Border Patrol

It's no secret that my oldest child is from a previous relationship, although my other children are unaware of that and will continue to be so as long as I can hold them off.  When I say relationship, I mean he was a former boss who dated an employee.  When I say employee, I mean I was a minor preyed upon by an older man (six years older, but hey..when you're seventeen, that's a ton.)  When I say preyed upon, I mean it was date him or lose my job, which I did both eventually.  The sorted story that describes the tumultuous years (was it two?) with him is long and probably, no--definitely--R-rated.  It's nothing I should go into detail about, although it would make a great indie flick.  Actually, most of my pre-Greg years would make a great indie flick, and we'll leave it at that.
In any case, what was done was done and I was with child.  Fast forward nine years and I'm giving the sex talk to my daughter.  It wasn't anything planned in terms of organized conversation, though the need to explain it to her to some degree was premeditated.  I remember the snowball building as I went along until my brakes went out and I was a runaway truck driving the 99.  She would hardly blink her eyes as I described with very little detail to the point where the organs of the process were sketchy in terms of recognizable gender.  What does anyone say besides get out the book made by the "Poo Poo In My Potty" people?  The words were flitting out of my mouth while my hands tried to make some sort of charades-like images in the air.  The math was adding up while I was talking.  She was six months when she met Greg.  He taught her to crawl.  She was three when we married, she was there at the wedding, though to her the big moment of the day was crawling on the back of the statue in front of the temple and waving her arms.  Here she was six years later and none the wiser as she remembers very little about her days of calling him Greg.  He's just always been the dad that she saw her mom marry.
Mmmmk.  So about that...my description of the man fitting together with a woman to create life was brief, but my blurting out that "her dad wasn't her real dad and that she had another person help me create her who she has never met although he did meet her when she was born and saw her again when she was two but she has no idea who he is and would never be able to pick him out between two guys standing in front of her oh and by the way he's Mexican and his last name is Romero" came out even faster and jumbled together like the longest word in a Mary Poppins film.  Too much info...sex and biological fathers.  So, any questions? 
The next day she had school and I worried so much about her.  What is going through her mind?  Is she able to focus at all on school?  Is she telling people about what Mommy told her last night?  Does she look at boys with utter disgust now?  I wished and wished I had waited for the weekend when she could take more time to absorb, then ask, then absorb again.  But no, I had to muddle her life-altering lessons in with her multiplication facts (truly, there were no puns intended but man...that was a good one...multiplication and sex...hah!)
She came home and I watched her, testing her attitude, mood, reactions, etc., before I braved a check-up.  She seemed to be alright except a little quieter than usual.  Could anything be stranger than reproduction?  I mean, yeah...once you've done it it's like--okay, this is how it goes.  But for the first time hearing it?  W-E-I-R-D....W-E-I-R-D.  Ew...WEIRD.  I follow her to her room and try with all the casual tones in my throat to pronounce the words, "how was your day?"  afraid to hear the answer...afraid she'd want drawings, afraid she'd heard some horrid sexual vocabulary like the O word and require explanation (that actually happened to my friend and she had to explain it to her son...bleh.)  She was indifferent in her answer, "fine" the usual, "So...did you have trouble understanding what we talked about, were you confused?  Were you able to focus at school?" 
She answered, "Yeah, it was so weird.  All day I kept playing it over and over in my mind."
Oh no--my baby is thinking about porn!
"I just kept thinking how weird it was and everyone looked different to me."
Oh no--she hates boys...she wants to be a lesbian!  I'm clutching my hands together holding a timid smile.
"I just kept looking at all the kids that I've seen everyday all year and now I see the Mexican kids and think 'I'm one of them.'  It's so weird.  I'm a Mexican."
I sat down trying to put myself into her shoes.  What would that be like to find out your are someone you never identified with before?  So, maybe the additional 'father' information was good to throw into the sex conversation.  I mean, how far away is her mind right now from the big O? With a squeeze of her shoulders and a peck on her head I tell her, "yeah, that's weird huh...but it does explain your beautiful skin!  You're lucky!"  Once again my words of encouragement and gestures of love and affection prove that I truly am...Mother of the Year.