Babyhood (9780062098788) Read online

  “You really don’t like Penelope?”

  “Really don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just . . .”

  “Come on . . . Penny. You like the name Penny, don’t you?”

  “I guess . . .”

  “Sure you do . . . Penny Marshall, Penny Lane . . . Penny for Your Thoughts . . .”

  “I don’t have anything against Penny . . .”

  “So? Penelope is Penny. It’s the same thing.”

  “You say it’s the same thing, but it’s not . . . If it was so much the same thing, why would you have to shorten it? You’re obviously dressing it up to try and sell it to me. Like, what—if you say Penny enough times, I’m going to forget the ‘el-o-pee’ is there? I still know it’s there.”

  Certain names you eliminate not because there’s anything wrong with the name, it just has a bad personal history.

  “What’s the matter with Merrill again?”

  “That girl Merrill I knew in high school who ate egg salad through a straw.”

  “Oh, right . . . so we’re crossing out Merrill.”

  “Please.”

  And some names you can both eliminate pretty comfortably.

  “Adolf?”

  “Out.”

  “Medusa?”

  “Out.”

  “Tweety?”

  “Let’s talk about it for a second.”

  You see, some names may sound silly but prove to be advantageous in the real world. For example, the not-particularly-common-but-not-unheard-of Bumpy.

  Now unless you’re raising a Disney cartoon, you’re probably not going to name your child Bumpy. It’s silly, childish, and laughable. But isn’t “laughable” potentially good? For example, how could anyone say no to a person named Bumpy? Think about it: You just got home, you had a terrible day, you don’t want to see anybody, talk to anybody, think about anybody . . . The doorbell rings.

  “Ah, geez . . . Who is it?”

  “It’s me—Bumpy.”

  Beat.

  “Okay, come on in.”

  You’re going to let the guy in.

  “I hope you’re by yourself.”

  “Well, I brought my cousin, Blinky.”

  “Ohhh . . . all right, both of you, come on in . . . but only for a little while.”

  Some people don’t agonize at all about finding the perfect name. They simply give the kid their name.

  “He’ll be me, but Me Junior. To be followed by Me the Third, and his son, Me the Fourth.”

  Certainly moves things along. Of course, if you’re really pressed for time, do what heavyweight champ George Foreman did—name all of his kids George Foreman. God bless him, a great fighter, a fine humanitarian—not, apparently, the most creative in the naming department. An entire family named George Foreman. It’s not like they’re of successive generations, overlapping only here and there for a few years . . . No, this is almost half a dozen guys, with the exact same name, all living in the same house.

  “This is my son George Foreman, his younger brother George Foreman . . . this one here is five and a half, say hello to George Foreman, and the little ones . . . where are they? . . . George Foreman? George Foreman? Come over here . . . okay, now, say hello, this is George Foreman and George Foreman . . . Why don’t you all sit down on the couch over there—the couch, interestingly enough, I call George Foreman.”

  For others, the task of naming is simplified by family mandates. There are people to be honored and remembered.

  “The child will be named after his grandfather.” Or, “She will take her mother’s surname, and it shall be as her own . . . And they shall go forth unto themselves, with their beasts and their grains, and into the desert shall they sojourn.” (I’m sorry, I just saw The Ten Commandments on TV and frankly, I enjoy talking like that.)

  In our case, we knew we wanted to name our child after my father. We didn’t want to use the exact same name, but something beginning with the same letter. We had plenty of girls’ names we liked, but nothing for a boy. Of course, when our son came out a boy (as almost all sons do) we were stuck. So we decided instead to honor my father’s name by making it our son’s middle name—which unfortunately has, to some, the tainted veneer of “second place.” Middle names are kind of like vice presidents: It’s a fine distinction and certainly an honor, but you’re never not aware that someone else got the real job.

  Parents often give middle names just so that later, when they’re yelling at the kid, they can drag it out.

  “Henry David Thoreau, you come in here this instant!”

  It gives them something extra to sink their teeth into.

  And a lot of people have middle names but you never know it. You can be friends with someone for years without ever once hearing their middle name. It becomes an area of unspoken intimacy, to be shared with only the select few.

  If, however, you assassinate someone, your middle name is all over the place. Once you shoot a famous person, not only do you go to jail and sit alone hungering for a forgiveness that eludes you your whole life, but on top of that, your middle name, whether you like it or not, gets publicly and permanently cemented right between your first and last name. They just run those puppies together like Sonny-and-Cher. There’s no way you can undo something like that.

  But because of the potential anonymity enjoyed by middle names, they also represent opportunities for Name Givers to safely store their really creative choices. That way the name is there, but not everybody has to know about it. Unless you want them to. So when you meet kids named Stanley DiMaggio Miller or Carol Satchmo Smith, you know their parents had healthy doses of not only creative sparks but discretion, too.

  The moment you announce your child’s name, people take it in for a moment, digest it, and then say, “Okay, but what are you going to call him?”

  “What do you mean, what are we going to call him? His name.”

  “No, of course, but what’s the nickname going to be? I mean, Franklin is a beautiful name, but what do we call him? Frank? Frankie? Frankle? Frankfurter?”

