“Kids!  We gotta be in the car in 15 minutes!  Let’s MOVE!”

“But Mom!”  Ula lobs her words from her pillow, over the stair railing and down into the kitchen where they land, smoking, at my feet.  “You have to make our smoothies!”

Imperitives don’t sit well with me today.  This is an invitation to war.  

“But MMAAAAAAUUUUUMMMM! You have to make our SMMEEEEWWWWTTTHHHHEEEEESSSS!!!!  But MMAAAAAAUUUUUMMMM! You have to make our LLLLLUUUUNNNNNCCCHHHH!  But MMAAAAAAUUUUUMMMM!! You have to make our  DDIIIIINNNNNNNNNEEERRRR!!!”  My words shoot up to the rafters and ricochet through every room in the house, raining schrapnel down on my children and their sleepover guests.  

I slam back into my office as I begin to hear stumbling and fumbling upstairs in response to my canon fire.  Am I behaving like a child?

I replay the scene in my mind, checking off the fundamental skills I should have taught them by now.  Those kids are 11 and nearly 15.  They should know how to get out of bed on time. Check.  They should know how to tell time.  Check.  They should know how to pull their shit together.  Check.  They should know how to make their own damn breakfast.  Check.  

Bob leaps up from the computer and rushes past me to the kitchen, his gaze intentionally non-reactive to my fury, his eyes not making contact with mine.  I can read that look. He’s not engaging in a confrontation on this.  But He thinks I’m behaving like a child.  I disagree.  I’m behaving like a 44-year-old woman.  

I’ve learned to streamline my summers.  I focus on two things:  the family business, and getting my somewhat isolated homeschooled daughters out to the social activities  with their peers that avail themselves only during July and August.  

A few years ago, this summer morning would have looked different.  I’d have packed the bag lunches, having invested a week’s worth of prep time to make sure they were appropriately nutrient-dense, diversified from day-to-day, sufficiently palate pleasing, and portable.  I’d have had a breakfast plan mapped out, the water bottles filled, the car loaded, and a carefully timed-out schedule balancing desk work that could be done pre-dawn; with phone calls and computer work that could be handled on-the-go; and the requisite drop offs, pick ups and special one-on-one time that is all part of digesting summer days.  

Today, I’ve handled the desk work.  I’ve grabbed a few random foods from the fridge and hurled them into a cooler, and I have my hiking boots and the dog.  Saoirse has her stuff ready. If Ula and her friend can’t get moving,  I conclude  I’ll get Saoirse to the lake, then I’m headed to the woods for a morning hike.  I’ll spend the rest of the day at the water’s edge ’til she’s ready to come home.  If the others get their shit together to join me, great.  If they’re still in bed when I need to pull out, I simply don’t care anymore.  Something inside me has changed.

Dad started warning everyone about it two Thanksgivings ago, after I turned to my brother at the community turkey supper and informed him, in front of all my family and neighbors, that he was no longer to use a certain tone of voice with me.   Dad’s Ph.D. is in reproductive physiology.  Faced with my brother’s bafflement and a father’s fervent a desire to keep his family on speaking terms, he fell back to his science as a way to cleanse and sanitize a sticky life problem.  With me safely out earshot, he explained to the rest of the family a perimenapausal woman’s estrogen and progosterone cycles, and the hormone changes that would be taking over my body (and presumabably my mind) in the coming years.  

Mom reported this to me after the incident, as though I should be thankful that excuses could legitimately be made for my behavior.  

“Or,”  I countered as she worked to re-stitch the peace between us, “My brother was being a shit, and for the first time in twenty years I had the courage to stand up to him.”

“It’s just the hormones,” she argued. “They make you crazy.”

I’ve heard this a lot.  

And I have to ask:  What is crazy?  Because  I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.  I laugh more than I’ve ever laughed.  I love more, find my kids and family more interesting, and I even keep my house (a little) cleaner.  Better still, more than ever, I can take happiness from others’ happiness.  When I hear Saoirse laughing with a group of teenagers, tears of joy well up in my eyes.  When Mom announces that she and Dad are taking a vacation from the farm, I feel a little thrill. When Bob wants to spend three hours at a rest stop on a road trip trying to fix his old camp stove, my happiness as he puzzles things out and solves problems is genuine.

 At the same time, deep inside me, I feel big questions bubbling up to the surface of my conscious.  I always thought I was completely free:  that I did whatever I wanted to do.  But as I work my way through this decade, I am bearing witness to a complicated discombobulation between what I’ve wanted, what has been expected of me, and what I’ve expected of myself.  They’re a mess of knots in my belly.

Do I want to take Ula and her friend for a hike?  Or do I just want to be in the woods by myself?  I think I want their company.  But I don’t  want to babysit and mollycoddle them through breakfast and morning ablutions, and I am realizing that, while this may be expected of me, I no longer have that same expectation of myself.  That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As these hormones do whatever they’re going to do, I see that mess of knots and snarls more and more clearly.  It took me 42 years to finally notice them.  And now, with the help of some hormone changes, I’ve spent the past few years working at the untangling.  Sometimes that means establishing new boundaries with loved ones.  Sometimes that means dramatically changing the family business.  Sometimes that means announcing to the rest of the household that someone else can make the damn breakfast smoothies.

Hormone changes don’t make me crazy.  They make me see more clearly than I’ve ever seen.  

And I see now that Bob can make a great smoothie.