When the Heat Isn’t the Thermostat
That’s what I’ve been thinking about.
This photo was taken six years ago.
A late summer day near Lake Mendota in Madison, just below Bascom Hill.
Melanie had on her trail shoes and that little brown backpack she always packed just right.
Bear looked like a walking rug with a mission.
They’d paused long enough to smile for me,
yellow wildflowers blooming behind them like they’d been planted for this moment.
It’s one of my favorite pictures.
Back when everything felt simpler.
The kind of day where you think you already know everything you need to about love.
If there was ever any doubt,
Melanie’s the favorite adult in the house.
Not just mine.
Ask the dogs.
“I’ve done the math,” Bear would say.
“She feeds us. She scratches ears with both hands.
You? You’re alright, but let’s not get carried away.”
But that’s the trick, isn’t it?
Love doesn’t just show up in the easy moments.
Sometimes it shows up at 2:30 in the morning with the sheets thrown off
and the fan turned up to cyclone.
No words. Just motion.
She stood in front of the fan like someone trying to fight fire with wind.
Bear cracked one eye and gave me a look like,
“You catching this?”
Then dropped his head back on his paws like he’d done his part.
She stood there, still.
Hands loose. Eyes half-closed.
Chest rising like she’d just finished a sprint.
You’d think it was the heat in the room.
But it wasn’t the air.
It was her.
That kind of heat doesn’t come from outside.
It rises from deep inside
like something ancient caught fire and is burning through her bones one inch at a time.
I wish it looked as brutal as it felt.
I wish there were sparks, smoke, some visible cue for the rest of us.
Because maybe then more of us men would understand.
Is that an oxymoron of sorts?
Probably. Bear would say definitely.
But there’s nothing to see.
And most of us weren’t taught to notice what doesn’t bleed.
I sat there, quiet.
Watching her try to settle back into sleep, knowing it wouldn’t come easy.
The truth is, I used to think menopause was a moment.
Something that happened quietly. Later.
A calendar flip. A closing chapter.
I didn’t know about perimenopause.
Didn’t know it could stretch a decade.
Didn’t know estrogen loss messes with serotonin and cortisol,
turning sleep into a myth and anxiety into a full-time job.
Didn’t know hot flashes hit eighty percent of women.
Didn’t know they weren’t flashes at all.
They’re floods.
Heart racing. Skin flushed.
And then, just like that, the storm passes.
Leaving her restless and exhausted
like the fire came and left no ash.
And the world just shrugs and keeps moving.
She didn’t need comfort.
She didn’t need fixing.
She didn’t even need me to see her.
She needed to survive it.
And I needed to not make it about me.
The fan winds down.
Morning comes like it always does
no matter how little sleep she’s had,
no matter how hard the night tried to take her down.
She pours the coffee. Checks the mirror. Not for beauty, for stability.
Then opens her laptop, and the day begins.
Back-to-back calls. Rapid-fire questions.
Deadlines. Numbers. Calm under pressure.
She’s the best in the mortgage business I’ve ever met.
Sharp. Steady. Brilliant. Unflappable.
Even now.
Even when the kids are grown and the house is quiet.
She still holds it all together like she always has.
The glue. The net. The reason things don’t fall apart.
And underneath?
She’s burning.
But the camera’s on. The client’s waiting.
So she clicks mute. Breathes through it.
Sometimes she turns the camera off and presses a cold rag to her neck.
Then clicks back on. Smile reset. Voice steady.
Later, at dinner,
she took her time getting ready.
Did her hair, picked out earrings that made her smile.
Pressed her blouse smooth. Gave herself one last look in the mirror
not for vanity,
for steadiness.
She looked beautiful.
But more than that, she looked present.
Halfway through the meal,
something shifted.
The wine wasn’t strong. The room wasn’t warm.
But the heat rose anyway.
She didn’t say a word.
Just gently lifted her hair off her neck,
tilted her head toward the ceiling vent like maybe it would offer grace,
and kept listening.
It took me a moment to realize it.
The signs were subtle—only visible if you knew what to look for.
She wasn’t fully with me.
Not because she didn’t care.
Because she was enduring something
and didn’t want to interrupt me with her pain.
Bear was waiting by the front door when we got home.
Didn’t move. Just gave me that long, flat stare like he’d seen the whole thing unfold.
“You’re over there narrating lawn care,
and she’s sweating through a war you can’t see.
Tell me again who the tough one is?”
Fair point, Bear.
That’s when I knew I needed to listen.
Not just to her.
To others. To what women are already saying, if we’re paying attention.
I tend to go and read what others are experiencing so I can relate better.
It’s something I’ve learned to do when words don’t come easy between us.
When I don’t have the right question,
or she doesn’t have the energy to explain.
When she’s hurting,
or there’s an impasse,
or overthinking starts analyzing the connection out of the room.
When something invisible is blocking my ability to love well
or even just be present.
Because just loving someone isn’t enough.
You have to try to understand what love looks like to them
in the moment they need it most.
One woman wrote,
“Please don’t remind me how I’m acting. I already feel ashamed.”
Another said,
“I still want to be touched. I still want connection.
I just need more patience. My body isn’t on the same page as my heart.”
And another,
“I don’t need solutions. I need empathy.”
That part got me.
Because I’ve offered solutions when she didn’t ask.
Because I’ve made it about me when she was just trying to hold on.
These stories hit me harder than I expected.
Because I’ve lived alongside one woman’s version of it
and I’ve missed more than I caught.
And I have five daughters.
I want them to grow up in a world where this part of womanhood
isn’t hidden behind polite silence
or treated like a punchline.
Where men don’t roll their eyes when they hear the word menopause.
They lean in.
Where we don’t disappear just because we don’t understand.
So yeah. I’ll keep learning.
I’ll ask better questions.
I’ll say less when less is better.
I love my wife.
My partner.
My best friend.
It’s on me to find a way to really understand and be supportive.
I don’t think I’m special because I do this.
But I do think more men would benefit from this approach.
And maybe having five daughters and a wife
has given me the lens to see it clearly
and the responsibility to speak on it.
If I can help even one man see where he can show up better,
listen deeper, or lead with empathy instead of ego
then that’s worth something.
Each one teach one, right?
And I’ll write about it too.
Because the silence around this?
It’s not harmless.
It’s a kind of erasure.
And love, real love, stays in the room when the fire starts.
Even if it doesn’t know what to say.
Some moments don’t need a response.
They just need space.
A little wind.
And maybe a dog who’s seen enough
to know when to keep watch
and when to side-eye the man
who still talks too much.
What a great tribute to love. "Fan turned up to cyclone." Good stuff.
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