The First Step
Summer of 2002, my family decided to visit relatives out of state, across the ocean in China. Normal weather for a summer, we were staying at my grandmother’s house for a month. In that time we would be able to visit the long and numerous amount of relatives and friends my parents know but haven’t seen in years. Plans were being made about where to go and whom to see in a week by week list. It would also give us time to figure out to whom the gifts go to for whatever reason. I never figured out why certain people got one box of the same thing instead of the other. It was also the year Taiwan pushed for another public break from China, told and repeat by guests and family at meal times.
Much of the trip was standard process, meet, greet, eat, give and goodbye. However a unexpected visitor appeared middle way into this vacation, one no one expected to see so soon. Certainly not me; though that the time I hardly knew the guest. My grandmother is a stronger, sturdy and knowledgeable person given the fact she walks six flights of stairs in her 90s; I had no trouble asking her about this guest. It wasn’t an unwelcome guest.
“Grandma, there is something you need to see. I don’t know what it is.” I said quite sincerely confused. ” It’s been appearing for a few days now.”
“What it is?”
I showed her the evidence (or is it better called gift) in question as it lays in my laundry basket prepared for washing, a pair of underwear with spots. She chuckles, actually chuckles before saying “Oh, that was the problem.”
She then proceed to another room, pulls a small packet from the closet and showed me what to do with it.
“You should have told me when you started. This is normal. It last for about seven days. Place the pad like so on your underwear everyday till its gone.”
Grandma then goes in a more indepth explantion of the process till I called it quits. There is only so much I need to know at once. That was it; my intro into life as a woman. I can’t say that I completely change from girl to woman at once but there was a difference after the fact. Much like Taiwan’s push for a break from China I was breaking from what remained of being a child. The difference isn’t so big in essence however I wished at the time I could have understood what such a break would mean.
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