Slackin'

Hi all,

Whoops. Slacking off, here. But I guess it's not slacking off when the reason I've been absent is because I'm working... doesn't really count if it's the paper chase, no?

I'll get on this soon. I got ideas, folks. Ideas I tell ya. In the meantime, I leave you with kind of a lame column I wrote for the Valley News' quarterly parenting magazine, Valley Parent. This came out a couple months ago. Actually, that's what I'm working on now -- the column, and a story, for the next one.

Enjoy. Well, sort of.

***

I was experiencing the quintessential motherhood moment.

My 7-week-old daughter June, nestled in her portable car seat, met my gaze with her big, shiny blue eyes and smiled.

Then came the fury.

It stunned me that out of such sweetness erupted something meriting a haz-mat suit and industrial cleanup. But as I high-stepped through the restaurant where my husband, visiting sister and I hoped to grab a meal, carrying June like a football to keep the mess contained, I caught a couple of knowing glances from fellow patrons.

The “Say no mores.” The “I’ve been theres.” The “I hope you packed a spare outfits.”

I did.

Moments later I was in the restaurant’s bathroom running interference with the offending diaper. There was a knock on the door and I could hear a woman’s voice outside. From my cross-legged position on the floor I reached up, opened the door and said, “We’ve got a diaper situation here. It will be a few minutes.”

The woman nodded and gave a little wave, a sort of wordless “I’m with you, sister.”

These silent sentences from fellow parents, new and old, have often become more comforting to me than actual articulated language; the little smiles, the exaggerated frowns, the hands placed over hearts after glances at the pink bundle in the car seat hooked over my arm. Good and bad advice comes barreling in regardless of my queries, but the quiet support of a fellow parent is an indication that I’m doing something right. Or that I’m doing something wrong that has at least been done before.

Such was the case when I hovered around a noisy heating duct in a store hoping the consistent racket would lull my baby to sleep during some errand running. It was unorthodox, and she would have been much better off napping in her crib at home, but we weren’t home, and a gray-haired man passed us and gave a wink. I read it as “Whatever it takes, right?”

For all I know it could have been, “Lady, you’re out of your mind.”

I recently thanked my dad for drumming the capacity to be embarrassed right out of me during my childhood. He started early, with his silly public behavior, questionable fashion choices and unyielding “war on rudeness” that usually resulted in unsolicited lectures to sullen teens in the service sector. It was hellish for a while, but now little fazes me, which has helped quite a bit now that I’m a mom and my social mirror has fogged up.

This was helpful the time I caught myself involuntarily swaying in the cereal aisle of a grocery store to lull my baby to sleep – only my baby was at home with my husband. Or the time I did about 75 reps of deep-knee bends in a pub during the lunch rush to keep her entertained. Or the time I belted out the falsetto harmonies to Prince’s “1999” to counter her fussiness in the handbag aisle of a discount store.

During that performance, a woman alongside her preteen daughter caught my eye and smiled, indicating familiarity with both the song and the tactic. I smiled back and then launched into the chorus.

The nice thing about this behavior is that none of it is a surprise to me, nor is it unwelcome. Sure, others are witnessing my introductory course in motherhood, but they are also watching me having a lot of fun. Parenting with an audience means my husband and I are getting the baby used to being around other people and situations, I get to practice my public singing, and the Upper Valley gets a chance to steal a glimpse at the cutest baby girl ever (biased?). And where there’s an audience, hopefully there’s a little applause, if silent.

So next time you see a baby-toting blonde woman belting out a rousing rendition of “Junie Trotter, She’s My Daughter” (second verse, same as the first), say hi. Or better yet, shoot me a smile.

It can speak volumes.