Uteruses, “Whaatsits” and Snickers Bars…

When my doctor told me I had “one hell of a big uterus” I was in such a state of elation after giving birth that I took his words as a compliment. I even thanked him as if he’d complimented my hair. It never occurred to me that he was making a clinical observation, albeit a bit blunt, because my baby weighed a hefty 10 ½ pounds.

A few days later though, doc’s words resonated as rude, and I couldn’t get his comment out of my head. The more I thought about it, the more I became embarrassed not only of my naivety about what I thought he’d meant, but of my Texas-sized uterus. Where does it say how big a uterus is supposed to be? None of the other twelve or so new mothers at the hospital had a baby anywhere near the size of mine. I'm not even a large person.

I was proud of my baby and what I went through to birth him vaginally. It was 21 hours of terror and pain with no meds because they thought I wouldn't be able to push him out if they doped me up. But whenever I answered the question of how much my baby weighed, I cringed watching people's eyes nearly pop out. All I could imagine was that they were mentally sizing up my gargantuan uterus instead of marveling over my baby.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said to my aunt who looked aghast. “You could fit a Mack truck in there.”

This was before cell phones. Before computers. Doctors were experts and their words carried enormous weight. Imagine not being able to look up the normal size of a uterus.

Aren’t mothers supposed to teach all that to their daughters? I suppose, in her own way, my mother did teach me by breeding dogs. Uterus size, however, was not included. No way. Uterus would have been one of those “forbidden” words. See, in my family, all terms associated with male or female genitalia or sex were replaced with nonsense words. I remember my siblings and I as kids being shooed away when Butch and Daisy, the breeding Basset hounds, started doing their thing. My mother would run around the house blurting things about Butch’s “whaatsit” and Daisy’s “rosebud.”

“You just go outside,” she’d say to me when I stood there gaping at Butch’s glistening, pink “whaatsit” dragging across the linoleum floor. Of course, I scurried outside, but naturally, I went straight to the open laundry room window and crouched in the grass listening. A bedlam of yelping and barking along with my mother’s squeals sent my heart thumping hard enough that I had to brace myself. I knew my mother was in there trying to help Butch get his “whaatsit” into Daisy’s “rosebud”, but the whole thing sounded horribly severe, and I could only imagine that my mother was forcing the poor dogs to do something terrible.

Hours later, I’d steal back into the house hoping to swipe a couple of Oreos only to find Butch and Daisy sprawled out and panting with exhaustion. All I had to do was reach out to pet one of them and my mother would snap, “You just leave them alone and get back outside!” It was an all-day affair. I had so many unanswered questions.

One time Butch’s “whaatsit” gruesomely appeared after supper while my father was watching TV. It slogged across the carpet collecting wood slivers and bark from the firewood, which stuck to it. When Butch began to yelp, my father lurched from his recliner flailing and yelling.

“Get out of here! Get out of here!” And he opened the sliding glass door and booted the dog outside onto the icy back step. When Butch’s “whaatsit” hit the ice, his yelping grew exponentially.

I ran upstairs.

There are certain things you cannot bear to ask your parents… or anyone.

A few years later, my father brought home a live turkey from the gun club as a pet. We called him J.R. as in Who shot J.R.? from the 1978 TV show Dallas. I was in high school by then and in the summer, I’d bring a big pillow and a towel outside and lay in the sun in my red-striped bikini. Turkeys are attracted to bright colors and though I heard J.R. scraping the edges of his wings on the ground as he got close (a mating behavior), I was taken by surprise when he mounted me, and I had to escape his iron clutches while he humped me. To keep J.R. away from me, I had to lead him away by circling around the house waving my towel or my big pillow like a bullfighter’s cape and then leave it laying on the ground for him to enjoy while I ran away. I hated that turkey and swore at it and called it names. My mother would laugh and tell me he just wanted to leave me a “ten cent spot” —whatever that meant. I was left to figure that out on my own. But I was pretty sure I knew what she meant, because I had a male cat who left sticky spots on my bed.

There are things you don’t dare tell your friends.

Even though I’d acquired a weird little patchwork of reproductive knowledge, I had a hard time applying that knowledge to my social life, and I was awkward far longer than my friends. Friends did, however, provide a more human perspective at times. In high school, I only knew a few girls who had had sex. One of them was Sue. Everyone said Sue was boy crazy, but I learned a lot from her. She was like a wild carnival ride whirling through life in her flashy red nails and spidery thick eyelashes. She was having sex before I knew the real names of the body parts. One day at lunch I asked her what it was like.

“It’s like trying to shove a Snickers bar up your nose,” she answered. Wow, I thought. No wonder Butch and Daisy yelped like they were dying.

I didn’t know much about kissing either. Neither my parents nor grandparents ever kissed where the public or kids at home could see. Not even pecks on the cheek. There was only TV and it wasn't exactly instructive. So, when I had my first kiss and this boy’s mouth covered the entire lower half of my face, I thought I was supposed to widen my own mouth to match his lips. As a result, I kissed with my mouth wide open until a boy several years later asked me why I did that.

There are things you don’t tell people….

It took a while, but eventually, I figured things out and I think it is safe to say that these days I feel pretty good about kissing and my uterus. And my young life among dogs and turkeys and cats adds a lot of color to my existence. Finally, no doofus doctor is ever going to damage my self-confidence again by insulting my wondrous, four-time, miracle-producing, overly large uterus.

Thank you for reading!

An earlier version of this essay was published in the Penman Review 2018.