You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism. ~Erma Bombeck
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My home is a museum. Admission is free, please touch the stuff, flash photography is allowed, you may eat in the exhibit halls, the bathrooms are located near the garage and at the top of the stairs. Parking is limited, however. If you break it, I’ll get the glue out. If you want to take it, let me wrap it up for you in Glad PressNSeal. If you think anything is valuable, you are delusional. Late at night, when the exhibits sit in the dark and the volunteers are dreaming, I hear the echoes from the day rattling around. I gather them together and consider what shelves to place them upon. I categorize and analyze and commit them to memory. I am the curator. “Tell us funny stories about when we were little!” my little ones like to ask. “Tell us about the time we drove to California. Show us pictures of our first birthday parties. Tell us, show us, mommy.” How priviliged I am at those moments. The kids may have been too young for memories, so I must fill in the blank spaces. In essence, I build their childhood memories when I tell the stories of their lives. I show them objects, toys, books from pre-memory. They hold these things dear—a teddy bear from newborn days or a dress from my daughter’s first Easter. Facts and artifacts. The fact is Sam didn’t walk until he was almost 17 months. He loves to hear how he didn’t want to walk because he was such an amazing crawler. The fact is Ryley had two surgeries and a hospitalization for an illness all before he was two. He takes in the stories and learns what he went through as a little guy. He must be strong! He must be brave! I don’t know what he takes away from the stories, exactly, but he likes to hear them. The fact is Aidan began collecting birthday girl figurines on her first birthday. She has them lined up on a hutch in her room. She sees them daily. Fact and artifact collide—tell me about when I turned two, mommy—she asks while holding the figurine in her palm. Joel will have the cast from his broken arm. Tommy will have a mile-high stack of drawings to sort through and admire some day. When my grandmothers died in December, I watched each of my parents go through some of the things their mothers collected. The objects that meant the most weren’t the most valuable, the oldest, the prettiest. A certain picture, a brooch, a carved bowl, a baking dish, a clock—everything infused with meaning and memory beyond my comprehension. So I ask: Dad, tell me about the clock and grandma and what made you tuck it under your arm the way you did when you left her house. What do you think about when you hear it’s ticking early in the morning? Mom, tell me about that ring around your finger. I saw it on grandma, too. Where did she get it? What do you think about when you look down at your finger? Show me. Can I hold it? I won’t break it. Tell me. Wow, that’s amazing. That’s funny. That makes me want to cry. There was never a velvet rope in my childhood, or now. I hope I never put one up in my own home.
How awful they looked, like garish plastic plugs. They were tooth-terrorizing drool dams. I likened them to baby’s first bubble gum, smacked and sucked and chomped on rudely. Pacifiers were a crutch for lazy, uncaring parents who couldn’t or wouldn’t take the time to delve into the reasons behind crying. I had visions of how it would be between the two of us. I’d be the mother in the white cotton lace trimmed gown rocking the Gerber baby near a window looking out onto a misty meadow whilst violins soared. A gaudy plastic pacifier was never jammed between those rosebud lips. One night, when she was about three weeks old, I stood in her bedroom swaying her bundled body and crying right along with her. She was fed, dry, and swaddled. My husband and I looked at each other and the fraying ends of our ropes. One of us suggested getting a pacifier. They were buried on the bottom shelf of the changing table, still in their packages—unwelcome gifts from a baby shower. While I rocked, he boiled water to sterilize the pacifiers. After five minutes rollicking in the boil, they were ready. We ran them under cold water. I placed one to her lips. The business end disappeared and so did her cries. Something amazing didn’t happen. My newborn daughter didn’t warp into a junior version of Rosanne abusing a stick of gum in her wisecracking mouth. A mullet didn’t sprout from her downy scalp. She was peaceful, and at that moment there was nothing more beautiful than feeling we had helped our daughter and ourselves by making a good parenting decision—to let go of a preconceived notion of how it should be done. So began our daughter’s long, passionate regard for the pacifier. In my dad’s side of the family, pacifiers were called “schnoolies” so we did the same. Then one day, at the mall, an elderly man approached Aidan in her stroller and declared, “Look at that little guy and his stooley!” He chuckled and walked off. We thought it was funny because Aidan was clearly not a little guy and the word he used was so close to our word for pacifier. We began to call it “stooley” too. As she grew, she renamed it “choo choo” which we adopted. Choo Choo got her through the transitional weeks after her baby brother Ryley (who never used a Choo Choo because he didn’t need it) was born. On her second birthday Choo Choo went Bye Bye Cold Cold Turkey Turkey. We had been warning her for months the day was coming when Choo Choo would have to go, so she accepted it very well. Sammy was a triple fisted Choo Choo man, often having one in his mouth and one in each hand. He’d switch them around according to a mysterious formula he devised, probably based on taste, temperature, and texture. Tommy took tender care of his charges, rarely losing them under the car seat or rudely throwing them across the mall parking lot. He further refined the name to “Coo Coo” where it stands today. Joel also used Coo Coos, but not as long as the other boys or Aidan. I said I’d never co-sleep. We did. I never imagined nursing past a year. I did. I wasn’t going to let my kids drink pop, eat a McNugget, or watch “The Simpsons”. I have. Did I cave? Was I weak? Joel screams “BlickDonald’s!!” when he spies the golden arches during our travels around town. Some may see that as a horrifying sign of bad mothering. I think of it as sight-reading. Whether or not the new baby is introduced to our pal Coo Coo is entirely up to the baby. His or her disposition will be the deciding factor. It’s the first act of trust I demonstrate to our little ones. It has to start somewhere, at some time. Of course my husband and I are the ultimate authorities and will give and take the Coo Coo as we deem fit—but I’d never dream of taking it away just because of some sort of twisted mother-pride that demands I cling to a certain set of dos and don’ts outlined in a book, on a website, or in a gauzy dream formed by the mind of sheer inexperience. The lace on that nightgown itches, anyway. ~~~The picture is from itsmybinky.com, where you can purchase this $17,000 white gold and diamond encrusted pacifier. |
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