Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

"the plot of our life sweats in the dark like a face
the mystery of childbirth, of childhood itself
grave visitations
what is it that calls to us?
why must we pray screaming?
why must not death be redefined?
we shut our eyes we stretch out our arms
and whirl on a pane of glass
an afixiation a fix on anything the line of life the limb of a tree
the hands of he and the promise that she is blessed among women."
~ Dancing Barefoot" ~ Patti Smith


Things change. All the time.

Menopause, the "Change", the Mother of all changes, changes all the time. I am cyclical by nature. Always have been. Every few months menopause - or rather, my menopausal symptoms, intensify for a few days. Always a bit worse at night. I mean, during the day I experience things like the occasional full upper body hot flash. The kind that includes sweat on my forehead, upper lip, the sides of my nose and my entire back. Anyway, at night it becomes it's own brand of terror. Hot flashes are the least of it. There's heart palpitations before the onset of the sweaty part of the hot flash and then the anxiety that accompanies the palpitations. I've only realized in the past year that my perimenopausal symptoms began with those night time anxiety rushes years ago. Sleeping peacefully one minute and then awakening to a sense of panic and dread that would manifest physically into a sort of terror that would make me want to jump up out of the bed and do something - anything. Sometimes, I would get the chills to such an extent that I would shiver uncontrollably for a few minutes. Then I would poo. Yep,poo.
I guess the difference between that nice feeling you get as you begin to get the urge to poo prior to perimenopause is replaced with anxiety because it's a change in the interpretation of the feeling. As we get older and our hormones are morphing perhaps we feel less confident in what it is we're feeling sometimes.
My sister and I would refer to my mother's rare good moods as her having to "take a shit" moments.
e.g. "Was Mommy happy that it was her bowling night?"
"Yeah, it was like she had to take a shit."
That euphoric feeling right before you drop the kids off at the pool.
In any case, I have yet to determine whether or not the urge to poop was the start of it all or if I get the urge as a result of waking up and having hormonal rushes of anxiety.

Anyway, I had my last real period on March 13th, 2003. Yep. My mom said she went through "The Change" at 42. Her period "just stopped". No symptoms. Not a one, according to her. I guess all those years when she would come home from work and retreat immediately into her bedroom with a pack of Benson & Hedges 100's and a cup of coffee and sit, in a cloud of smoke, watching reruns of "Little House On The Prairie" don't count. My two kids and my nephews used to refer to her, at the time, as Grambo. No symptoms.

I remember distinctly the last time I bled. I actually knew that it was the last time. I don't know how, but I did. I remember looking down at the piddly little offering my body forced onto the pad thinking, "this is it".
Oddly enough, I still have the diary I kept in the 8th grade and one of the 5 or 6 entries is titled "This Girl Is A Woman Now." I got my period on March 13th, 1971. Exactly, exactly, exactly 32 years to the day, it stopped. I wonder how many women that happens to but they just don't have the information recorded?

I was, if they were all telling the truth, the last of all my girlfriends to get my period. I was an athlete so, in retrospect, it seems to make sense. However, I was incredibly envious of my friends and their "cramps" and "pads" and "boobs". I faked having my period for about a year or so. If my friends had payed closer attention, they might have realized that I bled 19 days a month and had cramps all the time. I just wanted to belong.

So, seven years ago I started having hot flashes. Nice ones. Ones that gave me a healthy looking flush every half hour or so. My skin looked all glow-y and Doris Day-ish. Over the past few years they've morphed back and forth from Doris Day flashes to the Satchmo kind - hanky and all. My sister gets them so bad that she carries around rolls of Bounty in her bag. She works with small children in a local school and recently, mid-flash, one of the kids said, "Miss Lori, what's wrong with your face?" My sister said she humored the kid with a pretzel but what she wanted to say was, "Nothing asshole, what's wrong with yours?"