Birth Rights

Sunday, a young woman spent about an hour and a half in my yoga store frantically searching for clothing she didn't really need. It was a rare day off from her two year old, she explained, and she was treating herself to a shopping spree and she was, as far as I could tell, going to enjoy it and buy stuff if it killed her.

She seemed way too young to have a baby, but that's beside the point. About halfway through her spree she took a break from all the fun to call her husband (apparently, no real babysitters were available), and, from the look on her face, I was certain the baby was dead. "He gave her cookies when she got up from her nap!" she explained, stricken. I refrained from asking her what kind, even though I was starting to fantasize about the large chocolate chip number awaiting me in my purse.

After work, I went out to dinner with my two youngest children -- the ones who regularly ate cookies for breakfast, the ones who were routinely wrapped in towels after their baths that had not been washed in extra special baby friendly detergent, the ones I entrusted with my husband or babysitters on work release programs on more than a few occasions just so I could enjoy a spree. In spite of it all, though, I got the distinct feeling, chatting with the two of them last night, that they, like their older sister, would eventually graduate from college and maybe even get a job and become productive members of society.

I worried over everything with my first. When she was still using a pacifier at the ripe old age of one, my pediatrician had to reassure me that when she one day went off to college the only plastic she would have with her was a credit card. I was skeptical (both about college and the credit card), but I let it go. When my son was sucking his fingers so vigorously at the age of two he managed to dislodge an entire fingernail I didn't even bother calling the doctor. I was probably too busy shopping to worry about whether the nail would grow back. I checked last night; it did.

Once, on an out of town visit to my parents with my oldest daughter, I lifted her up and banged her head on a chandelier. I spent the next half hour trying to bang my own head against the same offending light fixture to determine the extent of possible brain damage (a pointless exercise as my brain was clearly beyond repair). My pediatrician advised me to sit down, shut up, and have a glass of wine. I have followed that advice many times since then, through scrapes and bruises and gashes and, yes, even a run-in with the police. It works.

When the young woman finally left -- distraught that she had only managed to buy two items -- I reassured her that her baby would be okay, that there are worse things than cookies for breakfast. And I suggested that next time she wanted to take a break, she should leave the kid with a real babysitter and she and her husband should hop in the sack and try to make baby number two, the one that will live on all things bad and probably be better off.