I’m trying to determine what is the function of a parent to an adult child. And if it’s what I think it is, I wonder who counts as a parent. Based on the actions of my biological father, a parent’s job is to win arguments, use their child’s values and even religion to manipulate them into obedience, and to demand a level of loyalty that they don’t reciprocate.

But what about the relationships I’ve cultivated with “dads” over the years? Pastors, friends’ fathers, and bosses have all stepped in as auxiliary parents when I’ve needed them. Judging from their conduct as fathers in my life, it’s fair to say that a parent’s job is to offer unconditional love, to advise without judgment, and to calm the fears that surface with each new challenge brought by adulthood.

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“A week? Every month!? Forever?”

“Not forever. Just most of your adult life.”

I felt utterly betrayed by this knowledge. As I understood it, I had crossed a line. On one side, I had been happily ignorant, assuming that the rest of my life would be exactly as it had been up to that point. I was going to grow up and be a veterinarian and a writer. My parents would look exactly the same and have the same dog for the next seventy or so years. On the other side of the line, where I now stood, something awful was going to happen to me, and continue happening. And I was going to be powerless to stop it. In many ways, learning about my destiny to “become a woman” was a step out of childhood more than my actual first period.

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