*My shrink recommends a healthy attitude toward bodily functions. "The baby's poop is a gift to you," he says. "Don't forget. An offering! Celebrate the poop!"
When his own children ask about death, my shrink becomes very serious. "I will continue to fart after death, " he says, "but my farts will travel everywhere. All over the cosmos!"
*"The Happiest Baby on the Block" suggests that if you swaddle too loosely, the baby will wriggle out of the cloth, and then maybe fall prey to SIDS. ("Don't worry," says the writer, in a not very reassuring tone. "Most studies say that if the blanket is very thin, then SIDS won't happen. Probably babies die only when the blanket is a bit too heavy!")
The book goes on: "Don't make the swaddle too tight. If it's too tight, the baby's legs will suffer. You'll be looking at hip dysplasia, somewhere down the road."
*My mother has advice, but she offers it the way I would offer it, in a disguise. Chatting over ice cream, she suggests, without context, that "all babies need a religion. I think it doesn't matter which religion. Just one. Any one." And there's a strange silence, because how do you respond to this observation?
She says, on the phone, that a class might be helpful. "You know, for diaper changing, for feeding..." As if her deeply anxious and self-doubting son would not have thought of this--as if he had planned to sail into the early days haphazardly, making time to light a joint in between disastrous, untutored pseudo-feedings. Diapers dangling from the infant's legs. Death metal playing in the background.
*"Your life will just be over," says a cousin, wide-eyed. "It will just end." And this is also murmured in some quiet corners in Provincetown, where there seems to be a perpetual war between the old-school bachelors and The Party of Those who Endorse "Family Week."
*I have an image of my baby at Disney World, and at Olive Garden, which is like the Disney World version of Italian food. I see him with buttered breadsticks, under a mural of Tuscan hills. "This place was founded by Mr. Garden," I'll say, "and he was a fine chef who lived somewhere peaceful....just outside San Gimignano....." I very much look forward to this outing. It can't come quickly enough.
When his own children ask about death, my shrink becomes very serious. "I will continue to fart after death, " he says, "but my farts will travel everywhere. All over the cosmos!"
*"The Happiest Baby on the Block" suggests that if you swaddle too loosely, the baby will wriggle out of the cloth, and then maybe fall prey to SIDS. ("Don't worry," says the writer, in a not very reassuring tone. "Most studies say that if the blanket is very thin, then SIDS won't happen. Probably babies die only when the blanket is a bit too heavy!")
The book goes on: "Don't make the swaddle too tight. If it's too tight, the baby's legs will suffer. You'll be looking at hip dysplasia, somewhere down the road."
*My mother has advice, but she offers it the way I would offer it, in a disguise. Chatting over ice cream, she suggests, without context, that "all babies need a religion. I think it doesn't matter which religion. Just one. Any one." And there's a strange silence, because how do you respond to this observation?
She says, on the phone, that a class might be helpful. "You know, for diaper changing, for feeding..." As if her deeply anxious and self-doubting son would not have thought of this--as if he had planned to sail into the early days haphazardly, making time to light a joint in between disastrous, untutored pseudo-feedings. Diapers dangling from the infant's legs. Death metal playing in the background.
*"Your life will just be over," says a cousin, wide-eyed. "It will just end." And this is also murmured in some quiet corners in Provincetown, where there seems to be a perpetual war between the old-school bachelors and The Party of Those who Endorse "Family Week."
*I have an image of my baby at Disney World, and at Olive Garden, which is like the Disney World version of Italian food. I see him with buttered breadsticks, under a mural of Tuscan hills. "This place was founded by Mr. Garden," I'll say, "and he was a fine chef who lived somewhere peaceful....just outside San Gimignano....." I very much look forward to this outing. It can't come quickly enough.
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