The secret in back of the linen closet
The other day I realized all those myths we were told as children are finally not around anymore, and if they are, they are few and far between. One of them I personally experienced was a scenario I still remember like yesterday. It involved my friend Cindy who used to come down from Montreal like clockwork once a month to visit her godmother Joan on Albert Street in Cowansville.
During those days she visited we used to go swimming at the town swimming pool every afternoon. Without fail, we were in that water at 1:00 and stayed there until 4:00. We really didn’t swim a whole lot, but jumped in and out of the pool feeling the chlorine stinging our eyes trying to avoid the local bully cannonballing everyone.
Enjoying our afternoon swim one day her godmother Joan, and my mother were suddenly seen standing at the edge of the pool wringing their hands looking like someone had died. Cindy was wrenched out of the pool and whisked away, and was never seen again. Being extremely concerned I often asked what happened to Cindy, and no one would tell me. It was like Russian spies had whisked her off the face of the earth, and it was only years later I found out that Cindy had gotten her first period that day. Of course in those days it was considered “the curse” and of great concern to all mankind.
May we not forget to mention that after that day Cindy probably followed 40 years of inconvenience, aggravation, and suffering.
I am sure that some of you can remember during that era there was no swimming, no moving, no smiling, no nothing, and NO ONE dared speak about IT. Strange pieces of white elastic and HUGE blue boxes with the word KOTEX, were hidden in the back of linen closets everywhere, and I had personally seen them mixed in with the family heirloom doilies to camouflage them even more.
My grandmother stopped baking bread and making jam when it was her time of the month, or ‘the curse’ as she called it. Bread according to Mary Louise Deller Knight would not rise, and jam would not thicken, so the kitchen almost shut down once a month. Her friends talked about it often around tea time at least once a week while sipping hot tea out of small fancy teacups, eating raspberry scones and sharing diet tips.
When it came to my turn to enter the world of womanhood I was handed “the elastic appliance” that was also made by Kotex if I am correct. That “appliance” was horrible as was all the surrounding mystique that I was suddenly made aware of. My Grandmother tried to soften the blow by saying, “You are becoming a woman” to which I replied
“I don’t want to be a woman”
Iwailed!
Young women today have no idea what their older generations did before them. I won’t even speak of the use of moss during medieval times. What? But, still the subject of what lurked in linen closets still remains something some folks just don’t even like talking about-- even today. I asked my husband if he would like to read this piece about women’s business gone by and he said, and I quote:
“Could we just talk about the weather, politics, Corona virus, or how black lives matter?” I guess some things will never graduate to common conversation.