My youngest is currently taking the class that teaches kids how male and female bodies work. He is in fourth grade. I remember taking this class when I was in fourth grade. It involved splitting the class into males and females. I don’t know what the boys did, but the girls went to this little trailer in the parking lot and watched a movie and received a little bag afterwards with deodorant and feminine sanitary pads inside.

Justin, at age 10, doesn’t have to go into a trailer in the parking lot, but he was separated into a group of boys. They watched a movie about the penis, and after the movie there was a worksheet where they had to identify all of the parts with the proper names. He said they learned how a penis has an erection. He started talking to me about what he’d learn, and he sometimes stopped trying to remember the proper term or how to explain what the term was, and I think he was surprised his mom already knew.

He had no idea that learning the uretha was where urine and semen traveled was not news to his mom.

But it wasn’t the parts and images of the penis that grabbed his attention. He was more interested in his voice changing and cracking as it goes through that change. He tried out various voices and imagined what it would be like to be talking high and low in the same sentence.

Part two of the movie is today. I think he is mostly interested in it being over so he can get his sample-sized deod0rant.

He and I talked about what he might be learning. He asked questions about periods, pregnancy and my own miscarriages. I think he was interested in these pregnancies that never developed into siblings. What if?

I try not to think about the what ifs. I don’t like to think of my three miscarriages as children lost. I try to look at it as one of my four children attempting to arrive a bit early. It helps even if it might be a bit delusional.