IT'S TIME TO TELL THEM

When I was 13 and my sister 11, my mother found herself in a late-in-life pregnancy. I have written about that event, specifically how she told us that she was pregnant, in an earlier blog (August 2008). In those days sex wasn't "in your face" like it is nowadays. In fact, even the word "pregnant" had lots of euphemisms that we were told to use, with "Expecting" being the most acceptable and "in a family way" running a close second. Believe it or not, my sister and I did not know how babies were made until mother put a book into our hands soon after she knew she was pregnant again.

The other day I was thinking about an upcoming talk I'm going to give on writing life stories and family histories, and how writing little short "vignettes" is often easier than writing a long narrative-type story. The more you practice on these little tiny slices of life, the easier it is to get them down. And that made me think about how I turned the story mentioned above into a second and companion vignette, written from my mother's perspective. Here's the result. I call it "It's time to tell them!"

Scott, we've got to tell the girls that I'm pregnant. Aside from the fact that I'm starting to "show," how much longer can we keep it a secret from them? Someone in the family is going to accidentally blurt it out and then we will be in a pickle. I know you'd just as soon stay out of this, but I want you with me. You got me into this fix and you can help me get out of it.

I gave them the book to read last week and I'm sure they both read it. Neither one has asked me a thing about it and I think they would have if they'd had any questions.

What are we going to say if they ask us if we've had sex? I've never talked to them about sex because it embarrasses me. I learned about it from my older sister. How did you learn about it? Oh, never mind answering that. You boys seem to have always known about it!

Anyway, we've got to tell them tonight. I'll say we want to have a family meeting in the living room after dinner and we can break the news there. No, I'm not asking you to do the talking. I just want you there for moral support. Hopefully they won't ask for any details. If they do, we'll just have to be careful with what words we use. I don't like the word "sex."

Oh, I just don't know why after all this time I had to get pregnant. Believe you me, Scott, we're never going to have sex again!

There were no more surprise babies.