Telling it like it is.. since 1985

Yesterday my grandmother threw a “luncheon” so that all her friends could finally meet little miss Hazel, my amazing, gorgeous niece who is nearly 16 months now.  Some of us ladies were all discussing Hazel’s shyness and how she is so shy at first, but slowly emerges throughout the course of any social gathering to reveal her true self, which is not shy at all.  I think my sister and I are both like that as well, and I added that to the conversation, and asked my mom who was shyer as a child - me or Melissa?  She said Melissa.

I was surprised and tried to refute her answer by pointing out several stories from my early childhood.  To this my mother responded, “You weren’t shy!  I couldn’t get you to stop telling the teacher things I taught you at home, like when you explained how the sperm fertilizes the egg to everyone in nursery school!”  I remembered this story also.. when I was 4 my mother explained to me how babies were made, not so much in terms of human love making, but on the level of sperm meets egg to create baby, using a volume from a children’s encyclopedia as a visual aid.  I have a memory of an illustration of several squiggly sperm swimming toward a balloon-like egg.

My mother was helping out with my nursery school class those days, so imagine her embarrassment when I raised my hand and said, “Teacher!  Teacher!  I want to tell you something!”  And jumped up and explained human reproduction to the whole class of 4 year olds at Honey Brook Early Learning Center!

Although I’ve always known this story, the connection to what I’m still doing, over a couple decades later, never struck me until now.  Still telling everyone about reproduction only really because I have a hard time not talking about it because I still find it so interesting!

I remember being blown away when I first found out the plants also have eggs and sperm!  What?!?!

Human heredity is crazy though.. and you don’t even really realize until you see it with your own eyes.  When I looked at Hazel this time, a bit more grown up since the last time I saw her a few months ago, and she was close to my face and looking at me, “having a conversation” with me, I saw parts of myself looking at me and talking to me.  She doesn’t say a whole lot yet, but with isolated words, some sign language signs, some of her own hand motions, sounds and nodding, we did manage to have a sort of conversation.  And I saw some of my facial features, making my facial movements on a little adorable face.  If that’s never happened to you, let me just say it’s kind of a mind-blowing experience.

Kids at that age have the capacity to understand so much, even though they may not be talking at any length.  Since Hazel is still nursing, Melissa refers to her breasts as “milkies” to Hazel.  Now, Hazel has made the connection to her own, and if you ask Hazel where her own “milkies” are, she’ll look down at them on her body.  At 16 months, she already understands a fair amount of basic anatomical terminology, including vagina.  After pointing out a few body parts, prompted by Melissa saying, “Show me where your _____ is,” she was asked where her vagina was, and turned around and pointed to me!  Ha, who knows, maybe Vagina sounds enough like Aunt Jill?  We laughed at her mistake, but she pointed at me every time we asked her.  Until my mother was around, then she pointed to Grandmom Karen.

Along the same lines of kids doing/saying the darndest things, my mother pointed out that not only did I repeat things she taught me to my nursery school and kindergarten teachers, I also repeated anything my parents told me about myself.  I guess the more you hear something the more you believe it.. so I told my kindergarten teacher just what my parents always said to me, that I was “cute as a button, and just right!”

Signed,

Aunt Vagina - “I’m (still) cute as a button and just right!”