it would be nice if you could ask mom for advice on vibrators or fancy lingerie. Photograph: Lisa Skinner
My mother and I are not best friends. And I prefer it that way.
I was never envious of my teenage friends who would spend afternoons whiling away their time in the kitchen, telling Mom through the onion-slicing and the rice-cooking for breyani about their new teacher or how Darren in standard eight made eyes at them. I found it silly, really.
Your latest crush is the kind of thing you discuss with your equally giggly and blushing friends — they might have been only 14 years old but all could analyse a single look from said Darren like a post-doctoral trigonometry student.
A mother is the one who always reminded you that kissing boys was something girls do who don’t have studies, sport or the holy spirit to occupy them otherwise.
She taught you that your virginity is a precious gift you give to only one man.
There is no doubt that, although I’ve never heard my mom actually say the word ”sex” out loud, it was forbidden.
A wedding ring was your only ticket to this mysterious world that seemed to be on everyone’s mind, but no one would talk about.
Unless, of course, it was about the results of sex.
Every 16-year-old girl who fell pregnant was the subject of long discussion between the women. Who is the father? Why did she have to hang out at clubs all the time? And the most important question was always: how could she do this to her parents?
So what do you do when, after listening to the teachings of your elders and being subjected to lectures from the true-love-waits brigade (seriously, that’s what they were called) at school, you decide that you won’t wait?
Not as an act of rebellion, just as a healthy mixture of hormones and common sense.
In our house that’s the point where you go underground.
You don’t participate in conversations any more when the neighbour’s daughter’s shotgun wedding gets discussed.
You have already thought of excuses to give to your mother when your lover answers your phone by accident at 7am — Mom’s favourite time to call.
You refuse to let your mom unpack your suitcase when you come home for a holiday. Even though unpacking is the chore you hate most, you can’t risk her finding a stray condom from your holiday. The downside is that now there is a whole chunk my mom will never know.
But letting her in there would lead to too many uncomfortable questions and judgments and that disappointed look that says: Is this how I brought you up?
You can’t go into too many details about Eric who, in a hot Nairobi nightclub, gave you your first look-across-a-crowded-room and so won a night in your bed.
Or why you didn’t mind much that the two locals who you ended up with on the outskirts of Istanbul could not speak English.
So although I don’t tell my mom every secret and she knows every detail of my life, it would be nice if you could talk to her about some of these things. Get her advice on whether to spend hundreds of rands on fancy lingerie. Or share the sigh of relief when the pregnancy scare turned out to be just that.
But I suppose that is what best friends are for.