Once a year we round up the young ones and separate them by gender. The kids have known this day was coming in the way that kids know things via the inter-gradal gossip chain. Word about stuff like this gets around. ‘They talk about what!? At school? And the teachers are all there?!” The note we send home fills things in for the kids who somehow missed it.
They all act like they’re dreading it, it’s going to be the worst thing to ever happen to them. They don’t know if they can handle people talking about ‘that stuff’ in school. But when it comes time to line up, they’re all eager and giggly. It’s time to become a woman. It’s time to become a man.
All the secrecy around kissing and puberty and their bodies is about to disappear. They’re finally old enough for all that, ‘when you’re older’ stuff. The questions they had when they last had some whispered conversation with a marginally more knowledgeable friend might be answered, and if not answered, maybe there’s an opportunity to ask it.
Boys are sent to the gym with a professor from a nearby college and local puberty-ed celebrity. He does a great job of being really direct while mixing in humor at the right spots. He also talks about sexual abuse in a very straightforward way. “There are men who will want to touch your penis. There are men who might want you to touch their penises. You tell them NO!” The boys are really good listeners. Dead silence, no laughing or joking. This is serious stuff . . . and no one wants to call attention to himself in this moment.
At one point the speaker tells the kids that they will start to get hair ‘down there’ and that maybe some of them already have. The kid on my row whose parents couldn’t come leans over to let me know that he doesn’t have that yet. I nod straight-faced and turn back to the front.
Ladies go to the library with a nurse. She also does a very good job. She tells us that the average age for girls to start their periods is now 11 because of all the hormones in our foods. This is 3 years sooner than when I started and 5 years sooner than my mother. She talks about having cancer and tells about how they cut out her uterus and took off her breasts, all the things that she felt made her a woman and in the end she’s still a woman. Our bodies are all different, but we are women. I want to cry a bit at the end.
Growing up was weird, exciting and disappointing. The first time I got my period I was at my grandparents’ house in the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. I was excited. For about a day. And then I realized what an annoyance this was going to be and it was a little infuriating. I have to deal with this every month until I’m old?! And now I’ve been ‘dealing with it’ for 20 years and have yet to make babies that would justify its existence. And yet, I can’t hate it, because as long as it’s there, there’s that promise. That’s what puberty and maturing is, promises being fulfilled, promises being made. Awkward, uncomfortable, but undeniable progress. Adulthood is coming at last, such bittersweetness.
And then glory of glories and none too soon, everyone gets a free deodorant.