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They’ll Embarrass You Whether They Mean To Or Not
M other atways said that having children is
humbling. As in so many things, Mother
was right. At the time, I didn't truly under
stand what she was saying. I thought she meant
something else... something not so—well—hum
bling. For the uninitiated, you should know that
after the moist festival of exposure and pain that
is childbirth, further indignities await. (I know
there are droves of you out there, you mothers
who say that it didn't really hurt too much, that
epidurals are not necessary because you can
manage the pain with breathing, that you in
vited your friends and neighbors to wade in your
home-birthing pool as you prepared placenta
stew, etc., etc. I know you're out there, and I
don't understand you at all, and my pain
avoiding self does not want to hear from you.
Nope. Give me an epidural—I'd take one,
right now, just for fun. I would rather sit on
an egy for nine months than even consider—
or hear about—natural childbirth.)
It would not do to fear these inevitable
postpartum humiliations, and it is pointless
to try to avoid them. They're out there, like
lurking coral reefs, and you just have to deal
with them. I don't blame my darling off
spring, not too much. There are consolations.
The offspring really are nice to have around,
and when they're little they smell good, and
when they get older they do really funny,
really bizarre—and occasionally stunningly
charming—things. No, it's not totally thank
less and morbidly embarrassing. Not really.
Food
However they arrive, you have to feed
them. I nursed both my children and have, as
a consequence, lifted my shirt more around
Athens, feeding children, than I ever did in
my happy carefree college days in Virginia.
And, despite the fact that I've nursed two
children, nursing mothers make me amazingly -
uncomfortable. It is just too intimate—not
creepy—just so personal, that seeing some
one else sharing that makes me squirm. Also £
squirm-worthy—at least to me—are the §
children who have apparently been grandfa- S
thered in, and merrily continue nursing when 3
nursing is not relevant to nutrition. For ex
ample, I had one friend whose child was nursing,
then popped its head out from under her shirt
and said, and I quote verbatim, “I want your lip
balm." Yow.
Later, when they take solid food, it gets
worse. Dutifully, you design a diet rich in pro
tein, vitamins, organic veggies and high-fiber
grains. Once you've satisfied their nutritional
needs, however, you realize that you should have
tossed them a crust of bread and some water, as
their healthy diet only gives them the energy to
embarrass you in public places, usually over food
you'd never allow them to consume. Tumultuous
fits of pique in Kroger over the purchase or
non-purchase of a live lobster. Vociferous argu
ments about why they cannot sutsist solely on
Asian baby corn cobs from a can. Car seat-bound
weeping when the fruit roll falls to the floor and
transforms into a lint-sicle.
If only they were photosynthetic.
Clothing
Food need not be present for parental humili
ation td occur, however. One of my boys has a
penchant for unusual clothing, and once decided
that appropriate garb for a trip to the library
comprised overalls and boots, capped off by a
white cotton pillowcase, worn over his head. I
thought this was fine—he was so happy. It never
occurred to me that it might be objectionable.
It did to my fellow library patrons. As I began
to notice their glares, I realized that they were
identifying me as one of the following: 1) an
over-zealous mother punishing her child, or 2)
an abusive mother concealing scars and bruises
from previous punishments, or 3) a deranged
mother training her child to be a teeny, tiny
KKK Grand Dragon. Although I am not a fan of
slogan-bearing T-shirts, I longed for some sort of
explanatory shirt, although what it would have
said, I don't know.
The other child prefers to be naked, whenever
and wherever. One of our neighbors calls our
house The House With The Big Naked Baby, as
this child removes his clothes whenever I turn
my back, and delights in frolicking naked in the
front yard while armed with a garden hose and
nothing else.
He is able to explain his behavior, however,
with a clear and succinct summary of what he's
done: "Take off pants." Well. In carpool line
one day, a humorless and always crisply-pressed
mother approached us. She greeted my child,
who responded: "Take off pants." Oh lordy.
Judging from her horrified expression, Mrs.
Crisply-Pressed did not take it as an explanation
of what he'd done, but rather as a request or
even—gasp of horror—an order. Heaven knows
where she thought he picked up that gem.
Give Me Shelter
I have had one child ask me what the wiggly
skin on the backs of my legs was. (Child Who Will
Remain Nameless, that would be one unfortunate
result of pregnancy.) The other child asked me
what that purple line on my leg was. (Child, that
would be yet another result of child-bearing—
the varicose vein. You could just say thank you.)
The fact that both of these incidents occurred
in public bathrooms, in clear hearing of others,
is only icing on the humiliation cake. I'm just
thankful that the children in question did not
fling open the bathroom stall door and expose
my reproductive battle scars—and all the rest of
me—for all and sundiy to see.
