How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane (9 page)

But mostly I pumped. And pumped. And pumped. And pumped.

Until little by little, drop by drop, my milk started to flow—or at least dribble. Not nearly at the rate the child was drinking, but enough that I could supplement her formula feedings with a little of my own milky love.

I was winning. Soon we would be the very picture of skin-to-skin maternal bliss.

But, as one slow-flowing nipple said to the other, “not so fast.”

The child did not want the breast.

When I offered my ever-so-feebly lactating nipple to my daughter, she would give it a look and a suck and then scream into it like a rapper yelling into a microphone. Sometimes I'd try to fool her by making her laugh, and while her mouth was open I'd jam my nipple in there. But she never took to it. Instead, she'd just stare at me like I was some kind of sick pervert.

The worst part was that she could be calmed only by the
other
Binky, her pacifier: i.e., a silicone version of my nipple. This is what is known in the breast-feeding world as “nipple confusion.” But if you'd asked my daughter, she would've said there was no confusion. That savvy four-week-old knew exactly what she wanted, and she couldn't have been clearer if she'd e-mailed her thoughts to me and b.c.c.'ed her lawyer. It was hard not to take it personally—almost as hard as it is to saw through a silicone pacifier with a steak knife.

I continued to pump around the clock and would then pour my liquid gold into little bottles that the husband would then feed her. I did this for five months until it occurred to me that the six hours a day I was spending with the pump might be better spent with my child. As much as I believe in the benefits of breast-feeding, I believe in the benefits of bonding even more.

That's when I eighty-sixed the pump, and from five months of age, my kid became 100 percent formula fed. That was five years ago, and now she's a happy, healthy, lovely child, and I'm at peace with my choice to abandon breast-feeding.
^*

*
Boobs, tits, ta-ta's, “the girls,” chesticles, naughty pillows, “Buddy & Bernice.” These are all phrases I wanted to use in this story but which my editor advised against, on the basis that their usage would make me seem immature. To which I responded, “You're worried
that's
what's going to make me seem immature? Do you even know me?!”

*
That might be the best/worst pun I've ever made. My sincere apologies.

*
Unless you're into that sort of thing. And if you are, then (a) each to his own and (b) Blortch.

*
Gazongas. I'd forgotten that one.

*
And that last part is a complete lie.

Back when she was still on the “F” (formula) I had a recurring nightmare about a citywide chemical explosion after which robots would take over the water supply and my baby would die because I wouldn't be able to feed her during the ensuing apocalypse.

Now I have more rational concerns . . . like the fact that having been robbed of her mother's milk she'll become a high school dropout and date a guy with a tattoo of a snake on his face who will try to rob a liquor store and accidentally shoot and kill kindly old Sheriff Jenkins and my dumdum of a daughter will get blamed for it and end up on death row where Susan Sarandon will try but ultimately fail to spare her life, leaving me to attempt a poorly planned prison break that will end with my death in a fiery hail of gunfire.

Of course I recognize this anxiety for what it is—an absurd and totally irrational fear that has no basis in reality but is predicated on an insidious set of cultural beliefs, which contribute to the notion that there exists a “perfect” style of mothering, but which of course we can all see is “perfect” only in that it is “perfectly” unattainable.

On the other hand—if I do die trying to bust my daughter out of prison, I think I can safely say that that “Mother of the Year” Award is mine.

four

SEXUAL DISINTERCOURSE

SOMETIME IN 1982 3:17
A.M.

I
am awakened from a dream that involves me and one of the Hardy Boys engaged in a spicy bout of tonsil hockey. I sit up and stumble groggily out of bed and into the bathroom.

Sit. Pee. Wipe.

Stand. Wobble. Flush.

Still half-asleep, I put my hand on the bathroom doorknob to return to bed (and to a shirtless Sean Cassidy, I hope) when I hear coming from my parents' room what sounds like furniture being dropped on the floor. Repeatedly, rhythmically, and with great effort.

Fully awake now, I jerk my hand from the doorknob, as though a chemical fire is raging on the other side. I drop to the floor and pull the nubby, mildewy bath mat over my head. And there I wait until I am certain that the banging has stopped. And then I wait thirty minutes more, until I am absolutely, positively sure that I am the only one still awake in this house, and that no one will ever know, that I now know, what my parents were doing under their polyester comforter that night.
^*

If I'd have been younger, the fact that my parents engaged in sexual congress probably wouldn't have phased me, and I would have skipped happily back to my room not caring that my father and mother were knocking boots just six feet away, on the other side of my pink cloud–mural-covered wall.

But at fifteen years old, the majority of my waking activities were centered on the topic of sex. Thinking about it. Dreaming about it. Looking it up in the school library dictionary, multiple times a day. Writing it in my notebooks so that I could study those three illicit letters arranged in such a filthy order.

So this sudden awareness that my parents were freely enjoying it—with each other, no less—it was a living, (heavy) breathing, gag-inducing nightmare. Because as anyone with a pituitary gland knows, there is nothing
more disturbing to a teenager than the knowledge that your parents have sex.
^*

But the lasting impact of this decades-old memory goes beyond my horrified fifteen-year-old self. Yes, the memory of it still gives me the sensation of having eaten raw chicken, but more than that I am left with an overwhelming feeling of wonderment and the enduring question: how did they do it?
^†

How did they—having been married, at the time, for more than twenty years—find the interest, the energy, and the will to do it?

S
OME
V
ERY
U
NSCIENTIFIC
R
ESEARCH FROM A
N
OT
-S
O
-R
ELIABLE
S
OURCE WITH
F
AIRLY
L
OOSE
T
IES TO
R
EALITY

Leaving the example of my parents for a moment (and which I must if I am ever to properly digest a meal again), let's ponder the usual course of monogamous sex:

In the beginning phases, a typical monogamous sexual relationship is rife with newness, discovery, and laser-powered lust. There's a fire in each of your respective loins, and when you rub them together it's like starting a barbecue with truck-stop fireworks and diesel fuel. Your face is chapped raw from cheek to chin, you're bragging to friends about your weekly bladder infections, and the sound of your beloved's voice is like that of an angel singing . . . in the nude . . . with a boner.

Compare this to what happens after you've taken on the shared responsibility of parenthood:

You forget the basics of human grooming, allowing the hair on your body to grow so long that from behind you could be/have been mistaken for an elderly Greek man. You choose a self-initiated tax audit over being intimate with your spouse. And the sound of your beloved's voice is as pleasing as a dental instrument being jammed into your ear canal . . . in the nude . . . with a boner.