When I was 12, I waited for my period to start with an anticipation and an excitement which seemed pathetic to my 13 year old self, naive to myself at 15, touching to the young woman I was at 18 and inexpressibly moving to the young mother I became at 25.

I give thanks to my own mother. How did she teach me about my body, about its mysteries and its potential, without frightening me, without ever making me worry or feel ashamed?

My period started when I was in 8th grade, during spelling class. After returning from the bathroom, I passed a note to my friend Susan.

“I’ve got it.”

“Got what?” she wrote back.

I remember being stunned. Wasn’t everyone thinking only of this?

Later I realized I was a year younger than everyone else in my class and that I was the last girl to “get it.” Susan, and everyone else, had moved on. They were all 13. There was no longer anything exciting about getting your period.

This came back to me last week when one of my staff came to me in great distress. She said her daughter was terribly ill. That she was refusing to eat, wouldn’t get out of bed, and wouldn’t even consider going to school. Telling me the story, she broke down in tears. She was so worried she didn’t know what to do.

I called a doctor and made an appointment for her. Sent her in the school van. Waited to hear the report. The next day, her Mom said the doctor had been very nice. Said her daughter seemed to be worried about her exams. Relax, he had advised.

But she couldn’t relax because her daughter still wouldn’t eat and still wouldn’t go to school. Now, she said, she was passing blood in her urine. I called the doctor to report this and he said we needed to get a urine test done.

As I explained to the Mom how to go about this, the light dawned.

“Go home now,” I told her. “I think she’s started her period. Go and explain it to her. Tell her she’s fine. Bring her some ice cream. This is great!”

I was right. The doctor was wrong. Ice cream was in order.

So now I am thinking about daughters. And how mothers are their gateways, their passages, their interpreters in a confusing and frightening world and how, if they arrive with ice cream and reassurance and the wild spirit of celebration of bodies doing just exactly what they should, how all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.