Babyhood (9780062098788) (2 page)

“Fine.”

“So, my toes, your skin—”

“And numbers. I'm good with numbers, he could have that.”

“And my enthusiasm for soups.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

A
t one point the lady with the kids noticed us staring. I got embarrassed and turned back to my in-flight magazine, which had an article on squirrels. (When you're on a plane, you start caring about things you ordinarily wouldn't.)

My wife, on the other hand, who is much nicer and can be—when she has to be—more mature, smiled and struck up a conversation.

“Your baby is just beautiful.”

The woman was visibly moved.

“Thank you . . . I hope we haven't made too much of a ruckus . . .”

“No, not at all.”

My wife can also
lie
more convincingly than most people I know.

“Do you have kids yourself?”

“No, but we've been thinking about it . . .”

Which wasn't really a lie, but didn't reflect the larger truth: We were thinking about it now only because the woeful reality that this woman and her husband called their “life” had all but convinced us to spend our years childless.

The woman smiled.

“You know, a few years ago, we were exactly like you. We used to get on a plane and pray we wouldn't sit near anyone with kids.”

“Oh, we don't mind sitting next to kids,” my wife said defensively. “We
love
kids.”

“Hey, you don't have to pretend. I understand. But things change. You'll see. Before we had—”

WHAAPP!

The sound of her daughter's head slamming into the coffee cart brought the conversation to a halt. And as the woman dealt with this newest emergency, my wife turned back to me and pulled my headphones off my head.

“She thinks we don't like her.”

“Why?”

“ ‘Why?' Because you were staring at her.”

We looked over, guilt-ridden, and saw this woman, who was now less of a cartoon show and more of a real person, as she held her daughter in her lap and kissed the child's freshly bumped head.

“That's so sweet . . . ,” says my bride.

“Mm-hmm. Very sweet.”

“I want to have kids,” she says.

“Hey, who said different?”

“But not right away.”

“No, I know. We'll
have
kids, but when we're
ready.
”

“Right . . .”

Beat.

“But I don't want to wait
too
long . . .”

“No, we won't,” I assured her. “We'll wait, like, you know . . . just the right amount of time.”

    

I
'm well aware that not everybody gives the if-and-when of having kids this much time and deliberation.

A lot of people have kids who, frankly, didn't mean to.

Many people choose to have no kids at all and live quite happily.

But most people have kids simply because you're “supposed to.” The rule book says once you get married, start churning 'em out. It's just “the next step,” part of that nonstop momentum that keeps us all sprinting through life.

If you're a young single person and you meet someone you like, why not
take the next step?
Go out with them.

Of course, you can do that only so long before it's time to—
take the next step.
Get engaged. Get married. And no sooner do you become Man and Wife than everybody in the world starts giving you that annoying smile-with-a-head-nod that says, “So? When are you
taking the next step
?”

We constantly up the ante. We're a species that just can't leave well enough alone.
Animals
don't have this problem. You never hear snakes say, “Ideally, we'd like two girls and a boy.”

They just do it. They procreate because that's simply what you do. They know that if they don't perpetuate their own species, no one is going to do it
for
them. Especially snakes. Because, to be totally honest, no one is that thrilled about getting
more
snakes. Nobody. You, me, other animals—no one walks around thinking, “Snakes. Boy, we need to send out for more of
them.
” Snakes, therefore, must take very seriously upon themselves the business of making baby snakes.

    

W
e, however, can't claim to be having babies for the sheer survival of the species. There's no real shortage of humans out there. We're not doing it for mankind. We're doing it for ourselves.

And it's not even for a specific purpose. Like years ago, when families needed kids to work the farm. Most people I know pushing strollers aren't doing it because they need strong-backed young 'uns to work the soil. It's much more self-centered than that. We want to have kids for
us.
We believe that children will make us “complete”; they will make us whole.

Plus, we want someone to drive us around when we're old and nasty.

This is a big motivation for a lot of people.

“Even if we don't necessarily want a kid right now, we
are
going to want someone to take care of us in our golden years, and if we don't hurry, we're going to be driven around by, at best, a nine-year-old.”

It becomes a matter of
which
self-centered impulse you want to service; the need to be free and unencumbered
now
, or the need to secure yourself a caretaker to whom you can be a huge encumbrance
later.

“Let's see . . . we're going to need someone to put our things in order, someone to take all our junk when we die, and someone to take care of us and worry about us
before
we die . . . I don't know anybody who's going to do
that
. . . I know—let's
make
someone. Let's manufacture a whole new person, and then that'll be their job.”

Then the thinking becomes, “Well, what about after we die? We don't want this kid to be alone, do we? I know—let's make
another
kid, for the sake of the first kid.” And what kid wouldn't like
that
distinction?

“You're our first child—we wanted
you.
On the other hand, you, our
second
child—you're pretty much the spare.”

T
he inevitability of old age forces you to do The Baby Math.

“Okay, so if we got pregnant right now, I'd be forty when the kid is born, which means . . . let's see . . . when I'm
sixty
, they'll still be in college . . . when they start a family of their own, I'm almost seventy, and if they wait even a
couple
of years to have their first kid, I'll be older than my grandfather was when he died . . . Okay, this is no good. It's too late. We missed it.”

