Back again, after many months.

It's August 2 and there are just 17 days left before my twin sister and I turn 48. Hard to believe the number is true. No more babies in my dreams. And I don't know if she'll have another. Can she? They are leaving it up to God and trying the old-fashioned way - even though it took fertility treatment for her to get pregnant with Julia just five years ago at 43.

As for me, it's over. Despite being disgustingly regular, too much physical trauma prevents me from believing anymore that I could bear a child of my own. A fourth major surgery in 7 years - this time for L4-5 - forces me to face facts. My body is not reliable anymore. Hasn't been for several years now. Probably wasn't to start with but I kept thinking of myself as sturdy. Sturdy and immune to stress. Not so.

I still don't understand how the whole stress thing operates because I sure do know how to relax and to express my feelings. People have explained it to me, and I feel quite dense for the reasoning does not penetrate.

It's sort of like the incomprehensibility of traffic jams. I do understand them more as I get older, but there is still something about them that just doesn't make sense. Yes, the more arteries that feed into a single or narrower artery, the more congestion we will have. That I understand, and despise transportation planners for. I gave up the Hamptons because of Jones Beach traffic turning into the Southern State, the LIE, the Northern State, 27A and even 25 - rendering them parking lots. It's the slow-down-and-stop LIE and Northern State traffic as you round the bend and see Queens that just does not compute. Or the inexplicable jams as you drive through the tunnel at exits 143-145 on the Garden State Parkway. There are four lanes leading in and four lanes leading out - same number of arteries, just solid lines painted between them instead of broken. What is the story there? The traffic jams I really hate are the rubber-necking jams. A strong childhood memory is listening to 1010 WINS or another all-news radio station somewhere in the US as we drove to Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or into the city, and the WINS News Helicopter reporting on "rubbernecking delays" on the Van Wyck Expressway or Koskiusko Bridge or the Chicago Skyway. I am always so disgusted when I finally near the slow-down cause and I see flashing lights, police cars, ambulances and a few totaled cars - on the other side of the highway! How do I see all this? I am rubbernecking! So really this is self-disgust for being a human like all others. A laugh then is in order, because traffic jams are all about human beings being human - quirky, fallible, curious, predictable, silly, compassionate, nosy, scared, and grateful to be on the side of the highway that is now finally moving very quickly - as well as grateful to be alive and moving at all.

Back to stress. There seems to be a lot of blame attached to the topic of stress, as in "you brought this on yourself, you stress-lover!" As I pointed out to my father last week, gravity is stressful. He shot right back, "and no gravity is also stressful - in a different way!" Dear old Dad. Right as usual. Is that where I get it from? Both he and my mom are Taureans, so I probably get it from both of them. As a Leo, however, I can be cajoled, bribed and otherwise placated and soothed into being happy instead of right. And right there is the reason I don't buy the "I dig stress" blame game. I HATE stress. May I say that again? I HATE stress! That feels better.

Honestly, is there anyone out there who seeks out stress? Besides professional athletes, I mean. Competing in the Olympics, the Tour de France, the World Series, Super Bowl, World Cup, NBA finals, the US Opens (golf and tennis) and the like - that is stressful. The pressure to win must be almost unbearable and the physical wear and tear is pretty phenomenal, too. Yet so many of us pasty-faced North Americans (I read that phrase once in college and love it) want to be athletic stars. It's a socially-acceptable stress. The folks who have a knee replacement because they've been running for thirty years - now they deserve our sympathy. Those tubbies who need a knee replacement because the joint can no longer support their weight - well, they brought it on themselves. And folks like me, who once were physically active but are no longer because our bodies have started to fall apart, are hard for people to figure out. I constantly explain to people that I didn't have an accident (that would be good stress), I don't have arthritis (also good stress, though pitiable in one so relatively young), and I don't exercise excessively (again, good stress though foolish). I did have Lyme disease, which I firmly believe weakened my spinal discs. That interests people - and they then are pretty willing to let me off the stress hook.

The stress hook is a horrible exercise in powerlessness. One is told to reduce stress in one's life. OK, what stress am I to reduce? Can't really do anything about gravity. Yes, losing weight would ease some of the physical stress on my body. OK, so then there's the stress of going on a diet and being more physically active. Good stress. But stress nonetheless. Money stress. Well, get a job. What kind of job can I reasonably seek when my physical self is not so reliable? More stress in thinking it all through, and justifying to people why I believe I can no longer work full-time.

It's hard to convince others that I am physically unable to work full-time when I don't really want to believe it myself. No, no, no. I can work full-time, I can change the world, I am the great and powerful Oz! Behind my curtain is a pretty beat-up and broken body. C5-7, L2-3, L4-5, new right hip. The right side has taken a licking and is ticking much more slowly than before. How on earth can I keep the hours I used to keep? 50 and 60 hour work weeks, regular commuting - no longer possible for me.

I watch my twin. She works long hours from home, and is always tired, cranky and overwhelmed. Her back is fine, though. She lost her beloved son. Anything more stressful is impossible. She's not getting back surgery. She weighs more than I do, she carries her 4 year old child, she gardens, she moves furniture and lugs a heavy briefcase. Her discs are fine. Her hip is fine. No surgeries for her. The stress that woman has endured is immeasurably more than what I have encountered. And I'm the one who's being told about managing my stress so my back is OK and I can work full-time.

This is when twin comparisons are useless. Well, perhaps they aren't so useless - because it's helpful to then look at the differences. If we are twins, what happened to me that accounts for my physical decrepitude? There's Lyme disease! And of course, the hip thing is a strange occurrence that no doubt happened some time when I was in the hospital for the crabapple-in-eye incident.

There is one other possibility: she is the stronger twin, I am the weaker. I've always had a problem with that theory, though, because I weighed more than she did when we were born. Wouldn't the weaker twin weigh less? Of course, I had to be immediately transfused and she was fine. And I've been sick so often through my life while she's been pretty healthy. So my hanging about in Mom's womb was a matter of my getting some nutrition on my own?

None of this really matters, to paraphrase Freddie Mercury. Nothing really matters to me but the reality that I am stressed, can't do much about it, don't choose it, and have consequences that affect me physically. I haven't really worked in 6 months, and I really don't want to work again. I want to do what I want to do, without having to suffer anymore.