Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed.
My brother and I heard the usual pieces of advice from our dad growing: education is important, work hard, don’t mess around in school, but the brutal little gem above was reserved solely for me, his only daughter.
Simple, practical, and it even rhymed.
I was 13 when I started bleeding, but I was still a couple of years away from giving any thought to breeding. All I wanted to do go was go see a movie with a boy, maybe hold his hand. But in my dad’s mind, that must have been one and the same. Holding hands, sitting with a boy in the dark was the gateway to having sex, he must have thought.
He didn’t want me to be a teen mom. I understood that then, I understand it now.
But, I would have liked a little more finesse with that expression. Or maybe a little more direction. After all, once I started bleeding, the possibility of breeding would always be there. When was the right time to have sex, then, Dad? Who was in charge of birth control? What should I be looking for in a breeding partner? What seemed like a simple phrase suddenly wasn’t.
Or maybe he could have just said that I was a precious and beautiful gift, not worthy of just anybody. Anything to make it sound less like a mistake that was mine, and mine alone.