My mother and I were staying over at my aunt’s house,
When my aunt came into the room where my cousin and I were sitting,
And calmly told us that girls experience this thing,
Which causes them to bleed every month.
She told us this,
So that if it happened at school,
We wouldn’t get scared.
I was stunned.
I didn’t understand what she meant.
She didn’t give any further explanation.

“Yeah, I know about that,” my cousin said.
So I couldn’t ask for further elaboration.
It felt as if it was something everyone knew,
And I was the only one who didn’t.
So I asked my mother.
“Yes, that does happen,” she said.
“What if I don’t want it to happen to me?
What should I do?” I asked.
She laughed, and said,
“There’s no such thing.
It’s a normal thing that happens to all of us.”

I waited until we got back home,
And asked my father.
“My aunt said so and so,
And I don’t want to catch this disease.
What should I do?”
My father is a doctor,
And he made sure while we were growing up,
To let us know that our relationship is more than just a father-daughter relationship.
We were also friends.
So he explained everything to me.
He told me that it wasn’t a disease,
And that it was something God created in women,
That allowed them to have babies when they wanted to.

He explained ovulation to me,
Hormones, and the uterine lining,
In a very simplified way.
It wasn’t scary at all.
He told me the name of these hormones,
And what happened when their levels changed.
He explained everything in detail,
And told me the scientific names of everything,
So that if I decided to look them up on Google,
I would understand it.

He would answer all my questions,
And assure me that there was no such thing as a wrong or inappropriate question.
If I asked about something that was too complicated for me to understand at my age,
He would tell me,
“Look, there are things if I explained to you right now, you wouldn’t understand,
Because you’re still too young.
Wait a year and I’ll tell you.
That way you’ll be able to understand everything.”

My mother wasn’t capable of explaining these things to me in a calm and simplified way,
But she managed not to make me feel scared,
And calmly dealt with the whole thing.
She made sure I knew it was a normal development in my life.
My father taught me that it was okay to talk about it,
And that there was no such thing as inappropriate questions.
The changes our bodies go through as men and women are not something to be ashamed of.
It’s not taboo.