Little Black Daddy Magic

This past weekend, C, myself and Eliza drove to another city to visit C's other two kids. His oldest daughter is 13 and would rather walk around her neighborhood aimlessly with a group of friends than hang out with her old man. On the way back, as we laughed about her general disinterest in us, he said something along the lines of "I just hope I get her back."

I found this odd because when I was 13, I was far less nice to my father. This was a pretty intense time for our family as this was the year my parents split up. My father had been seeing another woman for two years and finally, not long after I started seventh grade, he moved in with her. On Saturday nights, perhaps twice a month, my father would pick me up and take me out to a tortuous, stilted dinner at an expensive restaurant. If I felt charitably towards him, I'd let him take me to the movies afterwards. I took advantage of his desire to make things right with me by choosing movies completely inappropriate for father/daughter bonding. One week it was "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," a movie where every character excluding that Henry Winkler-esque Usher guy has sex. A few weeks later, it was "Porky's", where we watched a burly female gym teacher yank a man's penis through a shower hole. It was awkward watching such denoument along side my father but I loved the chance to see rated R movies I wouldn't have seen otherwise, and I liked knowing he was probably squirming with discomfort.

Before my father left, we'd been going through our own tough time because my father couldn't handle the fact that I was growing up. He'd caught me reading "Forever," an activity I hardly hid since I was certainly old enough to know of such things. Had it not been for Judy Blume, I imagine I'd still think pregnancy could be averted if you refrained from tongue kissing. My father yelled at my mother for allowing me read such "smut." My father wanted me to stay the little girl who jumped into his arms when he got home from work, sat on his lap and watched an entire Indianapolis 500, and hoped to be a professional football player just to impress him, forever. So we needed a break, a chance to regroup and get to know each other as man experiencing mid-life crisis and hostile, angst ridden teen. There were lots of fights, lots of cries of "I hate you," lots of making out slobbishly with unsuitable boys in his sightline. I think about it now and I'm a little pissed at my own behavior. My father made some mistakes, sure, maybe didn't treat my mother so well, yeah, but he didn't deserve some of the stuff I did. I see this now, of course, through the new eyes of a parent, one who's dreading these occurrances and knowing they're all too inevitible.

So compared to me, C's oldest daughter is a spa day. She's nice to him, hugs him, tells him she loves him constantly and runs off with nice, clean-cut girls who look like they were freshly ordered from an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. She likes happy, clean shows like "Gilmore Girls" and "American Idol" despite my desire to expose her to the dark side of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Naturally, I found the idea that he'd "lost her" amusing. Would he rather his daughter blow off her friends for a chance to play board games then fall asleep during "Saturday Night Live" while her father snored from a nearby chair?

Today my father came to New York to spend some time with me and my daughter. He had not seen her since Christmas and I must confess some unease before his visit. Eliza's currently going through a severe Mommy/Poppy phase that involves high-pitched screaming when anyone other than C or myself scoops her up. She'll smile, flirt, laugh, whatever, just as long as no one else tries to wrap her in their arms. My Mom, wild-haired and bleary eyed following a babysitting stint with Eliza, said, "at least we know she can't be kidnapped." My father, who takes things personally, would not bond with this gorgeous baby who looks like an angel but screams like a demon the minute an outsider touches her all too inviting arm. Add to the mix my father's Wolfgang Jack appearance, all white man's 'fro and thick beard, and I imagined a day full of Eliza's screams and my father's cries of "What's wrong with her? Why does she hate me?"

When my father first walked in, Eliza looked at him curiously but didn't start to cry. He started with the babytalk and her face crinkled into the big-wail pucker but she merely turned to me, and smiled.

"Whoa," my Dad said, spotting the smile. "Happy baby."

"Pretty much," I said.

I took my father to a nearby, baby-friendly restaurant to celebrate his birthday. It was an unseasonably warm day for Early March and we walked down Tenth Avenue, Eliza's eyes tired in her red stroller.

My father must have noticed a street sign and said, "Are we going to the Freezeout?"

"What," I asked, not understanding. Circle Freeze was the name of an ice cream shop near where he lived in Jersey. Was it a chain that I happened to live near? "The Freeze out? Is that an ice cream place?"

"Tenth Avenue Freeze-out," my father said and I forced out an obligatory laugh.

"I didn't know you were aware of that song," I said. Yes, Bruce Springsteen was the source of some father/daughter fights. Guess which one of us liked him and guess which one described his "singing" as "moaning."

We got to the restaurant and were seated in an outdoor garden. Eliza was fussy, I had to keep getting up to rock her gently in the stroller. When that didn't work, I put her on my lap.

"I can take her," my father said.

