After the Story - Choices Like Rivers Episode 2
After the Story - Choices Like Rivers Episode 2
This podcast discusses each chapter of Choices Like Rivers and each episode is posted directly after the book episode. This corresponds to Chapter 2 Section 1.
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We did not talk about sex in our home. It was a taboo subject as it was in most homes.
In 1970 I was 12 years old and just going into Junior High which in our small town was in the same building at the High School. Grades 7 - 12 all went to school in the same building. Let me just say this is a quick way for a bunch of 7th graders to get a social education - fast.
Our parents were oblivious to what we discussed at school. But, there were still things we just did not talk about and one of them was sex, and the other was drugs.
Our little school was a long way from a city and we were deep in rural farm and ranch country. Everyone mostly went to church and believed in the moral code that existed. And the unspoken moral code said you do not talk about those things.
However in my home things were a bit different. We were not regular church people. I know why now, but then I didn’t know and wasn’t sure why.
I was an only child and wanted the social experience of going to church, so my mom would drop me off at Sunday School and go to her friend Maxine’s to work the Sunday crossword puzzle then pick me up afterwards.
As I said, at home we did not talk about sex but there was one phrase that was repeatedly drilled into me. “You better not get pregnant! It will just kill your mother and me if you get pregnant!”
No context about sex outside of marriage, nothing about anything but getting pregnant. It was almost as if getting pregnant was the ‘sin’ and not premarital sex.
I had a girlfriend whose mother let her boyfriend move in with her and she took her to get birth control pills. That good friend of mine never ever let on in all those years. It was a super-secret. She only told me at the end of our senior year. I was in shock.
So in our book I could only imagine what Sharon was feeling. This sick horror of learning she was pregnant and then knowing she would have to tell her parents.
Her concern over who would take care of the baby was a real one. Daycare’s in small towns were non-existent, or were grandmothers or other stay-at-home mom’s who wanted to earn a little cash.
Sharon could have hired someone like that to take care of the baby while she worked or went to school. And there were government programs to have helped her, but since this topic was taboo, she wouldn’t have known any of that.
I wrote this character as a very conscientious young woman who saw and appreciated her parents. She saw how hard her mom worked to achieve her dreams and she did not want to take that away from her. At this age Sharon loved and cared freely for others. She was not selfish or self-centered.
As we read further through the book we will see if any of that changes.
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