Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, Jaime.
A love letter to Judy Blume
Dear Margaret,
We met in the young adult section of the public library. I was the nerdy book girl with stringy, blonde hair and you were in the paperback section. Our meet-cute might read “Tale of a 5th Grade Nothing bumps into Everything, Everywhere, All At Once”.
The library was my safe place to go through adolescence. I could read about anything without a nosy adult looking over my shoulder or telling me no. The sprawling old Tudor with sun-drenched windows and turrets also served as my babysitter. My mother would drop me off and I’d spend hours nestled against its comfortable velvet curtains with a pile of books; one hand fixed to a page and the other constantly pushing up my oversized glasses. It wasn’t unreasonable to cover the philosophy of Umberto Eco and be deliciously scandalized by VC Andrews in a single afternoon.
I couldn’t read fast enough.
The world was full of possibilities and I was curious. Especially about penises. The whole world seemed against me ever seeing one, so naturally, I scoured every health and anatomy book in those stacks. Little did we know that they’d be so readily available in a few short years, Margaret. I wish that had been noted somewhere. “The world is so full of penises, you’ll be asking men to put them away!”
Around this time, my grandfather told me to stop dressing up in the big bolt of pink polyester fabric my grandmother picked up at a yard sale. I’d created several fashion masterpieces over the years, pairing each one with matching yard-sale jewelry and a seemingly endless collection of resplendent pleather heels. I completed this getup with a tiara, of course.
I was beyond devastated that I was no longer allowed to play dress up.
I’d just turned 11 and hadn’t noticed I was filling out. It was confusing to navigate a world in which the definition of what a good girl is and what a good girl does was changing at the same time as my body, but I caught on pretty quick, Margaret.
Life became less mysterious as I got older. Anything I’d yet to puzzle out in regards to human sexuality was handled via the internet, expanding my knowledge in ways you and I never dreamed possible.
Over the years, I checked off sex, marriage, birth, and babies. How to wear a thong. My reproductive system was both an internal and external force that influenced everything from when I wore skinny jeans to when I wanted chocolate. We worked in partnership for decades.
Then, came the unraveling.
At first it was just the tiniest strand, a single frayed edge that came loose from the rest. An anomaly. Soon, more ragged fibers followed I could no longer predict the normal patterns of my body, from my hours of sleep to cholesterol. Everything was variable.
Margaret, our bookish girl in the library is coming undone and this business of ending is so much harder than the beginning.
I’d love to know how you’re coping with the realization that you’re never getting through 3 am again without popping Benadryl to get back to sleep. Also, why do we own six varieties of moisturizer?
Collagen is the new mystery of middle age. Where did it go and how do we get a refill on that? Ever since Nora Ephron wrote about her neck, we’ve all been obsessed with collagen.
Margaret, in the sequels you and Judy might write (if you weren’t so exhausted by the trials of middle age), there’d be that inevitable chapter about how you coped with the death of a good friend from breast or ovarian cancer. In your book there would just be the one, but outside the pages you live in, there will be many.
So many.
It’ll feel like you and every woman you know are walking arm-in-arm together, through an open field, in the middle of a lightning storm. One of us will suddenly and randomly be struck down. We‘ll sing our songs and mourn our losses and we will never stop asking why.
If you were physically here, I’d hold your hand, too, Margaret. Instead, we’re all holding on to the parts of you that we can still reach, deep within our faded memories.
Will our partners die before us and how do we cope with that? If Rob dies, I’ll live alone with cats, but the reality is that I’ll never want to get out of bed again and that’s what I think about at 3 am when I pop the Benadryl.
Of course, given the temperature on the thermostat he’ll be cryogenically frozen, which is the comforting thought I need to be able to get back to sleep 2 hours later, but not before going over every possible scenario, including reassuring myself several times that he is, in fact, still breathing next to me. According to my single friends, dating apps are the seventh circle of hell, so if there is an after-Rob, I’m definitely sticking with the cats.
Margaret, if you’re still out there somewhere, listen: we’re going to end this the same way we began. Together. We may be looking for ways to increase our bone density instead of our busts, but maybe now it’s my turn to reassure you. I know we’re going to get there. Wherever “there” is.
Yours Truly,
~jaime.k.
