Creature Feature

Dan and I were watching TV Sunday and Cold Mountain came on. Dan describes the scene in his blog: (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=59775710&blogID=248403239&MyToken=5355b6e6-9d1f-4fc3-a0fe-ab97b53bc0e8)
where marauders are hassling Sara. In order to get her to tell them where she’s got food hidden, they take her sick baby out of the house, lay him on the snow and unwrap him, shivering and wailing, while she screams. It made me physically ill – like "sick-to-the-stomach, I-feel-hot" ill. Later there’s a lot of killing but neither that, nor the bloodbath of the next movie I watched (Underworld: Evolution), had me as physically affected as that scene. Now, Natalie Portman’s a great actress and it’s a great scene, but I suspect there’s more to my almost hurling than cinematography.

Two things thus occurred to me. Last week, I used the word “visceral,” to describe this new state of parenthood because it occurred to me how much of my life now has to do with bodily things. From the time those two itty bitty cells get together, this is a totally physical ride. Mother nature takes good care of it, too, honey. I was stoned as a Pfish fan for the first two or three months on happy hormones, alternately nibbling on ginger and wolfing down five-course meals, giggling and glowing and pretty happy about my barely swelling midrift. The intricate dance of cells turned those two into a lizardy thing from deep in human evolution, into an ET-looking thing, and slowly but surely added eyelids and lungs and all that useful stuff. I didn’t have to think about a thing, not even wrapping the little critter in that waxy coating to protect it from the waters in which it would live. The whole process goes on autopilot til one day the baby wakes up the ole bod and says “’kay, I’m done here!” The muscles begin to squeeze in upon themselves and low and behold, you have the beginning of the rest of your life laying on a slimy mess on a table, squalling and blinking. Of course, in my case, this process likely would have perfectly killed me and the baby had things gone on naturally. Don’t think I don’t think about that or about how weird it is that I’d have gladly given my life for this critter to have a shot at his.

The second is that I am well and truly caught by the short ribs for the rest of my life over this child. He will be my greatest strength and my Achilles heel.

Friends with children have tried to explain to me what it’s like, either as I was protesting that I didn’t want to give away my freedom or because I was scared that the time conflicts of being a career mom would grind the last bit of joy out of my bones. They said things that made me think of pod people in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” – “just wait, you’ll understand.” Shit, no, I didn’t want to “just wait” to understand why you have a kid! I wasn’t going in drinking the Kool Aid, thinking it’d all be all right once the oxytocin takes effect. Bollocks! If I was going to have kids, it would be when my intellect said it was a good idea, not because some raging hormone eased my stress over being hamstrung like a Spring Turkey or dosed with Happy Mommy Hormones like a Stepford Wife.

So let’s see if I can explain what this is, having chosen with eyes wide open to purposefully put myself at an economic disadvantage, surrender my body to a biology that doesn’t give a damn about higher education, and walk into a new social standing that has almost no physical freedom. Parenthood has no real world benefit: it’s expensive, noisy, time-consuming, cuts into your drinking schedule, alienates your friends, makes you fight with your parents over stupid stuff, screws up your favorite toys (like Jon Stewart says when your baby puts fecal matter in your DVD player), ruins your sex life and generally lays waste to your cool factor. Still, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

It will probably sound cheesy or “drink-the-koolaid-ish” but having a child is like finding out that chocolate cake is really good for you, or that world peace is possible, that we’re not alone in the universe and there are really little green men and they do come in peace. It’s like something you’ve wanted for a very long time that you didn’t know you needed finally coming true. And you love it with your very bones. And it’s right.

That’s all I got. Think I’ll go play with the boy, watch his eyes and seek the divine.