Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

December 10, 2007

Today’s Announcement

Pray too for my friend in Springfield, Ohio who has a son that's a police officer.  He was deployed this past Monday.  I also have a second cousin who is already in Iraq, Bobby Thompson, please keep these two young brave men in your prayers. Janice Marlor

Janice

Christmas is just around the corner and most of you have already started to think about Christmas gifts for this season.  Why not help out Storytime Tapestry with its ongoing commitment to provide you with free wonderful stories and poems daily by purchasing the publisher’s newest book for someone special on your holiday gift giving list this year.  Angels Watching Over Me can be published through lulu press in both hard copy and e-book.  Just click on the link:  Angels Watching Over Me

Important notice: Storytime Tapestry is a free e-zine, however donations are always needed to help with the operating expenses of running the newsletter and to keep Storytime Tapestry the quality newsletter you are so accustomed to.   You can make your donations to paypal at: winterose@videotron.ca, or if you would prefer to use the mail system contact the publisher at the same email address: winterose@videotron.ca

Today’s Stories

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Perimenopausal Journey: The Case of the Missing Sex Drive:

Pina Martinelli

          Ten years ago, shortly after I entered the first blushes of  perimenopause, I began to notice the subtle physical shifts that were taking place within my body during the initial transitory moments of this new life stage. The first things I noticed were the understated changes my hormonal rhythms were making in my monthly menstrual cycle. The familiar back cramps I always had - those that were the long-term harbinger's of my period's imminent arrival - had now suddenly shifted to the front, where abdominal cramps became my new norm, that is until they changed a few more times over the ensuing years, a fact that has only served to add even more fun to my life. When these new symptoms arrived,  it didn't dawn on me that these were menstrual cramps so I chalked them up to some intestinal upset at the time. Unfortunately, after a mad dash to the bathroom thinking I was about to be ill, there, in all of her scarlet glory, my period would arrive in full force, catching me off guard and clearly unprepared on far too many occasions. Sometimes, just to add further confusion to the new mix in my life, I had virtually no cramps or menstrual symptoms to speak of at times. Keeping track of my cycle became an exercise in futility as well, for it possessed no rhyme or reason.

          Other harbingers of my period's arrival also changed. The enormous pimple I usually got during the week before my period - one that can best be described in my personal world view as a gigantic inflamed, baseball sized fiery lantern - appeared after my period, disappeared entirely, or grew three buddies as attractive and delicate as their Mother Ship. There they were, proud of their placement on my most prominent facial features, announcing their arrival in full regalia and command. Meanwhile, I'd groan and grimace in the mirror wondering why, at 41, I was still plagued by adolescent acne in perpetuity. There, beneath the glare of my bathroom mirror, I would make valiant efforts to conceal my new friends with an artist's hand, only to have some imbecilic moron at work comment on how they looked, or how much they must have hurt. Given the recent arrival of some adorable mood swings I had developed, it took every effort for me not to slug that person in the jaw. Once an angelic, forgiving creature, I was now Medusa's twin that turned vile colleagues into stone.

          With mood swings and other rapturously joyous symptoms making their mark on my life, I didn't notice that my sex drive had changed. Consumed by significant stress in my life between 10 and 12 years ago, the subtle shifts in my sexuality went all but unnoticed until I realized one day - after the chaos had calmed and, most importantly, with supreme horror and shock - that I felt absolutely no sexual desire at all. In fact, I began to think that if there were 12 naked men standing before me I wouldn't feel any great rush of desire, passion and lust. Instead, I imagined my new sexual persona looking up from her book, smiling at the crew and saying, "Oh guys, that's nice. Can you pass the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times?"  Somewhere between now and then, my sex drive plummeted to the bottom of the ocean's floor, right next to the ruins of the Lost City of Atlantis, yet to be discovered.  

          Though I write these words with a mixture of humor and sarcasm, the truth of this fact actually pains me. Here I am, a confident, secure and attractive woman of 51 and yet I feel about as sexual as a desk lamp most of the time. There are fleeting moments of desire, those that appear with the swiftness of a summer storm and then dissipate moments later after the rain has passed. Lust comes less frequently and usually when my period is about to arrive or not, or I am ovulating or I am in some yet unknown new phase of my now increasingly more confused, ever-changing menstrual cycle,  the kind that seems to change with annoying frequency each month these days. When the mood finally does strike, it comes at the most inopportune moments in my life, like when I am driving to work, stuck in traffic, in a meeting or at home changing cat litter, or doing household chores, like laundry and other mundane items. Invariably, by the time I even start to make plans to seduce my husband, the moment is gone, like a flash in a pan, the light of my desire turned off with a mere flick of the switch. I stand there stunned, unable to do anything but wonder how this can be rectified, and why this happened to me.

