Renaissance

104 days.

That’s how long it has been since I had a period.

104 days of estrogen withdrawal symptoms: hot flashes, as many as 40 a day sometimes. Metabolic differences too — as so many of my mid-life sisters have noted, it seems a lot harder to keep the midline slim these days. Plus other small variations in my physical normal, mostly too subtle to bother adding to a list.

After 104 days, my uterus was not going to go easy on me. Oh no. When she and her ovarian henchwomen stepped in and took charge of my physiology, they did it old school: let me know I was ovulating with a whiplash-sudden cessation of those hot flashes and textbook mittelschmerz. Eleven days later the PMS merry-go-round revved up with insane mood swings (“Babe, your head is trying to kill you,” my best friend told me), insatiable hunger and swelling up like a grape, until finally that inner thunder started rumbling, and the bleeding came on with birth-worthy cramps. Seriously: I could smell the labor ward.

And when I say bleeding, I want you to imagine something along the lines of Niagra Falls. That’ll get you in the ballpark.

But after 104 days with no period and lots of hot flashes, instead of wanting to bitch about it (like we all do, all the time), I am feeling fragile, precious…even holy. I want a Red Tent, a sacred place to go and be apart and share this monthly experience with other women. A ritual signifying that something special is happening here.

It reminds me of the first time. I was 14, a couple of years later than most of my friends, and boy was I anxious for it to happen. When that first period finally came — while on vacation with my dad and little brother, proving that Mother Nature has a sense of humor — every sensation was a revelation. I felt connected at some animal level to mysterious, ancient forces, but I had no real idea what that meant, or how it would be.

Today, at the other end of my fertility, sitting right next to the wonder of this resurgence of the Mark of Womanhood, thigh to thigh, there is also mourning. Because for all I know, this will be my last period.

Ever.

Of course, this perimenopause phase could drag on a decade, I realize that. But I don’t know. Its onset has been so sudden and unexpected that I have to recognize the possibility that it could be short, sweet, and permanent waaaaaay before my late 50’s, when I always imagined I would undergo the “Change of Life.”

I can’t know. As I couldn’t know what menstruation would mean for my body, that first time, until I simply lived it for a while.

So what do I do while navigating these uncharted waters?

I sit on my sofa and start sorting through a huge box of photographs that date from my early 20’s to my late 30’s: pre-babies to post divorce. The photos end where the digital revolution swept into my life — an iPhone, a Facebook account, no more need to use actual film or keep prints around.

What could be better than that?

An evening grappling with the cessation of my menses while suffering the worst pain it has to offer, spent reliving the joys and pains of childbearing years and the gradual descent into toxicity that my marriage became before its end.

I am throwing most of it away — flushing it like the blood, gone forever. I have four keeper piles: one for my kids, mostly funny things I think they might like to see; one for my parents; one for my ex (he doesn’t deserve this consideration, but I do it anyway); and one for me. The first three bags have sizable stacks of photos in them.

Mine only has two.

Turns out there really isn’t much I need to keep.

As I went along through those years I kept albums, and most of the really important stuff is already preserved there.

But I think the process of sifting through, sorting, and throwing out visual mementos of these years, the reject photos and the ones I never found time to put in an album…this is the really important thing I am getting out of that box: a look back. A chance to shine the light of today on these long ago times and see myself then, knowing what I know, being who I am now.

I was surprised a couple of times. I’d forgotten a hairstyle, a weight gain or loss, an event or two. Sometimes I found pictures of myself with people I do not remember, doing things I had no idea I’d done.

Those hundreds of pictures are mostly going in the trash not because they’re not valuable, but because I don’t need them.

The years have done their work on me. This is just an exercise in acknowledgement. Remembering every chisel strike that’s flaked away the dross over time, and sculpted me as I am: staring at 50 as it hovers on the horizon. Experiencing life-altering physical changes. About to have an empty nest. Happily partnered. Teacher, writer, musician. Mother, daughter.

Woman.

Maybe, after 104 days, this period is the same kind of thing — my chance to feel the whole experience, complete, intense, and painful; to remember again, and really pay attention to, all the details of what it means to be a fertile woman. And, knowing it may never happen again, to always remember how it’s been.

I feel like I’m on the edge of a new thing. It’s scary. Exciting. Troubling. Mysterious. I want to introduce myself to her, this emerging woman who’s putting fertility and two decades of child-rearing, marriage and divorce behind her.

So: Hi. My name is Lisa. Tell me about yourself. Let’s be friends.