Babyhood (9780062098788) (13 page)

Then the nurse stabs this spear into your infant's little virgin, heretofore undamaged skin. But the cries don't come right away. There's a small interval between Injection and Pain. Maybe it's that their little nerve endings take that much longer to transmit the news, but there's a good few, solid seconds where the baby doesn't register that they've just been savaged.

But
you
do. You know that with a jolt like that, a response will be forthcoming. I was painfully aware that there was a very short clock ticking, and only precious seconds of innocence remaining in my child's heart. Those beautiful, trusting, innocent eyes are about to transform horribly, and I have but a fleeting, minuscule window of opportunity to either distance myself from the event or soothe him; say something that will ready him, because any second now . . . and—
BAMMO!
—it hits. Wherever that shot was supposed to go, it just got there. And he is instantly, irrevocably
pissed.
Not regular pissed—rageful. There are no graduations. No transitional drama-award face. It doesn't hurt a Little, then a Little More, and then kind of Really, Really Hurt. It goes from Nothing Whatsoever to “OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW” in a flash.

And then he whips his head in my direction.

“Did you SEE that?!”

You have nothing to offer except a colorful plastic key you pathetically shake around a little. This does nothing.

“Did you see what that lady did?! She just stabbed me!”

The betrayal is unspeakable.

“How could you let that happen? You were standing right there, you must have seen that, for crying out loud. You two are the worst parents I ever heard of. You're both cruel, untrustworthy, and no damn good . . . Now could somebody get me a Band-Aid? Do you think you could manage that?”

It killed me to know that I couldn't make his pain go away. I looked at him tenderly, thinking, “Son—”

“And don't think this hurts you more than it hurts me.”

I thought, “Okay.”

Look, a Fuzzy Tiger

T
o fully appreciate what having a baby does to your life, you need to really grasp the concept of Baby Time. Babies slow down time in
two
particularly exasperating ways.

First of all, things that used to take five minutes now take an hour. When you add a baby to any activity, even something as simple as Walking Out the Door, you must allow yourself one solid hour more than you used to. There's the packing, the changing, the planning for any one of seven hundred scenarios that could develop, and the going back for things you'd need for any of the two dozen
other
scenarios your spouse decided could happen because she heard of them happening to someone her friend knows.

This is why the moment your child is born, feel free to lose entirely from your vocabulary the phrase, “We'll be there in twenty minutes.” It has no value, it has no more application. You will never again be anywhere in twenty minutes. Ever.

Furthermore, and this is the nasty
second
reality of Baby Time: Things that feel like they're taking an hour actually are
not.
I was once so proud of having successfully entertained my son for an entire afternoon. I designed and constructed an immense building-block fortress, played a vigorous round of “Where's-Daddy's-Nose?/Where-Are-Daddy's-Ears?” and rendered a poignant reading of
Harry the Hippo
, only to glance at my watch and discover that in fact
seven minutes
had elapsed.

BABIES SLOW DOWN TIME. Understand this. Accept it. Make friends with it. They tamper with the actual physics and mechanics of the Space/Time Continuum. In fact, if you play with a baby long enough, time will literally stop, and then go backward. These tiny people can actually
reverse
time. A friend of mine once played with his ten-month-old daughter for an entire afternoon, and by the time his wife came home, the man was seven years old. No kidding around, he was, astonishingly enough, a scant six or seven years older than his own child.

This is why parents love videos. Even the ones like me who swore, “I'm not going to be like all those parents who just drop their kid in front of the TV.” Because you discover that videos have the power to
overcome
Baby Time. They are immune to the baby's unearthly powers. If the tape says “fifty-three minutes,” you're going to get fifty-three minutes. Put the kid in front of that video, you are free to do fifty-three minutes' worth of stuff.

One time, the only tape I could find was the instructional video that came with our car. It was about thirty-five minutes long—which is exactly what I needed. As it turns out, my kid loved it. You know why? He'd never seen it. He's never seen
anything.

And this is where the Powers That Be compensate nicely for the inconvenience of Baby Time. They throw in the wonderful Counter Force—Baby Point of View. One works against you, one helps you out.

Baby Point of View hinges on the simple premise that almost anything you show them, they've never seen before. And if they have, there's a very good chance they don't remember. So it is through this miracle that a piece of Scotch tape becomes the best toy ever made. A restaurant's fish tank becomes the San Diego Zoo. The produce department at the supermarket is suddenly the Wonderful Interactive Museum of Food—because it's all new.

I
t seems that the key parenting skill you need to develop when entertaining your new child is the ability to Distract. If they get bored, or scared, or cry for any reason, you just pull a sleight-of-hand and misdirect their simple little minds elsewhere. For starters, show them something. Anything.

“Look, a fuzzy tiger.”

They will most likely stop crying and evaluate this new information.

“Hmm, a tiger . . . I hadn't realized that . . .”

“Yes, a tiger . . . look . . . see the tiger? . . .”

“Well, (
sniffle
) my stomach was hurting . . .”

“I know, I know . . .”

“But . . . a
tiger,
you say . . .”

“Yes, a tiger. Right here. Here is a tiger . . .”

It doesn't even have to be as interesting as a tiger. Any physical item that is currently on the planet and within reach will do.

“Look, the cap to Daddy's water bottle . . . see . . . plastic . . . and white . . . isn't that something? And here are some
keys.
”

It's truly a miracle that this works. I always expect them to demand more. At least an elaboration.

“Okay, I see . . . you're showing me keys . . . but what about them? Are they important? Do they open anything I should know about?”

“No . . .”