"No, she'll just start screaming."

When our food came, my wonderfully accommodating little daughter feel asleep in the stroller so my father and I could eat in relative peace. I was so confident Eliza would remain asleep, I ordered dessert. But she woke up. I tried to eat my hot fudge Sundae as quickly as possible but had to stop when the inevitable cold headache occurred. I pressed my head against my hands, my nightly five hours of sleep, the long ride back the previous night, the difficulty in having guests of any sort with a baby, all kicking in. Eliza got nosier and I waited for the restaurant's other patrons to start shooting me the dirty glances I always gave when I was on the other side of that fence. I was about to take her out of the stroller when I realized my father was already beside me.

"Here, I'll take her," he said and before I could stop him he had her up. She was wearing her little red, pink and blue striped sweater, the hood draped over her head I could see her tiny features, set in completely placid lines as my father toted her away from me. As I watched that little face retreat in my father's arms, I felt like I would be the one to cry. He walked her to the glass doors, now thrown open for the warm day and even with the distance I could see her smile. My father turned to the right and was gone. For a moment I felt panic, where did he take her? But I realized I was being ridiculous, even if my father "kidnapped" her, I imagine he'd allow me some kind of visitation schedule.

I turned to my sundae, grateful to eat my dessert knowing my daughter was safely in my father's arms. The same arms that propped me up on the couch then dubbed me "Flopsy" because I'd fall over to the side. The same arms that scooped me up and ran with me to his car on the day I got my foot stuck in the wheel of a bicycle. The same arms that pitched countless baseballs to me in our small backyard while telling me I could play the game if only I practiced enough. The same arms that held a camera and took the only good photos of me on the day of my high school graduation.

How did my father succeed where virtually every family member had failed? Does my daughter like men who wear a lot of denim and look oddly like King Kong? I think it's because my father's never afraid to be goofy. Maybe his jokes stink to me, the adult, but the crossed eyes and giddy voice could be magnets to a child. I loved my Dad, really loved my Dad as a child, I mean no one else could have convinced me that watching the Indy 500 was a great way to spend a Sunday. My Mom kept coming in that day, waiting for the moment I'd get bored and she could take me to a Park. Instead I spent the day alongside my father on the couch, probably only getting up to go the bathroom or get snacks.

After I finished my sundae, Daddy came back in, Eliza's eyes bright, her face calm. The sun burned behind him catching the wiry white strands of his hair but it didn't look a halo, more like the crazy God in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting, you know the one who's touching fingers with Adam. Daddy's are magic, I thought, as he handed my daughter back to me and she smiled. When I was a little girl I believed my father had the power to solve every problem. Get Mr. Duran for fourth grade, my father will call the principal and threaten to camp out in his office if my class assignment wasn't switched. I wanted to learn how to hit a baseball and my father signed up to coach the team so that he could teach me, a kid with no natural athletic ability, to make the all-star team. I believed my daddy was magic, the magic man. And maybe he still is, maybe daddy's are always, to us, their adoring little girls, the Magic Man.

Germaphobia

At the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of people still died in yellow fever epidemics in New Orleans. Scarlett Fever killed a large number of babies per year, in fact one baby left blind and deaf by the Fever would become famous for an incident that invovled her, a teacher and one very important well of water. Polio remained a crippling, terrifying menace until the late 1950's when good old Dr. Salk concocted a vial of magical medicine.

Today, most people only know these diseases from dusty textbooks and autobiographies. Measles, Mumps and Rubella have been eliminated thanks to the MMR vaccine. Of course this vaccine is controversial due to various, uncorroberated theories linking it to autism. My own experience with this theory is, to quote my mother, "Billy got that vaccine when he was ten. He was autistic long before that." So as much as new mothers might fear autism, their kids won't get it from this vaccination.

It's a safer time to be having a baby then it was 100 years ago. My grandmother was one of ten children--only four survived past the age of ten. Asked how these kids died, my Grandmother's answer is the same for each one, "heart," she says. I take this answer to mean that she honestly has no idea how they died. My grandmother's parents were peasants. I don't know if a local doctor was available and if their seven word English vocabulary was enough to provide their ailing children with care.

I'm not sure of the exact number, but New York State tests every hospital born infant for something like 40 ailments, birth defects and medical conditions. The average pregnant woman has about six prenatal tests, screening for everything from genetic defects like cystic fibrosis to chromosonal abnormalities like Spina Bifida.

