The Mommy Dictionary

Preity Zinta stroked her smooth, hairless limbs in the television ad.

“I want to get my hair removed, too,” announced one of my children.

I had a stock answer along the lines of: And so you shall. Some day, when you’re older.

Actually, I was grateful the depilatory cream caught her attention. There are dozens of explicit ads, some completely unfit for viewing at family time, that routinely get broadcast on Indian television.

Condoms. Contraceptives. Abortion pills. (“I didn't take any precautions last night ..." Magic product appears. "Now I have no chinta, only honey! Let’s bang away, tension-free!”)

Liquor and cigarettes ads are not permitted on TV, and for good reason. But if there’s anything concerning reproduction, body fluids and skin rashes that involve violent itching, hey, bring it on.

Now I’m up to discussing any of these subjects openly with my children. It’s just that I’d rather not be ambushed with them while we’re in the middle of watching Psych together, with dinner plates in front of us. That is not a time I want my family to be assaulted by graphic information on the consequences of not being protected from accidents and leaks involving the human body.

But I guess parents can never be prepared for the questions their kids choose to ask them, or when.

“What’s intercourse?” my younger child asked me, out of the blue, last week.

“Where did you come across that word?” I asked, trying to sound indifferent.

“These two teachers were talking and I was walking by and I heard one of them say “They had intercourse.”

Hmm, teachers! And it’s not like they were discussing the intercourse of art and science. They were clearly talking about people. I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t use the f- word on campus within earshot of children. But now there was something more Victorian and priestly to explain.

Intercourse, I explained, was the exchange or intermingling of things. Sometimes, people use it to mean having sex, I added. “Yuck,” she said, twisting her lips in disgust. And she was ready to talk about something else.

She could have looked up “intercourse” in the dictionary, too, except that the dictionary wouldn’t have interlaced hands like I did during my rambling, but mostly adequate explanation.

The dictionary was the default source of information for me when I was young and curious. My mother was prudish, and my father left discussions of all matters related to human plumbing to my mother, so the subject never came up. When it did, occasionally, it got shushed away.

I remember once overhearing my mother and her friend talking about a movie character who became a “pros,” which I gathered was a bad person even though I had never heard the word before. It’s not as if I eavesdropped. They were having a conversation right in my presence, but assumed that I was invisible or heard nothing. Later, I asked my mother what a “pros” was. She looked at me as though I had just told her I wanted to become one. Her cold, disapproving voice informed me that such words were for “adults” to know, and that I should never mention such a bad word ever again.

I took her lesson to heart. I never asked her about such words again. I just looked them up quietly in the dictionary ... and found the meanings of lots of forbidden “adult” words that were thrilling and disgusting.

The day I looked up “pros,” I also learned the meanings of “proscenium,” prosthesis, and “prostitute.” And after the way my mother had ticked me off, I was so expecting to be shocked by the definition of “prostitute,” but it didn’t even make my eyes pop.

My dictionary was a good confidant and companion. It offered up anything I wanted to know, without judging me. I learned the meanings of words I was looking for, and those I ran into because they were just hanging around the neighborhood. I could even open it up in full view of my mother and look up filth with scholarly diligence.

I would have loved to have my mom talk to me about the words I secretly looked up, but she was too prim. In her world, kids were too pristine to know about certain things. They just figured them out when they became “adult.” She had been raised in a devout household where they didn’t even know such blasphemous words existed. I can understand her awkwardness now, though I certainly think that as a rational, free adult, she could have made a choice to at least resist such ignorance, even a little bit, instead of raising her kids behind the same veil of silence. I pieced together the facts of life from whatever I gleaned from secret whispers, dirty jokes and high school anatomy lessons.

We have lots of dictionaries in our home. But I’m glad my kids don’t feel inhibited about throwing any question at me. I’m surprised they know about things I hadn’t even heard about at their age, but I’m glad to give them a straight answer.