Fractured Thoughts

Did I Miss Menopause?

I think I missed menopause. Seriously, no hot flashes, night sweats, eating binges, loss of sex drive or hitting the bottle after everyone went to bed. Ok, there may have been some moodiness, but honestly it just blew right by me. With all the hoopla and dread concerning menopause I was ready to take it head on, but it never reared it’s ugly face.  And if it did I was too busy to notice. I expected something equal to PMS only instead of once a month magazine articles had me preparing for years of all of the above.

My high school boyfriends would be the first to tell you that I did not do PMS well. In the 60′s if you went steady (our name for what they now call going out) you wore his high school ring with different angora yarn wrapped around it to fit your finger. The yarn came in  different colors and we changed it daily to match our outfits. Anyway, once a month I sent the ring sailing towards a cowering, bewildered boy friend while yelling “I want to break up.” Why? I didn’t know. It just seemed like the thing to do at the moment then days later I was wearing his ring again.

I don’t believe we had a name for PMS then, but early on I suspected that my menstral cycle had something to do with it. The week before my period I was moody, bloated, emotional, hungry and easily irrated. The week after I was little miss sunshine.

The first few years of marriage to my children’s father I got so bad my husband started marking days on the calendar to prepare himself for the emotional onslaught. He did that for a year or so until I caught on and threatened his life. Yes, it was PMS week and might have even been a full moon. If we were going to argue it was always during that week then marital bliss for the rest of the month. Come to think of it maybe that was why he was so happy, supportive and content when I was pregnant or nursing a baby. With six kids all a year  and a half apart I was was minus PMS for over ten years. And all along I’ve been thinking the pregnancies were all about the Morman belief that God wants us to “multiply and replenish the earth”. I guess I’m a slow learner. I learn something new everyday.