Being One

I never would have thought it to be true. In fact, for almost the first two decades of my life, I barely thought of it, and certainly didn’t understand it. But in every generation, there comes a time when there is nothing more important than being one. Were it not so, there probably would have been only one generation before the human race fizzled out.

It might sound ridiculous to today’s ears, but I grew up in more innocent times when sex was not splashed all over the TV, movies, papers, and books. I don’t remember a lot being said about it in Junior High, but there was a lot of talk about it in high school. I just did not understand what the big deal was.

I remember the day that Joan Fifield and I were hanging out at Fort Adams and out of somewhere the subject of sex came up. Joan was a year older than I. She was 16 to my 15 and she was actually the one who told me how to use a tampon so that I could go swimming any day of the month. It made perfect sense to me that it was a better idea than those bulky Kotex Sanitary Napkins (sometimes called a Mini Mouse Mattress) and that stupid elastic belt that had to be worn under your underpants and the garter belt that held up your stockings. Over those went either a half or full slip and then your skirt or dress. Teenage girls had an awful lot going on under their skirts back in the 1960s. But, that’s not what I’m getting at. No. I’m talking about the day when it finally occurred to us that OUR MOTHERS had each had SEX!

Up until that moment the idea of a virgin birth was nothing unbelievable to me because obviously, my mother had experienced THREE of them! Joan had basically the same reaction. Yes, we were probably even more naïve than many of our classmates, but maybe not. By the way, Mother would never have told me about tampons. She barely told me about my period, having left that up to some lame cartoon film in Girl Scouts and wordlessly leaving a book on the telephone stand by her bed, entitled “The Stork Didn’t Bring You,” which I secretly stole, read, and replaced without telling her. When it finally arrived, I was nearly 15 and didn’t bother telling her about it. I had an older sister and the bathroom closet was fully stocked with whatever I needed.

But what I really want to talk about is love, the deeply involved kind that makes you feel that the two of you simply HAVE to entwine and join as one – or you’ll just die!

Yeah. That concept wasn’t even on my radar at 15, or 16, or 17, or 18. In fact, after being on the radar for a few short years in my 20s, it fell off again for a very, very, very long time, surprising me completely when it reappeared somewhere after 40.

So, back to Mother and Dad. Who knew that there was such a love story between those two old, rigidly strict, disciplinarians? I’d have never heard it from Mother. Bits and snatches came from my grandmother and my dad. About the only secret Mother ever gave up to me was that, by extrapolation when I was 26, I learned that she had had sex more than 3 times! It had to have been at least 5 times because she admitted to having had two miscarriages! This she told me when my first child was born, the same time I learned that she hadn’t bottle fed us, had had natural childbirth and breastfed all of us. Such shocking revelations! I can tell you this, now, because she’s been dead for more than 20 years.

Just so you know, your generation, whichever it is, did not invent or first discover the undeniable call of love.

My parents met in college when Mother had a date with Dad’s roommate. He would sneak over to her house (when my grandparents were both at work) to woo her. He knew their route, when and how they always walked home together, and he always timed his departure to be leaving by way of going around the block in the other direction so as not to be caught. But they got wise and came around the block in the opposite direction, running into him face-to-face one day.

Dad gave Mother a diamond ring before he left for WWII, but MaMa made her give it back, saying it’s better to lose a boyfriend than a fiancé or husband in the war. When Dad threatened to throw it away on the train tracks, she took it back and hid it from her parents until he returned months later and married her while on leave.

She was a raven-haired drop-dead beauty and he was a lanky hormone-driven blond Adonis. No person or war was going to keep them apart for long. They were fabulous dancers and won all kinds of contests together. Dad was also an artist. Our house was full of nude paintings that he did, for which Mother never admitted posing. They strangely disappeared when the Cub Scouts started meeting at our house.

A little dollop of dessert was served up when I was in my 40s, short years before my grandmother died. MaMa told me she’d love to go barhopping with me in search of romance. “It’s been years since I’ve wrapped my legs around a man,” 98-year-old MaMa confided.

By the way, I never did go barhopping. That was MaMa’s idea, not mine.