Baby Daze

Last night we had some friends over for dinner that we haven't seen in over 2 years. They've had a baby since our last reunion, who is now about 22 months old, and was cute in that I-could-eat-you-for-breakfast-without-any-extra-sugar way, just utterly adorable. One thing really noticeable about her was that she is extra cuddly - the kind of kid who will crawl up on your lap and melt into your body and tuck her head into the crook of your neck. And she latched onto DH like he was her long-lost brother for whom she'd been pining away all her life and oh! the reunion!

This really cracked me up (in between my fits of jealously, as she would have NOTHING to do with me!), because generally DH is the kind of dad who loves kids most after they turn 2 or 3 and can walk and talk and tell you what's wrong and play frisbee. Babies, not so much. But if there were ever a toddler that could make DH change his mind about the species, it would be this one. I could almost see the question flitting through his mind: "Hmm, we're not too old for one more, are we?" Such was the power of this little baby girl.

No, not too old. But... wow, how weird it would feel to start all over again. We've given back the baby furniture we borrowed, sold the swings and car seats, donated the little baby shoes that got worn once. We're all about baseball and sleepovers and bikes with no training wheels and pool freedom (you know, where you can take your kids to the pool and never even have to get in the water, if you don't want to, because they all swim! In the deep end!). And math facts and Sponge Bob and ghost stories. You know, the good stuff. You put up with strollers and potty-training so you can get to THIS part.

I love babies, I'll admit it. But it's a little hard to imagine going back. Having a baby now would be nothing at all like it was back then, so new and life-changing and frightening and all-consuming. I like things the way they are. Besides, it's only, say, 15 or 20 years before I get (gulp) GRANDCHILDREN. (Yes, I'm presuming. They'd all darn well better get married and have kids, as THEY OWE ME for all the times I cleaned up their vomit in the middle of the night.)

So, I believe I'll be sticking with borrowing other people's babies. Especially the cute and cuddly ones.

Just Wondering

Greetings from the land of Midlife. Ok, I haven’t officially arrived in Midlife yet, as it’s still exactly 17 days until my 40th birthday, but I’m almost to shore now and can see the landscape from my cabin window. I’m now old enough to realize that really, truly, I will be old one day. It will happen. Unless I die first. (But that’s another conversation altogether.) I’m not old enough to feel old, yet. But for the first time since childhood, I can wrap my mind around the fact that I won’t always be young.

One way I know this is that time is moving faster for me these days. I had heard from other people who had gone before me that I should expect this, but now it is here and I am still surprised by it. One day you’re diapering the baby; the next day he’s asking for the car keys. What happened to all the years that were supposed to come in between?

Sometimes I wake up in the morning, or from a too-long, too-late-in-the-day nap, and wonder who the heck I am. Not in the groggy, disoriented sense of not being awake yet, but in the distressed, existential sense of Rip Van Winkle wondering why his beard is so long. Is this normal? I’m not unhappy or, to borrow that outdated feminist term, “unfulfilled.” I have a good life. But is it the life I was supposed to lead?

It is tempting when facing this question to start pointing to all the good things you have done with the time you’ve had, so far, as though you could justify a life, as though that were even possible. But none of those things, good though they are, feel like an adequate answer. There have been enough twists and turns in the road – some of my own doing, some forced upon me – that I can’t help but wonder if I left the road altogether. I just never saw this – this place where I am, right now – on the map at all. What does that mean?

I don’t know. All I know is that lately I’m asking the question often.

Bluegrass Therapy

Lately I have been playing my banjo more often. Daily, in fact. I haven't done this in years, unless preparing for an upcoming performance at church or with my dad. But a couple of weeks ago our whole family went to the Pickin' In The Park up in North Georgia, and it reminded me of my childhood. All over this park, by a river, under giant oak and maple and pine trees, people were playing and singing and listening and tapping their toes and generally having a good time, and it made me nostalgic for a part of myself that has lain dormant for too long.

