Retracing our steps, we headed briefly north on the I-45 feeder road, turned west on Spring Stuebner, past St. Edward’s Catholic Church and past the brand-new Dove Meadows subdivision. Rick was sleepy, leaning into Mom’s lap in the front seat, almost purring like a cat. Dad, eyes forward, was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the tune on the radio, now reduced to a reasonable volume. Kim was across the backseat from me, quietly admiring her stickpin, which she had taken carefully out of its box.
As for Little Amy, she had climbed up on the shelf behind the backseat. Though it was unsafe, in a car traveling fifty-five miles per hour on a bumpy, rural road with almost zero shoulder, it was an accepted, known practice, as no one made a move to stop her. She had her football helmet on, of course, strapped completely and tightened to a game-ready standard. Lying on her side, she had managed to line up the ear hole on the right side of the helmet with the car speaker. Listening, smiling and bug-eyed, she quietly sang along, “Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight.”
It was another inappropriate song, this time sung word-for-word by the ten-year-old version of myself. I was fully geared up for a pretend NFL game and singing about daytime sex.
Good Lord. I wondered if our parents were as stressed about “appropriateness” as we were back in the future. Seriously, while Harry Potter’s supposed demonic connection and Miley Cyrus’ swing-ride were intriguing in terms of their long-term effects, these folks, here in 1978, were singing about SEXUAL RELATIONS openly. And, in this case, “Everything’s a little clearer in the light of day.” Think about it, “EVERYTHING IS CLEARER.” Hello! They are talking about naked sex parts, being clearer, in the daytime, when you can’t turn the lights off and hide them. On the one hand, it was disturbing. Where was the filter? On the other, it was reassuring—I had turned out “fine,” clearly a relative term, and knew all the sex words to all the sex songs, as a small child.
Returning to Northampton, I was overwhelmed again with its palpable beauty. As captivated as I was, I felt sad and empty. It was all so fleeting, destined to fade away just like my grandparents—both gone in a flash, forever.
Maybe that’s what social media is about, a fruitless attempt to recreate something special, a feeling, an emotion. If that weren’t enough, we seem to collectively believe that the moment can only be validated by sharing it with others. In reality, we aren’t recreating anything, because we can’t. Soliciting one hundred likes doesn’t make it any realer, in your heart.
Turning into the driveway, I wondered what was next. Looking at my watch I realized that it wasn’t long until Mary was supposed to return. Would she really come back? Once out of the hot car and through the back door, I had that sneaking feeling I sometimes get. OK, I get it once a month. Retreating quickly back upstairs, I darted to the bathroom and disrobed. Crap. I had been correct. I had started my period. I had always hated it when my “time” coincided with vacation, and this was worse … unplanned time travel, when I didn’t even remember packing my bags in the first place.
I went back out to my suitcase. This may well have been the most ridiculous sequence of events in my entire life, thus far, but I knew myself well enough to know, regardless of the time or place, I would have come prepared for my period. I was always prepared—like a Menstrual Scout—with a small package of the necessities. Just in case.
Rifling through my bag, I found the emergency supplies, packed neatly in a small box rather than a Ziploc bag. Reviewing its contents, I was not so much shocked as wholly disappointed to find what looked like a set of straps and three or four bulky pads. Clearly, whoever packed this had not yet tapped into the cutting-edge technology of beltless feminine napkins.
I was mystified by this. I was convinced that most of the world had moved on to sticker-pads. Regardless of why, this package of underwhelming protection would have to suffice until I returned to my own time. Just to be sure, I looked in my purse, emptying the entire contents on the bed. Next I moved on to the train case, and finally, my satchel. Surely I had some belt-free business, or an ancient, awkward-shaped, non-plastic tampon somewhere.
No.
With desperation creeping in, I took the small box of horrors into the bathroom and searched through the cupboards. Nothing in the three brown cabinets under the sink, nothing in the towel cabinets over the wooden, built-in hamper, and yes, nothing in the hamper itself.
Crap.
I would never, in a million years, ask Mom if she had anything. No—this was something, both now and then, that I would have asked Kimber. Let’s see, she was twelve years old now. When did she start? I couldn’t be sure, but to the best of my knowledge it hadn’t happened yet. Her first period was a dramatic, memorable instance. We were in the Bahamas, on vacation in July, near her birthday, and she “started.” All I really remember was her gasping and exclaiming that it was “her worst birthday EVER!” Rick and I were thrown out of the hotel room, into the lush tropical surroundings, Rick dancing around yelling, “She got her period, and I don’t even know what it is!” I was laughing hysterically. Obviously.
I could also remember when Kim received “the talk” at school that covered periods, lady flowers and such, only because she flaunted her newfound knowledge. Then she received “the box” in the mail. I wondered where the box factory was and who worked there and, then, when it went out of business. When did young American girls stop receiving that special post-fifth-grade “talk” parcel? Or were they still receiving it? Because what did I know, I had two boys.
