Seeing my one year old child love me because she doesn't know much about
me but she does know she needs me to live makes me finally understand
how things like Scientology can happen.
Two things seemingly happened at once in my kid's brain development. The milestone where all babies cling desperately to their mother hit her hard, after months of crawling to and enjoying the lap of oh, just about, anyone.
Yet, at the same time, I saw her recognize that I don't actually appear to be her mother, but since I've acted as if (as if having a person's fresh warm drool fill my belly button and not instantly dry-heaving could ever be considered 'acting') I were her mother. Baby Girl eyeballed me, compared the facts as she was to know them at that point in time, and then-- and I swear on this- I saw my kid decide that I must be her mother because I am the person who is always up in her cornflakes.
I read her mind as if I could see right into her hairless skull, "Something here isn't completely adding up, but you'll have to do. For now." As for her father- she accepted him immediately. It must be his hair. She pets his furry chest like he is her pet cat. And her father is content to purr in return.
Being a parent is not unlike leading a cult or pulling a Patty Hearst. These babies are so effing helpless, and since you primarily are the ones to feed them, change them, turn them, dress them, bathe them, control what they wear, hear, eat, who they see and when, when they sleep, and when they better perform on cue. They are not your baby, they are your hostage.
And while early parenting resembles a hostage situation, it's an intimate one, so you get a
little close, perhaps too close with the prisoner. Stockholm Syndrome happens to you both. Every time you flip on
the light switch, and enter their cell and free them from their crib, they squeal with delight or hand you their teddy bear. It's cute and it proves one thing. Babies aren't as dumb as they look. They play us like Words With Friends.
Babies have no choice but to be cute and all adorable to their captors- since we provide them with three hots and a cot. But babies know that there are two people (if they are lucky) who basically keep them alive. And they better play dumb, smell good and act super cute and adoring or their high-maintenance factor will wear off toot-sweet. For true.
But right around that singular moment when you see your months old child accept you as their parent (after all, you are who they came in with) - it is also at that time in the mother-child continuum, that you (a new mother) decide what kind of a mother you are and will be-- and it's not because of how you feel about your child.
A woman chooses what kind of a mother she is based on other mothers. Sure, a woman's DNA and mothering instinct guide a lot of common sense mothering, but meeting other moms and vowing to never be like them has completely shaped my mothering.
And if I'm not mistaken, and I'm sure I am, mothering the species really is a process of elimination- Darwin on diapers. I definitely needed that non BPA, silicone baby bottle molded to resemble and feel like a breast full of warm, grassy milk from AmazonMom.com but I didn't need to take hormones to force my ancient breasts into lactation so I can experience the 'breast feed' and basically feed my adopted daughter milk laced with fun, bouncy hormones. I'm not above formula when the donated breast milk runs out.
I am the kind of mother who buys and wears the BPA-free silicone teething jewelry from fab.com but I am not about to pre-chew her food and spit it into her pre-toothy mouth. I'm not the mom who refuses to let my child have sugar and gluten but feeds her Kombucha which then makes the baby as drunk as Lindsay Lohan on a low speed police chase.
I am not the mom putting Fanta in her baby bottle, but I am the mom who lets my kid pick up her sucked over toothbrush off the bathroom floor and stick it back in her mouth.
Babies demand you to be present every moment they are awake. Being that awake and alert must be as draining as performing neurosurgery or taking care of a criminally insane person, because baby-reality makes you make challenging, split second parenting decisions all day long. In baby-reality, you pull the iPhone out of your baby's mouth even if it means they will dump a pot of hot coffee on your head. In baby-reality the three second rule of dropping food on the floor and still eating it becomes regular old meal time. Baby-reality allows you to allow your precious being chew on baby wipes if it lets you get her diaper on her in a few fleeting seconds of peace.
A friend found a nanny after interviewing five highly recommended women. When I interviewed my nanny, I asked her what I should be asking her. I had never hired a nanny or anyone ever in my life before. I felt it rude to ask if she had ever, I don't know, lost a baby somewhere. So I hired her. She's a great nanny. I was and remain desperate for her to love me as much as I love her. I'm not jealous that my kid loves her nanny, I'm jealous that my kid gets to hang out with my nanny.
When I was around eight, and struggling with bed-wetting issues, an older female relative suggested I be forced to parade around the neighborhood with my wet underwear on top of my head. That would learn me. While my mother drew the line at that, my secret shame wasn't as fiercely protected by my family members as it was by me. I distinctly recall Amy Brent asking my mom if she could diaper me before bed, as if I was a larger than life baby doll. I believe she was watching my mom pin my cloth diaper on me at the time. That might have been my mother's version of letting me chew on baby wipes.
But bed-wetting taught me about bigotry. I learned early that if you have one weakness or difference from other kids; be it skin color, weird religious affiliation, buck teeth, or bed-wetting it will be the first thing you are made fun of for when the chips are down in a sibling fight or a whole-block-kids-only street fight. I learned early to have no secrets. They are the easiest weapons that can be used against you.
My current parenting style?
The kid has a fancy air filter in her room but we don't know how to change the filter.
She'll live.
And I trust she'll do a lot more than just live.