  This was a setback I hadn’t seen coming. After finally landing on a name the two of you like, your family tells you it’s not enough. You have to come up with a menu of officially sanctioned deviations and nicknames, which they’re going to disregard anyway.

  “Hello, Snooky . . . Hello, Angel-puss . . . Who’s my sweet Pumpkin . . . ?”

  They get called a lot of foods, these babies. “Pumpkin,” “Angel Cake,” “Cupcake,” “Ducky,” “Honey,” “Sweet Potato,” “Sweet Pea,” “Sugarplum,” “Peaches,” “Pudding” . . .

  But not all foods. You never hear someone call an infant “Steak.” “Chicken Parmigiana.” “Rice Cracker.” “Eggs.”

  I think the rule of thumb is, desserts and side dishes are okay, entrées and appetizers, not okay. The only exceptions that I’m aware of are my Aunt Cutlet and Uncle Bisque, who were actually born with those names but, ironically, were later nicknamed Phyllis and Lloyd.

  One Sonogram Says

  a Thousand Words

  From what I gather, seeing a gynecologist is not like seeing any other kind of doctor. It’s more like seeing a Therapist Who Also Examines the Inner Reaches of Your Genitalia. Women bond with their gynecologists.

  Men have none of this. You rarely hear men say, “I just love my proctologist.” Or, “I really need a urologist I can talk to.”

  For women, though, this relationship is very complex. Among other considerations, the gender of their gynecologist can be a big issue. And often for men, too. Because these people are looking at other people’s wives naked. And I know they’re professional, and it’s “just a job,” but still, come on . . . women are coming in one after the other and taking their clothes off. Maybe I’m developmentally arrested, but that’s gotta count as something, doesn’t it?

  And if these men are entirely professional, and view their patients solely as patients and not as Women, I would ask, “How
come? Are you telling me my wife is sitting there naked and you don’t even notice? I ought to slap you right here and now.”

  There’s no way to win on this one. If you walked into a bar full of drunken gynecologists and overheard your wife’s guy say, “You know who’s really great looking . . .” and he started describing your wife, you probably wouldn’t be happy. And if they went the other way and said, “I’ll tell you who was really gorgeous . . .” and proceeded to talk about someone not your wife, you could get upset, too.

  “What do you mean? Are you going to sit there and tell me your ten-forty-five appointment was cuter than my wife? You may have to get slapped yet again.”

  It turns out my wife’s doctor was a very nice guy. Each visit began with the usual exchange of quasi-personal pleasantries—as if a perfunctory “Nice to see you, how’s your dog?” would somehow distract from the fact that his forearm was disappearing into the woman I love.

  Anytime the three of us were in the room together, it felt like only two of us could be a couple at one time. When he was examining and probing, I often felt like I was the intruder—despite his best efforts to include me.

  “I do feel a slight inflammation in the lining of your wife’s uterus.”

  “Thank you” was usually what I wound up saying, followed by, “I think the two of you really need to be alone now.”

  Often, he would leave us momentarily to tend to other business, and my wife and I would return to being The Couple—a transition that always felt odd. We went from serious adults who were discussing matters of medical importance with this trained professional to suddenly being just a goofy couple in a room, one of whom was virtually naked and had just been handled in the most personal of ways, and the other of whom was standing there in a jacket. It usually made us silly.

  “What do you think happens if I press this lever here?”

  “Leave it.”

  “What’s he going to do—yell at us?”

  “Leave it.”

  I made great discoveries with the guy’s stethoscope, placing it on various parts of my wife.

  “Ooo, listen . . .”

  “What?”

  “Your capillaries are playing ‘Mustang Sally.’ ”

  “Shhh—put it down, here he is.”

  “So, Doctor, you’re saying that these Braxton-Hicks contractions are entirely normal and nothing to worry about.”

  “That’s correct. Wait a second, where’s my stethoscope?”

  “She took it.”

  Our favorite part of these visits was when we got to see the sonogram. If there’s any event in the pregnancy that reminds you something real is going on, the sonogram is it.

  The first time we saw the wavy image of our child we were ecstatic. We took the little printout and showed it around town like it was a Van Gogh.

  “Look at that . . . we made that.”

  We looked forward to each subsequent sonogram like it was our favorite show. We’d dim the lights, pull up our chairs, pull up our stirrups, and settle in for the latest installment of My Little Fetus. The reception wasn’t that great, but the show had everything: When the little guy turned to the camera and thumbed his nose at us, we had comedy. And when the doctor momentarily couldn’t find our child’s heartbeat, we had one brief but terrifying moment of drama.

  The show even had mystery: Is there or is there not a penis?

  My bride and I decided early on to let the sex of our child be a surprise. We figured we had all our lives to know the sex. And once we knew it, it’s not like we were going to forget it. So why not try not knowing for a while.

  Plus, we’d heard horror stories of parents who were mistakenly told their child was a boy, got all set for a boy, bought boy clothes and boy toys, and then, in fact, had a girl. And since it was too late to return everything, they had to raise her as a boy anyway.

