Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume (12 page)

I held that literary reality close to my heart, and, in fact, it came true. My friends were nothing but supportive. And while they will now tease me about my chipmunk cheek days (my face is back to its angular lines and has been for years), never once did they say a mean word during our school years. Even better, they were quick to come to my defense against any moron who did make fun.

I took the medicine for years, finally successfully tapering off without my platelet count dropping during my first semester of college at seventeen. Those years in between were hard, but I had Sally J. and Deenie and my nonliterary friends and my family helping me through. Once I was used to the meds, I slipped back into fantasy again, becoming a world-famous scientist and solving the mystery of the “idiopathic” part of my illness. I made up wild causes and fantasized that my blood had special properties that aliens wanted, and that in order to save the world, I had to save myself from the invaders. In other words, I took a page from Deenie and Sally J.'s books and turned an unpleasant situation on its ear, entertaining myself with fantasies spun from my own medical misfortune.

When the doctor did tell me I was done with the meds, I thought of Deenie again. She ultimately left her brace behind, too. As far as I know, Deenie got to leave hers behind permanently. My illness came back with a vengeance after my first semester in law school. I had no bruising this time, so I wasn't expecting it; I'd simply gone in for a routine check. As it turns out, I had essentially no platelets. My blood wasn't just clotting too slowly, it wasn't clotting at all.

This time, the treatment was surgical—removal of my spleen (and, therefore, the major component of my immune system, which was doing such an excellent job of filtering out all those misplaced antibodies and the platelets to which they were attached). And because the situation was apparently so serious, my doctor insisted I go to the hospital right after our appointment. I begged for him to let me take my civil procedure final exam first, which happened to be scheduled for the next day. And so I went from sitting for an exam to lying on an operating table.

At that point in my life, my head was more filled with personal jurisdiction than with my childhood literary friends, but Deenie and Sally J. were still with me. I know because, following Deenie's lead, in that short period (and instead of studying for my exam) I looked up everything I could about the surgery. And in the style of Sally J., I spent the week of recovery in the hospital making up complex stories in my head. Stories that always starred myself.

I'm happy to report that the spleenectomy “cured” me. I no longer have a decent immune system, and my body still makes antibodies against my own platelets. But since my spleen isn't there to filter them out, the little platelet guys still do their job, albeit with antibodies clinging tenaciously to them.

It is possible that other organs will take up the slack left by my spleen's absence, but it's been years, and so far that hasn't happened. We did hold our breath when I was pregnant, since pregnancy can, in fact, induce a temporary case of ITP.

I was fortunate, however, and sailed through the pregnancy just fine. My platelets were monitored, and so were my daughter's. She's now four and shows no sign of having inherited her mommy's misguided immune system.

I know, however, that since it is idiopathic, it could show up in her, and I tend to freak a little when I see bruises on her legs. Our wonderful pediatrician understands and gently reminds me that kids bump into things and get bruises. And even while he reminds me of that, he keeps his eyes open for any unusual bruising and performs a platelet test if something seems amiss.

I hope and pray that she never has to face any sort of unpleasant medical situation. For that matter, I hope and pray that she never has to face anything hard in life. But, like a fourteen-year-old self-prescribing vitamin K, I know that is naive and unlikely. And, truthfully, it's not really what I want for her. Hard situations help us to grow, and I know she can make it through anything. Why wouldn't she? After all, she's got her family, and as she grows, she will have more and more friends. And, you can be sure, once she's old enough to read and understand, I'll make sure that my daughter has literary friends like Sally J. and Deenie to help her along the journey.

Kristin Harmel

When I read
It's Not the End of the World
for the first time, I was in the fourth grade.
Poor Karen Newman,
I thought. Sure, she was lucky because she was already in sixth grade (and everyone knew that the sixth graders ruled the elementary school), but her parents were getting a divorce! I didn't know anyone whose parents were divorced.
How awful,
I thought. But it would never happen to me.

Sure, my mom and dad fought a lot. Dad would work late; he'd come home and only half listen to the things we had to say; my parents would snap at each other, and I'd go watch
Mr. Ed
or
Get Smart
reruns on Nick at Nite and try to tune them out. Sometimes they would take it out on me, and I'd fill my diary with things like, “I think Dad hates me,” or, “Mom yelled at me for no reason.” But then we'd go on a family trip to Disney World or to see my grandparents in Massachusetts, my parents would both smile at my brother, sister, and me, and I knew everything was fine.

Poor Karen Newman.
But
my
parents would never get a divorce, I remember thinking confidently as I read about Karen's parents splitting up. After all, my mom had never thrown a mocha cake on the floor just because my dad complained about the icing. My dad would never yell at my mom because my sister spilled some milk. My mom had never screamed at my dad for getting home too late for dinnertime, even though they never really talked to each other and often seemed to dislike being in the same room. So, they must be happy, right?

