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The past two months have been a bit rough. My father died and, if that wasn't awful enough, there was an ungodly amount of sturm und drang in the aftermath of his passing. As the once official black sheep of my family, I found myself in the role of the family moderator and peacekeeper, an ironic twist in the drama. I need not tell you, intelligent and wise BlogHer.org reader, that all of this would wear on the patience of the best of us, and that a break from the madness as well as the grief that sits heavy and aching in the core of the chaos, is necessary, if not required.
I attempted a solo getaway to a beautiful Zen Center/organic farm in Northern California. I was hoping to find the serenity of a silent retreat as eloquently described by Contributing Editor Mata H., but I experienced a wave of anxiety on the second day. It was clearly not the right time to be alone and I drove back to be with my husband, daughter, dog and, admitedly, to cheer myself with choice television viewing along the lines of The Colbert Report and Project Runway reruns.
Despite the healing powers of Stephen Colbert, I knew that a change of pace and scenery was still a helpful idea. Having witnessed my family's not-fun dysfunction, my husband agreed that a getaway was needed, so he took a look at his calendar, made a couple of calls, and happily announced that I should get on the 'net and look for cozy lodgings, maybe up in wine country.
Then, he went upstairs to the medicine cabinet, shook a bottle and issued another happy announcement -
"Oh, good! It looks like I have enough Cialis for our trip!"
Thus, we were off on our Cialis Holiday.
I suppose we could have called our little sex vacation something tame and cutesy like an Escape to Romance, or a Second Honeymoon, but in our 50s we've become rather blunt and matter-of-fact about our lusty marriage. I hasten to assure you that should you invite us to a dinner party at your lovely home, you need not worry that our conversational contributions would include a play-by-play of our latest romp, or our fondness for certain practices, some of which may or may not involve chocolate sauce.
However, I did let off some shout-outs about our gratifying sex life on the ever entertaining Twitter, the quasi-chat room where participants describe what they're up to in 140 characters or less. Our cozy lodgings, little cabins on the Russian River area of the Sonoma wine region, had no TV, phones or a trendy ipod dock, but it did have blazing fast wifi. We were enjoying a fine bottle of local vintage, so I couldn't help but do a little sharing on a series of 'Tweets':
"...hubs & I were testing out Cialis."
Silence on my Twitter homepage.
"I guess I just told Twitter the hubs and I are having a sex holiday. HELLO TWITTER, WE'RE 58 & 52 AND WE JUST HAD SEX. Thank you Cialis!"
To which someone who follows/subscribes to my Tweets remarked:
"@GraceD has also now told us hubs takes cialis, I'll bet he's craaaazy about this :-p"
(I interpret the :-p to indicate tongue hanging disapproval, perhaps an equivalent to a tsk, tsk.)
I replied:
"Hubs prefers I discuss Cialis rather than the valuation of his start-up or anything that would send the SEC to his company."
I read the discourse to the hubs who said, "Damn right I don't want you talking about the start-up."
He said nothing about the Cialis.
Why be squeamish about this? After all, there's a lot of us healthy mid-lifers and elders enjoying our sexuality, as verified by a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Fellow Twitterite and Contributing Editor Laurie White who noticed my unabashed Twitter commentary, kindly provided me with this link to a Washington Post article on these findings:
Many people maintain rich, active sex lives well into their 80s, according to the first detailed examination of sexuality among older Americans.
The nationally representative survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults ages 57 to 85 found that more than half to three-quarters of those questioned remain sexually active, with a significant proportion engaging in frequent and varied sexual behavior.
"Older people value sexuality as an important part of life," said the researcher who led a major survey of more than 3,000 adults.
Sexual problems do increase with
