The following is the most recent column I wrote for the summer edition of Valley Parents magazine. Yes, this is a cop-out and I recognize that, but well, what are you gonna do.
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At eight months in, I can say I’ve learned a few things about parenting.
A sample:
1) I can do almost everything I did pre-baby, but now with one hand – including write this column.
2) It is possible to craft scintillating dinner conversation around the contents of a soiled diaper.
3) Less is more (and not necessarily in relation to No. 2).
Now, No. 3 is an unlikely revelation for yours truly, as I’m sort of a “more is more” kind of gal. As proof, please refer to my laughably large and impractical purse collection, and the 60-plus wine glasses that wound up on our wedding registry after a power mad UPC scanner spree through Crate and Barrel. White wine, red wine, stemless, stemmed, causal, formal. I needed 60. And yes, all but about four of them are in still packed in boxes stacked in our laundry room.
But I checked my usual leanings toward the mass accumulation of stuff at the door when it came to my daughter, June. What my wedding registry lacked in austerity, my baby want/need list made up for in an uncharacteristic lack of clutter. My parents and in-laws hooked us up with most of the necessities, the rest I approached with a “we’ll cross that wipe warmer when we come to it” sensibility.
If it isn’t borrowed, it was purchased on the cheap. If June can make do without, she does without. We’ve purchased a few teething toys to supplement all the generous gifts she’s received, but that’s about it. Any items she does have to play with are augmented by her fascination (mostly oral) with books. She’s got plenty of books.
Invariably while playing with her toys, June loses interest in the modest assortment of noisemakers and stuffed animals before her and snatches a pair of baby pants out of a pile of folded laundry. The journal I keep in her room for my tearful scrawlings of baby milestones may as well contain Elmo’s tell-all with the way she lunges for it. The lid for the plastic container holding some of her teething toys is like forbidden fruit. Who needs Fisher-Price when you’ve got Tupperware?
That resourcefulness has got to be from her dad’s side. My husband has spent a good chunk of his life fending for himself in the wilderness, everything needed for survival efficiently wrapped up in the pack on his back. This has always fascinated me.
Me: “Wait, what about the spare deodorant?”
Him: “You don’t bring deodorant.”
Me: “So, no scented shower gels?”
Him: “You’re kidding, right?”
Me “How about a tube of mascara – can you bring mascara?”
Him: (silence)
Stuff is not his bag. Ironically, he wound up with someone who cites bags as her bag.
But I am getting better, and I credit several house moves in as many years with tempering my need to collect and save. And June, too. Watching her while away 25 minutes chewing on her cereal bowl has hammered the lesson home.
While visiting my parents in suburban Chicago recently, I spent some time going through old boxes of things I’ve held on to from grammar school, high school and college. I was appalled at what I found: mortifyingly sappy journal entries (grammar school), a program from some football game of which I have zero recollection (high school), an old beer bottle, the skunked, syrupy remains of Rolling Rock still redolent in its green confines.(College, clearly). I saved the journal, the rest was tossed.
I was thinking of June as I was decluttering. Would she be interested in seeing any of this someday? Should she be seeing any of this someday? Would I want her to cling mightily to so much stuff?
I’m not a maker of New Year’s resolutions but I did pledge one in the low light of a frigid winter’s morn with June in my arms: Don’t say “need” when you mean “want.” I need food, shelter, love. I want a haircut, a meatball sub, those wine glasses.
It’s a bit why I’ve really tried to pare things down when it comes to June’s belongings – in order to save what matters. I’d like to be able to produce an old toy that she spent hours gnawing on and tell her, when she’s an adult and we’re enjoying a glass of wine out of her mother’s ridiculous collection, what it meant to her. Or show her the blueberry stains on the summer dress that showed off her deliciously chubby knees. Or flip through her favorite board book, the page corners tattered from being gummed more than seen.
But that’s the stuff I want to keep.
No, it’s the stuff I need to keep.
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