Truth. Parenting. Sex. Ouch.

My daughter Annie and I are eating dinner, just the two of us, at the sunroom table. Our dogs lie at our feet; Bill is teaching. We’ve been discussing her eighth grade Sex Ed class — today was the day they talked about Choices and Options, and she asks me. . . The Question.

I take a breath, repeat her question, “How old was I when I first had sex?” And then I tell her the truth. “I was fifteen and a half,” I stress the half, “and it was with a friend. Not a boyfriend, just a friend.”

Truth. Parenting. Sex. Ouch.

~

When I was seventeen and college loomed on the horizon, my mother said one night at the dinner table, apropos of nothing, “I think we should take you to Planned Parenthood to get you some birth control.”

My dad and sister Jessica sat completely still. Blood pounded behind my eyes; my vision dimmed.

“Why, Mom?”

My best friend and I had secretly gone to Planned Parenthood by ourselves, giggled through the orientation session, and were fitted for diaphragms. We were responsible — or we planned to be the next time sex came up, even if we hadn’t been responsible the first time we’d each done it. But that had been a year ago, and the diaphragm sat unused (and un-needed) in my drawer.

I looked across at Jessica; she sniggered. I hated my mom, that she’d bring up something so personal, especially in front of my sister and dad. We weren’t a family that talked much, even at dinner time. (“How was school today?” “Good.” “What went on?” “Nothing.”)

And I wasn’t used to telling her the truth.

“Oh my God, Mom, I refuse to talk about this,” I pushed up from the table and stormed out.

“You don’t need me to take you to Planned Parenthood, I saw it in your drawer, you already got yourself a little diaphragm!” she yelled after me.

~

My poor Mama. We didn’t know how to talk about sex. My parents were affectionate with each other — and private. They told me the “facts of life” early on, they encouraged my precocious reading habits (I read Naked Lunch at age 11), and they signed all the permission slips for sex ed classes. But we didn’t talk about it. I flirted with danger, had experiences, got lucky, and made it through — all without talking to my parents.

Other girls weren’t so lucky. The world had sharper corners than my parents ever knew. We lived in a town with a reputation for excellent schools but where kids threw each other into trash cans, ripped each other’s clothes on the way home from school, and molested each other behind the bungalows. In seventh grade, my friend Lisa’s mother’s boyfriend, with her mother’s permission, lit candles, brought out the massage oil, and taught Lisa “how to make love.” “He said I was a little young to start,” Lisa said, “but it was important for me to have a good experience the first time.”

She told me about it. Then she tried to kill herself. I never told my parents.

~

“Mommy, do you have any secrets you haven’t told me about?”

My daughter Annie and I are driving in the car, so I don’t have to look at her. I don’t intend to be coy, I’m just not prepared to spread it all out before her; it’s one thing to commit to truth telling, another to do it.

I fret about the lines between secrets and privacy and truth. How much is enough information? How much is too much? How do I model my own openness so my daughter feels open enough to share her truths and experiences with me?

I want her to feel free to ask, and I want to feel free to tell. I don’t want to lie to Annie, but I don’t want to overwhelm her with my “Capital P” past. I fear my adventures will dwarf her; the turf claimed, the wild seas charted. And I don’t want her to feel that because I’ve done particular things, she should emulate me; that because I had sex at fifteen (and a half), she should, too.

So I tightrope the line between openness and privacy, between “here’s my story” and “none of your business,” between pulling the car to the side of the road to talk and gripping the wheel harder and driving on.

I believe in speaking the truth, and I like it — it’s habit-forming, and it keeps communication clean, even though it’s often brutally hard. But telling the truth doesn’t always mean telling all. Some questions I’ll answer now, others when she’s older. But a few questions, like those about my sex life with her father, will always be off limits.

“Mommy, do you have any secrets you haven’t told me about?”

“Absolutely,” I say. “Some secrets are meant to be exactly that . . . secret. And that’s the truth.”