My friend Andrea over at The Creative Junkie just posted a hysterical piece about how she explained the birds & bees to her 5 year old, after finding the child and a friend playing Ken and Barbie make a baby. I'm sure that was horrible for Andrea. My heart goes out to her.
When Alesia came home, I realized that I was now parent to a 13 year old girl and I had no idea if she knew anything about where babies came from. She was physically about the size and shape of an American 10 year old, and had not started her periods, but I had to do something.
I remembered my poor grandmother, raised in a proper Victorian home where babies arrived every year or two and nobody knew anything. She started her periods and thought she was dying of some terrible disease, until one of her 6 sisters set her straight. I didn't want that to happen to Alesia.
I invited my friend Kate, who is a Russian interpreter/translator, to come over and visit, about two days after we arrived back home from Moscow. Alesia was still getting used to fast food and microwave ovens.
Kate was great about explaining things to Alesia in Russian. While she was there it occurred to me I needed her help. Kate agreed to explain the facts of life to Alesia in Russian, which was extraordinarily kind of her.
First, Kate asked Alesia if she knew anything about sex or where babies come from. Alesia said yes, of course, a man and woman take off their clothes and get in bed. That was it. That was all she knew. I wish we could have stopped right there, but I knew it was important for Alesia to understand her own body and how it worked. Kate explained the whole thing, in detail. I was fascinated by the hand gestures. Kate must be part Italian, somewhere in her background, because she has very expressive hands. Alesia's eyes were huge, wide as saucers, much the same expression as she has in this photo, made less than a week before she got here:
Still, when she finally got her period it was horrific, for both of us. Lots of pain, and mess. The language barrier was still an issue. More troubling was the fact she had forgotten a lot of Kate's talk and was just horrified by the whole situation. I was, too. Lots of crying, done by us both.
Now things are fine, except for the PMS. I won't even go there.
With me, Mother tried to explain scientifically, exactly what happens. I was 9 years old, and Mother knew I was in danger of starting my periods early, which in fact did happen. So Mother gave me a book and told me to read it. It was called Wonderfully Made. I Googled the book title, just for fun, and I found this funny blog which shows a lot of the illustrations from the book. As you can see, it was not a very informative book. I realized pretty quickly that amidst all the neato illustrations, there was no real explanation of how the sperm and egg actually got together. That was a crucial piece of information and I was outraged that book didn't cover it. Curiosity was my undoing.
Sometime around this same time, the early 1970's, my parents purchased a book called The Joy of Sex. I am sure they tried to hide it from us, but my brother and I found it. It had beautiful pen and ink drawings of a hippie couple having sex. The biggest fascination for me was the carefully drawn armpit hair on the woman. Up until then, our main source of information was the Better Homes and Gardens baby book, which had a small photo of a woman breastfeeding a baby.
When Mike turned 12, I felt like I probably needed to go ahead and explain things to him, because he was going into adolescence. Actually, the moment I saw a pimple on his face I had a panic attack, thinking, OMG, I need to explain all the icky boy stuff to him like unwanted erections and wet dreams and I have only the vaguest idea of how to talk about those things...
I emailed my brother and several close male friends to see if any of them would be willing to talk to Michael about the facts of life and all the icky boy stuff. To my surprise, none of them jumped at the chance. My brother, ever the diplomat, expressed complete disinterest in the whole situation.
I was telling Mother about it and she reminded me that when my father tried to explain the facts of life to my brother Bruce, it was a disaster. First, he sat Bruce down and tried to talk to him. Bruce ran out of the room and was not seen again for hours. Next, Dad took Bruce out on the lake, in our boat. He went out to the middle of the lake and cut off the engine. As soon as he started the spiel, Bruce jumped out and swam to shore. Finally, Dad got Bruce in the car and got on the interstate, doing about 70 mph, and Bruce was trapped. Dad explained the whole thing. At the end of the speech, Bruce said "I knew all that already. How fast are you going again?" They got home and Bruce was not seen again for hours.
With me, I had the vague and inadequate Wonderfully Made. Then I got an explanation from Mother that left me completely puzzled. It took years for me to figure out what happened between a man and a woman, and I remember thinking, Ken and Barbie cannot do that because their arms and legs aren't flexible enough. I secretly hoped I didn't have to grow armpit hair to make a baby. Sometime during this whole thing, we saw a film in school where a hippie couple gave birth in a lagoon, which looked a little weird but not too bad, and another one where they showed the baby emerging from the screaming mother covered in blood and ick. I thought to myself OK, this is worse than a horror movie. No way can that not hurt like hell.
Around the same time, I asked Dad what he thought the first time he saw me. That was a loaded question. With Bruce, Mom kept going in and out of labor, for a week. He couldn't make up his mind to be born. Mom would have pains, and they'd go to the hospital. The pains would stop, and they'd go home. Finally, there was a horribly long labor, and Dad set up a card table in the waiting room. All his friends came and they played poker, drank beer, smoked, and grew facial hair. Mom was down the hall dealing with a boy and a kidney infection. That was 1959.
In 1962, with me, Mom waited until the last minute to tell anyone she was in labor. I was almost born in a folding chair at a 4th of July Party while Mother ate barbeque and peaches, except the host of the party was her doctor. He noticed she was wincing every few minutes. Next thing you know, he gives Mother something to slow the labor, pops her over to the hospital, reaches in and unwraps the cord from around my neck, and there I was. By the time Dad got there with the beer and the poker chips, I had arrived. He said he took one look at me and, he told me later, he thought "She looks like a skint squirrel."
Thank you, Pappy Yoakum. What a Hallmark moment.
Anyway, I digressed. Back to Michael.
With Mike, I wasn't sure of all his English words, and so my explanation had to be rudimentary. He kept looking at me like, you've GOT to be kidding me. I finally ended up drawing pictures. He got a look on his face similar to the one below. I started explaining the icky boy stuff and he bellowed "I KNOW!! Stop talking!" and it occurred to me since we weren't in a moving car, I better be quiet.
Now, I have already decided that when I have adolescent grandchildren, I am going to volunteer to tell them the facts of life. I'm not going to provide icky details of anything. I am going to say when a mommy and dadddy want a baby - or when a single lady pushing 40 wants a baby by herself instead of waiting for Mr. Right Now - they call an agency, do a homestudy, and some months later, there's a new baby in the house. I like that. Clean and tidy.
Or I will just tell them to Google "procreation."
Not YouTube though. No reason to go there.
