Let’s just say I have never been one to cover my tracks very well. It was always obvious that I have been somewhere either by the mess I leave or the giant indention in the chair where I have been sitting. I’m bad at covering things up. This past Sunday night was no exception.
Friday, I met with my wonderful blondes from supper club with 3b in tow. We ate at Bannock Bistro on Central and when I say ate, more like a feeding frenzy as per usual with us. I got drunk on some sort of concoction called a “Bikinitini”. All I know it that it is blue and it goes down like a $15 hooker. Saturday, I had a last minute party for 3b’s birthday with his best girls from his hometown. Champagne and my mother’s recipe for vodka punch flowed. For those of you who knew my mother, you know this stuff is lighter fluid. Sunday was the christening of my great niece and 3b and I skipped the church for the bar at the Red Front in Troy and bloody Mary’s while waiting for the families to show up. Me, my girl and 3b left around 3:30pm and I spent the remainder of the day on the couch with my girl watching TV. It was around 7pm when we went upstairs and my secret was discovered.
Let’s just say I had my period and to spare you the graphic details, I didn’t do my usual good job of hiding it.
Girl: Mommy, are you OK?
Me: Of course, why?
Girl: (Graphic detail followed by tears that I was in pain)
Me: It is a tampon, honey. Mama uses them when she has her “lady days”.
Lady days is what I have named my PMS and period. I didn’t want to have this conversation ever so I would tell her that when Mommy is cranky it is because of her “lady days” and that it would pass in a week and please don’t set Mommy off. Now I have been caught and she is not accepting “I will tell you when you are older”, for an answer. I was really devastated because I feel eight years old is too young to worry about the plague that will be with you one week a month for most of your life. And yes, I think of it as a plague. I don’t think of it as a blessing and all that happy woman horseshit. It sucks. I breakout, bloat, cry, get mean, get drunk and pass out on the bathroom floor of the Capital bar downtown. P.S. I am still convinced I was drugged. I am not blessed with this at 46. I am freaking exhausted and want it to end with little to no fuss. Certainly not the same way it came to be. It won’t happen quietly. I will probably have my period until I am 60. I don’t need to ruin things for her but I did.
After I convinced her that I was fine, I told her to brush her teeth, hop into the shower and when she was in jammies to come into my room and I would explain everything. I hear the shower and do the only thing I can do; I call Capri. She is not home. I call her cell. No luck. I call my sister. Nothing. I find out the next day that they were both at the same fundraiser in Troy. That’s my stupid luck. So, I turn to technology. I Google, what happens during my period? Thankfully, the information seemed correct. My girl comes into my bed and we look at the screen and I try to make it as boring and as a matter of fact as I can. I tell her that if she has any questions to come to me first because I rather she hear what I have to say rather than her friends. I tell her that no subject is off limits no matter how many “happy pills” I take during the conversation. She asks the usual questions. She asks does it hurt, could you bleed to death, how old will I be when I get my “lady day” and so on. Then she asks a question I cannot answer because there is not an answer:
Girl: Do boys get a period?
Me: No babe. Boys are built differently.
Girl: Then what happens to them?
Me: Well, nothing really.
Girl pauses and a light bulb goes off.
Girl: Wait a minute. Girls have to go through all that for most of their lives and then carry a baby and go through all that pain and boys don’t. Is that what you are saying?
Me: Well, pretty much.
Girl: How is that fair?
Me: It isn’t. It is just the way it is.
Girl: I can’t believe this. Why did I have to be a girl? This really is so unfair. I don’t want to talk about this anymore or ever again. I wanna be a boy and just have it easy through life.
Me: Honey, I know you are looking for a way for me to make this better but it is what it is.
She said she is really sick of me saying “it is what it is”. She hates the way I say it because I do my Robert De Niro from Goodfellas when they are telling Henry to go back to his wife. I do it every time and I feel I do it brilliantly.
I don’t know if I handled this the way I was supposed to and I am sure I have offended someone by calling it a plague. I would rather be honest that have her get hit with brain splitting cramps and wonder when the blessing happens. I don’t think I will win mother of the year. I keep trying.
“nothing happens to boys”? We’ve got to live with (& bite our tongues & continue to be nice even when we are called insensitive dick-heads) you ladies while you have your “lady days.” Just saying.