Mother’s Day and Pubic Hair Memories

Pubic hair runs deep in my family . . . and probably long.  Our history is bushy with secrets and revelations.  In the 50’s, my mother didn’t hide her pubic hair from me.  I'd accompanied her to the bathroom when she peed and watched her dry off after her bath. I assumed all women had black pubes until, at the age of eight, I faced a flaming-red snatch.  A divorced red-headed woman with a four-year-old lived next door.  I was supposed to be watching him while she bathed.  He ran into the bathroom and I ran in after him just as she rose from the tub.  My absolute stupefaction at her fiery pubis stopped me in my tracks.  She looked down at herself as if she’d encountered this sort of shocked behavior before, and then she took a deep breath and calmly told me to take the kid out.  She was a nurse.  A beautiful, smart nurse with a huge red bush.  

The hairstory continues. 

If you were in college in the 70’s, you may have let the hair on your legs grow to carpet-like density and considered cornrowing your armpit hair.  Shaving my legs had been a rite-of-passage that forever separated me from my girlhood – in my father’s eyes, at least. The man never recovered.  So, unlike my peers, I refused to stop shaving my legs or armpits, but compromised by letting my pubes curl out the sides of my bathing suit. I told people I was Italian.

Don’t judge me too harshly.  Consciousness-raising was all the rage on campus.  Pelvic self-exams were cutting edge.  All you needed was a plastic speculum.  A roving nurse arrived at our meeting with a gooseneck lamp and a bored expression to show us how to use the speculum.  She explained what we were looking at. We examined our own and one another’s cervixes. While roughly similar, each was unique in its own way. The high point was one woman whose period was just beginning. 

Weeks later I was invited by the Dean of Women to team teach a class called “Modern Woman,” at the University (Arizona State).  The registrants were women returning to college after having children and putting their ex-husbands through school.  I invited the bored nurse to do her thing; it was like a mission for her.  She hustled her gooseneck lamp into a good position on a table and plugged it in.  Then, in what seemed like one fluid motion, she got up on the table, spread her legs, slid the speculum in and reached out a free arm to adjust the light.

I invited the class to take a look.  They got in line and one-by-one stood a good three-feet away.  Some stood on their toes as if that would give them a better vantage point. No one got up close.  I wished I’d brought binoculars.  At the end of a very quiet queue – I’ve heard more conversation at a viewing of a corpse - I thanked the nurse.  She gave me a disinterested shrug and strode off.  Needless to say, I got a flurry of phone calls from the school administration.  The main complaint was that the nurse had shown her “pubic hair.”  She showed more than that, but no one was able to get past the external signs of an adult woman.  I was not invited back to teach the class.  As a matter of fact, I think it was never taught again, or even mentioned in polite circles.

Mom fostered my pubic hair élan not only by not hiding her body, but by showing me a shaved female pubis – her own.  It was 1957 and my brother was three-weeks overdue.  Mom acquired a book that showed the stages of fetal growth inside the womb. The vaginal canal was depicted sans vulva and, of course, pubic hair.  In those days, they “prepped” the mother for childbirth.  This means they shaved her pubes, considering them unsanitary.  Since my bro was late, she kept having to go back to be prepped.  After one such appointment she explained what they did.  I must have looked perplexed because she asked me if I wanted to see.  Of course I did.  Her pubis was desecrated, thorny, and with a five o’clock shadow that just looked criminal.  She told me not to tell anyone.

I told all the kids in the neighborhood who were so dismayed they told their moms who called my mom to say that Sandra Mae was talking about “down there” to anyone who would listen.

I owe this blog to the memory of my mom.  Without her influence, I probably wouldn’t have pubes and I’d be just like everyone else. 

Happy Mother’s Day to all!

This Stuff is Mine

The image at left says:  Housewife: The best job in the world.

I keep waiting for my inner hausfrau to burst forth from within, someone with good knees who keeps an immaculate house. Why is the archetype German? Surely there are other ethnic archetypes of the person I am not. I'm 50/50 Irish and Mexican. Both these ethnic groups fall to the negative on the good housekeeping continuum. I think (vows to do internet search to disprove point).

I’d rather do the research than dustbust the dirt that dripped from the burro’s tail I transplanted. Not cleaning is as obsessive as cleaning too much or thinking about cleaning, or in my case — thinking and writing about not cleaning. It’s also a form of self-hate, because who likes dirt? I don’t. And this dirty floor and dusty stuff is mine, and even though I’m a lousy housekeeper (distracted is more descriptive) I don’t really respect other lousy housekeepers, and I hate that about myself because it goes against my promise to love all things Sandra.

It’s all here, people: inner turmoil, angst.

Some of you are feeling smug, and maybe even vaguely nauseated because cleaning and straightening, picking up and putting away require no thinking on your part. It’s your innate quality, what you were born to do. It’s like you’re programmed, preset and predetermined. On the other hand, you probably have no injuries. I’m an actuarial nightmare.

Yesterday I was dusting in my little area. Not dusting dusting because I usually wait until I need a damp cloth. I highly recommend this method; the dust comes off in a satisfying sludge on the white face cloths that I use. They get recycled into dust rags after one of my dusting sessions. Nothing gets them white again. These preordained dust rags are never nearby when I decide to dust, so I use another face cloth. The pile is growing. Soon, I will venture forth and purchase more white face cloths.

I’ll probably end up an old lady with a room full of dust rags. They’ll fall on me in my hospital bed and I’ll suffocate. Unless I manage to raise one arthritic paw and create a pocket of air. Or maybe the cat laying next to me will tunnel us out.

That was exciting. Even under spectacularly ridiculous circumstances I imagine the angles for survival. I love that about myself. Which reminds me of the flaw that brought me to this self-examination.

While I was dusting I knocked down this teeny perfume bottle and it cracked on the tile floor. My only thought was to pick up the top half quickly to save some of the essence. I picked up a few pieces of glass, but didn’t examine the floor very closely. Through sheer luck I didn’t step on the littlest shards. Just dustbusted those babies. Decided to let the perfume soak into the tiles. Strong, but not unpleasant scent the first night. Today — very nice, sensual, like your mom’s favorite cocktail dress hanging in the closet, evocative even years after she last wore it.

A Brief Update on My Life

I'm off to give a break to my bro who has been caring for our elderly mother. She seems to be giving up, doesn't want to do much to help herself. It'd be just like her to die in my care. And right before Mother's Day.

On the upside, I have a story in the Latinos in Lotusland anthology, which Dan Olivas edited, and we're doing readings starting later this month.

I've lost ten pounds, and my arms and legs are quite shapely. Stomach is flat, but (the writer's lament) my ass is unwavering in dimension. Have not worked on my second novel much. But have started to feel at loose ends, which is a sign I need to get back to writing. Going public with it here.