Vaginal Room

My mother has begged.  The internet has forgotten.  Blogger has an updated interface.  And all but 2 followers remain.  What can I say? I have a little steam in the Engine again and feel like writing.  Writing may be a practice, but it also requires a certain amount of stamina and perspective to be worth anyone's time reading.  As this is a blog and not a personal diary, it's worth writing something worth reading.

My apologies for the 10 month delay!  My new blog, www.thepiedkingfisher.wordpress.com, has kept me happily busy and inspired and has little demand on my brain, enabling more freedom and creativity.  Food is just easy like that.

But the past 10 months have not passed without incident.  They have not been boring, nor have they been the most fun.  This 29/30th year in my life has me feeling the consequences of being on the cusp of adulthood and wondering when life will ease, and still I know I have yet to meet the darkest place.  May 1st passed this week and it was the one year anniversary of something unmentionable that happened last year.  Perhaps that was why writing felt impossible.  Perhaps that is why, one year later, I feel I am emerging to a better place.

It's not really worth recalculating the past year.  I know that one of my biggest personal hurdles in life is letting go.  It's hard when you have such a great memory!  But it's a burden and it's time to stop adding it up for some irrelevant subtotal, just to feel worse.  So here's moving on. A very short story - "Vaginal Room." At which point, if you know me, you may choose to stop reading (although this is not sexual, but medical!):

To top an off-year, I suppose it was time I encountered some, well, let me be subtle - female problems.  I'm sure you may have known from the heading.  But it was high time.  I have had few complaints for my cogs and chambers since reaching puberty over half my lifetime ago.

I had taken out the trash. Which, to most urbanized, citified folks would mean "taken it out to the curb."  But since I live on the veld and there is a wide expanse of rubbish heap 20 feet away (luckily on the windowless/road-less side of the cottage), it really meant taking the trash, neatly tied in a grocery-size parcel, to the front door.  So that Johannes could walk it the further 20 feet.  I hate taking out the trash.  Maybe it's because I always associated that duty as my brother's responsibility.  It's absurd, but I'd rather clean a toilet.

My little children neighbors being the restless creatures that they are, stumbled over to our house at some point mid-morning to help with the endless weeding and tying up of bean vines.  Before I knew it, they were into the trash bag, searching for goodies.  And that lurch.  That gulp of a golf ball in the throat.  The paling of the face.  The evil knowing that they might find my baby pink, discarded "cream" applicators.  In Afrikaans "room" applicators.  And knowing there was no way I could explain it in the lightning-speed seconds before they were discovered. Immediately, upon alighting her hand to the so-called reinvented gem, 10 year-old Mammekie was playing with my medical tools.  Disaster.  What could I say?  The shock upon my face melted into complete horror and absolute bewildered embarrassment.  The saying "One man's trash is another man's treasure?"  She ran off into the horizon pumping that ridiculous little baby pink tube into the air with shrieks of laughter; unbeknownst to her, the heart wrenching sound of my own sighs disappeared into the ether.

I promptly called Danielle.  Only a woman could know.  Absolute horror.  I'm so glad Johannes has taken to burning the rubbish as his second calling in life.  "Room" saviour.