First Period, First Person - A Collection of Initial 'Time of the Month' Tales

Out of the same sense of squeamishness that prevents men from nonchalantly buying a box of tampons or pads for their girlfriends, wives, daughters...these same guys will also give a certain just-published book a wide berth and likely never stand in line at Barnes & Noble to purchase a copy.

What makes every male cringe and every female nod in recognition? A woman's period. Especially her first period.

That's the simple yet brilliant concept behind My Little Red Book, the brainchild of 18-year-old Rachel Kauder Nalebuff. It gathers together nearly 100 short reflections by women of all ages and backgrounds on the occasion of their first period.

Recalling the First Time
I remember mine. I was eleven years old and - having just moved to a new house in a new town - I didn't have any friends to confide in. It was a hot and sticky July day, and I was wearing white shorts. When I noticed that I was bleeding, I thought, "How did I cut myself down there? Did I sit on a piece of glass?" I had only my mother to tell, and when she made a big fuss about it, I thought I would die of embarrassment.

Many years later I saw a production of the play Hysterics, a one-woman show starring the playwright Le Clanché du Rand; it ended with du Rand both celebrating and mourning her last period in such a way that the act had every woman in the theatre sitting on the edge of her seat and every man squirming in his.

Only Women Bleed
When we first experience our periods, we know what we've gained - our own private entrance into womanhood where instead of X, blood marks the spot.

Later, especially in our late teens and early twenties, it becomes little more than a bother, an inconvenience, a stretch of days where we're cranky, sluggish, bloated, and just waiting for it to be over.

But when it leaves our lives once and for all, we lose something more than our fertility. We lose the common thread that binds all women together; we lose that shared experience, that monthly reminder of the cyclical nature of our lives.

We are still women, still female, but something vital is missing. Something intimately familiar has gone from our lives. Only then do we realize - with an unanticipated wave of sadness - that we have yet again crossed another significant threshhold, but one we don't fuss over, don't honor, don't say anything to anyone about.

In silence we mourn that we'll never see it come again.

Period.

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