Are you there?

While I was walking my daughter to school today, I was reflecting on the fact that she's growing up so fast.  I swear, I don't know how that happens.   All of a sudden our conversations have become so mature.  I'm thrilled to be relating to her on a new level, but I can't help but think that I'm going to blink my eyes and she'll be gone, starting her own family, off on her own adventure.  I want to be able to freeze time every now and then to just appreciate it all.

Anyway, when I see her with some of her friends, I can't believe how wise and worldly they seem at times.  I remember when I was a kid, I always felt excruciatingly behind the eight ball in terms of growth and development.  I was the last of my friends to grow out of that tomboy stage, the last to kiss a boy, the last to need a bra, and by far the last to get my period.

I remember counting off every time one of my friends made that leap into womanhood and hoping against hope that I wouldn't be the last.  By the time freshman year in high school came around, I'd stopped talking about it, but I'd started harboring fears that maybe I was a hermaphrodite like Jamie Lee Curtis.  Luckily, by the end of freshman year, just before spring break, my menstruation cycle finally began.  Hallelujah.  I was normal, relatively speaking.

While I was in the throes of believing my period would never come, it was such a comfort to read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.  How great is Judy Blume?  How did she manage to climb into my teenybopper mind and make me understand that I was not the only adolescent girl waiting in hope and fear for the day that her first period would arrive?  Blume made me feel like I was not alone.  It's been quite awhile since I've read her books, but I have a feeling that this one will stand the test of time.