  While we appreciated the doctor and his staff for respecting our wish not to know, we also got a kick out of watching them trip all over themselves as they struggled to speak in gender-neutral pronouns.

  “You’ll notice that those are its feet and those are its arms . . . Yes, this sure is a beautiful little . . . person.”

  We also had fun looking for early traces of family resemblance.

  “Gee, honey, it looks just like your mother, if she were small, bald, had no eyelids, and was floating in amniotic fluid.”

  “Yeah, but from this side, it looks like your father—presuming, of course, he was a Hawaiian prawn.”

  My wife and I had a post-OB-GYN-visit ritual. After every checkup we’d go to this little coffee shop across the street from the doctor’s office and grab a bite to eat. I remember one of my wife’s friends saying, “Boy, you are one great husband to go with your wife to every doctor’s visit.”

  I said, “Well, I enjoy it, and I want to be there for her . . . Plus, the place across the street makes a banana muffin like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Being out in public with an obviously pregnant woman has some strategic advantages. For one thing, there’s nothing that makes strangers more hospitable. It’s the VIP pass of all time.

  “I’m sorry, we have no tables available.”

  “I see . . . Did you notice my wife’s belly, by any chance?”

  “Oh, look at that! You’re pregnant! God bless you! Right this way . . . Anthony, throw those deadbeats out of table seven. This lovely woman is pregnant.”

  People do anything for pregnant women. For many, it’s the last vestige of social nicety. They may be rude and malicious toward every fellow man, but if a woman is bulging with child, most people, I was relieved to discover, will knock themselves out to be courteous. Seats are offered; groceries are carried. An occasional dessert is served on the house. Some couples, however, try to take advantage.

  “Pardon me, I know this is not store policy, but my wife is expecting, so I’m wondering, could you give us a free pasta maker?”

  At the same time, the indisputably pregnant belly also invites a lot of conversation and attention from people whose intimacy you don’t necessarily welcome. It’s such a public statement. When you see a pregnant woman out with her fella, you can deduce not only that she is with child, but also that he’s the one who did it. “That guy did that to that woman.” It’s a pronouncement to the world that you’ve clearly been having sex. A pregnant belly is, essentially, a hickey for grown-ups.

  And there was always the barrage of questions.

  “Is this your first child?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Boy or girl?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “When are you due?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Soon.”

  It wasn’t until they walked away that it hit me.

  “Soon? The kid’s coming soon?”

  “Yeah, soon.”

  “Wow . . . I had no idea.”

  This Is It

  I don’t remember everything. I do recall we were eating pizza. My bride and I were eating really good pizza and watching a movie where Katharine Hepburn plays tennis. I remember that she played very well, and that it didn’t seem to be a stunt double. That was definitely her hitting the ball. I remember Spencer Tracy was upset about something. And I remember my wife getting off the phone with the doctor and telling me, “He says we should get to the hospital now.”

  That’s where my memory gets spotty.

  I recall getting up to shut off the TV and cleaning up the kitchen remarkably thoroughly. I was wiping crumbs off the table, wrapping the unfinished pizza in Saran Wrap nice and tight, rinsing out glasses not once but two, three, even four times. I folded the pizza box in half, then in half again, and just before I got it down to the size of an overseas postage stamp, I heard my very pregnant wife say, “What are you doing?”

  “What?”

  “We have to go.”

  “Oh, of course, I know . . . I was just cleaning up a bit.”

  I wasn’t cl
eaning up just “a bit.” I was scrubbing up with an attention to detail unprecedented in our years together. I had moved the couch so I could get a clear shot at vacuuming the entire carpet area.

  “Maybe you could do that another time,” my wife suggested violently.

  Up to that evening, I had fully expected that with all the built-up tension and anticipation, I would virtually scoop my wife and child-to-be up in my arms and fly out the door the second I got the sign.

  What I didn’t expect—and didn’t understand till months later—was that when the moment actually came, it would scare the hell out of me. I knew instinctively that the instant we stepped out of the house, our lives would never be the same. And I wasn’t sure how much I wanted that. So my brain convinced me that if I slowed down and dragged everything out, I could postpone the next phase of my life. As it turns out, apparently you can’t.

  We got into the car, and I tried desperately to project an air of competence and authority.

  “I’ll drive,” I said with great calm and magnanimity.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Like she was actually thinking of driving.

  I remember thinking that if ever I was legally allowed to drive too fast, it was now. Because even if we got stopped by a cop, I could say, “But, Officer, my wife’s having a baby.”

  And then, if he did his part right, he’d push up the brim of his hat like cops did in the movies and say, “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Follow me!”

  And then we’d get that really cool police escort, with sirens and everything.

  I also remember it was really quiet in the car. All I heard was the thumping of my heart and that faint, grinding sound you sometimes hear when everything in the entire universe spins horribly out of control.

  I looked over at my wife, who was holding her belly, her eyes closed. I squeezed her hand. She weakly attempted the beginning part of a smile, and then gave up.

  I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. I suspected that asking “You okay?” every eight seconds wasn’t really helping.