“So what are you telling me?”

“Um, nothing . . . just that they jingle . . . and they exist . . . and I have them right here.”

“What do they have to do with my stomach ache?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Then get out of here with that. Bring me a malted.”

But they don't say that. They're willing to seriously consider whatever you have to offer.

Singing
is also popular. Since the arrival of our child, I've been singing everything. Simple sentences like “I'm going to make your bottle now” become operatic arias, half spoken, half sung, and usually nasal, with randomly elongated vowels. Basically, everything sounds like Jerry Lewis. So, “Who's crying?” becomes “Whoooooo's cryyyyyy—iiiinngggga fuuyymn?”

If a baby is on the verge of tears, sudden and emphatic singing directed right in their face will, nine out of ten times, do the trick.

“Twinkle, twinkle, liiit-tle star . . . how I wonder what you are . . .”

If they don't actually stop crying, they'll at least simmer down enough to see if you're any good. They'll listen to a few bars, and if you're
not
good, they'll resume crying. I mean, they may be easy, but they're not
that
easy.

Still, the fact that they even give you a
chance
is remarkable. That they have a legitimate grievance, and are willing to forgo complaining about it in exchange for a song, is, to me, darn decent of them.

This is something, again, that would not work at all with taller people. Try it. Next time your wife is upset about something, see what happens if you break into song.

“I can't believe you invited people over now. There is nothing in the house to eat . . .”

“Yes, but, honey, shh shhh, shhh, honey—look:
Seventy-six trom-bones led the big pa-rade
. . .”

“The place is a mess . . .”

“. . . with a hun-dred-and-ten cornets right behind . . .”

Beat.

“Oh, I guess it's okay . . .”

It'd never work. But babies, fortunately, are more easily sidetracked.

Infants are also, I've discovered, quite fond of the “peekaboo” game. The game is simply: Show them your face, then take it away. It's essentially two components: “I'm here,” and “then I'm not.” “I'm suddenly right in front of you, then mysteriously, not-so-much.” It's the
change
they like. The alternation of being there and then not being there. And while you're
not
there, they enjoy the anticipation of you coming right back in two seconds. (The first four hundred times you do it gives them a sense of the pattern.)

Ironically, while my son seems to love the “faces coming at him” more than the “faces going away,” I seem to recall that
I
was just the opposite. When I was a baby, I preferred the part of “peekaboo” where they went
away.
I didn't like the “peek” as much as the “aboo.” I was a big fan of the “aboo,” the “stop sneaking up on me and just sit over there” aspect of the game. But that may very well be just me.

T
here are times, however, that as easily as kids can be amused, the sheer burden of being the one doing the amusing can be overwhelming. Especially if you're doing the amusing all by yourself.

One time, my precious little tax deduction and I were having great fun playing. But after an hour or so, I realized there's only so much playing I'm capable of doing. I'm not
that
inventive,
that
enthusiastic,
that
naturally playful. I mean, I can indicate the inventory of toys available, demonstrate how the sliding things slide and the bouncy things bounce, all of which he will either try himself or put in his mouth until the toy is so dense with saliva absorption that it falls to the floor and the game is over. But then what? No matter how much you worship and adore your child, there are times that you hit your limit. You look at your watch, calculate the astonishingly large block of time left to fill, and realize, “I'm not going to make it.”

This, I discovered, is what they mean when they say you
have a child.
You literally
have
him. There is no other verb operating. You're not “doing,” you're not “being,” you're not “interacting,” you're not in any way benefitting from each other—you simply “have” the child. Much in the same way that you
have
a blue blazer.

“You have kids?”

“Yup, we have two kids. One in high school, one a freshman in college.”

“Do you have a blue blazer?”

“Yes, upstairs, in the closet, on the right.”

You may not be wearing the blazer, or in any way entertaining the blazer, but that blue blazer is nonetheless yours. The main difference, of course, is that not every baby goes with gray slacks.

Hey, There's Milk
in There

“Y
ou're scared of my breasts, aren't you?”

“I'm not scared . . .”

“Then why are you skittish around them?”

“Who's
skittish
? No one's being
skittish . . .
”

Here's the truth: That milk can flow from a breast is, no question about it, a miraculous miracle. Breasts that heretofore had no experience in this area suddenly, upon the birth of a child, start serving up the one item this particular child likes to eat. Talk about packing your own lunch—this guy not only sees to it that he'll have what he needs when he lands, he's arranged for someone else's body to dispense it upon request.

But as miraculous and moving as this is, I can't get past the fact that
food
is coming out of my wife's breasts. What was once essentially an entertainment center has now become a juice bar. This takes some getting used to. It's like if
bread
were suddenly coming out of a person's neck. Wouldn't that be unsettling? Let's say you're a woman. If you were nibbling your husband's ear and came away with a piece of toast, wouldn't you be a tad skittish? That's all I'm saying.

My son never had this concern. He and my wife developed a terrifically fine-tuned routine. Whenever he felt like nursing, he would look up at her and shoot her a very seductive little Marcello Mastroianni glance, and in response, she would put a breast in his mouth.

It was that simple. He knew what he wanted,
she
knew what he wanted, no words need be exchanged. And it's amazing to witness how swiftly and inconspicuously nursing mamas can lift their shirts, slide open their bras, and maneuver both baby and breast into full operating mode in a matter of seconds.

My wife and child got so good at it, there were times we were in mid-conversation, and I didn't even know it was going on. I'd be talking to my wife, looking at her, she's looking at me, absolutely involved in the discussion, when I'd suddenly hear a slurping noise from inside her shirt.