          In my youth the moments of lust I had during the day were readily sustained until I got home and made plans to see my long term boyfriend for a "special" night of romance and love. Then, my body hummed with desire, sparking and flaring with its own kind of electricity and a current all its own. Now, with the full force of middle age upon me, it creaks and chokes with age and rust, rendering me all but a shadow of the passionate self I once was.

          I have always been a sensual spirit, a woman born of the earth, air, water and fire, imbued with the delight I felt in the enormous power of my senses. As a child I loved to scoop my hands in the richly dark chocolate colored earth I dug in my garden, savoring its sweet, musty scent in my hands, its coolness that was so gentle and soft to the touch. In the summer I loved to feel the contrast of the sand beneath my feet, when it was soft and malleable in water, damp and partially drying after the tide just left, or when dry and delicate, like wispy fairies on the wind, floating on their own volition, landing wherever they fell. I loved diving into the crest of an ocean wave and then feeling its foamy bubbles dance and kiss the length of my body as I swam beneath it. Though I am a grown woman now, I am still that child who relishes in those sensations. That component of my essence has never changed, and yet, I miss the sexual part of me that was its perfect complement.

          Discussing this at any length with friends not experiencing this aspect of perimenopause is as futile as my attempting to climb Mt. Everest given my intense fear of heights. As hard as I try to explain how perimenopause has affected me, my more sexual friends lecture me on my responsibilities as a wife when it comes to pleasing my husband. They say that despite my issues, I must find the time to make love even if I don't feel like doing it, but that is not the issue here. Psychologically I may want to, but the decline in my hormones has an enormous impact on my ability to muster any sensation of desire. It has nothing to do with my husband or my love for him, but rather the simple fact that my hormonal declinations have adversely affected me. Going through the physical sensations of these hormonal shifts is bad enough for me to contend with, but is made far worse by the lectures my unwise friends hurl at me. 

          It has been suggested that I take hormonal replacements to get me over this hump until my body regulates itself, but hormones are not in store for me. With fibroids, endometriosis and a tendency to produce enormous cysts on my ovaries, hormones - especially estrogen - will adversely affect my various conditions. Increasing dosages of estrogen will ensure the recurrence of my endo, which for now is in a state of decline because of my age. With HRT, my endo will most assuredly resurface, as would the likelihood that additional surgery would be required to remove the newly minted endometriosis "implants" the additional hormones would encourage to grow. I know this truth all too well. After six laparoscopies for this awful condition, along with being required to take menopause- inducing drugs for six months after the post operative phase, I know I will return to where I was in my late 30's during each monthly cycle, in pain for 3 weeks and drained from its unrelenting constancy.  I can't and won't do that to myself again.

Now, as the early morning hours of night slowly move towards the awakening of the dawn, I sit here and wonder what will happen to me and if there will be a time when my sexual self will return to me. If I were sitting by a shoreline right now, I would look out onto the wide expanse of the water with the hope that things will change. Maybe, in the wake of a miracle, my sex drive will return, right on the heels of the discovery of the Lost City of Atlantis.

Pina Martinelli

Pina1101@aol.com

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Poetry Corner

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 HOME

April Lipscomb

I wished to go home again, but home was

forty years ago

So I took a trip down memory lane, the

only available portal

I enjoyed this trip immensely, I loved

going back

Every year of my childhood was available,

down each chosen path

One path for sweet innocence, Taffy apples,

soda pops and school

Another led to adolescence, where I tugged

and pulled the established rules

Some paths were marked with signs "Do Not

Enter"

The memories there to raw and painful to render

I wanted to walk the streets of my youth, to touch

those places again

To travel through my old neighborhood, say hello

to old friends.

Memory lane was a nice visit but I wouldn't

want to stay there

I have a home of my own, right here

So I thanked my memory for the trip and made

to depart

For after all home is with my family, Home resides

in my heart.

April Lipscomb 9-21-07 (C)

Imladybug270@aol.com

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Readers Feedback

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Re Eagle Award by Jennifer Oliver.    I know another of those dads, my husband, who survived the horrors of that war and never let on that the pain wrecked his heart and mind.  He loved his family too much to share that agony.  Many thanks for this one Jennifer.                Louise

Here is our Storytime Tapestry Angels: Also, I would like to thank those of you who chose to be a silent angel and gave an anonymous donation to keep Storytime Tapestry up and running.

Clara Westerfer, Mark Crider, Rosanne Catalano, Paula Booher, Kay Seefeldt, Mariane Holbrook, Mary Ellen Grisham, Louise Nomani, Sharon Bryant, Angela Walker, Hart and Helen Dowd, Keith Ready, Ginger Morgenstern, Ellie Braun-Haley, Surinder Jandu, Bob Shaw, Carol Meeks, Charlotte Hilliard, Maria Keller