t act out, who didn’t fall victim to his emotions.  Bob’s dad was supposed to raise a gentleman.

And while Bob never truly learned to become the stalwart salary man society expected of his generation, I have seen in my husband the effects of that training.  In public, he truly is the consummate gentleman.  He can be counted on to be kind and courteous.  He helps with your coat, opens doors, thinks of the things his wife or his guests or his customers need long before they even recognize they need them.  But behind closed doors, he still rails at cruelty, rages about pollution, and distrusts conformity.

We have been together since I was 22 years old.  In the nearly three decades we’ve been in love, I’ve never known him to be any different.  He shows the world the face his father taught him to show.  He shows me the side his father felt obliged to try and erase.  

Meanwhile, he has known me to be many different people in the course of our relationship.  At 22, I was young and ambitious, eager to have a career.  At 26 I turned suspicious of paid employment and grew determined to work independently.  At 29 I became a mother.  At 34, I became a home-schooler.  By 35, I was doing it all:  fulfilling the expectations of a woman of my generation, while simultaneously thwarting them and cleaving my own path.  

And then came menopause.  

I don’t think I became prone to hormonal rage or confusion, as the mythology implies You could ask Bob if he experienced it any differently, but he will likely deny it.  He is, after all, the consummate gentleman.  

We entered my perimenopausal years, and the hot flashes began.  As my body cycled in and out of them, I metamorphosed.  I began to understand my own needs, and honoring them…Even if they cost me friendships, or professional success.  I became more comfortable displeasing people.  I learned to honor my conscience above the opinions of others.  My middle grew thicker, but so did my hair, and so did my skin.  And then, *poof*!  One day my doctor told me I was through it, and I came out the other side — joyful.  Joyful that I no longer feared pregnancy, joyful that I could wear white nightgowns, joyful that I could take pleasure long braids, skinny dip without giving a hoot about who saw me, and refuse to wear a bra.  Joyful that I suddenly felt free to become more my self than ever. 

And that’s when Bob, my beloved consummate gentleman, was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  

If the initial prognosis is good, there are quick procedures and a man moves on with his life.

If the initial prognosis is not good, the man must endure what, behind closed doors, Bob referred to as chemical castration.  Hormone ablation therapy, the suppression of all testosterone from the body in order stop the growth of the cancer.  Bob was lucky in that the doctors felt he would only need to do this for 18 months in tandem with radiation.  Some men confront this for the rest of their lives, however much time they get. 

Either way, if they fall into that second group, then it’s worse than menopause. 

It’s man-o-pause.

Like me, Bob suddenly began to grow thick around his middle.  Like me, he has had to endure hot flashes.  But it’s even harder for him.  The therapy saps his memory, his energy and his strength.  And it makes it harder and harder to maintain the face of a gentleman.  Eventually, on these drugs, his tender heart grew more powerful than the training his father imbued in him.  He cries easily  — at the suffering of an animal, at emotional moments, at anything that might make me sad.  By instinct, I guard him fiercely, buffering him from conflicts and disagreements, doing all that I can to help him maintain the public equanimity his father expected of him.  

Happily, we’re rounding the bend on his treatment.  If all goes well, in September, he takes his last dose of the drugs to suppress his hormones.  We are enjoying picking up with the life we planned to enjoy pre-cancer.  Last summer had us in endless doctor’s appointments and left us with no opportunities to escape for our annual wilderness camping adventure with our family.  This summer, we find one tiny window between the nearly constant rains, and slip away with the girls.

We set up a tent on the side of a busy lake in the Adirondacks, then take our canoes up a quiet river into the back country, spending the day gazing at the blooming pickerel weed and cardinal flowers, watching the clouds stretch out before us against an endless blue sky.  The jet skis and motorboats can’t get to us here.  It is quiet but for the birds, the crickets, and the occasional splash of a beaver.  

The trip is not without struggles.  Bob’s loss in strength makes it hard to move our oldest, unwieldy boat.  We worry about his fatigue, and I send up prayers that he can be restored to his former self after we are through this.  

But still, we are in the wilderness, where there is no pressure to be a consummate gentleman, where who we are is who we are.

And then we return to our lakeside campsite, navigating across the water made choppy by racing motor boats and jet skis.  But the golden hour comes, the water settles, the speed boats and jet skis retire, and a loon comes out in the stillness, it’s call echoing between the mountains.  

We sit with the girls on the edge of the water, laughing and talking about our day, enjoying the song of the loon.

…Until the party boat comes out,  revving it’s motor, circling in front of our site, cranking rock music so loud that we can make out all the lyrics, so loud that we cannot hear ourselves talk, so loud that the call of the loon is drowned out.  

There is no justice in these places for such encroachments.  Victory goes to the party who can dominate with the most horsepower and noise.  Nature doesn’t stand a chance.  We raise our voices in disgust, but our complaints will go unheard.

And that’s when it happens —   When the consummate gentleman and the angry nature-loving boy become one in the same:  When Bob stands up from his place on the pebbled beach, drops his trousers and makes a bare-bottomed statement that will be heard above the noise. 

And while the girls and I don’t observe the side he’s showing them, we see his face.

It is one of pure joy.  His words won’t carry across the water, but he delights in using his body to show them what he thinks.   He is, in that moment, truly himself:  both the consummate gentleman, and the full-mooner.  

As I watch him, tears of laughter stream down my face.  He is my hero.  My gentleman.  My eco-warrior prince.  He is not the man his father intended for him to be.  He is far greater: lovelier, kinder, more fun, truer to his heart and, dare I say it, more expressive, if occasionally less articulate.  He is a survivor, learning each day how to live more as himself than ever before.  And I am so thankful to be along for the journey.

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