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"&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m trying not to become my cold,&amp;quot; I remember one of my English professors saying decades ago. The odd sentence stuck with me because I knew the tendency to become one with a bodily illness is strong. Sometimes, when I&amp;#039;m in the throes of my 17th hot flash of the day, I feel as if the rest of me is canceled out, and I&amp;#039;ve become nothing but my perimenopausal symptoms. Yet when I&amp;#039;m traveling, as I am now on our annual pilgrimage to see family, there are pictures to remind me of the other ages of my life, ages that I can still feel and remember, unbound by bodily realities. At my in-law&amp;#039;s house, I turn and see a photo of me as a new girlfriend. My then-boyfriend, now-husband and I are on our way to his high school reunion, where I will write &amp;quot;Girlfriend&amp;quot; on the nametag, figuring it was just easier than having people squint and fruitlessly try to place me as one of their classmates from 20 years ago. But it backfires when one woman accosts me in the restroom: &amp;quot;He made you wear that! That&amp;#039;s disgraceful,&amp;quot; she says and proceeds to rip the tag off before I could tell her it had been my idea.  At my parent&amp;#039;s house, I can still feel the bored teenager, who lurks on the deck, reading on a hot summer day and waiting for something &amp;quot;exciting&amp;quot; to happen. Or I think back further to my grandparents, and I become the girl who protested vociferously every Sunday as she leaned over the kitchen sink to have her hair washed. And so I&amp;#039;m reminded that I&amp;#039;m more than my biological age, that I also contain all the other ages from childhood to girlhood to womanhood. I&amp;#039;m more than the sum\u2013\u2013or reduction\u2013\u2013of my symptoms at the moment. And I am glad. Reader, when do you feel the multiple stages of your life? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/a44334/addition-subtraction-2417/>