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Fear of the Package Insert
Summertime and the living is easy. . . for skin problems, apparently. Felix got something that looks angry and seemed to be spreading fast so I did what every parent apparently does after a holiday weekend and trotted over to the pediatrician.
The office was flooded with the usual assortment of extremely new babies, kids with stubborn splinters, limbs wrapped in ice from recess falls, and ailments that held off on making themselves manifest until the offices were closed for the long weekend.
So the rash, while rashy and large wasn't wildly impressive. Ointment was prescribed and the pediatrician told me not to worry about the fact that the warning label would probably say that the medication is not for children under 18. Fair enough. I was prepared.
Until I read the package insert that came with the remedy, and then I turned anxious. There were oodles of warnings about how this topical medication could trigger syndromes that crop up in the differential diagnoses for the fascinating mystery cases on certain medical television programs. I braced myself and left a message for the doctor. I'm sure that doctors city-wide dread the little scraps of paper covered with anxious messages from parents who read the package insert.
As I was calling, I was thinking that of course the doctor would be annoyed. The rash had to be gotten rid of and it is unlikely that the cure would be hideously dangerous. This wasn't something acquired in the bush or anything. (I worked once for an anthropologist whose husband, also an anthropologist, acquired an amoeba while doing research somewhere that was so persistent that it made much of the poor man's hair fall out. The cure not only encouraged the hair loss but was so toxic that he occasionally felt he was better off with the parasite than the medicine.) This is something that is prescribed all the time.
But there I was, leaving the message. There I was, getting the impatient reply about how only extremely prolonged use causes the terrible syndromes. There I was, certain that a big green "C" for CRAZY MOTHER had been etched onto my kid's chart somewhere.
Now, as charming as it is to acquire new titles, I don't really want that one. "Who would?" you say. Plenty of folks. I had a conversation not a week ago with a woman for whom "crazy" was clearly an adjective she used to brag about herself. "Crazy" was code for "knows best" or "takes better care of my kid than you do of yours because you don't stay on top of people." For me, though, "crazy" is not a compliment and I don't like that my gentle behavior could be interpreted as falling into that category.
Of course I'll still ask my questions that may test the patience of professionals around me, but I do wish there were a little more sympathy for nervous queries. Kids are worry-generators and even if everything is going well, those package inserts make one frightened that all that hard work one has done not to screw things up so far could all get blasted away with some poorly applied ointment. And I really have to say that people who happily call themselves crazy are giving the rest of us a bad name.
posted by Elise at 3:08 PM
15 Comments
What Are You Saying?
Summer descended in Manhattan with quite a thud, judging from the sweaty foreheads and patches of sudden sunburn that can be seen all over the place. This seasonal shift brings with it a new set of little parental anxieties, I suppose, and a catchphrase with which I'm familiar, but now find really annoying.
In the course of a block, I ran into three different neighbors, all of whom have young babies, all of whom expressed some concern about the sun on their kids (despite having taken a wide assortment of precautions) and all of them said: "I feel like a bad mother."
This sort of proclamation always tweaks me. Of course I have no trouble hopping in and saying "Of course not. My kid hates hats and I spend blocks chasing them down the street until I give up making him wear them. It'll be fine." But these statements always give me that old locker room feeling where your very slim friend sighs: "Oh I feel so fat." And there you are, growling behind your towel while stating the obvious: "No, no. You look fantastic."
Disingenuous self-deprecation is rampant in the maternal arena where people can wear their sleepless eyes like trophies and glorify suffering. I have a handful of I-Have-It-Worse relatives to whom I happily bow whenever there is a complaint. But why does it have to come down to being a Bad Mother? Do people just assume their friends and neighbors are so horrible that they have to debase themselves first before getting criticized (for taking the kid out while the sun shines)? Or is this just a weird conversational gambit- just the chit-chat of shame?
Why does this bother me? Perhaps I'm irked because I lack the Small Talk Gene that would make so much of life easier. But I fear I'm bothered because I take my own failings too seriously to voice them even so slightly lightly, even as a joke with people I don't know so well.
Though honestly, I'm not so worried about the hat.
posted by Elise at 1:47 PM
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All Right, I'll Bite
I have only been dimly aware of the Elizabeth Vargas/ABC news situation (largely because I don't watch the evening news on any network), but something about Dahlia Lithwick's commentary on Slate made me notice.
