Are You There God? It's Me, Heather

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the first trailer for the movie, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and my stomach immediately did a backflip. That’s the only part of me that has ever been able to do a backflip, considering that I never made it past level one in gymnastics. I was immediately taken back to the summer of 1984.

I’m on the cusp of my 5^th grade year at Radney Elementary School in Alexander City, Alabama.  My sister, brother and I were on our monthly visit to the small local library in the center of town to select our next stack of books for the MS Read-a-thon. My stack, as usual, was the tallest. I was a voracious reader as a child, and without the distraction of social media and hundreds of extracurricular activities, I could motor through books like Dale Earnhardt.

Even more so, I was competitive.  Reading and academics were my sports.  As in my only sports. The thought of a ball flying toward me made me curl into a ball on the ground and duck for cover. Dodge ball and Red Rover were literal nightmares for me.  But I found solace in reading. I found even more solace in winning prizes for reading the most books in the MS Read-a-thon each summer.

In summers past I had devoured Freckle Juice, Blubber, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Superfudge, Double Fudge, and all of the other “Fudges”. But there was one of Judy Blume’s books that had stayed on the shelves.  There were rumblings about this book and why it was not appropriate for children, which made me want to read it more.

With my stack of books on the counter, tucked somewhere between a couple of Sweet Valley High books and The Grapes of Wrath, the librarian pulled the card from the back of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and raised an eyebrow. 

“Do your parents know you are checking this book out?”  she asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

She discretely placed the book back in the middle of my stack of books, and off I went with them tucked neatly under my arms.  I had done it.  I was a rebel.  I was going to figure out, at last, what all the fuss was about.

Growing up in a small town where your father is a Southern Baptist preacher, it was taboo to question the existence of God. Was that the central controversy of this book?  In my town, there were many different brands of Christianity, non-Christians (i.e., non Church-goers), and there was one Jewish family, the Sokols. One of the Sokol girls was a friend of mine. I tried to convert her to Christianity when we were in the third grade. It had not gone over very well.

 In the book,  Margaret is born to a Christian mother and a Jewish father who are allowing her to choose her faith for herself (scandalous!).  She speaks to God every night about her changing body, friends, etc. until members of her extended family try to force her into selecting a religion. It is then that she decides she no longer needs God (also scandalous) and stops talking to Him.

As a committed ten year-old Christian, I secretly hoped that Margaret would accept Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior by the end of the book, but that does not happen. She does, however, begin speaking to God again – a step in the right direction (yay!).

Reading the book did nothing to damage my faith, but it opened my eyes a little to Rachel’s. So that was ONE positive that came out of the book for me.

The other positives about Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret were that it very openly discussed puberty and first kisses, both of which would happen to me within the next year. Yes, I had my first kiss at age eleven on a dare (it was gross).  I was subsequently slut-shamed at school the next week and did not kiss another boy for two more years.  Then I kissed a bunch of boys (but that is ALL, kids!), but that is a post for another day.

Up until Margaret, the only real sex-ed I had ever had was from the encyclopedia and a book called Wonderfully Made (or something like that).  God forbid I talk with my parents about such embarrassing things.  Judy Blume and Margaret filled in a lot of missing gaps for me when it came to the perils of becoming a woman. So, with that, I say, thank you, Judy Blume.

 Side note: when I asked my much younger daughter if she needed help learning to shave her legs, she told me that she had already watched a YouTube on that.  NOT.CONCERNING.AT.ALL.  Whereas we had few sex-ed resources in the 80s, our kids have FAR TOO MANY, which is resulting in very unrealistic sex-pectations.  Again, that is a post for another day.

I also learned that it was okay to not have all of the answers, and that almost EVERYONE was dealing with some kind of insecurity, no matter how confident they looked. Sometimes I still have to remind myself of this.

With the reemergence of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in movie form, it has gotten me thinking that perhaps we could petition Judy Blume to do a sequel of this book for middle age women. She’s 85, so there’s not a lot of time to waste.

Hear me out on this.  How many of us in middle age still sometimes question God?  I know that I do. And I’m sure that my incessant chatter with God can sometimes vacillate between the mundane and the insane, much like Margaret’s. Thankfully, I do not think that God cares.

How many of us are handling hard things, like dealing with difficult things with our older children, becoming empty nesters, going through marital issues, experiencing a first date again for the first time since college, coming to grips with changing bodies, or dealing with sickness and/or death of our parents?

I think there is definitely a book in there for Judy somewhere for us peri-menopausal and straight-up menopausal women. I will volunteer as tribute and gladly allow her to use my name:  Are You There God, It’s Me, Heather.  I think it has a nice ring to it.  

To be fair, I am thankful that I live in a day and age where I can sit at a nice restaurant and have a glass of wine with my girlfriends and discuss our bonus twenty pounds or the fact that we want to punch every member of our household in the face or what hormone supplement we are taking (pellets, the patch, cream??) or our languishing or burgeoning sex drives. The boomers at the table over from us may clutch their pearls when we explode into laughter over such things, but at least we feel free to talk openly about this stage of life.  I’m not sure that our mothers had it that easy.

Perhaps if Judy Blume had followed up Margaret with Heather a little sooner, then menopause would have ceased being a taboo subject a little sooner. Maybe, Blume could have made menopause a super power, just like Farley Drexel Hatcher became in Superfudge! 

Judy, there’s still time.  And there’s absolutely a market for it.  Until we can rally Judy Blume out of her retirement for a follow-up book, let’s gather together in menopausal(ish) solidarity, discuss the hard and uncomfortable (and funny) things and tie together the collective threads that we are all clutching onto with our dear lives.  If there is ever a time that we need each other, it is now…..if not for emotional support, then to keep each other out of jail.

Now, who wants to go see the movie with me?

Male menopause is a lot more fun than female menopause. With female menopause you gain weight and get hot flashes. Male menopause? You get to date young girls and drive motorcycles.

– John Wayne

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