My most humbling child-related experience:
We were at school orientation, an affair that ap
parently requires all women to be dressed to the
nines. Child Who Will Remain Nameless was hip
to the bathroom thing, but was a bit unreliable
in stressful situations, such as school orienta
tion. So there he and I were in his classroom
with all the well-dressed mothers, and it became
clear that Child needed to use the facilities. After
much fevered, whispered negotiation, he agreed
to attempt a liaison with Mr. Potty Man. Success!
So exciting, but he also succeeded in drenching
the floor. No problem.
En route to getting some paper towels to
clean the floor, and also carrying Child and his
beloved Bear so they wouldn't slip and fall and
get wet and ’cky, I managed to slip and fall into
the Astounding Lake of Urine. Nice. Fortunately
for Child, his seersucker shorts were a very for
giving fabric in terms of concealing urine. I wish
that I could say the same for the now-dripping
ensemble I was wearing.
I wish I could say that I didn't have to con
tinue with orientation, reeking like a public uri
nal and with a very sore shoulder to boot. I also
wish that I could say that I had some golden-
lining moral to cap off this particular embarrass
ment. I don't. The whole experience was mortify
ing, moist and painful (much like childbirth),
and one might have thought that those brown
paper towels have changed in the years since
elementary school. One would be wrong.
Before you abandon all hope, you should
know that there are compensations for such
damp and public humiliations.
The Good Part
Perhaps I'm not fully qualified to speak
on this subject—the heart-warming, Norman
Rockwell wonderfulness of children. I fear that I
am a dog person, not a child person. This is good
news for resident canines Colonel and The Lovely
Maude, but not so good for children. I horrified
my sweet mother-in-law by telling her that one
newborn son looked just like that squid/ alien
baby in Men in Black. I also will freely confess
that I don’t like most other people's children.
Children, as a sub-species and in the abstract, do
not interest me.
For mine, I'm over the moon. When
they're little they smell so good. Their little
fuzzy ovoid heads and curved baby legs make
me swoon, as does the fact that the bottoms
of their toes are pointy because they've never
been walked on—unused! Just look at your
own flat feet-bottoms and think about that.
Once they can speak, their lispy mispronun
ciations absolutely delight me. I once called
my husband Winston at work to weepingly
report the sad ending of William's use of
"doh-doh" to denote a window, and the mere
memory of the guttural mess that was his
word for squirrel ("qqrrll?") can bring tears to
my eyes. Ted has always referred to Winston
as "Ga," which imparts to all utterances a
retigious import. "Share that with Ga." "Ga
is gone." "Ga is coming home." Tremble with
fear, boys. Ga is coming, and he's not happy.
As they grow older, they become more and
more interesting. William once held forth for
more than an hour on the puzzling topic of
what it would be like if ail the woild were
made of rubber. Although by the end of his
soliloquy I was ready to chew off my own
arm to escape. I have to give him snaps for
thoroughness and creativity. He also cre
ated Snappy White, a modified, jack-o-lan-
tern-esque, semi-formal, toothy Stride-Rite
shoebox who sports a button-down shirt, tie
and jacket, all made of paper towels. I love
the fact that I can make him (William, not
Snappy) weep with laughter by telling him
what the Yeti would do if he went to Krispy
Kreme (severely burn his hands by grabbing
the doughnuts cooking in the boiling fct,
clearly), or maybe what the Yeti would do if he
wandered into a beauty parlor (full facial waxing
followed by an ill-fated dinner on the town). Ted
once thanked me for being his beautiful girl, and
although I question the adjective, I will always
treasure the sentiment, even as I anticipate him
sneaking out his bedroom window, years hence,
to deliver the same cloudy nonsense to some un
appreciative, wine-cooler-swilling teenaged girt.
Maybe that's the crux of it, the fact that they
will not always think that you are their beauti
ful girl. (Fellows, substitute Ga, or whatever
your sweet children call you. The sentiment's the
same, isn't it?) They will soon grow away and
up, as they're supposed to, and you will be left
with a storage box full of their creations, like
Snappy White, and some alarmingly ultrasound-
esque self-portraits (how do they know???), and
the memory of the time that your sweet baby
said that your tummy was almost as beautiful as
his own. What's so humbling is, maybe, the fact
that—if you don't stop and consider what you've
got back there yowling in the car seat—you'll
end up missing what you once thought was such
an embarrassment, or the fact that you didn't
properly savor it while you had it.
Elise While
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