Vargas is 44 years old, and is due to deliver to her second child in August. On advice from hr doctors, she will start her maternity leave early to avoid gestational complications and when she returns to work she will no longer have her co-anchor position on World News Tonight. She will instead go to 20/20.
Needless to say, there's been a world of back and forth about this. Was Vargas pushed out by ABC, terrified that their news program won't be able to compete with Katie Couric on CBS Evening News? Or was she telling the truth when she said (as reported in the New York Times): "I don't think it's fair to a new baby to have a new mom who's off in Iraq or Iran all the time. . . I certainly intend to be doing that in a few years. But right now it's not realistic for me."?
Do we have to worry about ABC abusing a pregnant employee? Is Vargas hurting other pregnant women who don't want to quit their intense jobs after they have their children? What are the implications? What does it mean?
I do wonder what this means, not so much because it seems reasonable or unreasonable that Vargas may have changed her mind about the kind of work she wants to do with a newborn on her body and mind. I wonder if some of the intense reaction has to do with the way we respond to people on television.
Quite a long time ago, I read an interview with the actor/director George Clooney, who said that, at the height of his ER popularity, he was once on a plane with Mel Gibson and was amused by the way the other passengers treated Gibson like a visiting deity while treating Clooney with extraordinary familiarity. His reasoning was that his being a television personality- someone who visits his fans at home, in their living rooms, kitchens and beds- made him approachable, known to people. Fans seemed to feel entitled to be close to him.
So there is Elizabeth Vargas, sitting in millions of living rooms, and her pregnancy is troubling. Why is it a problem?
Is it bad that she needs time off? Perhaps it weirds people out in a way that Lithwick described: "Maybe the reason we can't quite stomach a hugely pregnant news anchor is that we can't even manage to talk coherently about all the ways in which they somehow freak us out."
Maybe Vargas is universally disappointing to network executives and feminists and home-viewers alike because her pregnancy means no one owns her. She will never belong to her audience or her employers or the people who would hold hr up as a political example because ultimately she belongs to her body and her family.
posted by Elise at 8:07 AM
2 Comments
What Was I Saying About Lost Identity Again?
In light of the last "Nobody's Business" rant, I suppose I should say that clearly the administration under which we live in the United States doesn't agree with me.
I'm hardly breaking this story, which has been reported extensively in the Washington Post, among other places. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a set of guidelines for women of childbearing age that they should always be prepared to get knocked up, even if they have not a thought in their minds about having children.
Women should not smoke (because it's bad for the unconceived- in every sense- baby), they should take extra folic acid (to prevent neural tube defects), they should maintain a healthy weight (again, better for this kid), have preconception exams to prepare for the baby who is as far from a twinkle as it is possible to be, and get all possible chronic conditions under control. Hey, you can't be too careful, you could get pregnant at any moment. And wouldn't you feel guilty if you didn't have a handle on all of this?
I could comment about how the infant mortality rate in the United States is so high because of the lack of adequate health care for the underprivileged and that there are dozens of other issues raised in this unhelpful set of guidelines.
But I can't shake the sense that is set of recommendations is saying that women are really meant to carry children. That their primary responsibility is to take care of the vessel that will eventually get pregnant. Forget about individual will and perspective, every precaution must be taken to protect the prospective baby.
So these are just little guidelines published by the government. They don't seem wildly draconian at first glance, but I find them frightening. I don't want these recommendations to turn into something more sinister like laws and I'm just as happy if the government doesn't try to crawl further up my skirt.
But I suppose this makes some kind of awful sense. Kids are being taught abstinence instead of birth control, and with reproductive freedoms so incredibly threatened, there has to be some sort of nod to women's health. It's just much too bad that all of this reveals how little interest the government has in real, live, not just potential, women.
posted by Elise at 9:59 AM
1 Comments
Smoking Mother
A woman I don't know is pregnant right now. She is a friend of a friend, so everything I know about her experience is complete hearsay. I have no sense of her actual feelings or reactions but I know she surely has them. The woman in question smokes.
According to my source (who told me about her friend for a reason) she has cut back considerably on her cigarette intake since discovering her happy condition, but has been unable to stop lighting up entirely.
