Tell Me Again How Babies Are Made

• 

The clock read 2:55, five minutes before the dismissal bell would ring. As we lined up by the classroom door, my fifth-grade teacher passed us each a small permission slip to take home to our parents. Before my teacher even handed me the slip, I knew what it was for, and I couldn’t wait. Our suburban school district decided that sex ed participation would be voluntary, and if parents wanted their kids to learn about their bodies, fresh armpit hair, and why girls get their periods, parents would have to sign a permission slip. I figured my parents would let me take the class, without much protest, because it was one less awkward talk for them to have with me. The slip was pink, and it made me giggle.

The ten-minute walk home proved uneventful, and I safely delivered the permission slip to my household. Like a note from Santa or the Easter Bunny, the slip sat on our Formica dining room table for a few moments, as if backlit by gold magic, before being noticed by my mother. I tried to act cool, like I didn’t really want to take the class, when I slid the paper over to my mom.  Without hesitation my mom signed the sheet and I placed it back in my school bag. It was that easy. By age 11, I already knew it was better to hand my parents’ permission slips when they were distracted, and my three-year-old brother played his role as consummate wing man well. The following day, I returned to school ready to learn about pubic bones and other mysteries.

*****

When two people are in love, they hug each other very tightly, and create a baby. That was it. A tight, special hug, and boom, someone gets pregnant. As a kid, and even into my young adult years, I was easily convinced of the most ridiculous “facts.” Tuna fish is made out of tuna eyeballs? Ok! I believe you, older sister! The ridges in mushrooms are actually fibers woven from the ear hair of old men? Sure, older sister! You’re the smart one in the family. Why wouldn’t I believe you?

*****

I remember one Saturday at the mall with my sister. We were in a record shop, and I picked up the Bon Jovi cassette titled “Slippery When Wet.” I asked my sister what it meant. She replied, in an absent-minded but annoyed tone: “What do you think?” It was apparent to me that I should know what it means and that the answer was obvious. Jump a decade ahead, and the title will finally make sense to me. It will be some random night when the memory will pop back into my mind and the world will become clearer. What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t ask a lot of questions as a kid. If someone told me something, regardless of proof or even feasibility, I believed them. If I felt like I should know the answer to a question, I would simply pretend that I knew. It felt dangerous to ask too many questions.

*****

As a kid, I believed that babies came from a special type of hug, longer than I should have. The fact that I, a well-versed viewer of soap operas, such as “Guiding Light,” the “Young and the Restless,” and “As the World Turns,” believed that a hug is what made babies is odd to me as an adult. I think I began to believe that babies came from dramatic confessions of love and passionate kisses. The actual anatomy and steps that it took to even get pregnant, were of little interest to me. I liked believing what I believed.

*****

When we began fertility treatments, it became very clear to my partner and me that it is extremely difficult to get pregnant. All biological aspects must align perfectly in order for it to occur. No matter how much we loved each other, our getting pregnant would take much more than a free, special hug. And, for that, I feel duped.