License To Love

Be An Eagle, Not A Sheep

Once, when I was a young Pearl Jam-listening, concert-going, Doc Martin-stomping, urban-sniffing, apartment-dwelling, bicycle-commuting artiste, I eloped with a man I had known for only six months or so.  My mother and sister, who were uneasy about it, were at least hopeful because he was charming and had a real job that wasn't in the restaurant business. I waved goodbye to my family and drove off with him to the Big City, happy to be leaving the clutches of the suburbs, which I was sure was killing me.

We married in October, and immediately started trying to get to know each other. We tried hard.  By March I was pregnant and throwing up all over Metropolitan Boston. I threw up in bushes when I got off of trains or buses, at restaurants, concerts, at my husband's office, or when we went to visit friends. One time when we went out to a restaurant, I was too sick to eat by the time the meal came, so I brought my food home. The drive home made me sicker still, and I was about to blow, so I did the only thing I could – threw up in the to-go container holding my twenty-three dollar steak. It was either that or on the floor of the car, which I think my husband may have loved more than me, so I am sure I did the right thing. This morning sickness lasted until the day I gave birth, so if you haven't yet done the baby thing: be forewarned.

Between bouts of anxiety and violent puking, I started to read books and parenting magazines. I had a lot of catching up to do. Before I was pregnant, I basically hated babies and small children. I never baby sat as a child, looked at motherhood as a terminal affliction, and avoided all of it like a vampire avoids light. I would see mothers at playgrounds or on the subway with strollers, and rumpled,  squeaking children, constantly hunching over to stuff something in their grubby little cake holes -- a bottle, a noo-noo, a goldfish cracker, or worse -- sweep something out --a bottle cap, a beetle, a string, some mucus. Traveling with that much stuff isn't cool. Neither is noise.

Once I got pregnant, I didn't feel much different. I wasn't thrilled to be joining the ranks of the lumpy and sleepless, but knew that I had to learn everything I could.  I wanted to have this baby on MY terms.  It would be a very quiet baby, who liked living in a sling on my back while I painted and went to museums. When the kid said "wah," I would whip it around and hold it out at arm's length and let it tinkle on the ground, just like they did in Clan of the Cave Bear. When it said "rah!" I would swing it around and whip out a boob, while continuing to draw and write magnificent pieces the world couldn’t live without.

I had decided, while thumbing through baby magazines, usually between bouts of "morning" sickness, that childbirth and baby raising is a machine of an industry that doesn't really care about the family at all. It was and continues to be all about money, or more precisely, all about Us giving most of our money to Them, to avoid being Bad Parents. Good parents bought their children all of the latest developmental toys and Baby Einstein videos, because if they didn’t, their children might be stupider than other peoples’ children when they got to preschool. Nobody wants a stupid child.

 “Oh, no! I have to buy all this stuff!” I thought as I read the lists. “I need a Diaper Genie, a baby bath tub, special baby soap, an electric baby wipes warmer, a swing, a bouncy seat, a anti-head bobber for the car seat, a new diaper bag, a new crib and a crib bumper and a crib dust ruffle and a quilt and a changing table, and a layette and.....what the heck is a layette?”

I started going to a park in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, where we lived. Each day at around ten a.m. mothers congregated there with their very small children in hot-rod looking strollers, like sheep congregating at a watering hole. They were armed with diaper bags that looked like suitcases, sippy cups, ziplock baggies of crackers and cheese squares, tiny flat containers of baby wipes, more toys than an Indonesian child sees in his whole life, enough extra diapers to get them through a month-long breakdown of commerce, and the latest potty training newsflashes.

“Tempest went poo-poo in the potty this morning!”

“So did Cobalt! He pulled his Pull-Up down all by himself, didn’t you Cobalt?”

I willed myself to sit near them, frightened about what I might become once I gave birth. Over the weeks, as my belly grew bigger, I studied these women,  rearranging and dropping and handing and wiping all the things they brought with them, and their discontented children – reaching and grabbing and fussing and needing. Their stuff consumed them, and I think it taught their children to want more and more. I was afraid of being bogged down by so much stuff that I wouldn’t have time to interact with my child, little what’s its face. 