The reason I heard about all of this is that a smoking pregnant woman creates sharp social circumstances. Because in New York one must smoke outside if one is not in one's own home, she is visible to all. Of course she is doing something ill advised, but people, strangers, treat her in astonishing ways.
Of course one shouldn't smoke when one is pregnant. Really, smoking at all isn't a good idea and there are very few people who watch television or have obtained a first grade reading level who could claim not to know this. It is not news. No one gets knocked up and continues smoking because she thinks it is a wise move.
But here is this woman, who surely knows the score, smoking outside her office, her pregnancy showing to the world. A few months ago, people would have passed her without even registering her existence. Now she is a wounded fish in open water.
So people are snide and nasty or lift their voices as they chat on cell phones, hoping she'll overhear their rage and disgust. And this woman surely feels lousy and guilty and angry and stuck because quitting smoking is no mean feat. What to these smug passers-by think they are accomplishing? Do they feel they are doing a public service, correcting this woman's dangerous behavior? Would it be a sin not to tell her about the harm she is doing and advise her about what a horrible mother she must be? What kind of help is that? Why are people so entitled?
I've said before that pregnancy is terribly lonely. Part of the strangeness came from the way in which I was me-but-not-me. I was Pregnant Elise and people could ask me questions they wouldn't dare pronounce otherwise, or call me "Fatso" (in jest, of course- ha, ha I'm still chuckling), and they could advise me. I was told what to eat and how to consume it. A relative told my husband that my eating habits and coffee consumption would damage my child. I got death ray glances when I ate sushi (my doctor was absolutely fine with it). Someone at a party was scandalized when I confessed that I went to trapeze school two days before I found out I was knocked up in the first place, saying she wouldn't have been surprised if that killed the baby right there (before it was really alive).
Finally someone sent me an article from the Guardian called "Lay Off My Pelvic Floor" that was quite comforting, and now I know what a "French Pregnancy" is.
There is a sense that hangs like a cloud over pregnant women that they are not really themselves but belong to some collective group that should live with a special purity, following increasingly complicated policies that will ensure the health of their children. To violate or ignore these rules sets puts one on the outside, makes you wicked in the eyes of the world.
Pregnancy really is just the start. It's an important part, but still, I have known perfectly cosseted babies born to perfectly pure mothers who have been damaged quite remarkably. All of this clean living doesn't make people any more kind or generous, qualities one would think would be rather appealing in parents.
At any rate, if I find myself ambling past this woman or someone like her, I won't be saying anything.
posted by Elise at 2:56 AM
1 Comments
Red In Tooth and Claw
Isn't it odd when you go out with reasonable expectations of having a specific experience and then, when you get there, the entertainment is entirely different, and bloody?
I am thinking here about the rather awful experience zoo goers in Amsterdam had at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park recently when they got to witness some Sloth bears chase and maul a Barbara macaque (monkey) to death.
When I heard about this (and my husband kindly warned me that the story was in play- because I tend to be soft when it comes to animal tragedy, even when it is inevitable and reasonable) I was reminded of the first time I ever wondered what I would do if I were the parent.
Impossible to figure out exactly when this happened, though surely this scene played for me at least 10 years ago. I went to the Bronx Zoo with two very close friends and their children. This excursion was significant for me. I was not the kind of girl who often joined other people's family excursions and I was flattered and a bit intimidated to have been invited. Children were sort of mysterious and I was unsure how to even talk to them.
My uncertainty bore itself out almost immediately. We entered the park I believe at the Bronx River Gate and walked past the Bison Range and soon found ourselves observing the Pere David Deer.
Pere David Deer are Chinese in origin, and are consistently featured on endangered lists. For quite some time it is likely that the species only managed to persist at wildlife parks, though they have been reintroduced to the wild with some success.
I mention this because while we were gazing upon them, the Pere David Deer began aiding their movement towards extinction. Two males approached each other and started tangling, batting each other with their horns, tangling and separating, until finally they locked themselves together and began twisting their long thick necks in an effort to drown each other in the water pool about ten feet in front of us.
At this point, the children's mother started encouraging her kids to look away. I began trying to find a park ranger but was semi-hypnotized by the losing deer's sad rolling eye. It was a terrible and mesmerizing thing to watch and somewhere in my mind a thought rolled through- the first of its kind. "If I were here with a child of my own, what would I do? What would I say?" Nothing coalesced.
