It wasn’t much better when my mom picked me up. She immediately dragged me to the drug store to get pads. It was then that I realized she lacked sensitivity. And an indoor voice.
They say that girls these days develop much earlier, so, in an effort to avoid similar humiliation for my daughter, I gave her the rundown when she was about 9. I told her it’s her body’s way of practicing building a nest for a baby, which, I pointed out, she wasn’t allowed to have until she is 30. I tried to make it positive and talk about it matter-of-factly, but there’s just no super happy way to tell a 9-year-old girl that when said nest practice is over, “blood will come out of your hoo-hoo.” We came up with a code. If she got “it” at school, she could call and say “code red” – I assured her no one in the office would have any idea what she was talking about.
One day awhile later, I picked her up from school, and she excitedly ran up to me and whispered in my ear.
“Code red.”
What? Huh? Nahhhhh. Surely, it couldn’t have already happened. “No,” she assured me. “I have it now.”
It took awhile for me to collect my brain cells. Then it occurred to me. For two straight days, she had eaten barbequed beets – the red kind. I summoned her and explained that root vegetables – not development – were to blame for the red tint she observed. It’s been four years. She hasn’t eaten a beet since.
But she has started doing that head-bobbing sassy thing, and her chest is sprouting. I pray that her erratic behavior is because of hormones and not a more serious personality disorder. She’s mad, and then she’s sad, and then she’s possessed by Satan. If there were an international eye-rolling competition, she’d bring home the trophy for sure.
When I look at my daughter, I see the baby I cuddled, the helpless little tiny thing who’s every need I had to meet. I don’t see boobs and boys she likes and attitude and independence. Sometimes I wish there was a reverse button to hit, one that would take us back to pacifiers and high chairs and pureed pears. Oh wait. That would mean diapers. Never mind.
Gabrielle is the single mother of an 11-year-old son,13-year-old daughter and an epileptic puppy who is scared of the dark. In her spare time….wait….she has no spare time. She does, however, dream about pedicures, hiring a maid and figuring out what rotten food item is making her car stink.
Author: Mile High Mamas
Amber Johnson
HILARIOUS! Funny story: my neighbor didn’t tell her daughter anything about periods and when she was about 8 or 9, she visited some cousins who told her all about it. She was traumatized. Several weeks later, my friend was in the store and her daughter started weeping but wouldn’t tell her mom what it was all about. Finally, she forced it from her. “Mom, is it true I’m going to bleed down there EVERY SINGLE MONTH?”
Welcome to the club, kid.
Linda
LOLOLOOOLOLOL. Snorting beets out of my nose right now.