The one thing I was absolutely sure of, the scrap of undeniable truth I could conjure up after thirty-six hours in la-la land, was that I knew nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Mom’s approach to “the talk,” “the box,” and “blossoming” was apparently less than direct, because I could still remember finding the box, Kim’s box, unopened and slightly damp on my dad’s workbench in the back corner of the garage. Presumably, it had been there a while.
Not knowing what it was, I opened it, probably carefully gouging its contents free with a screwdriver. Inside was a sanitary belt, the first and only one I’d ever seen, that is, before now. Back then, I had shoved the contents back into the box and placed it back on the workbench. I never mentioned it to anyone and as far as I knew, it was never discussed.
Was it just me or was this a central theme in my upbringing?
Though even two days ago this would have been a major thinking point for me, now it seemed so ordinary. First, I got it, I was here, back in time, and this is how we were surviving. It, the silence, was basically a genetic gift. Next, having learned as an adult that we aren’t all as unique as we think we are, I understood that we couldn’t be that different from the millions of other families that lived in suburbia, with workbenches in garages, with musty boxes of outdated sanitary products. We weren’t the only ones who didn’t discuss things.
Back to the task at hand, my immediate need for absorbency,
I examined the belt. It was rose-colored and elastic. Hanging from the front and back of the main part were two smaller straps. Each had a fastener on the end that looked like a pink monster.
The pads, or I guess napkins in this case, were huge … gigantic. What was interesting, and confusing, and disgusting, was that the pads didn’t have any obvious way of being attached to the belt-like item. Instead of any plastic connectors that paired with the metal monsters on the straps, the pad had loads of extra “fabric” at each end. The only thing that made any sense was to tie off the pad end on each of the monsters, a connection that looked dubious at best.
That was the moment I needed the Menstrual Scout handbook, or, at the very least, my son’s Cub Scout handbook, to tie the proper knot. This was as important a knot as I’d make in my adult life, to keep this entire farce connected. Anything less would mean an embarrassing leak onto my breeziness. And again, I was on the road, meaning there wasn’t much backup in the way of extra clothing.
I needed to completely disro
be from the waist down. It was a lot like a visit to the ob-gyn—without the awkward silence or perhaps the oversharing that happens when you stare at the ceiling while a stranger has his or her hand up your hoo-hah. Why did I sometimes say “thank you” while she was doing whatever it was she did down there? Totally ludicrous. Then, on top of all of that, I got a bill in the mail.
In both cases, it would be a relief to clean up, put your clothing back on and rush out to your car, blocking it all out— acting like it never even happened. Again, it was an awful lot like real life.
After pulling the belt up to my midsection, where I guessed I would tighten it once I got it all rigged up, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to tie the pad, or napkin if you will, onto the back connector without help. Then it struck me, oh the irony of standing in the blue bathroom on the third floor of my childhood home, with the plaid wallpaper and the linoleum floor, the same place where just a few short years from now my big sister Kim would show me how a tampon worked. In fact, she had basically done that first application for me.
Maybe I should call downstairs and get her up here, at twelve, to work this out for me, in the same bathroom. You know what? She probably would and could do it. God bless her and her perfect hair and small thighs. Who in the hell did she think she was?
Removing the belt, I could tell that it was not going to be easy to keep the apparatus in one place or untangled, mainly because I couldn’t even keep it straight during the act of simply taking it off and putting it back on. I tied the end of the pad to what I thought was the back of the belt. Next was putting it on again. Everything had to be positioned correctly so I could attach the front of the napkin to the belt. Good Lord, those adhesive pads, those whispers from the heavens! I hadn’t really ever appreciated them before, but now they seemed more crucial than the Wi-Fi signal staying steady during my Netflix marathon. Better than that was tampons, any kind of tampons. Surely those, even in 1978, would be better than this crap.
It was crap.
Putting my clothes back on, I came back out into the bedroom and looked over at the flip-clock. 4:32 p.m. Damn, I was going to have to get my stuff together and get downstairs.
It was almost time.
Placing my things carefully back in the bags, I thought of Little Amy. There was so much she needed to know, but, as Mary had suggested, there were limits to what I could say or do. I knew now that my involvement, the one with lots of hindsight, would screw things up. I knew things she didn’t need to know— like why I would always wear a wide watch band on my left wrist to cover the embarrassing self-inflicted scar that never went away—and she knew things I should have already forgotten. But still, I had to do something. My instinct was to leave her a note, some sort of inspirational written message. I had always liked that kind of thing.
Over time, Little Amy would likely lose anything I gave her on paper, not entirely a bad thing given this wasn’t supposed to be a lucid memory, but at least she could have the words for a while, giving her an opportunity to consider them later, when this had all died down. When she was alone again.
I knew I couldn’t change anything, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.
Frantically, I thought about all my favorite sayings, quotes and adages, but had a difficult time coming up with anything useable. I thought of that Theodore Roosevelt quote I had always liked, the one about how it was better to do something daring and fail than to never try at all. But, there were two clear issues with this. First, and though she would think a quote from a president was heavy stuff, what in the hell did being daring have to do with surviving the next ten years? She was only nine years from hitting rock bottom, and she wouldn’t even know why or how she had gotten there. What I desperately wanted her to know was that she, or we, were going to be OK. I didn’t want her to be afraid, even if she wasn’t. Beyond the problem of content, the TR quote wouldn’t work because I couldn’t remember the exact wording, and sans my iPhone or laptop, I couldn’t look it up.