My friends' children were unhappy about being turned away from the scene and fought hard. "I want to se the reindeer locking horns!" was the plaintive cry. (There was no time to discuss the difference between reindeer and Pere David Deer and the horror would have been the same regardless of species anyway.)
Things looked horrible and then suddenly, the nearly drowned underdog deer managed to break away, stagger backwards and run to the far end of the enclosure where he lurked, barely visible. The nominal victor did not follow him.
We were all wildly relieved except for one of the children who was quite agitated and for quite some time after that kept wanting the reindeer to lock horns again.
Well, now I have the kid, but I haven't made any progress on answers. I don't know what I would say to my son if he happened to bear witness to live animal death, or what I would do. Would I let him watch the "reindeer locking horns" or "bear feast" moments or would I trundle him off, against his will? Would I really find myself mouthing "circle of life" platitudes, or could I navigate this with blunt, age-appropriate grace? Happily, I suspect I am not the only person puzzling right now.
posted by Elise at 7:44 AM
1 Comments
The Tube and the Immature Brain
All spring there have been waves of back and forth reporting about the relative wisdom of exposing very young children (the two and under set) to lots of television. I find this an interesting problem not because of my own inclinations but because the urge to harness TV and make it work as an education devise seems especially urgent.
My kid doesn't watch TV. He was given a Baby Einstein DVD (Bach!) that I dutifully popped in a couple of times and since he barely glanced at it and the electronic classical tunes were unusually annoying, I shelved it, and never made the effort to screen other things for him. Selfishly, I'm not wildly interested in researching television programming for my toddler and will hold onto my curatorial cards until the day I can plop him in front of some Buster Keaton shorts.
But lots of toddlers do watch plenty of shows (Teletubbies, the Wiggles, Blue's Clues) and there are a couple of whole channels dedicated to preschool programming, Noggin (from Nickelodeon) and the satellite-only BabyFirst TV.
The controversy about toddler TV exposure seems to have been triggered by Sesame Beginnings, a new set of DVDs by the Sesame Street people for kids too young for Sesame Street. Adults are supposed to watch the show along with babies and interact with them.
Cynically, I wonder of course if the point of Sesame Beginnings is more about attaching more kids to the Sesame Street brand than anything else. There is also something a bit odd about creating a DVD system that little babies COULD watch unsupervised but putting it on the market with a set of unlikely-to-be-followed instructions that parents need to participate in this audio-visual experience. People are not used to interacting with programming.
And here I just have to say, that I have visited the Sesame Beginnings site, watched some clips and read all the mission statements. I have also looked at the BabyFirst TV website and read all of their literature. It's worth a glance, but it does feel like a bunch of marketing gobeldygook. It is all a little sinister to me, though I can't quite tell if my distaste comes from a certain mistrust of corporate-speak when applied to toddlers or if I'm just not getting the point of these shows. I just don't care for
What is interesting about this TV debate (written up in the Washington Post and in the New York Times) is how it taps the same anxieties that parents have when faced with horrible preschool admissions issues or playgroup scheduling. Who doesn't want to give kids advantages? Why not try to make your children as intelligent and receptive as possible? The TV is right there- how could it be wrong to show kids educational programs? Anxious parents are what every business needs to succeed.
What is the best thing to do? I don't have a plan, and happily don't need one because my kid doesn't like TV and I have yet to see a single frame of toddler programming that doesn't give me migraine aura and waves of inappropriate rage.
Is the jury really still out on this? I can't really see how some shows would be utterly corrupting, and everyone weighing in seems to hold such extreme opinions- yay TV and nay TV- that it is hard to trust anyone.
But I can tell you that my kid won't ever have an in-room television.
posted by Elise at 1:06 PM
1 Comments
Mother's Day Distraction
I don't really celebrate the day, don't expect pancakes in bed, dare not go near extra chocolate. My own quiet celebration included holing up in the bathtub last night with a book I couldn't stop reading.
It is the third novel in a mystery series by Michael Gruber. The first volume is called Tropic of Night and it is a thorny pulpy thriller that takes the impossible very seriously.