And yet still, despite our best efforts to guarantee you a worry-free trip down Motherhood Lane, there's still the threat of bird flu, flesh eating bacterias and the dreaded common cold. Now in our "safe" society with so many diseases a thing of the past, germs have risen to the heights of King Kong. The monster under the bed that we outgrew as children returns in the shape of a abnormal cell when we become mothers. Seemingly reasonable adults start Purelling their hands every five minutes. I see more people opening bathroom doors with paper towels so as not to taint their freshly washed hands than ever before. The label "obsessive-compulsive" gets replaced by "frantically nervous new mom." There's the old story that says the first kid gets only a boiled, sterilized pacifier, the second kid gets a rinsed pacifier after it hits the floor and the third kid gets it popped right back into his or her mouth following the binky's fall from grace.

In the case of C and myself, this scenario is sadly true. Since Eliza is his third child, I've seen plenty of pacifiers smack the floor only to be slid right back into her tiny, sweetly pristine mouth. Since Eliza is my first child, I want anything that comes near her lips to be washed with soap and water, then boiled for at least ten minutes. I spend, on average, about 40 minutes to an hour each day sterilizing items that come in contact with my daughter's mouth. Yes, this includes my boobs. I am not as crazy as some mother's who greet me at the door with Purell and insist I take off my shoes. But I now feel there's nothing wrong with asking a guest, upon arrival, to wash their hands while I hover in the backround and like a cheerleader, belt out, "Get the tips of your fingers, yes! Don't scrimp on the soap, yes! Keep your hands under longer, longer yeah!"

So while C has the third child So-cool parent syndrome, I have full-on, first time mama Germaphobia enhanced by a sharp mix of former career managerial mama anxiety. Yes, as a former careerist I approached parenthood with working woman zeal, taking classes, attending group sessions and organizing local mommy gathering all to better serve my new empoyer, teacher and mentor--my child. The clash between the different parenting styles has never been more evident than when we're in the presence of C's children from his first marriage.

Upon arrival of a recent weekend visit, we were greeted at the door by C's oldest daughter who promptly informed us that C's son had a fever and was in bed. This sent panic through me with the force of a pulled fire alarm but I struggled to remain calm in the face of incoming germs. We resolved to keep Eliza and her brother apart which we did for the first few hours. But as her brother's fever broke, C ended his son's quarantine and trotted Eliza upstairs to the room I could only think of as the "sick bay." Although C urged his son to stay back, babies are magnetic and frequent urgings to keep a distance are finally beaten down by the sheer force of that magnitude. I vowed to go to bed and be tougher the following morning, to fight the new sibling bonding process and protect my child with the force of a Roman gladiator, for whom thumbs down meant instant execution at the mouth of a hungry lion.

C's son decided to return to school the following day, a decision that pleased me, surely his ailment must have been minor for so speedy a recovery. However, this new development brought forth it's own host of anxieties as C's son was determined to bring his new sister to school for show and tell. As we bundled her in her bunting and walked the two blocks to the school, I had no clue to the terror that awaited. I imagined only a blissful moment where C's son introduced Eliza to his teacher who'd then humor us with the appropriate polite remarks while tending to her class of wild, crazy third graders. Imagine my horror upon realizing most third graders, or at least these third graders, found my daughter just about the hottest baby on the block. Student after student fought for a front row seat at her stroller as they bent over like old men with myopia for a better look. Merely inches from my daughters face loomed one snotty, coughy, itchy kid after another. But the real kicker was a child, I'll call Ty, who was easily the winner of the Kid-Who-Found-My-Daughter-Most-Enchanting contest. Under normal circumstances, his devotion would have been charming but since poor Ty sported an angry red rash that looked like a "Got Bright Red Cranberry Juice" ad or a raging allergic reaction to a commercial facial hair depilatory, his facination was the cause of blind panic.

The situation was made worse by the teacher's apparent desire to continue the Eliza fawn fest over the sound of the bell. Students were assembling in their seats, things were winding down and still this teacher and our anti-hero Ty, determined to love my daughter against all odds, showed no signs of backing off. Unfortunately for me, Eliza's genial, calm demeanor actually worked against her. While other babies might find this sort of attention disconcerting, even scream-attack necessary, my daughter sat there with the tranquil grace of a buddha, who clearly enjoyed the surging devotion of her charges.

"How calm she is," the teacher noticed and I tried to think of ways to uncalm her. Should I flash a boob, then quickly put it away like dangling the proverbial carrot stick? Should I encourage C to loudly blow his nose knowing this sound is, for some reason, more terrifying to her than a passing fleet of sirened New York City fire engines?

Finally, C's desire for his coffee fix overruled the lovefest and we set out for Starbucks. As soon as we were out of earshot, I commented on poor Ty's creeping crud. C himself something along the lines of "Yes, what was that" than changed the subject. Obviously he would not need weeks of therapy to rid himself of vivid nightmares that involved Ty's rash and the plump, dewey skin of our daughter.

