Tonight my menstrual cramps are a belt of pain ripping across my lower back, a band pulling my shoulders down toward my knees; at times a burning flame down into my right thigh, all with the strength of labor contractions. Tears run out the sides of my eyes tonight while I lamaze breathe and try to lie still next to James who is so tired and in need of uninterrupted rest. He is light sleeper and if I get out of bed, he’ll wake to ask what is the matter.
The father of my children, my intimate of 30 years (in all his maleness) doesn’t understand the swirl of emotion or the sudden onset of these gripping pains. Still, he goes out on a Sunday morning and fetches an Americano just the way I like it with a little room for cream. He reminds me we need to eat and drives me to two different stores to buy my brand of tampons, and MM’s or a brownie because he knows the necessity of chocolate for getting through this day. He steers clear, granted, being a little put out that he has to endure my moodiness again, but he rests his warm hand, weighty and perfect, on my lower back while we watch a movie, then on my tummy before dozing off to sleep. Simple gestures run deep, while words remain in short supply. “Thank you,” I whisper in time to his slow, soft snores. He is a good friend, but he is not a woman.
I’m not feeling sorry, or asking the great ontological why’s about being a woman (even though the Red Baron insists on landing like clock work every 27 days these two and half decades after my last child was born. At 49, I need a monthly cycle like I need to be carded for wine!). It’s just that my iron defense against loneliness crumbles on these days, loses its strength after a long solo-preneur day in my virtual-reality-based vocation.
I’m angry at a culture that has a woman my age going it mostly alone without sisters or aunties in the kitchen making warm soup, without a child on a hip, or sitting across the table from grubby faces; angry that I fell under the spell of tough, upward mobility and sending career-minded daughters into the world, far away; furious that I somehow helped create this. This nuclear path of feminine loneliness.
Having not shared life closely with multi-generational women, it’s just occurred to me that grandmothers down through the ages still had their monthly cycle. My own granny was not yet 40 years old when her first grandchild came bouncing along.
The shuddering vice grip feels like I’m giving birth again, perhaps to all that I’ve lost—mainly motherhood now past—with its daily worries and demands. These pains grip with ferocity the memories of my two little babes, whose DNA was designed right here—their traces in this forever soft stretch of my midsection, this space that I typically give only enough attention to firm up, or cover up. Memories that predate the majority of my present friends. After moving and career transitions, who in my local, current life remembers the giggles of my brown-eyed Shirley Temple, of the charming sweetness of my little blonde boy?
***
I want to pray for these little ones I almost missed, even with my utmost intention not to. Can I pray backwards in time? Will God, who is outside of chronos, respond to their needs then, shelter them from bullies and tummy aches, instill in them how very loved they are? I ache to hear their tender voices, their giggles, their whispers saying, “Mommy, sing it again.”