D.B. is now three and a half months old. She has lost that ball-sprouting-twigs look of newborns and now bears an uncanny
resemblance to the fairy-tale baby drawn in one of my childhood books. She is a beautiful baby, a statement I can make with
no prejudice whatsoever, and she is a beautiful, breast-fed baby, which means she prefers to visit her mother on a regular
basis. So while she comes equipped with a fully functioning thirteen-year-old brother, she requires the supervision of someone
with either (a) a driver’s license, or (b) a deeper commitment to the next generation than I have.
Baby-sitting for D.B. was sheer hell.
Her mother woke her up, fed her and gave her to me before she left. I tucked her into her stroller and lulled her back to
sleep with the sound of my snores. We co-napped until about 10
A.M.
when her brother got her up, changed her diapers, dressed her, and suggested we might rush to the car while the mood was
still good and the weather sunshiny. I did put her in the car seat, and he did gently let me know how to do it better next
time. We went to the craft show, where eighty women converged on us, all cooing, “What a BEAUTIFUL baby …” and I didn’t see
her again for an hour and a half. She fell asleep in the car on the way home. I walked into the house, became involved in
a phone conversation with a family member whose life is not going well … I had less than an hour and a half to go when several
thoughts occurred to me at once.
D.B. was not sleeping.
D.B. was not happy.
D.B.—who was not supposed to be hungry until her mother came home—had ALREADY been fed one bottle of interim formula and her
brother, who panics even faster than I do, was ready to feed her another.
I was actually going to have to work for a living.
We tried strolling in the stroller, but we were over-strolled. We tried rocking in the rocker, but it didn’t fit and we were
restless and we had missed a nap while playing with our brother. We wanted (the Least Wee Aunt determined) to sleep, but we
were only 3.5 months and we didn’t know how.
So the Least Wee and the Weeest sat down on the couch, cuddled up in a blanket, rocked ourselves, and sang Universal Songs
of Truth while the Weeest snuffled about the injustice of unfaithful mothers and the Least Wee thumped. We sang the “Butt-Thump
Song” (to the tune of “Jingle Bells”):
Thump your butt, thump your butt,
Thump your butt all day—
Thump your butt, thump your butt,
Thump your butt today (HEY!)
or the “Ooo’sa Pooh Song” (sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”):
Ooo’sa Pooh, Ooo’sa Pooh,
Ooo’sa Pooh all day …
(“Ooo’sa” meaning “You are” and “Pooh” being a generic shorthand for anything soft and cuddly, like, for instance, a cat.
This is Babycakes’ favorite song.)
The songwriter’s guild hasn’t called me yet.
And finally we gave up on complex lyrics and settled for the “Let Me Sleep” song (sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”).
She weighs fifteen pounds. Her head fits neatly under my chin. Her little hands rested up on my shoulders, one reflexively
gripping my neck from time to time. She folded up her legs against my hips and slept tucked up frog-like against me while
I rocked her and thumped her back and crooned nonsensical little songs no one else but my cats will listen to.
I found myself thinking about my grandmother and those fifteen little girls’ dresses with the double- and triple-stitched
seams, the lace, the rows and rows of decorative stitching, the hems we had to stand still for on the stairway while she hung
her row of straight pins … it was a woman’s ritual. The three of us— our mother, her mother and us girls were the only ones
there. We were Getting Ready.
I’ve been thinking about my grandmother—and my mother— more than usual, these past three and a half months. I find myself
making mental notes to remember to show D.B. the Sacred M&M’s Flower Arranging Ritual my grandmother and I shared. (This ritual
involves a flat-bottom dish, multicolored M&M’s, and a passionate desire to create flowers out of small pieces of candy.)
I’m beginning to understand why so many of the stories my grandmother told me were about her mother, who died before I was
ever born. Her stories were threads sewing us all together, one generation after another, exactly as bits and pieces of used
experiences come together to make the patchwork of shared memory. This is where you came from. This is what you could become.
These are the women who shaped your life. This is how we survive.