The day passed quietly, our normal routine of feedings, walks and my thorough skin investigations for the start of any forming rashes. As the time approached to meet C's son at the end of the school day, I actually looked forward to the accolades, the devotion, the love my daughter inspires.

However, while in the morning, most students were already in their classes and we traveled to our destination with little interruption, now C and I waited outside the classroom for the final bell to ring. We were met by our firth admirer, the mother of a classmate who leaned in for a peak. She was followed by the mother of C's son's best friend, who not only practically dove in for a better view, but encouraged her three year old to do so as well. The bell rang and C's son was anxious to get outside and play ball, so much so, he didn't care if his teacher saw the dear Eliza again. This cheered me imagining a quick rush to the great outdoors where germs fly around in the air and are less likely to land like tape on my daughter. However the teacher and good old Ty were already stroller side and the ceremonial ahhing had begun. It looked like my daughter had a suiter ready to ask for her hand and instead of being poor or a drug dealer or some other unsavory bloke, he was just a poor kid afflicted with a scowling red rash. With the influx of kids rushing out of classrooms, maneuvering her out of Germ Hell proved felt like trying to get to the Lincoln Tunnel entrance at rush hour.

Finally outside, I greeted the fresh air like a swimmer who hits the surface. I glanced down at my daughter, again unfazed by all this calamnity and wished, just once, for one of those kids who cries all the time, one of those kids who doesn't inspire an army for a fan club. As C and his son played in the school playground, and I walked Eliza in her stroller, we were followed with a stalker's zeal by Ty who kept calling out to the other kids, "Hey look, it's Eliza, Eliza!" Again how charming this would be from a child without a rash. Poor Ty, his only desire is to love, honor and respect my daughter and here I am shooting down his advances like an angry Prophet protecting the faith of an entire people.

As I write this now, my daughter has a cold. C will be back at work while I attend to her cold-induced moodiness. Such is the life of a new Mama and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's not all smooth sailing, but with a baby this magnificent, it can seem that way. I'm ready though and with the prospect of a first cold is another new and exciting prospect of surviving that first cold. Just think of the tone and musculature my mommy muscle will take on with that new development?

The Mommy Muscle

Yesterday Eliza had her first fall. Wait, you say, she's only three months. How can she fall when she does not stand, does not walk. She fell, basically, because her mother is an idiot. Or was an idiot for about five seconds and in those five seconds, baby took a tumble.

I had arrived at my first mommy and me kind of excercise class which was very crowded with other moms and babies. A little flustered by crowd, the rush to get out the door with the baby and Eliza's crying jag on the crosstown bus, I must have unfasted the second two snaps on the baby bjorn. In my own defense, one snap on the bjorn isn't great and has come undone while I'm seated before. So perhaps that's what happened, while I sat on the bjorn, the snaps became unfastened and I didn't check when I got up which I should have. Either way, the fall was my fault.

Now don't get an image of me standing and the baby spiralling to the ground, at least I was seated on a carpeted floor. I turned to get a blanket, her still attached to me and then turned towards her in time to see her slide from my body and fall flat on her head to the floor. I spent most of yesterday reliving the fall, her little body in it's pink bunting, slamming against the floor. It was the worst five seconds, or three seconds or ten seconds of recent memory. As it happened, I screamed, powerless in a room full of other mothers. No one really noticed, I guess it was more of a silent scream. Eliza cried out and I scooped her in my arms, terrified, cradling her little head against my chest.

The instructor had started the class and I rushed out of the room, the evil bjorn dangling against my legs. Eliza cried, redfaced in her pink hat and bunting and I struggled to contain my tears, my own horror at my stupidity.

"Shh," I whispered in her ear, "It's okay, baby, it's okay."

I am so lucky to have the daughter I have. I could tell almost immediately that she wasn't seriously hurt. Already, her cries were subsiding. Already I started to morph from the stupidest mother in the world to the most powerful, simply by my ability to comfort my injured child. She should have screamed longer, should have been harder on me but she gently calmed down, her sobs becoming further apart and less forceful.

"My girl," I said, "such a good girl."

Another mother saw us. "Poor little girl," she said. "Probably overwhelmed by all the people."

"She just fell," I said. "It was awful."

The mother studied Eliza for a second, then quickly said, "Well you can tell she's fine."

I nodded, not only hoping but believing it to be true. "It was so scary."

I wanted to cry, to throw my arms around this nice mother and have her comfort me the way I comforted my daughter.

"It is, but they're always sturdier than we think."

