Birds and the Bees Talks

I learned about the birds and the bees the summer I turned eleven. The discussion didn’t come easy. I inquired, cajoled, pleaded, begged my mother to tell me about the birds and the bees. I knew that phrase related to an adult topic, but I didn’t know what. I thought it had something to do with pregnancy but I didn’t know how. One steamy July afternoon, my mother fixed identical plates with a hot dog-no-bun, potato chips and a pool of ketchup and poured two glasses of skim milk. When she brought them to the kitchen table, she sat across from me in my brother’s place while I sat in my dad’s. “It’s time we talk about the birds and the bees” she said.

No meal ever lasted so long. We ate our hot dog-no-bun with our fingers, dipping bite by bite of the wiener into ketchup.  I stretched every chip to two, three, four bites waiting for the big reveal. She explained I could look forward to menstruation. I remember taking smaller and smaller nibbles to allow my eyes safe haven from hers when she finally dropped the bomb. She explained Kotex pads and the elastic belt, which completely confused and complicated my understanding of garter belts.

No crumbs remained on my plate when she asked if I wanted to ask a question. “That’s the birds and the bees? That’s it?” I didn’t know what else to ask her. I still didn’t know what they were. Why did they call it birds and the bees when it’s about bleeding once a month for the rest of your life? I knew all that period stuff from the day they separated the girls and boys in school for filmstrips presentations.

I knew more than that too. Earlier that summer, after dinner and a day at the park where we tanned and listened to our transistors, my best friend Debby and I sat on a blanket in our hideout where hidden from view all secret conversations were held. She loved spies. We’d argue over cuter/smarter Illya Kuriakin to my Napoleon Solo and James T. West to my Artemus Gordon. She called me to hurry over to her house to see the cave she found for our hide out. Though I couldn’t think of a mountain in the distance of the six homes between our houses, nevertheless, I was keenly disappointed that a pocket between dense picker bushes behind her garage formed the cave. A Peppermint Pattie from her father’s candy broker samples, cushions from the chaise lounge and a coke, she eventually lured me in and won me over to the value of a hide out.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she made me promise. “I got my period. I am a lady now.” Until that day, I thought my grandma was a lady, maybe the queen and anyone who crossed their legs at their ankles was a lady. Not an eleven year old. She told me her dad bought her supplies, she only needed to say the code word “corn flakes” and a box of Kotex appeared under the sink in the bathroom. Debby became a fast girl, wearing a bra.

I wanted to be like her. I implored my mother to get a bra for me. She told me I didn’t need a bra. I didn’t care, no lady wore an undershirt. Training bras? “Ridiculous” was all she said. Our school uniform included a grey/tomato plaid skirt, matching bolero over a white shirt beanie and grey socks. I used my mother’s sewing scissors to cut a Carter’s ribbed girls undershirt in the outline of a bra to be seen under the uniform shirt. The next day, on the playground before church… before school, I removed my bolero, stuck it in my book bag and joined a game of tag. Assembling once the bell rang for procession into church, one of the fast girls outted me.  She pointed at my shirt as she scowled, “What do you have on?” She saw that at best my cutting was free form. Pinking shears I thought, gave my new foundation a hint of fancy. Clearly and I told myself gladly, I was not a fast girl. I donned the bolero and pulled it tight across my flat chest.

It wasn’t until the next spring my mother took me to Penneys to be fitted for a bra. I remember the clerk  pulling out a measuring tape dragging it across my so called breasts and writing down the number. She went to a drawer, like a library card file and pulled out a white brassiere, decorated only by a tiny satin bow in the front between the cups. My period arrived three years later when I was in high school, after the doctor seduced it with a month of birth control pills.

Five years later, my mother climbed the stairs to my bedroom. The attic fan, installed at the top of the stairs covered all sound of her approach. Like an apparition, her appearance jolted me from my bed and book. Standing in the doorway, her face unreadable, I knew only that my heart raced. 

“Startled you, didn’t I?” She walked over to my dresser, carrying a handful of folded panties and opened the top drawer.

