Adding Insult to Injury

Yesterday, my twelve year old daughter S became a woman. It is important that you know she gave me permission to write her story. If you see her, don’t congratulate her, commiserate with her, or tell her she is blossoming before your very eyes. Whatever words of wisdom you feel the need to impart, stuff them back inside your gaping maw. Make like you don’t know, or she will never grant me such permission again. Here we go.

Is there ever a good time to get your period? I mean, other than when it’s late, obviously. What about when you are just a kid, minding your own business? You know eventually it is going to happen to you, since everyone has assured you that yes, you too will bleed once a month for approximately half your life.  Until it finally happens, though, you probably don’t think about it too much. You might carry a little bag with pads in your backpack or your purse, hoping that you never need them. Chances are pretty good that when it does start, you will be without your little bag, or your mom. Just like a real grown up.

All year, S was looking forward to the sixth grade field trip to the U.S. Whitewater Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Due to budget cuts and everyone’s general contempt for middle school aged children, the middle school has no other field trips for sixth grade students, not that this actually counts as a field trip, but more of a parent funded day away from school, one that the entire sixth grade dreamed of for the entire school year.

I dropped her off at school at 6:45 in the morning. She wore old clothes and carried a change of clothes along with a towel in a backpack. She left everything else at home, her hair brush, her spending money, her little bag of pads, because she really didn’t have any room in her bag for any extras. She didn’t even have her phone since the kids had nowhere to leave their belongings except on the seats or in the storage under the bus. I recall offering to chaperone back in the fall, but S thought it would be better if I didn’t, since even she realizes we need to have some time apart.

About three hours later, my phone rang. It wasn’t a number I recognized, so I let it go to voice mail. The phone rang again right away, the same number, which is never a good sign.

“Hello?” I said.

“Waaaaahhhhhh,” my daughter cried loudly.

Oh lord. No mom wants to hear her child cry like that, especially not when said child is on a school trip in another state.

“Calm down, baby. What’s the matter? What happened?”

“I got my period, and it’s all over the place. It’s like someone died down there!” She cried and sobbed and choked a little on her hyperbole.

“It’s ok, sweetie, it is. Aww, I’m sorry this happened on your field trip, but congratulations?” It came out like a question. Emily Post doesn’t have much to offer either under these circumstances. I just went with the first words that came out of my mouth.

“But Mom, I went to the gift shop, and all they have are tamponnnnnnssssssss!” she wailed.

“It’s going to be okay, I promise. Just calm down.” It was kind of hard to concentrate with all that crying. “Here’s what you need to do. Be brave, and go ask a teacher. A female teacher. Tell one of them you just got your period for the first time and does anyone have a pad? I promise you one of them is going to have one. There is no way they can take that many twelve year olds somewhere and not have at least one pad. Do you think you can do that?”

I assumed she could, because she hung up on me.

I waited about five minutes and then called back that mystery number. It was her chaperone. Her male chaperone.  

My poor baby. She just became a woman with someone else’s father.

“Hello?” he said.

“Um, hi, this is S’s mom. She just called me from this number. I wanted to call back and see if everything is under control.”

“Oh, hi, this is so and so’s dad. I’m so glad you called back. Yes, S is fine. The other girls have her in the bathroom and are taking care of her right now. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Well, I really appreciate that, and, um, I’m sorry you had to be the one to be there, for, um, you know, her first time and all.”

“Really, it’s fine. I have daughters.”

I thanked him and said good bye, and spent the rest of my day oscillating between feeling sorry for my little girl, wishing I had been there, crying, and laughing.

After dinner, I drove back to the school to pick her up. I had been dreading it all day, assuming she would burst into tears the minute she saw me. When she got off the bus, she waved and walked over to me, but no tears. I thought, cool, she is saving her melt down for when we get in the car, but again, nothing. She just chattered away about how much fun it was with the rafting and the zip lines and the ropes course and so on and so forth.

“Were you able to find a pad?” I asked hesitantly.

“Let me tell you what happened. I got off the phone with you and walked over to a group of teachers who were sitting doing nothing by the buses. I told them what happened, that I started my period and needed some female products. One of the teachers got out the first aid kit from the bottom of the bus and started digging through it to see if they had anything for me to use.”

I imagined them creating a pad for her out of a wad of gauze and some cloth tape. “Did they have anything?”

“Yes, she found two pads, and she gave them both to me.”

“Well, that was lucky,” I said. “What if some other girl got hers too? Someone wasn’t going to be happy. I’m glad you got them first.”

“I know,” she said. “But listen to this. While she was looking through the first aid kit, a cute little field mouse came out from the bus compartment where they keep the bags. He was so cute, Mom. He was small and brown and so sweet almost like a gerbil but with a small little tail. He kept darting about between the bags. But then one of the teachers said he was hurt. I looked, and it was so sad, he looked like he had been injured, there was blood all over his side.”

“Maybe he got his period?” I asked her. Sometimes I am the only one who thinks I am funny.

She rolled her eyes at me and continued. “The teachers looked at that poor little thing and decided he needed to be put out of his misery, you know, cause he was hurt. And then the science teacher, that one man? He just walked up to the mouse and stomped it to death. He stomped and stomped and stomped until the mouse stopped moving, and he did it all right in front of me, while I got my period. Can you believe that?”

“No, I cannot,” I said.

“It was so sad, Mom. That poor little thing. And you want to know the worst part?”

“There is something worse than crushing a mouse in front of you? Maybe I don’t.”

“On the way home, you want to know what movie they showed us on the bus?”

“No, what was it?”

“Ratatouille.”

“The one about the French rats that cook?” I asked.

“Exactly,” she said. “I had to watch a cartoon movie about mice. Mom, every time I close my eyes, I can still see him stepping on that poor little mouse, crushing it.”

I fed her a lovely dinner of boxed macaroni and cheese, and she watched television afterwards while holding her pet hamster. And that’s when she cried, fat tears raining down on her pet rodent, Sponge Bob blasting in the background.

She might be a woman now, but she is still my baby.