Becoming Babymama
Even though I'm a career gal, I am proud to say I know my way around a baby. I was the first born child in my family, including extended family, which means that I've diapered many a brother and cousin. I have also served time in the babysitter's club (I like to think of myself as the one in the red beret). These are pretty typical experiences for a girl - although, surprisingly, some of my female friends have no baby background. But, for someone who has not yet given birth, I have a disproportionate amount of experience being a single mom. I've lived with three (if you include my own - and I do, because I think I raised her more often than she raised me).
When I first went away to college, I avoided dorm life in favor of off-campus housing. I used a roommate referral service and found Tiffani, a "hard working" "student" and teenage single mom who had an awesome bungalow house two blocks from the beach in Santa Barbara. She had just broken with her boyfriend but wanted to stay in the house. She wanted a responsible roommate and a quiet environment because she had a child to raise. Tiffani seemed nice, but her biggest asset aside from the house was her son, Shad. At age 1, he was nearly the smartest guy I'd ever met - and by far the best looking. He had Tiffani's dark Puerto Rican skin and full lips, and his anglo father's white blond hair and royal blue eyes. People would stop to gawk on the street - and this was not just general baby gawking, it was more like a mixture of envy and lust and hunger to just eat him up so his beauty and wonder could be all yours. Seeing Shad was like being touched by an angel or Brad Pitt or something. Plus, he could air guitar, instantly locate your picture in a yearbook, and open a car door with a key and mock drive. In fact, he could actually drive, if you let him sit on your lap and steer, which my typically very careful and conscientious mother did. That's just the kind of trust Shad instilled in you. He was a wunderkind.
As soon as I moved in, I learned the truth about Tiffani. Unlike me, she was not a college student, she was a cosmatology student. She was not serious and hard-working, she was a lazy, scatterbrained, sometime coke whore (and a sometime meal whore, which is far lower on the whore scale). She was not a dedicated mother, she was a party girl with a gorgeous-but-bothersome living accessory. My first weekend in the house was during Fiesta - an annual weeklong drunken town party. Tiffani showed me the sights. Long story short, I ended up stranded with her as she partied at the apartment of two rich and debauched brothers. There we met Bridget, who was the first girl I'd ever seen in real life who walked around naked in front of strangers. I was 17 and cowering in a corner, but I remember thinking that was the moment I had officially lost my innocence. My second weekend there, I woke up to Shad's crying at dawn, only to find that Tiffani's bed hadn't been slept in. She stayed across the street with our bartender neighbor, and later claimed she thought she would have heard Shad if he cried 50 feet and several closed doors away.
I won't go into how Bridget eventually moved in and punched me at a party in my own house. Or how I begged one of Tiffani's friends (who also happened to be Gene Hackman's nephew - seriously, a young, hesher dead-ringer) for a ride back home to LA at 3 am, causing him to subsequently fall in love with me and send me flowers on a regular basis. There are a lot of Tiffani-related stories that I won't go into, I'll just say they should have no part in a young girl's freshman-year nostalgia.
It was during those early months that I got a part-time job at a hip maternity clothes store. Not coincidentally, my biological clock started ticking overtime. It was kind of like a G-rated version of that movie Angel (one of my very favorites). By day, I was a shy scholar. By night, I was undercover mommy. I would imagine myself catwalking through trimesters in all sorts of different outfits, each tailored to my own indivdiual style. I searched every stroller that rolled through the place, looking for something to goo and gaa at. While I pretended to be straightening the racks, I thought up perfect baby-name combinations. And when I was not working or learning, I walked around town with Shad, not correcting people when they told me what a beautiful son I had and how he looked just like me. I considered myself a sort of second (and far superior) mother to Shad, and he played along brilliantly. I moved out before his second birthday and haven't seen him since. It's scary to think about but today he is 17 and probably long past losing his innocence.
