Babies R US round 2

My second trip into the land of babies was not as harrowing as the first. I did not immediately start tipping over strollers or turning them about in the aisle as if they were Nascar racers. Nor did I fail to set the break and make myself appears as an inept future parent. No, this time around it was a bit easier.

Firstly, we jetted through the middle section that we'd avoided previously. Why? Because when confronted with baby shoes even the hardest of the hard hearted is immediately overcome by warm and fuzzy feelings that make them question everything. Unfortunately I kept picking out little boy shoes briefly forgetting that we are, in fact having a girl, a girl who would no doubt defame me later in life if I put awesome Nike shoes on her at birth instead of the little pink bow that helps people define the child's gender in that early and awkward bald phase.

We escaped the little shoes section, well, S did, I was still extolling the virtues of the Nike cross trainer on an infants development as a runner while she had already departed for the crib section. Before purchasing the crib we sat down in gliders. Why gliders, you ask? Because rocking chairs were for the previous generations, we can improve on anything they'e done! Though, admittedly the gliding, if done in too hasty of a manner gives me a mild case of nausea. Thus, the first thing I set about doing in a gliding chair is having it rock gently. Anyhow, as Stephanie bartered, (I assume that's how they do it at Babies R US) a few pregnant women and I idled away the afternoon on our gliders discussing the ins and outs of foot swelling and back pain.

During the course of time that it took the clerk to take our order, in excess of twenty minutes, apparently he was the sort of fellow who asked you if you spelled your last name (Bertaina) with two q's, I strolled around looking at bed sheets. Pink and purple are out because those are sexist colors, clearly. If my graduate education has taught me anything it's that gender roles are all bad. Thus, I settled on a little Pooh Bear set because I'm a fan of the great stoic philosopher Eeyore, probably one of the seminal cartoon characters of my youth, a fellow companion in arms and not like that mincing piglet always wining about the garden, or slow Pooh so concerned about honey, or that idiot Tigger. Egads! Anyhow, as all of those lowly characters would be adorning the bedding I think we're going with something simpler.

Our mission at Babies R US complete we headed over to Target and spent a great deal of money on cleaning supplies. Question? Is there anything in the world less interesting than purchasing cleaning supplies? I mean. I had no idea that they could cost so much, mind you, we were buying a lot of different products. It's just that I was raised in a good and proper home, so I don't clean. I consider picked up to be clean. I've been told that there lies a chasm as great as the Mariana trench between picked up and clean, and this trip to Target taught me that. While I wearily dragged around behind Stephanie, trailing in her wake, occasionally departing for brighter shores, bringing back various t-shirts held up like flags of surrender that she quickly derided before heading back to the world of mop and glo or orange and glo, or back to nature and glo, or whatever. My goodness what a cost we pay in time and money to keep nature at bay. I should think we'd be just as happy in a cave or a tent with time to idle or philosophize as we would be peering at our reflections in a finely mopped floor, but perhaps I'm wrong. I'm at least out a chunk of change.

Fiction

The phone rings and I answer it like my mother by saying, “Yes,” pausing for a while and then saying “Hello.” My mother doesn’t answer the phone that way anymore because she’s gone batty. Now she yells, “Who is it?” increasing her decibel level and consternation each time, until a nurse reminds her who I am. Janice is on the line making sure that I’m doing okay, that I don’t need a bowl of chicken noodle soup or some Saltines. She is so unremittingly nice that it makes me hate her even more. “Oh heavens, I say, channeling my mother even more, “you worrying about me when you’re so close to your due date. What a sweetheart.” And every time she asks me if she’s looking fat or if her baby is going to be cute and healthy, I tell her that everything is going to be fine and that her baby will be wonderful and healthy and I say that her husband probably loves her lustrous glow. I say all sorts of things that I don’t mean.

When Janice and I are done talking Jason steps out on the balcony to smoke, and I sit down at the computer to look at pictures of people I used to know. It is strange, to be able to pass through their lives in minutes, as if I am a train and they are an old ghost town, watching their hips widen in seconds, and their husbands lose their hair. At seven-thirty they are getting married and by seven thirty-two they are throwing a themed birthday party for a chubby three year old who looks nothing like his father.

The thing is though, the three year old may not look like his father, but it’s clear that he’s having a really great time and is so pleased to have two wonderful and supportive parents who know how to set good boundaries and also encourage him and balance that with a good knowledge of knowing when to stay firm, those parents.

In every picture, I do the same thing as everyone else in human history. I scour the picture trying to find myself, to see if I’m in top form, if the camera has caught my good side. And if it’s a particularly good one of me, I might say to your friend, “I like this one, the composition is really nice,” vaguely pointing to an off kilter poplar and hoping that my friend doesn’t notice how good I look. And I am so used to pictures of me that the absence begins to feel more real than my presence here, and I end up clicking on a picture of myself, and starting at it for a minute, wondering what kind of parents I had.