Dammit.
Should have known better.
Yeah, should have definitely known better than to get my hopes
up.
Mother, God bless her departed soul, warned me she had the
occasional “curse” until she was fifty-two. Now at the backside
of fifty-three and not having “one” for close to a year, more
importantly not having used any birth control at all for the past
six months because I thought I was over and done with “it”,
damned if “my friend” hasn’t shown up again.
“Here’s your change, Mrs. Gartner, can I help you take these to
your car?”
“Yes, Brian, that would be nice of you.”
I wish the dampness “down there” was the result of my mind
wandering to the sometimes fantasies about my favorite bagboy –
Brian, but after a lifetime of dealing with “the drips” I knew
what “Auntie Flow” felt like once it hit my “lower lips” and
panties, dammitall.
If we can send a man to the moon and if men now have cures for
baldness and impotence, why can’t someone, some woman doctor
somewhere since no male doctor gives a flip about women except
how much money they can make off of them find a cure for “the
monthlies” except in my case now it should be called “the yearly”
and hopefully “the lastly”. Do need to write myself a post-it
note to call my Gyn and make an appointment to have this checked
out just in case, but, no rush, I just know it’s Mother Nature’s
last little joke on me that for the past six months after I
thought I had been “safe” for the prior six months , Robert
plowing my sometimes dry and often sore but still accommodating
“field”, that I had been taking the huge risk of assuming way
too much just because I had been at the threshold of oldhagdom
for the past couple of years.
Now, where was that last pack of maxis? Oh yeah, in the linen
closet, behind the guest towels. I swear, just two Kotex
Overnights left, and one old Tampax regular so many years old
that I didn’t want to touch for its heavy coating of dust. I was
just at the grocery store, shit, oh well. If I had bought a new
box of Tampax and a new bag of Kotex, maybe it would have given
my favorite fantasy toy, Brian, a hint that I was still a viable
woman, hell, a hint that I was still a woman at all and not a
dried-up old prune?
A brand-new, well, just three months old pair of Olga panties
too, ruined. Maybe not ruined, but definitely not wearable again,
except. Cold water running in the lavatory for soaking. At least
I didn’t have to worry about the kids seeing them in there and
asking questions I was never comfortable in answering, not even
to Charlene, my one and only daughter, now adult and grown-up and
giving me my first grandchild five years ago. Billy, he never
paid me any mind, even after accidentally seeing my old Kotex
filling to the brim the wastecan time and again over the years in
the our then one bathroom three bedroom old house over on Grand
Avenue that he and his sister grew up in when they were kids
before we moved over here to Killain Morrow Road when they were
both teen-agers. Kids.
Kids. Two I had given birth two, four I had aborted. Each time,
my womb shed its bloody tears when our household economics more
than Robert’s and mine love for each other dictated I break the
bond of matriliny that only another woman could possibly
understand. The four children I really wanted then and now long
gone, gone to the pressures of life. Flushed down the toilet like
so many egregious pre-menopausal clots dripping from not my womb
but my heart. Four chances at the roulette wheel of feminine
destiny that came up double zero. In the end, “the house” and not
“the player” always wins.
Drip, drip, drip. At least I had saved my best pair of old
“period panties”, “just in case”. Just in case a miracle happened
and I “accidentally” got pregnant. Yeah, I had been hoping. But
today’s “accident” made it clear that my last chances for a last
chance had come and gone.
Drip, drip, drip. Tears, not blood. Composing myself sitting
atop the toilet, then blood, not tears. A cramp, and then
another, and then, both, the salts of clear and the salts of red.
“Honey, I’m home, you here?”
“Yes Dear, in the kitchen, I’m fixing your favorite, poached
salmon with almonds” if the fish and almonds both were from cans,
my dear husband never would say a word to me other than “thank
you”.
“What’s the occasion? You didn’t wreck the car, did you?”
Silly man, but my man. Not the best man in the world, not the
best lover, not the best provider, not the best anything else,
except my best friend in the world. I couldn’t help myself.
“Don’t cry, Honey, it’s okay, the insurance will take care of it,
that’s what we carry it for, don’t cry” as my sobs became wails
for a split-second before I finally composed myself a little,
both upper and lower “flows” “flowing”.
“It’s not the car, the car’s fine” he giving me a game show quiz
look as he held me close to him. His funky old Paco Raban
aftershave filling my nostrils made me realize how truly lucky I
was to have ‘him’.
“Then what? Tell me, you know you can.”
“I know” his eyes meeting mine, his lips kissing me as a husband
should.
“I, I; I ‘started’ again today. I’m sorry, Dear.”
He broke his embrace to pull back just enough to look deeply in
my eyes to make sure I was telling the truth.
“I thought you were way past ‘that’.”
God bless him, at least he thought before he spoke and didn’t
say I was “too old” for “that” to happen.
“I didn’t have any idea” my arms holding him closer to me as I
kissed him “it just happened, out of nowhere, didn’t have any
pings or pangs or bloat and anything ‘before’, it just happened.”
“It’s okay, Hon’, it’s okay.”
“I know you were planning on using one of ‘your pills’ tonight
and ravishing me, now we can’t. I’m sorry.”
“And why can’t we?” a sweetly evil grin, his horns popping
through his recovering Rogained scalp.
“Because; because we never have, ‘during’, that’s why.”
“No, in thirty-one years of marriage we never have, so this might
be our last chance ‘to’. Whaddya say, Dear-y? You know I love
you. What’s a little blood between husband and wife?” his breath
fresh, his face a little rough from his five o’clock shadow
scratching me a tad, reminding me he was my “man” and not just my
husband.
His lips kissed the smears of my tears away. Many reasons to
cry, many more reasons to be happy. Lord knows he wasn’t perfect.
He was and is perfect for me.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. A little blood’s nothing at all.”
“Then cut the oven down to warm and let’s go turn up the heat in
the bedroom to high” he almost throwing his back out, damn his
sometimes too-romantic soul, as he somehow managed to lift up and
cradle me in his arms, thumping my head against the frame of the
kitchen door as he captured my heart all over again making me see
stars from the impact but that was okay, I was seeing stars, real
stars of our universe past present and future together, anyway.
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