Then it hit me—whatever meaningful words I shared would have to come from my own mind. No smartphone meant that I was going to have to be smart without Google. It was a sobering thought, and if I had had more time to consider the implications, I would have realized that true intelligence has little to do with the speed of your internet connection.
My next thought was a Bible verse. I could probably come closer to hacking Scripture than American history, and it would be more apt, but I still couldn’t think of something that precisely fit my needs. Plus, I couldn’t be absolutely sure of quoting chapter and verse, which would make me seem less than legit if she wanted to look it up later, and I knew she would. I could have raced down to her room, hoping she was being a freakazoid somewhere else in the house, and copied something from the green Children’s Living Bible, but there was no time for that. The same issues applied to a covert mission down to the formal living room bookcases, which held the brown-and-black leather set of World Book Encyclopedias.
What could I possibly say anyway? Really, there were no great words that were going to gently guide her until she hit the magic age of twenty or twenty-five, when things would even out and she would begin to discover that she actually was well and fully OK. Perhaps the note was nothing more than a futile idea, designed more to make me feel better in 2014, than for her to grapple with in 1978. For all I knew, she didn’t consider what she was doing as grappling, or struggling. She was just living and this was the only life she knew. All my misplaced words could do was to paint a complicated forty-five-year-old picture of what to her was a simple ten-year-old paint-by-number. I would think my canvas was a masterpiece. She would look at it and never be able to sleep again.
With that in mind, I got up and finished my packing.
Stacking my bags neatly outside the door, I turned around and looked into the bedroom, a place that had been buried in my memory for years and was now starkly presented in front of me for one last time. If I could have imagined this sequence from the safety of my living room couch, I could have come up with hundreds of meaningful feelings and thoughts. Now that it was real, I had no idea what to think or how to feel.
Starting down the stairs I stopped. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to leave the younger me with something more than a Hickory Farms gift set and some above-average NFL items. It was the same sense of overwhelming commitment I had felt coming up the sidewalk yesterday. I didn’t know what to do, but I had to do something.
I would do something.
I returned to the shaky wooden chair in front of the desk. Looking through the drawers, I couldn’t find anything to write on. Though I had the little notebook tucked away in one of my big pockets, that hardly seemed suitable. I sat back and sighed, scanning the rest of the room. I was running out of time. I’d have to settle for tearing a piece of paper out of the notebook. Staring at the blank page, I wondered how, in my own words, I could possibly sum up everything I wanted to say. How can you adequately express the way you want somebody as important as your own child self to approach the rest of her life? That is until they catch up to the part where you are living, only by then, you’ll already be gone.
And then it hit me. I knew what to say. I knew what to tell Little Amy so she could survive the years that separated us, not just so she could get through it, but so that she could be truly whole. It wasn’t my own words I’d use, they were somebody else’s. What they lacked in prestige—this guy wasn’t a president, prophet or poet—they made up for in actual meaning.
Just last year, my oldest son Will had filled out an application to work at Camp Olympia, the same place my husband and I had met, the font of many of my closest friendships and the place that our boys had also happily attended. He had been adamant about completing the forms himself, yet another sign that he wished to be independent from us, a frightening and delightful prospect all in the same breath.
He had told me there was a question on the form that asked him to sum up his approach to life. I had g
iven him specific advice on how to answer it, what I viewed as one of the trickier questions. As a sometimes writer and a once camp counselor, this was something I could really help him with. With me guiding the process, he couldn’t miss.
Ultimately, he had completed the application without my final approval, and I could only hope that what he had said— either word for word or in the spirit of—was basically what I had told him to say. Had he not asked me to mail the application for him, I never would have known how it turned out.
Did I read it? Absolutely.
It was a solid job, but not without a few grammatical and spelling errors. That said, I totally respected that this was his deal and resisted the overwhelming urge to “fix it” for him. Scanning all the way to the end, I came across “the” question, the one about his approach to life. The first thing I noticed was that he had only used two of the five lines provided. This immediately alarmed me, as (1). I was afraid he had given a half-ass answer and (2). The brevity was proof positive that he had not utilized my rambling pontification on the meaning of life.
Before I could completely overreact, my disappointment and alarm were squelched by reading the simple words he had scribbled. From them, I experienced one of those life-changing moments when you realize not only that your kid is going to be just fine, you also find out that he was better off not taking your advice. Will was, for real, one hundred percent certified better off doing it on his own. Without me.
The moment was humbling, disturbing and pride-filled all at the same time.
And so, now, in this impossible, crack-induced situation, I knew what to say to my ten-year-old self, because my sixteen-year-old son had told me, without actually telling me.
Little Amy,
Meeting you was the best part of this Thanksgiving. If you are ever wondering what to do, or are having a difficult time with something, here are what I think are the two most important things to remember in life:
(1). No matter what the question (ANYTHING), LOVE is always the answer.
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