C
OCKATIELS CAN LIVE
to be twenty-five years old,” I lectured, which my friend Annie agreed was a significant commitment. She and I both have
reached an age when we must stop and consider whether or not we can afford our infant house pets on our Social Security during
their old age. “However,” I reminded her, “that may not be a problem in my house.”
“That’s right,” she remembered immediately. “And exactly how do you plan to manage a bird around … you-know-who?”
I have never owned a bird. Never even considered one. When I was quite young my great-grandmother kept a parakeet named Joey.
Joey had a working vocabulary that included “peetie peetie peetie Pete” (she imagined he was infatuated with a cardinal who
lived in the hedge), “dirty bird,” and a charming repertoire of ear-splitting whistles. I remember two things about this bird:
(1) whenever I dropped my guard, he strafed me and flew away with toesful of my hair, and (2) she trained him to hop around
on her chest and kiss her on the lips on a regular basis. Joey never seemed to mind this, and, as far as I could tell, quite
willingly obliged. Gram had a nasty habit of grabbing unwary great-grandchildren and demanding the same performance from them.
I hated it. I didn’t have a great deal of respect for the bird. Also, I believe the little buzzard bit me.
I was utterly bird-free until one evening not that long ago when I accidentally strayed into a pet store on my way home from
a balanced, home-cooked feast at Burger King. The craze in my office of late had been for dwarf hamsters, and I thought I
might visit one and compose a list of reasons why I didn’t need one. I was successful. On the way out of the store I passed
something called a “playpen,” and playing on the playpen was a small parrot-like bird with a tiny crest, a long tail, clipped
wings, and no patience whatsoever with human cuteness. He amused himself, therefore, by poising himself on the edge of the
“playpen,” fluttering his wings madly and leaping to the ground—which caused him to sort of … drift … to the floor. Once there,
he tucked his wings behind his back, leaned forward, and, looking for all the world like a tiny Charlie Chaplin, took off
on his own walking tours of the store.
I was enchanted.
I wanted one.
I alerted the store clerk to the fact that one of his $70 birds was walking to Indiana and the clerk smiled at me with the
patience and endurance of a young man who might actually have paid $70 out of a store clerk’s salary for the privilege of
stomping Mr. Chaplin into the carpet. He said, “Really?”
I could see that not only did I wish to own Mr. Chaplin, he needed me.
I visualized Mr. Chaplin moving into my house, escaping from his open cage onto the floor where he would tuck his wings behind
his back, lean forward, and march resolutely toward whatever adventure might await him.
In my visualization I then heard a scream of terror, a streak of orange (or black, or black and white) as Mr. Chaplin became
a very expensive cat treat—raw squab, perhaps, or Cornish cockatiel—for the Intrepid Hunter.
My macho housemate, Sir Babycakes, has never been outdoors and has single-handedly purged my house of killer flies, poisonous
gnats and that bane of all feline existence, invisimites. He has stalked and furiously killed nail holes. Something that I
can’t even see lives inside the living room lampshades, appearing to mere mortals as nothing but dust motes, but the mighty
Baby-cakes is not fooled. He purges those shades of demons nightly, never shirking, never wincing, and only occasionally howling
with rage and frustration when the invisimites burn his tender noseflesh, or toast a whisker in their own defense.
When my sister closed her quilt store she gave me the stuffed bunny that had hung for years over the cash register. I had
often admired it, and she had no further use for it. I brought it home and hung it in the corner of my living room where,
if I had one, I might hang a bird cage. It looked like a bunny to me. True, one of my nephews pointed out that it was “silly”
because it had wings and bunnies don’t fly, but I dismissed him as being too literal.
Babycakes spied that winged bunnything, and he said to himself, “bunnymites.” To himself he said, “If I leave that thing alone,
then next thing I know she’ll be bringing live birds in here.”
And he slew that bunnymite.
Repeatedly.
I would have to say that bunnymite is as dead as anything made of cotton and quilt batting can get. Once I caught him dragging
my again-dead bunnymite between his legs to his condo, like a lion hauling his kill back to his lair.
“Can you do that to an innocent bird?” Annie asks me.
