One of my last and best few friends in China ordered and delivered this book to me one day before I came back to Seattle after mom’s funeral. She said it was a hilarious book and would cheer me up. I was suspicious, not about the cheer-ability of the book, but about my capability to read any books in such a state of mind. But its small size made it perfect to put in my handbag and I started reading it at the airport over a bowl of Korean bibimbap.
My friend was right, it was hilarious, not in the way of being funny or humorous, but brutally frank and relievingly enlightening about her aging as a woman (in particular the menopause as what the title says in Japanese), about being a mother and then a grandmother for the first time, about her life falling into pieces and putting the pieces together again, about living on the other side of the vast Pacific Ocean, about losing her mother, and then her father, about my current life and my life in the future. We all know that we will get old and die one day, even my four-year-old says: “We will die at one hundred years old.” But I never pictured in detail how it would look like or feel like. I doubt I was ever able to until the death of my mother. Getting old means wrestling with my own body, while being here looking after my children and flying over the Pacific Ocean several times a year (even if not every month as Ms. Ito did) to look after my parent. Getting old also means that I will have so many experiences under my belt that I don’t care any more about what others think. In the very early years of my motherhood, I used to looking forward to the post-menopause life stage when the children will be adults and we will be empty nesters so that we could travel wherever we want and do whatever we want. But now I think that the next ten years from now on will be the best when my husband and me are physically fit (hopefully), the children can tag along (in most cases), and my father is still alive and healthy (hopefully).
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