For the Love of Fran ~ Sisterhood

It was the winter of my twelfth year.  It was a Wednesday night and I was sitting in the livingroom watching the Jane Wyman show with my sister Anne.  Fran walked by and went into the kitchen holding some sort of napkin.  I ran after her and asked what kind of napkin it might be.  Fran looked at Mom, who was sitting on a chair that was drawn up close to the open oven door, typing a news report.  Mom was the social editor for the Old Colony Memorial newspaper and many nights I went to sleep with the clink, clink sound of her old Underwood typewriter.

"Mom, what do I tell her?"

"It's not a napkin, huh, Fran?  You put it in your bra to make you look like you have big boobs", I said knowingly.

"Did you just hear what Bobby said, Fran?  She doesn't even know what a Kotex is!" laughed my sister Anne. 

Once again, Fran looked at Mom pleadingly.  "Mom, you have to tell her.  She's twelve years old.  She should know."

"She's too young.  She's just a baby.  She doesn't need to know about these things", Mom said quietly.

"Well I knew when I was ten...I knew all about it", Anne quiped.

"That's because you overheard Mom telling me about the facts of life.  You just butted in like you always do", said Fran.  "But Mom, Bobby should know.  What if it happens in school?"

"I imagine you are right.  I guess we need to tell her.  But she's just so young to be burdened with the knowledge of womenhood."

And so that evening I learned about the birds and the bees.  Fran had to demonstrate how one hooked up the Kotex to the belt.  I watched intently all the while wishing I hadn't asked the question.  It was just so grose.  Mom said it was beautiful.  Ummp...I didn't think so.  Blood just coming out of ya'....yuck.  Who wants to be a woman anyhow?  Dad said I made a great boy...I was fearless, took risks and could out beat any boy when it came to swimming, catching turtles and frogs, and hiking.  Definitely, I didn't want this thing called a "period".
How stupid was that name?  Period...as if it was a punctionation mark.  Dumb...just dumb...this whole thing about womenhood!

The very next day I got off the school bus and came running in the house shouting at the top of my lungs, "Fran, Fran, you know that stuff you told me last night...well guess what?  I have blood in my panties.  Real blood and it's sticky."

"Bobby, you must be mistaken.  Let me have a look.  Oh my God, you do have your period.  I need to call Mom at work.  Anne, Bobby has her period.  Just think if we didn't tell her last night."

"She would have lived. Welcome to the world of cramps, Bob."

Quietly, Fran took me in the bathroom and told me to take off my underpants and then she washed between my legs.  Then she got this strange elastic belt and told me to put it on as she hooked the kotex pad to it.  I told her about the "headache" in my tummy and she gave me some Midol.

That night in our bed that we shared,  I confided my worst fears.  "Fran, I don't want to be a woman.  I don't want a man doing THAT to me.  I don't want it.  I don't want to have babies if I have to do that.  Fran, I hate this whole thing.  How can we go back to yesterday?"

"We can't Bob.  We never can go back.  Some things we just have to accept.  Some things we can't change.  But it will be alright, I promise you.  Someday you will look back on this day and just laugh...we will laugh about it together, you will see."  And we have.  Actually, yesterday morning she came down to see how I was doing with the Baker's cyst and I told her I was going to write this story for Bhawana's Zoomit.  She laughingly said, "Are you going to tell them, in the end, you really did like sex?"

"Nope, I'll let them wonder!"



Bob and Fran down the pond with Tippy in May, 1957.  Bob was 11 and Fran was 15.



Fran and Bob sitting on the backstairs on July 12, 1974.  I was home from Alaska for a two week visit.  Fran is 32 and I was 28.