She handed me a tampon when I was twelve and walked out of the bathroom. That was the entirety of the conversation. I do not blame her for what she didn’t say. I am, however, going to say more.
I learned what was happening to my body from a friend’s older sister and a paperback I bought at a Walgreens. I learned what to expect from my first OB-GYN visit from a sitcom. I learned about endometriosis at twenty-eight, when I was diagnosed with it after eleven years of being told my pain was normal. None of this is unusual. The pattern — girls learning about their bodies through books and friends and television, mothers handing them a single tampon and exiting the room — is the modal American experience. It is not the only one. It is the most common one.
When my daughter started her period last year, I sat down on the bathroom floor next to her and we had a forty-minute conversation. I told her what I had not been told. I told her what I had wished I had been told. I told her some of what I had learned about my own body in my thirties. I think the forty minutes was about thirty-five too long for her. She rolled her eyes at me approximately six times. I know she will remember most of it. I am betting on the eye rolls now and the memory later.