It occurs to me to recommend it for Mother's Day because these volumes offer some of the most powerful, most optimistic, fiercest and most unabashedly good representations of mothers I've read for a while. I should say that the divine maternal is hardly the focus of these books, which are, as I said, at first glance, crime novels about bad things happening in sunny Miami but they are extremely tasty.
To say anything else would risk spoiling everything.
Happy Mother's Day.
posted by Elise at 8:22 PM
1 Comments
Class Class Classy
Who knew New Yorkers were all so loopy? The way the New York Times plays it this week, all of Gotham's parents spend their days desperately smacking the "redial" buttons on their phones and popping Valium or Xanax or Librium like Pez candies to get their kids into the top, best, fanciest, chicest, coolest, kiddie enrichment programs ever. (Until very recently, the only time I had heard that term was in the context of entertaining Gus, the formerly stressed-out compulsive polar bear at the Central Park Zoo. Among his enrichment activities: a bubbling whirlpool in his swimming area, fruit frozen in giant ice blocks and peanut butter stuffed toys.)
I don't mind too much the thought that everyone is laughing at my expense. I can handle it at least as well as I handled being a United States citizen visiting Europe early in the War in Iraq, which is to say, I was unhappy that people were likely to automatically think the worst of me because of my passport origins, before I had a chance to show them how uniquely problematic I can be.
And what do people do for baby enrichment, you ask? Limited enrolment music classes, exclusive playgroups, language classes, swimming, mommy and me groups (though these sound a lot like playgroup- or is there a distinction I'm missing?). The key is that to be "good" these classes have to be very hard to get into (you have to register for them immediately after you deliver) and expensive. I have taken Felix to a few classes, though none of them could be called "exclusive," unless one means to imply, as was the case with our swimming class, that all of the other kids and parents would drop out by the end of the semester, leaving us alone with the teacher in the shallow end.
This spring I had toyed with worrying about my son being underscheduled, though by now that issue isn't even a candidate for a place on my List of Worries. During that brief haze I was forwarded a fascinating account of a lecture that had been given by the director the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development. According to the speaker, toddlers (children between 1 and 3) should not have so much structure and scheduling. What they chiefly need is to develop on their own without their parents enforcing agendas and interests upon them. Toddlers can become stressed from excessive classes because, while they do feel a strong urge to please their teachers and parents, they also might be realizing they don't care for these activities and be unable to express themselves. The net result, the speaker said, was that kids could easily resent all classes and become apathetic about potential interests later on. Her recommendation was to sparingly enroll toddlers only in non-structured open play classes. (I'm paraphrasing notes from a lecture so forgive my vagueness.)
So this New York Times piece does so many things. Readers who embrace everything and nothing can feel smug and desperate, inadequate and overachieving. But why does the article exist, if not to stir the pot, confirm caricatures, inspire jealousy, and twang the strings of discord between people of varying means? Why do we want to find it fascinating?
For my part, I don't have the interest or energy to compete for a space in "exclusive" classed, but I don't quite believe that my kid's weekly music excursion is cramping his style.
If nothing else, the Center for Toddler Development lecture should be a balm for those of us who don't pursue the latest and greatest. But I don't mean to hold it up as yet another way to be smug about child-rearing. There's so much of that going around already, why add to it?
posted by Elise at 7:36 AM
0 Comments
Going Home Again
So I recently engaged in a little anthropological exercise. It was quite out of character, really, since I have never been one for things like school spirit.
I went to my high school reunion and it almost goes without saying that the experience was strange.
Apart from the surely inevitable soul-searching (Will I remember anyone? Will anyone remember me? What if the only things people remember are truly unflattering?), I was really frightened as I stuck my requisite nametag on. What was I doing there anyway? Why was I disobeying my natural tendencies?
I suspect I went because of my child, though I haven't been able to connect those dots very clearly. Maybe I wonder if I will end up trying to send my son to the school I attended (though only for a few years, and for high school). As I have mentioned here, New York City's School Terror is Topic B, second to New York City's Real Estate Terror (now that the Cherry Blossoms have faded and Ramp Seasonis well underway, we are inundated with the annual Raging Debate on Rent-Stabilization Price Hikes), so I was interested, though I didn't have any revelations.