“Yeah, I guess so.” I said, as I watched her move in front of the bed.

I couldn’t remember the last time she visited my room. She didn’t climb the stairs much. The cleaning lady hauled the vacuum that looked like a metal Dachshund, cleaned the toilet and shower, dusted the furniture and Windexed the windows. My parents expected me to make my bed and keep the floors clear. Sometimes and only after Johnny Carson, when Grandma occupied the bathroom on the first floor, my dad used the bathroom outside my bedroom.  My room a hide-away, a place I read, wrote letters, listened to the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, the Bee Gees on WXYZ. I wasn’t allowed a phone, though sometimes when they were out of the house, I’d carry an extension and plug it into a jack near my bed, careful to replace it on the night stand next to dad’s pillow.

She reached in my drawer with her right hand as she set in the panties with her left. It didn’t occur to take the underwear from her, to stop her from opening the drawer. “Mary Beth”, her voice a blade I’ve since heard from my mouth when I experienced anger and frustration with my son.

“What’s THIS?” Another time, another mother might have added shit at the end of that sentence. My mother was proper. She liked “damn” and dammit”. She used “hell” but no other swearing.  She held up a plastic and foil pack of pills. “What is this?” Now, having been a mother, I know she knew before she made the climb. I know that she found the pills some time before. I know she rehearsed this confrontation. II can’t dismiss the fact, that my response changed the course of life decisions.

“Jeff and I are getting married after I graduate and get a job. They are birth control pills. You know THAT! Doctor Kay prescribed them when I was sixteen to get my period started. You know that. The doctor at school said I should go back on them.”

I didn’t tell her that the doctor said he gave them to any girl who asked for them. He would give them to his daughter. He didn’t want pregnancy to stop anyone from finishing school. He’d pass them out on the street if he could.

I graduated and got engaged the weekend before the first day of my first professional job. My mother helped me look for a dress. After telling the clerk a price range, I chose one that the clerk brought in after we were exhausted. Perfect in every way including cost: bride to be returned it after ending her engagement and I got it for under $100.  Ecstatic from finding the perfect dress, we found renewed energy to find a headpiece. Asking us about our preferences, my mother interrupted the clerk, “She won’t be wearing a veil, she doesn’t deserve one.”

When I look back, I realize I stayed with that plan to keep from making a lie of the statement I made to my mother that night in my bedroom. 

So, this brings me to my son who by seventh grade was uh, a bit faster than me. Bringing in the mail, I felt two flat disks in the envelope addressed to him from Dr. Drew. “What this, Bud?  I asked him when he got home from school. “Poker chips, chocolate coins?” Okay, I knew who Dr. Drew was and I knew he gave away free condoms. “Is it okay to open it?” He shrugged, which I took as permission. Two gold coins fell from the envelope. I saw his face… scared, embarrassed, tortured. My heart-to-heart of that moment went something like this. “Bud, this is the biggest double message you will ever hear. I am glad you got these. And, you are much too young emotionally to use them. Please keep them for an emergency. Please don’t need to use them until you are older.”

I graduated from college with a degree in health education. Internships included talks on venereal disease. In the years prior to the Dr. Drew mail, I never shied from talking with my son about sex and related issues. The envelope of two free condoms let me know he saw himself a man and he would make his own decisions about sex. I would not attempt to influence his decisions about relationships.

Thirteen years passed since that day. High school, college and girl friends have come and gone for him. Getting ready to move a couple years ago, I sorted what remained in his closet after he moved to his first adult apartment. In the back of a dresser drawer with mismatched socks, a couple wadded ties and t-shirts with graphics from eighties sitcoms, I found a tiny Marshall Fields' jewelry box wound round and round from side to side and end to end with scotch tape, marked “In case of emergency.” Which leads me to believe he is exactly who I hoped he’d be, a man who is prepared for any emergency that arises. And one that makes solid decisions about his life. My birds and bees talk with him came as installments, like a mother bird feeding regurgitated information when needed, like a bee moving from flower to flower for nourishment.