So long to Aunt Flow

After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on sanitary napkins, tampons and Midol, my Aunt Flow failed to show up at the Greyhound bus station for her monthly visit, as she has done every month for the past 38 years, sometimes twice a month.

At age 49, I am officially in menopause. How do I know? Maybe the many mornings this past year when I woke up drenched in sweat as if I had participated in an all-night aerobics workout, the insomnia and the hot flashes that have me turning the air-conditioning in my house down to 55 degrees. And those pre-uterine contractions that felt like someone was wringing my uterus like a dish rag were a blast.

Aunt Flow's first surprise visit came during a Chicago Cubs-Montreal Expos game at Wrigley Field in June 1969. It was bat day, and I sat holding my Louiseville phallic symbol when I suddenly felt something amiss between my legs. I was 12-years-old and had been prepared for Aunt Flow, thanks to the many Disney sex education films starring animated, jiggerbugging sperm and eggs that the girls watched in school while the boys played kickball on the playground for two hours.

But I wasn't prepared for Aunt Flow's arrival at Wrigley Field. I remember going into the upper grandstand Ladies Room - the one with P.K. Wrigley's wicker veranda furniture from his summer home in Lake Geneva - and stuffing my pants with toilet paper to catch Aunt Flow. I couldn't exactly tell my father that my period had started, so I didn't say anything. The next morning, my mother noticed blood on my pajamas and bed sheets. She went to Jewel's and even called me from a pay phone to ask if there was anything that I needed from the store, but I was too embarrassed to confess that Aunt Flow was paying me a visit.

My mother came home from Jewel's with a gigantic box of sanitary napkins, each with its own adorable disposal bag, and a sanitary belt. I don't know who the misogynistic bastard was who invented the sanitary belt, probably the same asshole who invented women's swimming caps. For those chicks who are old enough to remember sanitary belts, it was impossible to wear one without the buckle digging into your tail bone. I still have the permanent indentation.

You wove the ends of the sanitary napkin into each buckle. The sanitary belts were not made for little girls to sit on hard chairs of school desks, church pews or the back of a Plymouth Fury station wagon zomming across South Dakota on a family vacation. I used to try padding the buckles with toilet paper, but somehow the padding always had a way of slipping off. Finally, I resorted to safety-pinning the sanitary napkins into my underwear, thinking how marvelous it would be if someone invented sanitary napkins that you could directly affix to your panties with adhesive.

My Aunt Flow wasn't some dainty broad that beat it after a few days either. No, she weighed about 400 pounds and would hang around an entire week, demanding super-plus-size accommodations. Very often she brought along her boyfriend, Uncle Cramps. When Aunt Flow first started visiting me, I used to complain about her to my mother. She told me to get used to her because, "You'll be having your period for the next 30 or 40 years."

At first my mother was sympathetic, but eventually she made me ride my bike to the convenience store to buy my own giant box of sanitary napkins. This was terribly embarrassing, because there was usually some old man at the cash register. I'd end up buying butter and French bread, so it wouldn't look like I was coming into the store just to buy sanitary napkins.

For the most part, Aunt Flow has been a real bitch, but she came in handy during high school, especially when we had swimming in P.E. Aunt Flow was always good for sitting out swimming on the life guard chair for three or four days, thus sparing me the embarrassment of having to don an oversized, black tank suit. Of course, my gym teacher, one of several lesbians at my school who taught P.E., would admonish us by saying that "if you were modern girls, you wouldn't have to miss swimming." These were the same bitches who warned us that we'd experience a lot of pain during childbirth if we didn't physically exert ourselves in gym class by getting smacked in the face with a volley ball.

I don't know how I feel about Aunt Flow not coming around anymore. I've often lamented that "I'm so sick of my fucking period" while scrubbing stains out of my pants at midnight, but I never really meant it. I feel like a dried-up, menopausal, old hag. I never had children so for most part these long monthly visits from Aunt Flow have been a waste of time. I'm going to miss her and my days of being a young woman.

Of course, just when you think Aunt Flow is gone forever, she has a habit of reappearing with a vengence. My aunt was 45 when her Aunt Flow stopped visiting, but she ended up attending her oldest son's high school graduation seven months' pregnant. (I am definitely not pregnant.)

I don't think I'm ready to bid goodbye to Aunt Flow, even though she wrecked a lot of birthdays, plus I'm stuck with all these pairs of period-panties. But I knew that this day was coming some time. All I can tell Aunt Flow is to be kind to the eleven-year-olds out there who are greeting her for the first time.

Don't worry, girls, 49 will be here before you know it.