In the Beginning

This story is not just about vagina.

But of course, vagina is the starting point for every woman's story. By this, I don't mean to conflict with the belief that life begins at birth; or in the uterus, at the point of viability; or in the fallopian tube, at the point of encounter between sperm and ovum. No matter what you believe, when we are born, we are announced to the world on the basis of our vagina:

"IT'S A GIRL!" someone invariably exclaims, upon seeing it. And thus, we begin.

As far as I can recall, nobody ever spoke to me about my vagina when I was little.
My mother did teach me that the part of my body that I kept in my underpants was called the vulva. I knew it was private because my sister and I weren't allowed to walk around with it uncovered, no matter what. We grew up wearing underpants under our nightgowns. When I asked my mother how to make a baby, I remember being very specifically concerned about whether it was necessary to remove your underwear. She told me you didn't have to if you didn't want to.

I first learned my vulva was interesting to boys when Craig Barash, who sat next to me in the very back row of Mrs. Brown's third grade classroom at Birch Lane Elementary School, asked me to show it to him.

Craig was clever enough to start by asking me just to let him see my panties. I knew this overt fascination with panties must run in his family, because his father drove a big fancy car with the first vanity plate I had ever seen: SKIRTS. Once, when we driving right behind them, I asked my parents about it, and they told me it was because his father manufactured skirts for a living; the plastic, see-through kind. I could tell that my parents did not approve of this kind of skirt, or of Craig's parents. Even though we went to the same temple and Hebrew school and lived just a block away from each other on Bay Drive, we did not carpool with the Barashes and I was instructed never to go into their house. There was consequently an air of mystery around all the Barash family that thrilled and baffled me. I knew instinctively not to ask my parents any further questions about the peculiar skirts that Mr. Barash made, and a few more years would pass before I knew anything about the type of women who wore them.

I wore short (but opaque) dresses from Florence Eisemann or Chemise Lacoste as my Mommy-imposed school uniform from age 2 1/2 until sometime in the fifth grade. By about age five, my legs had grown too long to fit into tights, so Mommy switched me to wearing knee socks with my Mary Janes, which I owned in both black and white patent leather, as well as buttery leather, in brown or maroon. When I was standing or walking, I looked very prim and proper in my dress, my color coordinated knee socks, and my long, straight, brown hair tied up with a matching bow. But when I sat down in my low, little desk chair at school, the hem of the skirt invariably rode up pretty close to panty level, exposing long, white thighs that just barely fit under my desk.

It was no big deal to spread my knees apart, twist sideways in my seat, and let Craig see my panties. They were Carter's panties, with a pattern of little flowers scattered across the white, cotton fabric and a delicate, colorful rick-rack sort of trim at the leg. It made sense to me that if Carter's bothered to make panties that pretty, people should want to see them. From there, it was a fairly simple matter to reach in and pull down my panties, when Craig asked me to. As the youngest kid in the third grade, I was very happy for the attention. I was six years old at the time.

I'll return to Vaginologue soon and often to tell you more of the story of my vagina and its neighbors: uterus, urethra, and rectum. I'm forty four years old now, and yesterday, I started physical therapy for what those in the business like to call my pelvic floor. It was a pretty big deal for me to admit, to myself and then, to a doctor, that I have been having a problem "down there" ever since my youngest child was born.

The problem is this: I have been accidentally peeing on myself for the last eight years; every time I slip on an oil puddle in the garage, trip on the sidewalk, sneeze while walking, dance while having cocktails, or run more than about six steps. It was difficult for me to come out of my cloud of denial and wishful thinking to confront the fact that this problem was not going to go away by itself, no matter how many kegels I might remember to do at stop lights. It was extremely difficult to show up at physical therapy yesterday and allow a stranger to help me begin to do something about it.

Having now taken those first steps, however, it is my lofty hope that with this blog, I can be of service to other women by sharing my experience in working to correct a problem from which I know so many of you also suffer. My personal goal is to strengthen the muscles that control urinary flow so that they do their job the way they used to, before I pushed three big babies out into the world through my vagina. I want to continue my very active lifestyle, but in such a way that the only thing I am soaked in is sweat, and in which I pee only when I consciously give myself permission to do so. I now have a list of daily exercises to perform as homework before my next appointment on Wednesday, so I'm going to go and get those done. I'll see you back here in a little while.