The We Do Not Care Club - Florida Chapter

The sun had climbed high enough to turn the Gulf into a sheet of hammered copper when the plates finally slowed their circuit around the blanket. Someone had cracked open the watermelon, and the sweet red scent drifted over charcoal smoke and coconut oil.

Mary stretched her legs out in front of her, toes digging into warm sand. She’d taken the big hat off; silver-streaked hair caught the breeze like sea grass.

“You know what nobody warns you about?” she said, licking a drip of watermelon juice off her thumb. “It’s not the hot flashes. It’s the day your brain quietly hands in its resignation from bullshit.”

Patrice snorted so hard she nearly dropped her skewer. “Preach, Miss Mary.”

“I’m serious,” Mary went on, voice easy, almost amused. “One morning you wake up and the frontal lobe—your lifelong people-pleasing secretary—has packed its bags. All those little circuits that used to light up every time someone needed their feelings tiptoed around? They go dim. Not dead. Just… selective. Like the brain finally says, ‘Ma’am, we are fifty-three years old. We no longer have the bandwidth for fake nice.’”

Kiku, who’d been quietly sketching the horizon in the wet sand with a stick, looked up. “Is that why my mom suddenly started telling department heads exactly what she thought of their quarterly reports?”

“Textbook,” Mary said. “Estrogen was the glue holding the ‘give a fuck’ factory together. When it drops, the whole assembly line slows down. The medical term is ‘reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate,’ but I call it the Great Unsubscribing. You stop caring about things that never deserved your care in the first place.”

Shawna leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “So it’s not that we turn mean. We just… stop auditioning for roles we never wanted?”

“Exactly,” Mary said. “It’s freedom wearing anger’s clothes for the first week or two. Then you realize you’re not mad—you’re awake. And awake women are dangerous to bad systems.” She grinned, sudden and wicked. “Why do you think half the nonprofit boards in this country are suddenly run by perimenopausal witches?”

Eleanor laughed, low and delighted. “I thought it was just me. I told my ex-husband’s new twenty-nine-year-old girlfriend that her passive-aggressive Instagram stories were giving me secondhand exhaustion. Out loud. At Whole Foods. It felt amazing.”

She continued. “Then there’s the rage-crying for no reason. One moment I’ll be folding laundry, remember some stupid thing I let slide in 2017, and suddenly I’m ugly-sobbing into a fitted sheet.”

“Completely normal,” Mary said. “The amygdala’s off leash for a while. Think of it as your brain taking out twenty years of trash in one very intense weekend.”

Erin, who’d been quiet, finally spoke. “I used to worry you were disappearing on us, Aunt M. Like the old you was getting swallowed. But you’re not gone. You’re just… edited. Sharper.” T’pot nodded in agreement.

Mary reached over and squeezed her niece’s knee. “The old me is still here, baby. She just stopped volunteering to carry everyone else’s luggage.”

A comfortable hush settled, the kind only women who trust each other can hold. The tide had crept closer; cool water licked at the edge of the blanket.

Patrice broke it, soft. “So what do we do with all this new real estate in our heads?”

Mary tilted her face to the sun. “Whatever we damn well please.”

The speaker, as if it had been waiting for permission, slid from laid-back reggae into Aretha Franklin—big, bold, unapologetic. Patrice was on her feet first, dragging Shawna up by both hands. T’pot whooped and pulled Kiku into the circle. Eleanor started snapping the rhythm on her iced-tea glass like it was tambourine.

Mary stayed seated a moment longer, watching them spin and stomp and laugh in the sand, barefoot and ridiculous and radiant. Then she stood, brushed the sand off her white pants, and stepped into the dance like a woman who no longer needed an invitation.

The chorus rose—R-E-S-P-E-C-T—and the Gulf carried it out past the breakers, past the horizon, past every quiet apology any of them had ever swallowed.

Just respect.

Just finally, finally respect.