Blink

So, we weren't able to use our theater tickets last Saturday because our otherwise extraordinarily gifted infant still doesn't know how to suck milk out of a bottle and swallow it. I don't think he would have starved to death had he gone without out food for a few hours while Mommy and Daddy enjoyed themselves on the town, but there was enough of a possibility that he'd drive his temporary guardians to throw themselves onto the nearest train tracks that we didn't dare leave him with anybody for the evening. If only there were a babysitter we both trusted and yet intensely disliked...Alas.

In the end, we gave the tickets to our neighbors and spent the evening with Emily and Dan, who were in town to celebrate a very important milestone in the style of Alice in Wonderland. (I was the White Rabbit, Wombat was the Dormouse, and Simon wore a shirt that said "Eat Me", see, and Emily gave each of the attendees an unbirthday gift because she's awesome like that.)

Although we had a blast hanging with our long-distance friends, I was pretty disappointed to miss out on the date night we'd been looking forward to for more than a year. We won the theater tickets two Christmases ago in a heated holiday gift swap, and when we finally booked the tickets last fall, we thought we were ever so wise in selecting a show that fell at the ideal time: when Wombat would be old enough for a babysitter and we would be eager for the break. As the date neared, it became even more important that we see the show because it would symbolize the successful achievement of the difficult and somewhat undesireable yet completely necessary separation of mother and child, who had theretofore been attached at the hip (where "hip" = boob 'n' mouth). Point of fact, I barely even remembered the name of the show we were going to see because it was never about the show so much as it was about reassuring ourselves that our New Normal included things like going out sans l'infant once in a while and all of us surviving.

In the end, Simon thought it was more important that we not lose friends by inflicting our ravenous spawn upon them, and so we stayed home. Good company and hot tub and prosecco aside, it was still hard, though, because it felt like an opportunity was slipping away forever. Firstly, when is the next time we're going to come across free theater tickets, because we sure as hell can't afford to buy them for ourselves, and secondly, what if this means we'll never see a play again?! What if we never again go to a concert or to a movie or to a bar? What if every Saturday night forever and forever and forever will involve nothing more thrilling than throwing in a load of poopy/vomity laundry and waiting with ardent anticipation for the outcome? (Will all items emerge stain-free? Or will there be fluorescent orange mystery spots on everything? The tension is palpable!)

This is where I must tell myself what I told Simon the other day when he was mentioning (complaining?) how long it's been since he's had a spare half hour to get up into the studio to compose a song or get down into the workshop to build something and grunt and scratch his balls: This is just a phase. As tempting as it is to rend our fancy garments because who needs them when we'll never leave the house again?, the truth is that Wombat will eventually take a bottle (or grow old and learn about sippy cups and/or pint glasses), and we will eventually do all the things we used to do--see a play, ride our bikes, dress up for the Folsom Street Fair, crowd-surf naked at a Josh Groban concert...Okay, maybe not that last one.

The point is that our lives are different now, yes, but they will also be different three months from now and a year from now and two years from now, et cetera, ad nauseum, or at least ad the era of false teeth and Wheel of Fortune and four o'clock bedtimes, when I imagine we'll thrive on the same old, same old. So, as much as it sometimes feels this black and white, our family timeline is not divided neatly in two distinct eras--Before Baby and After Baby--but is instead a rainbow, a spectrum of gradations, a million moments and phases each blending into the ones before and after. The good news and the bad news here is the same: Nothing is forever. We can't spend all weekend riding our bikes now, but one day we will, all three of us. And then, before we know it, Wombat won't suffer being seen with his dork parents in public and it'll be just the two of us again.

I must remember this every day: It's all temporary. For better or for worse, my son won't always communicate his needs by crying directly into my (good) ear. For better or for worse, I can't wish the clock or the calendar forward or back no matter how hard I try. For better or for worse, I won't always juggle full-time motherhood with a part-time job (it could go either way), so I shouldn't let worrying about the implications wreck my week, or my year.

Over the last three months we've been really good about letting/making the baby adapt to our lives rather than the other way around. We've taken him to dinner parties, house parties, and brunches, to museums and parks and restaurants. We took perverse pride in the number of strangers who scolded us for daring to live such normal lives with a baby so young; I think he was five days old when we introducted him to Target. The very first social invitation I had to turn down was just last month--barhopping with these lovely ladies because bars + baby? even I'm not quite that crazy--but until then we'd done everything we would have without a baby.

For a while there, Wombat was so easy that I was able to convince myself Life in General hadn't really changed that much at all. It was certainly different on both a micro and macro level (on the one hand, the constant feedings and diaperings and bathings and nail-trimmings and, on the other hand, the all-consuming, unconditional love for this new person), but at the same time everything felt surprisingly normal, like Baby? What baby? I didn't have the identity crisis or relationship crisis or body crisis all my research had led me to expect; I still felt like me and I felt okay.

And I still feel like me, although I realize now that some of what I am will have to be put on hold for a while. Just as Simon might not write any songs or produce any woodcrafts for a few years, I might not have a chance to do some of the things I'd like to, for instance, finish Wombat's gestation scrapbook (what?) before he graduates junior high. But that's just it--it might take a few years or ten to get to all the things I want to do, but This, whatever This is in the moment, is not forever. All the things I can't do are just things I can't do right now. (Of course, having a child means there are some things I just plain Can't Do Ever, but I probably never wanted to do any of those things in the first place anyway, so no biggie.)

Already things are changing. In the time between when I started this entry and now, Wombat took an entire ounce from a bottle. Simon fed him (Medela bottle, Nuk nipple, upright in the bouncy seat, milk at room temperature) while I hovered just out of sight. Last night I tricked the kid into half and ounce by sticking my finger in his mouth under the bottle nipple. Today the bottle, tomorrow the world? Don't blink or you'll miss it.

wrote Leah at 6:37 AM | Comments (10)