In Sync

It’s finally happened.

You know why the sultan never, ever, enters the harem tent?

Because once a month every single female in it cycles simultaneously, but he never knows when.

So he will die.

Even if he brought chocolate.

Have sons, oh ye females of the maternal instinct. Have sons.

They will punch each other and spit and wipe paint on the sofa, but they will never lock themselves in the bathroom sobbing hysterically over the color of nail polish.

Almost never.

Daughters will play sweetly with dollies and their tiny kitchen until they hit the twilight tweenage years.

Then they will morph into Gollum, mulling over this new ring of power.

They will follow you with their eyes, waiting to pounce, tail twitching, nostrils slightly flared, wondering if you shrank their favorite shirt in the laundry this time. Again.

Or if you spent the day preparing a big batch of chicken enchiladas and she can’t believe you made those again because you know I don’t like enchiladas….ever!

“Good morning!” you will say, sauntering into the kitchen for tea.

Dark and brooding silence will greet you and if you have any brains at all, you’d better saunter quickly out the other door without making eye contact.

The tea can wait.

Their brothers went through the basic stages of training, the stuff you learn growing up in a house with females in it:

1. You’re too new to the territory, so you pretend your sisters are just having “a bad day” and go along with whatever they want. If they tell you to bring them the TV remote, the hot water bottle, a box of tissues and a Coke, you do.
2. You’ve wised up a bit, so you decide to not go along with anything the ladies demand. Enter: WWIII. Sometimes you leave a manly presence in the bathroom, just to reestablish your right to exist, and they firmly elucidate otherwise. Everyone else abandons the building.
3. You’ve finally wised up enough, so you do the only realistic right thing: take up fishing.

Hey, I’m not saying I’m any more rational.

I have been known, on occasion, to lose my cool over socks left in the middle of a room.

But as I continually chant to anyone who will listen to me (aka nobody), “I’m the mom! I get paid to nag over socks!!”

Lately though, I’ve been looking sideways at those socks like maybe they’re from Mordor, and not at all during the right times of month.

And here I was, thinking my mother was finally right about something.

She has been waiting for years for me to go into menopause. Even just a little bit. She went early and insists that, in all genetic fairness, so should her daughters.

My body is still prepared to conceive triplets if necessary on any given month.

Too much information later, I couldn’t figure out why Aunt Flo was getting capricious on me.

Until I began to notice the looks on my daughters faces around the same times.

And that they were all twitchy-eyed over the laundry. And the weather. And the look of my face.

Oh, I’m suddenly all kinds of on track again, but it’s not my track anymore.

I’ve been shanghaied by the Hormone Express.

And I want off.