The Gift

I was approaching the end of Grade Eight, and still... nothing. I prayed to God—much like Margaret did—but, still... nothing. I prematurely lined my undies with maxi pads the size of small decorative pillows in hopes that their super absorbent powers would suck the lining of my uterus right out of me... but...still... nothing.

I was menstrually retarded, and it was a humiliating truth I had to face whether I liked it or not. I was tortured by all my friends coming to school and acting all smug while they waved their sanitary products in my face. While they were getting excused from gym class because of menstrual cramps, I was running to the bathroom between dodgeball sets to see if, by the grace of God, my vagina had finally taken pity on me by giving me the go-ahead to enter womanhood. The dumb bitch was against me. 

I know it's called the curse for a reason—as I would learn in later years—but at the age of thirteen and being the last of my friends to start menstruating, I considered it more of a curse not to have my period. It was like I was excluded from an elite group of girls who, with just one brown stain, had suddenly figured out the meaning of life. In just a couple of cycles, I was left alone in a world where it was assumed that the greatest stress in my day was whether I had authentic adoption papers for my Cabbage Patch Kid®, not whether I should forego wearing white pants to school. This, for me, was devastating. 

Like all things in life, that for which you desire the most—love, a great job, money—comes when you least expect it... 


I was playing Kick-the-Bucket in our cul-de-sac with a bunch of neighborhood kids. I had already made it to home base and was waiting for the rest of the kids to come out of hiding. As I was standing there, all of sudden, I felt it; the warm, slow, thick "blub." At first I thought I had pissed myself, but, no, this was different.

Suspecting my prayers had finally been answered, I ran home and locked myself in our downstairs bathroom. As I pulled down my pants, I kept reciting in my head, "Let it be it. Let it be it. Please, God, let it be it!" Little did I know, I would be uttering these exact words on several different occasions later in my life.

There it was. It...was...IT!

"MOM, come down here! Mooooooooom! HURRY-UP!"  It was a simple request that came out as a shrilling scream due to my overwhelming excitement.

My mom, in a state of sheer panic, came to my beckoning. Within seconds she was outside the bathroom door. The urgency in my voice must have lead her to believe that I had severed my femoral artery while shaving my legs, what with me being a novice groomer, and all. 

The force with which she banged on that door was more suggestive of a mother trying to rescue her children from a burning building than a mother who was about to witness her daughter's first period. 

"What,  Rachel? What is it?" Bang, bang, bang. "Let me in!" Bang, bang, bang. "The door is locked!"

Shit, I locked the door. With my pants and my espresso-colored stained undies around my ankles, I waddled to the door like a Japanese geisha in training.  

Upon opening the door, she entered, out of breath from having raced down our entire staircase in only four swift steps. 

I didn't have to say a word. She just looked at me, saw the look on my face, and then looked down at the evidence I had been so proud to have discovered seconds earlier. 

"Ooooh, darling," she beamed, cupping my face in her hands. "You're a woman!!!"  

And with these words, I started bawling. She thought I was crying over the fact that I thought my vagina, quite possibly, was excreting shit. Little did she know these were tears of joy. 

"There, there, Rachel! Don't cry," she said, trying to console me. "This is normal!"

Like she had to tell me this was normal. I'd been feeling abnormal for months, fearing I'd been afflicted with some sort of syndrome that would render me androgynous. Damn right, this was normal. 

The next day, I went to school feeling proud, mature, and quite confident that all of my friends would know just by looking at me. They did not. I had to tell them. In detail. 

Unfortunately, having had their periods for all of two months, my friends were not the least bit excited by my news. It was, like, "Welcome to the club," *eyes rolling* "How did you do on that math test?" 

It was, to say the least, anticlimactic.  

After school, I went home to find my mother waiting for me. She had a gift for me. 

"This is just a little something to welcome you in to womanhood." 

What could it be? A tennis bracelet? A Swatch watch? A diamond encrusted chastity belt? 

She handed me a Gund® stuffed animal. It was a pig. Named Hamlet. 

This is where the story gets a little confusing for me...

By giving me a stuffed animal, was my mother somehow suggesting that I was on some sort of precipice, in danger of falling out of her reach forever? Was Hamlet her last-ditch effort at holding on to her little girl? 

Or...

Was this gift symbolic? After all, it wasn't so much a stuffed animal, as it was a stuffed animal that was, well... a pig. Was my mother trying to tell me something?

"Here! Here's a pig. Yeah, you might be excited about this monumental moment now, but just you wait until once a month, every month, you feel like you actually morph into a pig. You will bloat up, fat as a pig. You will eat like a pig. You will feel disgusting and dirty like a pig, and people won't want to be around you. Because, guess why? You'll be a pig!"

Was this her way of saying...

"Welcome to womanhood!" 

Hemlet Pink Pig - Gund®

"Oink, oink!"