Some other mothers on our block--the cowards--elected mine to enlighten their daughters about sex, the Big Secret that defined being in the know in those days. I’d been bugging Mom to spill the beans on the mystery for a long time, because whatever it was, it was causing gaggles of giggling girls (sorry) to torment us clueless types (well, me) in the school bathroom. But my mother had said no, my sister was still too young. Insensitive to my outcast status, she intended to have the conversation as infrequently as possible--apparently even if it meant renting a hall.
Finally, one summer afternoon, we were gathered around Mom at our kitchen table--several neighbor girls, my sister and I, the last people on the planet not to know. Ever the charmer, I delayed the moment by whining mightily that since I’d had to wait so-ooo long, my sister should be required to leave the room, shut her ears tight, and stay in the dark until she reached my age as of that day. And not a day sooner.
Hmph. Overruled.
But I was proud of my mother for being the brave one in the neighborhood, and I felt a little sorry for the girls who weren’t learning it from their own moms, hiding in their own kitchens. That is, until my mother got started. Whatever great news she was building up to, something about men and women (and even I’d gathered that much), she was telling us--more often than necessary, it seemed to me--that something, no matter how disgusting it was going to sound at first, felt really, really good. Really good. She was transported, her face taking on a look I did not recognize and did not want to see again--especially not with my friends around.
Feeling? Good? Mom, please . . . the entire concept of a woman feeling good in that era began and ended with a TV commercial for bath salts. Besides, why couldn’t the various repressions I’d been dutifully enduring from her be a two-way street? But no, there she sat, regaling the gaping neighbor girls and my cheater sister. My mother, out of control.
Finally, out she came with the briefest possible specifics.
“I knew it! I knew it!” I yelled. I hopped up to get in neighbor-girl faces, strong-arming my hapless witnesses into assenting to this vital fact, which so obviously overshadowed the actual revelation itself. Attempting to relate how I’d come to form my brilliant if unvoiced best guess, I conjured my TV-black-and-white mental image of how a man and a woman--doubtless in some bare, 1950s hotel room--could walk naked toward each other. Note if you please, neighbor girls, the aligning positive and negative spaces, so that, if they kept walking . . .
But no-ooo, apparently only my mother was allowed to talk about it--and she was done talking.
If only I’d been confident enough to have posited my theory in the school bathroom, but again, no. Beyond the obvious social risks, being wrong would have posed a graver danger: giving the world an idea that people would otherwise never have thought of on their own.
Finally, one summer afternoon, we were gathered around Mom at our kitchen table--several neighbor girls, my sister and I, the last people on the planet not to know. Ever the charmer, I delayed the moment by whining mightily that since I’d had to wait so-ooo long, my sister should be required to leave the room, shut her ears tight, and stay in the dark until she reached my age as of that day. And not a day sooner.
Hmph. Overruled.
But I was proud of my mother for being the brave one in the neighborhood, and I felt a little sorry for the girls who weren’t learning it from their own moms, hiding in their own kitchens. That is, until my mother got started. Whatever great news she was building up to, something about men and women (and even I’d gathered that much), she was telling us--more often than necessary, it seemed to me--that something, no matter how disgusting it was going to sound at first, felt really, really good. Really good. She was transported, her face taking on a look I did not recognize and did not want to see again--especially not with my friends around.
Feeling? Good? Mom, please . . . the entire concept of a woman feeling good in that era began and ended with a TV commercial for bath salts. Besides, why couldn’t the various repressions I’d been dutifully enduring from her be a two-way street? But no, there she sat, regaling the gaping neighbor girls and my cheater sister. My mother, out of control.
Finally, out she came with the briefest possible specifics.
“I knew it! I knew it!” I yelled. I hopped up to get in neighbor-girl faces, strong-arming my hapless witnesses into assenting to this vital fact, which so obviously overshadowed the actual revelation itself. Attempting to relate how I’d come to form my brilliant if unvoiced best guess, I conjured my TV-black-and-white mental image of how a man and a woman--doubtless in some bare, 1950s hotel room--could walk naked toward each other. Note if you please, neighbor girls, the aligning positive and negative spaces, so that, if they kept walking . . .
But no-ooo, apparently only my mother was allowed to talk about it--and she was done talking.
If only I’d been confident enough to have posited my theory in the school bathroom, but again, no. Beyond the obvious social risks, being wrong would have posed a graver danger: giving the world an idea that people would otherwise never have thought of on their own.
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