When I graduated college and moved to New York, I found another "sweet" "serious" and "hardworking" single-mother roommate who had a dream apartment in the East Village. She turned out to be a lot like Tiffani, only 10 years older, graduate-school educated and "artsy". In other words, a total nightmare. Her 3-year-old son, who I will call Anti-Shad (his actual name sort of rhymed with Damien - as in, "It's all for you, Damien.")did not exude beauty, sensitivity and light despite the difficult circumstances of his upbringing. His mom fought with and ignored him as if he were an adult, and he fought back in pretty much the same way. Sure, he was cute, if you consider Malcolm MacDowell's character in Clockwork Orange cute (seriously, he's that guy's doppleganger). He was also smart, but not in a "Hey let me give you the keys to my car you little genius" way. He was smart like those assholes guys that you meet in bars in San Francisco, who act superior but still try to get inside your head to find something they can eventually use against you. Once, when I was having a homesick and self-indulgent pity party, Anti-Shad crept into my room, looked up at me with his big blue eyes and asked, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I answered. "I'm just feeling sad."
"Why?," he queried. "Is it because no one likes you." (And they say modern-day New Yorkers aren't all that brutal.)
"I guess so," I said, after recovering from the emotional sucker-punch.
Cute little Anti-Shad then padded out of the room and closed the door behind him. Then opened it just a crack and whispered - in the most evil Damien or Carol Ann voice imaginable - "They're right."
I think that's the exact moment my biological clock stopped ticking.
It's been a few years, so I've been able to coax the scared little thing back. Not to full-60 Minutes stop watch speed, not immediately. For awhile it was like a clock in a Harold Pinter play - tick (beat, beat, beat, beat, pause, wait a sec...) tick. That was during my late twenties. But recently it was running normally enough to make me want to attempt conception.
So here I am, entering the second trimester. Still trying to squeeze into my nonmaterity clothes while I can. No runway mommy outfits in sight. And while I'm not afraid of holding or feeding a baby, or cleaning baby poop (I actually think it's cute), or playing horsey, horsey go to town and peek-a-boo, I do kind of fear my baby's personality. That sounds bad. Let me rephrase: I fear the bad baby. Because, contrary to what they say in Hallmark Stores and Republican Conventions, not all babies are good. Like adults, they are a mixed bag - some are angels, others droogs. I won't argue nature vs. nurture, because I have no idea when or how babies decide to go one way and not another, I just know it happens.
So let's all hope junior gets daddy's looks and mommy's charming personality. (Cue Anti-Shad: "Yeah right!")
When I first went away to college, I avoided dorm life in favor of off-campus housing. I used a roommate referral service and found Tiffani, a "hard working" "student" and teenage single mom who had an awesome bungalow house two blocks from the beach in Santa Barbara. She had just broken with her boyfriend but wanted to stay in the house. She wanted a responsible roommate and a quiet environment because she had a child to raise. Tiffani seemed nice, but her biggest asset aside from the house was her son, Shad. At age 1, he was nearly the smartest guy I'd ever met - and by far the best looking. He had Tiffani's dark Puerto Rican skin and full lips, and his anglo father's white blond hair and royal blue eyes. People would stop to gawk on the street - and this was not just general baby gawking, it was more like a mixture of envy and lust and hunger to just eat him up so his beauty and wonder could be all yours. Seeing Shad was like being touched by an angel or Brad Pitt or something. Plus, he could air guitar, instantly locate your picture in a yearbook, and open a car door with a key and mock drive. In fact, he could actually drive, if you let him sit on your lap and steer, which my typically very careful and conscientious mother did. That's just the kind of trust Shad instilled in you. He was a wunderkind.
As soon as I moved in, I learned the truth about Tiffani. Unlike me, she was not a college student, she was a cosmatology student. She was not serious and hard-working, she was a lazy, scatterbrained, sometime coke whore (and a sometime meal whore, which is far lower on the whore scale). She was not a dedicated mother, she was a party girl with a gorgeous-but-bothersome living accessory. My first weekend in the house was during Fiesta - an annual weeklong drunken town party. Tiffani showed me the sights. Long story short, I ended up stranded with her as she partied at the apartment of two rich and debauched brothers. There we met Bridget, who was the first girl I'd ever seen in real life who walked around naked in front of strangers. I was 17 and cowering in a corner, but I remember thinking that was the moment I had officially lost my innocence. My second weekend there, I woke up to Shad's crying at dawn, only to find that Tiffani's bed hadn't been slept in. She stayed across the street with our bartender neighbor, and later claimed she thought she would have heard Shad if he cried 50 feet and several closed doors away.