“Baaaa” they said to each other.

“Baa,” they beckoned to me. “It’s nice over here by the watering hole.” I didn’t want to be a sheep. The baby turned inside of me and kicked my liver. I looked up at the sky and saw a dark shape gliding through the sky. I squinted.

“Look!” the mothers said. “Look up there. It’s an Eagle! A real Eagle!”  The mothers grabbed their children and pointed to the sky. The Eagle was coasting mightily; we could see its head scanning the terrain for something that might be just right. He circled over an area, then rejected it and circled somewhere else, all the while its eyes hunting for just the right thing. He wasn’t after everything and anything – just one thing that was right, one thing that he needed, presumably something he could nosh on.

“That thing looks big enough to snatch a toddler,” I announced to the group. They recoiled from me and continued to talk among themselves.

This Eagle was very careful, cautious even, before spending his effort. He slowly flew out of sight without finding what he was looking for, contented to wait for what he needed, and I knew then what I had been trying to formulate. I decided to be choosy when faced with baby-related purchasing decisions. There was really nothing that I had to have for the birth of the baby, at least for the first few weeks, besides a car seat, diapers, some nighties and onesies and blankets and my own boobs.  I didn’t even have to have the baby’s room ready because the baby wouldn’t be able to focus past my face for the first two months of its life, and as mean as I sound, I wasn’t planning on letting the kid out of my sight until the demonish window of SIDS had closed.  I didn't need a crib this week, or next. The baby could sleep safely between my husband and me, especially since we weren’t drinkers who tossed and turned. I’d get the baby Stuff as the need presented itself, after careful consideration, without busting our bank and shopping like a sheep.

With a measure of relief, I decided to be an eagle.

To see what you can live without the first year of parenting, go to Be An Eagle -- The First Year

Don't Be A Sheep

This is the start of a several part series on how to raise happy kids without spending three hundred thousand dollars per child.

I know Hillary isn't in the running for president anymore, but some wee part of my largely satirical thought process thinks that there are people in our government who are working hard to convert our fine republic into something with a little more Chinese flava.

Oh, it is subtle, these conversion tactics. One of the most obvious clues is the public school system -- whereby children all over America are taught only what the government wants them to learn (see The Inquisition, What a Show).  Another way is the sneaky propaganda They releases to keep the pants permanently scared off of us. I submit to you global warming. We're gonna die and it's all our fault.   Hold on, I need to go buy some carbon credits to offset the electricity I'm spending in writing this post, or else my children might not live to grow up.

MSN Money reports that, in 2004, the US Department of Agriculture revealed some daunting figures on the cost of raising children, likely in hopes of quietly starting a national "One Child" Campaign, surely a concept that someone,the ZPG folks perhaps, or whoever thought of universal health care, thinks is for the good of the people.   If needed here, to keep yourself from leaving the blog, please refer to first paragraph, wherein I mentioned my "largely satirical" thought process.

Here's the stat that would frighten young marrieds everywhere into tying their tubes and using their money for things like, food, clothing, and shelter for themselves instead of pouring it into the black hole that is child rearing:

"Families making $70,200 a year or more will spend a whopping $269,520 to raise a child from birth through age 17. Higher-income families in urban areas in the West spend the most, $284,460." And that was four years ago when a gallon of gas cost $1.75.

"Uh-uh," they say. "We're still paying off our students loans, we can't buy a house, and  we may have to save up for our move to Mexico when Barack Obama gets elected.  We'd better not have kids if it costs that much!"

I think they surveyed a lot of stupid sheep who believe they must purchase everything their ad-controlled televisions and mainstream magazines tell them to, but it doesn't have to be this way. Go ahead. Get a baby.  My family is living proof that it does not have to cost everything you've got to raise children, and you don't need to go into debt to create a good life for them.  I'll teach you how to do it. Go to Be An Eagle, Not a Sheep.