It is natural to look upon any kind of reunion as a testing ground- a chance to prove whether one has been a success or a failure. I certainly was prepared to embrace the worst about myself and nursed enough vodka tonics to assist me there, but what turned out to be the second strangest things was learning about everyone's families:
- Some people I went to school with have children who are themselves in high school.
- Some folks have children with a decade between them.
- At least one person had six kids.
- Quite a number had several children under four.
I have thought about those family configurations quite a bit since the reunion... almost as much as I have about the casual comment someone offered up after expressing considerable surprise that I showed my face at all: "I have to say, I never thought you would get married."
Criticism or compliment? I may never know.
posted by Elise at 1:21 PM
2 Comments
When You Become the Obstacle
Days are pockmarked with tiny rudenesses and petty humiliations for everyone, but parental behavior in restaurants can be astonishing.
Years ago, before my kid was the proverbial twinkle, I used to go to an Italian restaurant near the Film Forum with some frequency. It was tasty, they fed you fast if you needed to catch a movie, and they often had tasty seasonal items, like punterella, which I completely fell in love with and developed cravings for in the off-season (it's an Autumn thing).
But one day, while eating, a family got up and changed their baby on the table, hoisting the little kid in the air to dry off its bottom and ended the performance by leaving the discarded diaper ball on the table for the waitstaff to clear along with the plates.
My disgust persists even after having a baby. In fact it's grown and blossomed. Those folks give people with shame a bad name.
But that's surely an unusual moment, a tiny bit of extreme awfulness from a rare breed of nightmare parents.
But there are other smaller kinds of entitlement and unpleasantness that contribute to the not-insignificant list of reasons Why People Hate Parents and Babies.
This afternoon, in the company of my baby, a four-year-old, a 5-week-old and three other adults, I tried to find seats in a not-particularly-full restaurant. A woman and her husband had liberally spread their belongings around, stroller, bag on a chair that went with a table adjoining their own, that sort of thing. The woman was breastfeeding.
So I asked her in gentle tones, my own kid on my hip, if the bag was hers and if we could use the table. She snarled at me that she was breastfeeding and couldn't do much about it. (Though, interestingly, she was able to use her free hand to eat. Perhaps she had that post-partum carpal tunnel syndrome that makes lifting a bag impossible but forks are not troublesome.) Her partner sighed and said he would move the bag, and started to get up when some other people spotted what was going on and generously moved for us.
Thank God, because who would want to sit next to her anyway?
Now, obviously, I am sympathetic to breastfeeding in public, so that isn't the point. The problem is entitlement. This woman felt that because she was breastfeeding she could take up as much of the restaurant as she wanted and be genuinely angry if someone else, someone who clearly also had a child, would ask her to be a little accommodating.
So while my misanthropy is growing like a weed this spring, I also wonder about this behavior. Does it come about because people are parents or was it always there and being parents just provides so many opportunities for people show off how unpleasant they are. It is baffling, since ideally one would want one's child to participate in the world, and not pretend the world was either there only to serve or be an inconvenience. For my part, I my shame has increased exponentially post-kid, but anyone who knows me probably could have seen that coming.
As much as I love him, no one's meal would be improved by a gander at my child naked and angry about being changed, let alone the revolting hygiene questions that- I won't even begin to begin.
posted by Elise at 1:58 PM
7 Comments
Windows to the Soul
The universe holds so very many mysteries one of which, once you get past the standards (why are we here? chicken or the egg? intelligent life on other planets?), is this: why is it so difficult to do the obvious?
Domesticity does not come naturally to me, and I do fall into homey despair, but even so, this sort of thing astonishes me. (Forgive this interlude that has nothing to do with questions of parenting.)
It started a few years ago when the windows were so filthy (because of city life generally, in the wake of the events of September 11, and in light of the massive construction that went on across the street) that even I was forced to take action.
I found window washer much beloved by a neighbor. Ten calls yielded a few appointments that were never kept.
Jilted, I moved on.
The next window-washing outfit seemed more substantial, professional even. An appointment was made. On the day, a man showed up and looked at my windows and said he couldn't touch them because he doesn't climb ladders. He left. Several weeks and- I am not making this up- four appointments later, another guy came, scolded me for not having had the windows cleaned earlier, somehow managed to make them sparkle and left.
Years pass. I have a child. The kid grew over the course of the year and I decide it would be nice if he could see out the windows, so I call the Professional Outfit, set up an appointment.