Ms. MMV has in the past quoted Joan Didion's passage about staying on "nodding terms" with our former selves. The full quote is (thank you MMV):

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

I think this explains a little of my Banjo Fever.

I've also had a little hard-on-the-pride-but-ultimately-freeing realization about myself in the process of picking up an old interest. As a kid, growing up, I had the same burning desire to be "special" that every member of the human race feels - different in a good way, better than everyone else in some way, no matter how small. Some are blessed with natural beauty or unusual intelligence or physical ability and "special" status is theirs by default. Most of us, though, go through a process of seeking and discarding qualities that can be unique to us, that make us stand out in a crowd. We settle on an amalgamation of those things that fit best, or those things which pay us the biggest rewards, socially or emotionally.

So, as you might imagine, learning the banjo definitely made me "special." I was a 10-year-old girl in a class of old men (at least they all seemed old to me) when I started taking lessons. After a couple of years my dad started letting me practice with his bluegrass buddies, forcing me to learn to without stopping and restarting, to keep going in spite of mistakes. When I was thirteen, I played onstage at a bluegrass festival with my dad's band. Talk about attention! I definitely reaped rewards.

Yet I didn't really love bluegrass music, like my dad did. I gave up lessons when I was fourteen. Now I'm almost forty. But deep down in my DNA, I still believe that I'm "special" because I can play the banjo.

But picking up my old instrument, and listening to banjo teachers on the internet, I'm realizing something: I'm not that great on the banjo. I admit, I used to think I was the cheese. But I'm not. I'm a pretty good intermediate player who has a limited repertoire and has forgotten a lot of what she used to know. There are quite a few banjo virtuosos out there, and I ain't one of them.

Everyone you meet feels deeply in his heart that he is superior to you in some way - better looking, more organized, smarter, taller, faster, more compassionate, more hip, more environmentally-conscious, whatever. I used to think that I was a better picker than you. But the truth is, I'm not.

But here was the freeing part: after a few depressing seconds of realizing I'm only a mediocre banjo picker, I had a good laugh at myself. I don't have to play the banjo to be special! I don't even have to be "special." I yam what I yam. How that compares to anyone else is irrelevant in most ways that matter. I have a unique place in this world, in this life, in my generation, in my family, past present future. Ahhh, the freedom of truth-telling.

There's probably a bluegrass song hiding somewhere in that sentiment, isn't there?

God's Art Class

Tonight, Littlest Babybird and I watched the sunset together. It was stunning, quite a show. Pink, then gold, then purple, then deeper pink again.

Mom: God's painting the sky.

LBB: Yep.

(Long pause)

LBB: We're in the painting too, aren't we?

(More silence)

Mom: Yep.

(Thinking, as I say it, "Indeed we are, little one. Works of art, still in progress.")

The Diaper Dance

When my middle bird was about 3 years old, we were sitting at the dinner table one night listening to his older brother (4) whine and complain. I no longer remember what upset eldest brother so much that night, but I will never forget his little brother's response. Without a word, he crawled down off his chair, wearing only his diaper and the jelly on his face, and began spinning around the kitchen, arms flailing, singing:

"The Diaper Dance! The Diaper Dance! The Radi-o-ac-tive Diaper Dance!" (He said radi-o-ac-tive just like in the old Spiderman cartoon theme song.)

I wish I had taken a picture of him that night, but I was too busy doubled over laughing. We laughed so hard we could have squirted milk out of our noses. Even now, when someone is grumpy, someone will occasionally do the Diaper Dance Chant. (No one's in diapers around here anymore, so the Dance has become sadly obsolete. Or maybe that's not sad. Anyway.)

I don't know why that scene has been on my mind so much lately, but it has. DS has remained his cute, hilarious self, sensitive to his brother's needs and looking for ways to help him. Yeah, they argue and fight. But what a great gift to have a brother who'll make up silly dances just to cheer you up. Friends are friends for a short time, but siblings are forever.