The summer after fourth grade, we moved to Florida. That's where Karen Newman's family was going to move at the end of the book. But they were moving there because her parents were divorced and Karen's mom wanted a fresh start. Not my family. No way. We were moving because my dad had a great new job. And besides, Mom and Dad had been happy during every trip we'd ever taken to Disney World. And Disney World was in Florida. So it only made sense that once we were living in Florida, they'd talk to each other more and start getting along again, right? Divorce wasn't even an option.

At least that's what I thought.

But divorce wasn't an option for Karen Newman, either, was it? Like me, she watched her parents fight and convinced herself that it was no big deal. She felt the tension that pervaded their home and internalized it. And so did I.

But still, I didn't see the signs. Divorce was something that happened to other families.

At first, Florida was great. Well, as great as it could be when my new fifth-grade classmates were snobs who snubbed me because I dressed like a dork. But I didn't see Mom and Dad fight very much anymore. Sure, I felt tense all the time for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. And, actually, Dad was never really home that much; he'd come in from work after we had gone to bed and be gone by the time we got up in the morning. But they must be getting along, I thought. It's not like I heard them argue. And the complete lack of talking to each other that I couldn't help but notice on the weekends? Well, it just must be that they got all of their friendly talking out of the way at night after we had all gone to bed. It couldn't be that they had run out of things to talk about altogether. And it definitely couldn't be that they just didn't like each other anymore.

Dad came home earlier than usual one night midway through fifth grade. Great, I thought. We'll finally be able to have a family dinner together! Maybe we can even go out to eat. What a treat that would be! But instead of having a great family meal like we used to, what felt like a long time ago, Mom and Dad asked me, my seven-year-old sister Karen, and my four-year-old brother David to come sit with them in the living room. Okay, I thought. Maybe we'd all sit down and play Candyland together or something. Great!

“Kids,” my dad began somberly, looking at my brother, sister, and me. “Your mother and I love you all very much. But we've decided to separate.”

I think my heart stopped for a moment. My jaw dropped.

No.

No.

It couldn't be happening. Not to my family.

“What does that mean?” asked my panic-stricken sister, looking from my father to my mother.

“It just means that Dad and I have some problems we need to work out,” my mother explained kindly, making eye contact with each of us. Or at least I think she was making eye contact. My eyes were welling up with incredulous tears, so it was hard to see. “This has nothing to do with you three. We love you more than anything in the world. We both do.”

“You're getting a divorce!” I exclaimed. I couldn't believe it! My parents were just like Karen Newman's! And I hadn't even seen it coming!

“No, honey, right now it's just a separation,” my mother soothed.

“But where will you go, Dad?” I asked. I looked at my little brother, who was too young to understand. But he was following the conversation with the wide eyes of someone watching a high-paced tennis match.

“I've found an apartment close by,” my dad said.

“But we'll never see you!” my sister wailed.

“Of course you will,” he responded. “I'll be right up the street. We'll see each other all the time. I'll take you to dinner one night a week. And we can see each other every other weekend.”

I just stared. One night a week? Every other weekend? It was just like Karen Newman's parents! And her parents got divorced soon after her dad moved out.

No, I decided. I would
not
let that happen. Not to my parents. After all, I'd seen their wedding photos. One of them was still up in the living room. Look how happy they were! That couldn't just go away! Could it?

I mean, sure, Karen Newman had tried to get her parents back together, and it hadn't worked. But maybe she just hadn't tried the
right
things. So in the name of research, I went back and reread
It's Not the End of the World.
Okay, so Karen's plans
seemed
solid. For example, bringing her diorama home from school so that her dad would have to come over and see it, thereby running into her mom and remembering how much he loved her? Pure genius. The one flaw in the plan was that in my class, we weren't actually
building
any dioramas at the moment. I didn't have any bait to lure him home.

Okay, Karen Newman Plan #2: Pretend to be sick so that Dad
has
to come see me, thereby running into Mom and noticing her stunning beauty and sparkling wit. This plan, too, was flawed, though, as Dad was a doctor and Mom was a nurse, and they could spot a faker a mile away. They were on to me the moment I held the thermometer up to the lightbulb in an attempt to simulate a fever. Hmm, it didn't work for Karen Newman, either.

Okay, on to Karen Newman Plan #3: Get Mom and Dad back together on their anniversary. Surely they couldn't help but remember how in love they had been on the day they got married, right? They had just forgotten, but I could remind them, and everything would be fine. Unfortunately, that plan crashed and burned, too. It seems that two people who are in the midst of dissolving their marriage don't really appreciate it when their eleven-year-old daughter fills the house with Happy Anniversary banners she prints out on the computer. Karen Newman's plan failed similarly. I should have known.