Eliza had quieted down by now, no more tears. She was looking at the other woman and her baby, a boy I think but now I don't remember, don't even remember what this woman, this saint in my time of need, looked like. The Mommy Stupdometer is on these days, on in full force, and I can hardly put two sentences together when I'm speaking.

I looked at Eliza, her face less red as she looked at me, not smiling but generally herself. She was wearing a hat lined with fake fur and her bunting still. The hat and the bunting probably broke her fall. She fell, I'm guessing, a distance of about two feet. The shorter the fall, not only the lesser the distance but the slower the speed of the falling body. My daughter was okay and we went back inside to continue the class.

I felt discombobulated throughout and wondered if I should rush Eliza to a doctor, after all she did fall on her head. Perhaps she wasn't okay, maybe I only needed to believe it so badly, I refused to see the signs. So what if she smiled at the other mothers, laughed as we trotted in a circle and whipped her head around from one side to the other in order to take in the sites. I stepped back from the class and sat against the wall, lifting my shirt to offer a boob, the universal pacifier, comforter, love inspirer.

Eliza sucked hungrily, happy, I think, to be done with the class. She pressed her hand into my chest and clung to the neckline of the shirt. Even a bad mother seems to inspire the love of her child. I exchanged glances with another breastfeeding mother pressed against the next wall. We were partners in a universal tribe and we both knew the secret: how satisfying feeding a baby can be, how powerful you can feel as a mother, just one person with the power to hear all the world's wounds, on a small scale anyway. My baby cries and I silence her. No one can satisfy her as well as I do. And still, I don't deserve her.

Last night I had a nightmare that I killed a man. I don't remember the details, only that I killed a man and was worried I'd get caught. I didn't feel bad about the murder, nor did my friends who were assisting me in the coverup. I'm not a big dream interpreter but I think my dream was inspired by my own guilt in hurting my child. One quick fall and I am a murderer.

After the class ended and I'd asked several of the other mothers about what to look for with falls, I held another mother's tinier baby while she gathered her stuff. Eliza was on the floor, fussing in her bunting while I held Meredith's daughter, Julia against my chest. Julia immediately turned her head to my boob, wondering why it was next to her head and not in her mouth. Julia's a month younger than Eliza and I really needed to hold a littler baby. A littler baby, a fresh start, a chance again at having a child unbruised and umblemished by my inteptitude.

"Look at this." I tilted my chin down to Julia who gnawed at my nipple through my shirt. "She wants me to feed her."

Meredith eye's widened with disappointment. I know the look. She thought she'd missed her daughter's cue, that she had somehow failed as a mother. I didn't mean to make her feel this way, I'd only pointed it out because it seemed funny. As mother's, we continually beat ourselves up. Here's this woman chastising herself because she stopped nursing to gather her diaper bag and I was being far too easy on myself for Eliza's fall.

But I wasn't. I didn't force myself to relive that moment. It happened over and over again on it's own.

A woman on Urban Baby posted that it took five months for a mother to build up her "Mommy Muscle," in other words the strength to have confidence in her abilities as a mother and shut out the comments, supposedly well-meaning, that instead sound like "we're telling you how to do it right because you're doing it wrong." My Mommy Muscle in that regard has kicked in--I am not bothered by "Oh she spits up so much, what do you think that's about" or "You should use formula, you'd be so much happier if you did!" No my Mommy Muscle is needed to combat the terror I have in the real wounds Eliza may get in the coming years.

I can blame myself for what happened yesterday and it gives me some power, a way of saying Eliza won't get hurt that way again because I learned my lesson. But what about the hurts that might happen that won't be my faulty. The falls she'll take from jungle gyms or balance beams--I can't keep her locked in box sized apartment her entire life. The long road of motherhood is filled with joy, love, pride and absolute terror. I'm going to need so much muscle just to combat the fear I have in carrying her around the apartment everyday. There's no health food supplements or pills to help build up my Mommy Muscle unless you include zoloft, popular drug amongst mothers of multiple kids.

Eliza sits under her Elmo right now clad in only a diaper and booties. Her skin in luminous in the afternoon light, flawless not a scratch or mark on it. Her little legs wiggle and her arms windmill as the toy plays "She'll be coming 'round the Mountain." My baby, perfect and lovely, that I grew in my body. I took my prenatals and didn't drink while I was pregnant. I nurse her and watch what I eat to avoid a plethora of chemicals going into her body. I have several books on parenthood, all to arm me with what I need to know to reassure her in her lovely little life. But I am only the beginning for her, the start of a much larger picture. As I take in her flawless white skin, I can only cherish this moment, when I can kiss away her pains and when a little Elmo "gym" is just about the best thing in the world.