Double Trouble
Education
Sometimes
the universe plays tricks on me. Like the day I found out my youngest daughter
had lice. There’s no time for the hell that ensued following that phone call,
instead I’m going to focus on the opportunities that lie ahead when you have
hours of nitpicking each evening.
Basically,
the best (and in my educated opinion, only) way to eradicate lice is to pick
them out. Daily, then periodically check until you can declare the home lice
free. In order to effectively do this I used a headlamp purchased for camping.
It was the perfect tool. The best position for nitpicking is with the child
facing away from you and you standing behind. Now that I offered the visual,
here’s the opportunity. It is an invitation for your tweens to talk to you. I
have twin girls who are ten, and they used this opportunity to divulge all
kinds of secrets without having to look me in the eye. It was wonderful, I
almost wished I had a reason to keep checking them, but alas, they were not the
source of the lice.
The first
question I was prepared for and knew it was coming; they wanted to know about
having their periods. I breezed through this like I had been training for it
for years. I talked about puberty, bras, boobs and vaginas. I explained the
cycle, the timing and that yes; you can still play sports during this time. I
was Mom of the Year, upfront and honest like I had promised myself I would be!
Then,
my oldest twin asked me how the egg (which I mentioned in the previous
discussion) was fertilized. Bam! Easy, they knew about the plant life cycle, so
I told her it was fertilized with sperm. Again, I was winning. However, the
next question knocked me off my pedestal and back into my room. She asked how
the sperm got into the woman. And I froze. My initial thought had something to
do with explaining sex to someone who still believed in Santa. I just spilled
it. My daughter is a technical thinker, so I kept it mechanical, slipped in a
reference about marriage, and gave it to her straight. I know for a fact she
was mortified. But her only question was “so, daddy has seen you naked?”
As a
mother of 3 girls I know that timing is everything. If I told one twin, I must
tell the other, and soon. I had the next child assume the position, I grabbed
my comb and turned on my headlamp and started talking. As with before I covered
periods with little issues, I’m guess she already had a hunch about that, as
she’s a little more socially savvy than her sister and would ask one of her
friends for information. I launched into my technical explanation of egg
fertilization. Complete with a marital reference. Her first question stumped me
and it was “who gets to plan the wedding?” What? It took me a bit to figure out
why that was even on her radar. I guess it was because my insinuation is that
sex happens after marriage. I mentioned earlier that her sister was more
mechanical, so it never occurred to me that she might ask me some other
questions. And they were very legitimate questions; however they required a
glass of wine.
After
some Pinot I was able to say that yes, sex happens in the house. Where else?
Well, mostly in the house. What room? Our bedroom. So, you only did it 2 times?
No, you don’t always get pregnant right away. Why would you do it again? Does
it feel good? And on and on we went. After what seemed like an hour we walked
downstairs, my husband, who was oh so clueless, was approaching us and both
kids gave a once over, looked him up and down and smirked.
He glanced
up at me; I just smiled and mumbled something about the birds and the bees
while trying not to seem like I was in a huge hurry to exit stage left.
Overall, I think I handled it like I wanted to, upfront and honestly. I’m sure
there will be more questions, and I hope the girls know they can come to me,
even if they don’t have lice.
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