“I
t's the greatest thing in the world.”

I had to take off my headphones again.

“I'm sorry?”

“I was just telling your wife—it's the greatest thing in the world. It's certainly not easy, and it does change your life forever, but it really is true: There is nothing more rewarding or wonderful than having children.”

The best I could muster was a tiny smile and “That's what they say . . .”

New parents always sound like hucksters in a pyramid scheme. Anyone who has kids and then gets
you
to go and have kids gets a check from Huckster Headquarters. They're like newly converted religious fanatics, these people. They're not only hooked, but they won't rest till they bring
you
into the fold, too.

I smiled at the lady and put my headphones back on while pointing to the screen, as if to say, “I really would like to finish the conversation, but I tell you—this movie is just so darn funny . . .”

When the time came to get off the plane, we watched the exhausted new parents and their squawking progeny gather their belongings—which, together, was probably more than my grandparents packed to cross great oceans—and as we grabbed our We-Don't-Have-Any-Cares-in-the-World carry-on bags, the woman reached out, touched me on the arm, and said, “Good luck.”

I remember thinking, “Hey . . . we're not the ones who have to get a cab with fourteen hundred pounds of luggage. Good luck to
you.
”

T
hat night, we were getting ready for bed and brushing our teeth and still talking about those people on the plane.

“Did you see how pale they both looked?”

“I know . . .
both
of them . . .”

“Well, it's not exactly like you're going to the beach everyday when you've got little kids like that . . .”

“Hey, no kidding . . .”

We got into bed.

“Also keep in mind, they're older than us.”

“Yeah, plus that's their
second
kid.”

“Right.”

“If we have a second kid, I'd definitely want to wait longer than they did . . .”

“Definitely.”

“Maybe three years. At least . . .”

“Definitely . . . and, you know, there's no telling if we could even
get
pregnant right away. There's a very good chance it could take us a year or two for the
first
one . . .”

“I know, believe me, I've thought about that . . .”

Then there was a long pause.

“What the hell just happened?”

“I don't know.”

“Have we decided anything here?”

“I'm not sure.”

“I think we did. I think we were
snookered.
Those people snookered us . . . Didn't I tell you not to talk to those people?”

I tried in vain to trace the exact steps and conversations of the previous half day.

“I mean, we know we want to have kids
someday
. . .”

“Of course . . . we've never questioned
that
. . .”

“So what happened?”

“Maybe it's just time.”

For several moments, nobody said anything. Then I jumped in.

“Yeah, but we don't really have any
values.
”

“Huh?”

“When you have kids, you're supposed to be able to teach them
values,
instill them with all your
values
. . . I don't know if I have any
values
. . .”

“You have values,” my wife assured me.

“Do I?”

“Sure you do. You do unto others nicely, you never steal, you're polite to people from other countries . . .”

“Yeah, remember that time I gave those really long directions to that family from Canada? I didn't have to do that . . .”

“There ya go.”

“Yeah, maybe you're right . . .”

It was very dark, and all I heard was my heart beating in my ears.

“So we're doing this?”

“What?”

“We're going to try to have a baby?”

A brief, sharp noise came out of my wife's throat—somewhere between a laugh and a squeal.

“It's not like it's going to happen overnight, you know . . .”

“No, I know . . .”

We looked each other firmly in the eyes.

“Are you telling me we're having a kid because a lady on a plane said something over Cleveland?”

“Yeah.”

“It makes no sense.”

“I know.”

“So . . . you wanna try?”

“Yeah. Let's try.”

We made an elaborate ceremony out of retiring all birth control paraphernalia (or, as a friend of mine so delicately puts it, “We yanked the goalie off the ice”) and jumped back into bed.

We laughed and hugged and giggled and kissed.

And proceeded to not have sex for two and a half months.

The Big White Elephant

O
nce sex is for real, and not just for entertainment purposes, it's a much scarier proposition.

So even though we had both officially
committed
to procreating, we weren't actually doing anything about it. In fact, we were too scared to even talk about it. Sex became the proverbial Big White Elephant in the room that everyone sees and pretends isn't there.

Finally my wife suggested, “Look, we'll just be casual about it.”

“Good idea . . . casual . . . we'll just see what happens.”

“Yeah, we're not trying to get pregnant so much as we're
not
trying
not
to get pregnant.”

Which is not exactly a vote of confidence for your child down the road.

“We wanted you more than anything in the world . . . but we could have skipped it, too.”

Looking back, I think I know why we were hedging our bet: If it turned out we couldn't get pregnant, this seeming indifference might make us a little less devastated.

And also, there's this: As happy as you may be, when it comes to relationships, having a kid is the last level of
commitment.

If you break up with someone you're living with, it's painful, it's heartbreaking, but let's face it: You lose some books, a spatula, some CDs, get a depressing apartment, and it's over.

If you get a divorce, it's
more
painful and
more
heartbreaking, you lose
more
books,
more
kitchenware, and
more
CDs, but, facing it once again, you sell your wedding ring, get one of those depressing
furnished
apartments, and
that's
over.

But if you have children, after all the pain and divvying up of material possessions, it ain't
ever
over. You could move to opposite sides of the universe, but you will, in the most physical and intimate of ways, be forever connected.