I open the door and Mr. No Ladders strolls in. (The dog is happy to see him, my heart has already sunk.)
Mr. N L: "Oh no, no. I've been here before. I can't do these windows. I don't climb ladders."
Me: "OK. I'll just set up another appointment. Thanks for coming."
Mr. N L: "I used to climb ladders. I scrambled up there with the best of them, but that was 20 years ago and now I weigh 250 pounds."
Me: "Don't mind the dog, he's just happy to see someone new."
Mr. N L: "There's plenty of things that I can do that the smaller guys can't. There are some heavy windows out there- the kinds of things that you need a big guy to pull out, big panes. Two guys can't do it because you need the same amount of force exerted on both sides. These little guys can't handle that. I can. Now that I weigh 250."
Me: "Oh, really? I didn't realize you had specialties."
This went on for a while until I started to usher my dog's new friend out when suddenly he whipped around.
Mr. N L: "Wait, what kind of exposure do you have? Do you get any sun? Because the next guy they send won't want to clean windows if he's exposed to too much sun.
My brain shut down at that point.
Later, Mr. No Ladders's boss called to make a new appointment.
Boss: "So you didn't tell me you don't have a ladder. We can't wash windows without a ladder."
Me: "We have a step stool and a six-foot ladder and there's probably a 10-foot ladder in the building. Your GUY WON'T CLIMB ladders."
Boss: "That's not what he told me."
Me: "Well, there's no shortage of ladders here and my windows are still filthy."
I didn't mention that sometimes we get some sun, for fear that this information would put the kibosh on the whole plan and made a new appointment.
Days pass and a sign goes up in the lobby of my building saying that some window washers would be coming to do various apartments and anyone interested should sign up. I jumped.
Two men walked into the apartment, to the delight of my child and my dog.
They looked at my windows (which are mildly unusual- double panels to help insulate and keep the place quiet- they were here when I moved in, so don't think I picked them or anything) and sighed deeply.
Is there some trick of the world that I don't know, or is it just the way of things that everything that is obvious is actually impossible?
These fellows have made it through two windows and I just heard one say: "Oh it's quitting time!"
I have not yet canceled my future appointment. I'm not crazy.
posted by Elise at 8:46 AM
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Lessons
"Well, we would never pick up a child from behind."
And a big cavern yawned open in front of me. Things had been going so well up until then. I had discovered that my companion's child was only a little younger than my own. The chatter was lively, and then he dropped this in my lap.
When I gently quizzed my new acquaintance, he told me that a parenting philosophy called RIE, which was developed by a woman named Magda Gerber, author of Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child's Natural Abilities from the Very Start and Dear Parent: Caring for Your Child With Respect.
My eyes must have given me away because my companion acknowledged that perhaps this method of parenting education isn't popular in New York. His family was only able to find one class offered in Manhattan.
And I gave up, embarrassed by my contrarianism. This philosophy clearly works for this family and makes them happy, so I would never argue.
But there I was the sourpuss, wondering why everything has to be so earnest with babies. Felix loves being swooped up by surprise. The idea that this might somehow damage him or be interpreted by him as my treating him with a lack of respect (RIE suggests this is a possibility) is utterly beyond me.
Pre-kid, I took classes: childbirth, breastfeeding information, newborn care practicum. Post-kid, I also took a class: CPR and child safety (an evening that I still look back on with horror), but I have never been tempted by a parenting philosophy. As frightening as it is to have an infant, having a protocol to live up to would only make feel less capable. I don't like extra rules. I don't want them. There are too many requirements in my day as it is.
My companion tried a different tack: "No one told me that being a parent would be so hard. Weren't you amazed at how hard it is?"
I didn't know what to say. Of course it is difficult. Of course it is. But I don't think my experience is the same as his.
I told him that Felix isn't what is hard for me. In my case, the hard part is the rest of the world. Having a new identity is difficult and destabilizing for me. I can figure out my kid. Questions of work and friendship and worrying about the rest of the world and my child in it are what undo me.
Of course conversations like the one we were having are part of what is most difficult for me. But I kept that to myself. I did like my companion and he didn't need to come away thinking he had been chatting with a true sourpuss crackpot, even if he was.
posted by Elise at 7:55 PM
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