The best image I can conjure is a feline afternoon amusement called “Leaping for Cockatiels,” which involves Sir Babycakes
vaulting from the couchback to the cage and clinging like a huge, homicidal cover; to be quickly followed by “Bowling for
Cockatiels,” in which Nicky and Babycakes take turns rolling the bird cage, torn by sheer cat-weight from the ceiling, along
the floor from room to room while Mr. Chaplin exhausts himself just trying to stay upright and away from the edges.
It’s hard to convince myself this would be more fun than walking behind the pet shop counter and beaking that store clerk
on the ankle.
I
NEVER WANTED
to play football. I never wanted to fight in Vietnam. (I mention that because it was one of the other options not open to
women when I was planning my life.) I never spent a minute of my life envying men for their football skills or their ability
to get shot, and I ruled out both as possibilities for myself for about the same reasons. You could get hurt. The fans were
fickle. There was way too much controversy involved for someone as ambivalent as I was to choose that path.
As far as I know, any woman my age who actually played football did so because she had brothers who were either tolerant beyond
their times or trying to kill her. We were allowed to use the gym on evenings six weeks out of the year to play intramural
volleyball (if the boys weren’t using it). Period.
Later Title IX came along and the quality of men’s sports was compromised forever by the odd assumption that girls were entitled
to explore as many life options as boys. Apparently now in some schools there actually are women’s varsity football teams.
I don’t often watch football. It’s a brutal sport. Beyond the obvious bumping and slamming on the field, there is me in the
grandstand shouting, “Kill him!” or “If you can’t outplay him, hurt him.” Football does not showcase my best qualities. And
the overall camaraderie of the fans has never been quite the same since they made us stop passing the cheerleaders over our
heads.
So earlier this spring my Beloved announced our area was developing a women’s football team, and we were required to go immediately
to the nearest field and wait for them to play.
I said, “Why?”
This was wrong. I should have said, “Oh, great—let’s go show our support for women younger, stronger and more determined than
we are. Perhaps if we’re quick enough, we can carry a wounded one off the field.”
Last night my Beloved organized a small group of friends and we attended the first ever game played by the Southwest Michigan
Jaguars. They played an orange-and-white team from Detroit. They got creamed 34 to 16. The score, however, is beside the point:
they got out there, they played their hearts out, and in the second half they pulled their offense together and got two touchdowns
AND a two-point conversion. They stood around and had their pictures taken. They came back to the showers and a crowd of devoted
fans who had waited for them. They sold out the seating in the bleachers. It was a good game.
I think if I had ever wanted to play football badly enough to pay $500 just to try out, if I had made the team, if I had practiced
my heart out and if I had finally PLAYED FOOTBALL it would have been one of the most glorious nights of my life. It was fun
to be a part of that.
Yes. Women really can play full-contact the-same-shit-the-boys-play football. We just did it.
And this is wrong and I know it and I should be slapped on the hand for even mentioning it, but … the number of men who came
to watch surprised me.
Are you surprised by the number of women who attend men’s football games?
Actually yes, but then, I don’t like football.
Do you just automatically assume that no one would be interested in women playing sports?
No—I assume men wouldn’t be interested
. So after twenty-five years of identifying yourself as a feminist, you still define your values by what you perceive men
to value?
No, I’m just surprised that many men came to see women play football on a Saturday night. And apparently so were the players
because the newspaper article I read stressed, every other line, how many husbands and boyfriends were bringing them water
and offering moral support. I expected to see thirty men on the sidelines wearing their MY WIFE IS NOT A LESBIAN badge; it
was the two hundred men in the stands that surprised me.
We all know, of course, that one of the players got sacked because she “ran like a girl.” (In fact, I don’t believe that criticism
came from a man.)
When the ball carrier for the Jaguars ran for the first touchdown a Detroit player came barreling in from the side and smacked
dead-on into a well-set Jaguar guard, bounced off and landed on her butt in the grass and the man behind me went crazy. “Did
you SEE that? My God, that was one hell of a block!” All around us amazed male voices decreed, “That was a good play!” Two
plays later the man behind me turned to his companion and said, “Yeah—but did you see that block back there? I mean, she just
WHOMPED her …” (I’m not really making fun of the boys. It really was a textbook block and I was pretty impressed myself.)