CREEPY CATALOG

My Mother Started Acting Strange After I Got My Period

I love my mother, although there are many things about her not to love.

People are often at a loss as to how my mother and father met. After all, my father is what most people would consider a typical, boring businessman. Nobody would imagine that he went through a wild phase in the 70s, obsessed with drugs and music and independence.

That, of course, was when he met my mother. A flower child with the sun wrapped up in her smile, that's how he describes her. According to him, she hasn't changed much, even all these years later.

My mother can be wonderful. She is incredibly loving and sweet and compassionate, but she is something of an eternal child. She has no concept of responsibility or growing up. She does not have priorities. She simply... is. Perhaps that's an admirable trait in a grown person.

It is not an admirable trait in a mother.

My father swooped in and married her soon after he met her. They had me only a few months later. He learned rather quickly that she could barely be called an adult. Yet he loves her more passionately than I've ever seen somebody love. They are happy together, and that suits me just fine.

For the most part, my father was a sufficient parent. He took care of me in ways that my mother never could. My mother's involvement in my life was more as a friend than anything else. But there were still times that her influence was... a little less than wholesome.

You see, my mother was incredibly superstitious.

When I was very young, she taught me all the normal rituals that are a part of every child's life. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. Never break a mirror. If you spill salt, throw a pinch over your shoulder. Never say 'MacBeth' in a theater. Never get out of bed at three a.m.

For the most part, they were harmless. Oh, but there was one... one that stuck with me like a bad taste in the pit of my mouth. One that I'll never forget.

It's a little embarrassing, but it has to do with my period. See, I got my period before most other girls in my class. I was twelve, but my mother assured me this was normal in our family – "early bloomers," she said, when referring to herself and her own mother and sister.

I remember the day I got my first period so well. I got it in gym class and my gym teacher found me crying in the locker room, too embarrassed to try to seek out a pad. I actually got sent home early, and my mom came to pick me up and take me to get ice cream. We were sitting in McDonald's with our soft-serve when she became very serious and said, "Alyssa, now that you're a woman, there's something you must promise me. It is very, very important, and if you don't promise to do it, then I'll never forgive you!"

That "never forgive you" threat wasn't new, but I was still young and I would do anything for my mom's approval. So I nodded with big, solemn eyes and waited for her to continue.

"From now on, whenever you get your period, you have to do two things. You have to change the sheets on your bed, to start – they have to be white. You also have to hang white sheets from every window in your bedroom."

I was confused by that, but when I asked her why she had given me these instructions, she held up her finger and said, "Don't ask any questions. This is for your own good."

When we got home that day, my mother helped me change the sheets on my bed and hang some fresh sheets from the window. It was unavoidable, of course, that I'd bleed through my pajamas onto those pristine white sheets that first night, but when my mom caught me trying to change them in the morning, she slapped my wrist and scolded me.

"You mustn't change those sheets until your period ends."

"But I don't want to sleep on them like this!" I protested.