I can't even count the number of times I read and reread
It's Not the End of the World.
That's because when you're eleven and your parents are splitting up, no one realizes that you might have some real adult questions that you don't exactly know how to ask. Even though my mother did her best to explain the divorce to me and answer all of my questions honestly, there were some things I didn't know how to put into words. Will Dad stop loving us? Will he forget us when he moves? What will happen to us? Will we be poor? Will Dad try to take us away from Mom? I didn't know how to ask those things. But Judy Blume did. And through Karen Newman, she told me the things I ached to know.

The divorce hit me hard, just like it did Karen. Karen was in sixth grade when her parents divorced, and so was I. Why did Judy Blume choose to make her that age? I've always thought it's because that's the worst age to go through a divorce. You're old enough to absorb the tension around you and to grasp the basic undercurrents of the situation. But you're young enough that no one actually realizes that you know exactly what's going on but don't know how to ask the questions gnawing at the back of your mind. Karen Newman was the only other sixth grader I knew who was going through a divorce that she didn't understand, didn't want, and didn't know how to stop.

But Karen Newman made it through. And that was important to me, because it meant that I could, too.

I often wondered through the years what happened to Karen Newman, or rather what
would
have happened to her if she were a real girl rather than a figment of Judy Blume's imagination. There's a singular solidarity to the children of divorce, especially those of us who go through such a thing at a highly formative age, and I like to think she and I would have been great friends.

I know now, without a shadow of a doubt, that my parents are much better apart than they were together. When I was young, all I could see was that they had loved each other once, and it made no sense to me that they could suddenly fall out of love. Did that mean they could stop loving me, too? Now I know that sometimes people
do
fall out of love with each other, and that as my parents grew and matured, they grew apart, changed into different people, went in different directions. But when I was eleven years old, hurting and confused, it changed my world to know that I had Karen Newman and
It's Not the End of the World
to turn to for help.

Judy Blume, I often thought, must be some sort of oracle who knew exactly what I needed to hear. That's because for a long while it
was
the end of the world for me. Karen Newman's story ended before her parents' divorce was final. But did she know it could get worse? Did she know that her dad could leave and not look back for a while? Did she know that her father could show up just before her Catholic confirmation, an event that felt like the most important day of her life, and tell her while standing uncomfortably in her driveway that he couldn't come because he'd decided that spending time with her wasn't good for his “own personal happiness”? Did she know that she would probably internalize lots of her parents' problems and somehow feel that they were her fault? Did she know that she would spend years feeling guilty for not being as perfect as she could have been, because surely that's what must have broken up the marriage? Did she know that she would cry herself to sleep at night because she couldn't fix what was broken?

I wonder, having experienced the breakup of her parents' marriage, and ultimately her family, who Karen Newman would be today. Would she be one of those lucky kids who escaped relatively unscathed from her parents' divorce? I suspect not. Because, like me, Karen Newman felt it all. She saw her mom in pain. She saw her dad hurt. And she internalized it all, made it her responsibility to fix it, worried about the things she couldn't possibly change. And when that happens to an eleven-year-old, it shapes her for the rest of her life.

I wonder if Karen Newman has problems today with relationships. I do. There's something about realizing early on that love doesn't always work out that makes you reluctant to try. There's something about watching your parents' marriage fail that makes you doubt you'll be able to make a marriage of your own work. Would Karen Newman have found that out, too?

I left Karen Newman when we were both sixth graders, both mired in our parents' divorces. Her story had ended, and she had imparted all of the knowledge she had for me. But does the story ever really end for either of us? After your parents divorce, the shock, sadness, and confusion fade, the years wash away some of the bitterness, and you eventually learn to let go of the hope that your parents will reconcile. But in a way, you're changed forever. Divorce is a shadow that shades the rest of your life.

Today I'm nearly twenty-seven. More than fifteen years have elapsed since my parents' divorce. After several rocky years with my father, we are finally back on track. We're friends again, and that means the world to me. I am closer to my mother than I ever could have imagined; she is my best friend, my role model, and the one person in my life who I know I can rely on through thick and thin.

I don't have problems getting into relationships. I fall in love just like anyone else (even though my boyfriend choices aren't always the best, but that's another exploratory essay for another day, isn't it?). I am able to commit to relationships and I would never dream of cheating on someone—ever. But I've been cheated on. And instead of reacting with horror and surprise, my reaction has simply been one of confirmation of my fears. Rather than thinking,
That bastard!
when I once called the guy I was dating and his ex-girlfriend answered the phone in his hotel room, I resigned myself to the inevitability:
Well, it was bound to happen sometime.
Then I promptly lost even more faith in relationships and commitment. What a depressing thought that I go through relationships waiting to be let down, waiting for the man to walk away. I wonder if Karen Newman would have approached relationships with the same unhealthy skepticism.