I won't go into how Bridget eventually moved in and punched me at a party in my own house. Or how I begged one of Tiffani's friends (who also happened to be Gene Hackman's nephew - seriously, a young, hesher dead-ringer) for a ride back home to LA at 3 am, causing him to subsequently fall in love with me and send me flowers on a regular basis. There are a lot of Tiffani-related stories that I won't go into, I'll just say they should have no part in a young girl's freshman-year nostalgia.
It was during those early months that I got a part-time job at a hip maternity clothes store. Not coincidentally, my biological clock started ticking overtime. It was kind of like a G-rated version of that movie Angel (one of my very favorites). By day, I was a shy scholar. By night, I was undercover mommy. I would imagine myself catwalking through trimesters in all sorts of different outfits, each tailored to my own indivdiual style. I searched every stroller that rolled through the place, looking for something to goo and gaa at. While I pretended to be straightening the racks, I thought up perfect baby-name combinations. And when I was not working or learning, I walked around town with Shad, not correcting people when they told me what a beautiful son I had and how he looked just like me. I considered myself a sort of second (and far superior) mother to Shad, and he played along brilliantly. I moved out before his second birthday and haven't seen him since. It's scary to think about but today he is 17 and probably long past losing his innocence.
When I graduated college and moved to New York, I found another "sweet" "serious" and "hardworking" single-mother roommate who had a dream apartment in the East Village. She turned out to be a lot like Tiffani, only 10 years older, graduate-school educated and "artsy". In other words, a total nightmare. Her 3-year-old son, who I will call Anti-Shad (his actual name sort of rhymed with Damien - as in, "It's all for you, Damien.")did not exude beauty, sensitivity and light despite the difficult circumstances of his upbringing. His mom fought with and ignored him as if he were an adult, and he fought back in pretty much the same way. Sure, he was cute, if you consider Malcolm MacDowell's character in Clockwork Orange cute (seriously, he's that guy's doppleganger). He was also smart, but not in a "Hey let me give you the keys to my car you little genius" way. He was smart like those assholes guys that you meet in bars in San Francisco, who act superior but still try to get inside your head to find something they can eventually use against you. Once, when I was having a homesick and self-indulgent pity party, Anti-Shad crept into my room, looked up at me with his big blue eyes and asked, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I answered. "I'm just feeling sad."
"Why?," he queried. "Is it because no one likes you." (And they say modern-day New Yorkers aren't all that brutal.)
"I guess so," I said, after recovering from the emotional sucker-punch.
Cute little Anti-Shad then padded out of the room and closed the door behind him. Then opened it just a crack and whispered - in the most evil Damien or Carol Ann voice imaginable - "They're right."
I think that's the exact moment my biological clock stopped ticking.
It's been a few years, so I've been able to coax the scared little thing back. Not to full-60 Minutes stop watch speed, not immediately. For awhile it was like a clock in a Harold Pinter play - tick (beat, beat, beat, beat, pause, wait a sec...) tick. That was during my late twenties. But recently it was running normally enough to make me want to attempt conception.
So here I am, entering the second trimester. Still trying to squeeze into my nonmaterity clothes while I can. No runway mommy outfits in sight. And while I'm not afraid of holding or feeding a baby, or cleaning baby poop (I actually think it's cute), or playing horsey, horsey go to town and peek-a-boo, I do kind of fear my baby's personality. That sounds bad. Let me rephrase: I fear the bad baby. Because, contrary to what they say in Hallmark Stores and Republican Conventions, not all babies are good. Like adults, they are a mixed bag - some are angels, others droogs. I won't argue nature vs. nurture, because I have no idea when or how babies decide to go one way and not another, I just know it happens.
So let's all hope junior gets daddy's looks and mommy's charming personality. (Cue Anti-Shad: "Yeah right!")
posted by j.m. at 11:41 AM
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