Hold The Phone

Well, we’ve reached the end of our first week home in New England, and we are commemorating the 1st month as a legal family. (Previously outlaws, we went legit on December 4th at 6pm in the city of Semey (neé Semipalatinsk), in the former SSR of Kazakhstan. It was chilly inside and outside the courtroom, but we managed to ply our case (with considerable expert help), and with a stroke of the judge’s pen, we were grafted to Thumblini until the hereafter. Hurrah!

The little one? After her bath tonight, I carried her upstairs in a plush terry towel hooded with a sun and the approximation (in cotton, of course) of the sun’s rays. In my opinion, this getup transforms her from my beloved, Siberian Thumblini into a pastel-colored Aztec priest. Then she gets a baby oil spa treatment at the hands of the Mrs. I get to do the dishes.

So, yesterday, as part of the slow return to a routine, we went to the dry cleaners. The two sisters who run the place were so excited to see the baby, that they ran out in 17 degree weather, forgetting their coats. Then, of course, they ran back in (were the coats theirs, or just borrowed from the customer rack?) and returned, be-downed. One of them jumped into the car and sat with me, fawning over the baby. These women could not keep their hands away from the baby. They seemed compelled to reach for her as though she were a sliver of the True Cross, and entitled to reach for her feet and make what appeared to be gang signs in the air in front of Thumblini as they cooed, smiled, and otherwise contorted their tan faces (lovingly conditioned in UV booths). It was then I realized: babies are communal property. Babies are the touchstones to our dreams, desires, and our fantasies of regression, a sure shot back to a person’s own child-rearing encounters, and a window to what is profound about the human experience. The kid, in other words, transforms in a moment from the flesh-and-blood, spit-upping, gurgling, sleeps-with-the-pacifier-dangling-from-her-mouth human who is my daughter, into a mirror reflecting the person looking at her fat, rosy cheeks. Although I know it is futile, and that judgments will be made of her, and that people will experience her as they wish, and possibly to her future consternation, I must entreat:

People of earth: Co-opt somebody else’s kid. Me & the Mrs. have worked so dang hard to find her, and now you want to fill the air around her with so much pablum about how your nephew pees in his bed? You can’t possibly see the gravity and joy in our simple, family stroll through the aisles at CVS to select from among the four available flavors of Pedialyte. And you want to get your french-manicured hands on her tiny socks? Oh, she might look like a China Doll, but she can bench press 350 without breaking a sweat, so be warned, my friends...

OK, I know no one means any harm, but I resist the pigeonholing and the reductionism: yes, she’s a cutie, but she’s lived a heckuva life, and its a privilege to be in the same room with her. Harumph.

- DD