Suffer Little Children – The Smiths
A woman skidmarks into the restaurant where I work. At first I think the leash in her hands is pulling at a very eager dog trying to scramble its way to our kitchen on its hind legs, but then I realize the bundle of excitement on the end of the taut strap is not a yipping family pet but a little boy of about 3 years old. The boy is tugging and pulling at a harness tied all around his chest and back where it is masquerading as a fun little backpack. Why is this woman walking her child on a leash?
I think, maybe the boy is one of those wolf children you hear about every couple years; feral kids who’ve been raised by a pack of wolves or other wild animals. Maybe the woman is a concerned child care worker and the leash is part of this miracle kid’s slow rehabilitation into civilization. You know, to keep it from gnawing at people’s shoes, or worse, marking his territory in public. Meanwhile, the boy has realized it is the backpack that is causing his grief. With tremendous effort he tries to reach the clasp tying him to the woman. There he is, whirling like a dervish around his own axis in hot but futile pursuit, a dog chasing its tail. I try to catch a glimpse of the boy’s face. It does look somewhat savage.
On second glance, it looks a bit mean. It might be his struggle to break free – what with him lunging forward and backward, gasping for air, a little vein on his red forehead about to pop – but the kid looks like he would set the place on fire given half a match. The more I look at the boy, the more I think that this is probably the kind of kid that would twist the legs off puppies, just because.
Isn’t our boy just so inquisitive, you can see his parents try, all apologies and smiles at the neighbors as they bury another mangled pet in the back yard. When do you realize, as parents, that you might have a future homicidal maniac on your hands? I can see how you’d better contain and restrain this kid from an early age on. When left in the woods (I imagine him, in full harness, tied to a tree and watching the rest of the family drive off into their summer vacation) he would probably pull the wolves’ ears and poke them in the eyes and end up being eaten alive before the pack would even remotely consider raising him as one of their own.
Maybe the woman is one of those moms who get confused, so busy keeping her family and her wits together that sometimes she forgets who’s who in the family pecking order. I am half expecting the family dog to come wagging in after them, leash-free, maybe wearing a little sweater and a beanie. Slobbering up an ice cream cone. It happens, you know. Confusion within families about who’s what. I guess you need to be really level-headed to make a family. Then again, what do I know? I don’t have any kids and I don’t think I ever will. Apart from my physical fear of giving birth, I’m just not much for small children. It’s not that I don’t like them, necessarily; I just don’t really know how to act around them. I'm always afraid to break or traumatise some fragile framework; common case scenario is I go out of my way to try and be nice or funny, and in return they give me that blank face kids and cats seem to reserve just for me. It's just awkward all around. Besides, what if I turn out to be a confused mom?
The closest I ever got to resembling anything motherly, was when my oldest sister had her first child, and I went to live with her for a couple weeks to help take care of her and the baby. At that time, all I knew about babies was that they feed a lot and they sleep a lot and in between they crap a lot, and all I knew about parenting was that there are some parents who insist that all visitors wash their hands before touching the baby. I can sort of see how you wouldn’t want the crack addict on the corner sticking his gnarly jagged finger in your offspring’s mouth to suck on, but I find it rather insulting when people ask me to wash my hands before laying one on their gene pool. I mean, your average baby is the dirtiest thing! They have no sense of personal hygiene whatsoever, sticking their grubby fingers into everything while soiling themselves. If anyone should wash their hands more, it’s them.
Anyway. I don't know much about kids, but I do know there was a time when dogs and children still ran free. I was a little girl, and always alert for any occasion to pet a dog – any dog, anywhere. I loved anything furry back then, and dogs in particular. Back in those days my mom told me time and again to always ask first before touching someone else’s pet. She’d watch in petrified horror every time I ran up to random strangers’ snarling pit bulls and frenzied chihuahuas on the street or in the park. My mom is not an overly dramatic woman – not like me, anyway – but I can only imagine the slideshow in her head of ripped off fingers, blood gushing out of mangled legs and loose flaps of meat hanging off the face of her youngest coming home from school. What do you tell your husband, or worse, your own mom, when that happens? I can see the I-told-you-sos lining up around the corner. So she’d make sure to tell me, every single time I went anywhere, to keep my hands to myself until given explicit permission to touch anything animal. To this day I find myself apologizing when I touch someone unsolicited – much to the awkward surprise of some of the guys I dated.
As a kid I totally understood where my mom was coming from. I wouldn’t want anyone to just come up and touch my dog, either. Hey, that’s my dog! I get to pet it. You go pet your own, sucker. So I would go up to people as politely as my borderline tizzy would allow, and ask them if it was okay to put a hand on their dog. Most people are really pleased when strangers like their dogs and come up to touch them. It’s strange how different the sentiment is when it comes to their kids. Especially when you think about how much rarer it is for people to like other people’s kids and want to pet them. You’d think it would be a good deal more appreciated.
One day when I was walking to the store with my mom, I spotted a poodle across the street. Not just any old poodle; this was a real big one, in full coif and everything. It was a luxurious poodle, with an expensive woman attached to it. I was already halfway to dog-touching heaven when I heard my mom call after me: “No touching without asking!” So I asked permission, my eager seven year old fingers knotted behind my back. The woman sized me up for a second or so, and nodded, yes, you can touch my poodle. As I was burying my face in its fur the woman and my mom struck up a conversation – the awkward kind, spawned not by the wish of two strangers to share any possible mutual interest and get to know each other, but the kind that solely exists to bridge the time-gap until your child is done fondling someone else’s poodle. My mom could be really patient that way. So she stepped up to the lady and said, “My daughter really likes dogs”, and added, in the way small town moms bring up their good upbringing rules when confronted with possible small town tattle-tales, “Of course I always tell my children to ask the owner’s permission before touching their pets.”
The lady sized my mom up for a second or so, and nodded. “Ah yes, indeed. With kids these days, you simply never know where they’ve put their little fingers.” After that, my mom never told me to ask permission again. Not for petting big rabid-looking dogs with rabid-looking owners; not for running with scissors, or juggling rotating knives. Insults directed at parents can probably be held responsible for mangled and traumatized kids all over the world.
So I arrived at my sister’s house with no knowledge about babies whatsoever except for what I’d seen about newborns on TV. Consequently I knew that, from the very second babies are born, they are fat and happy looking, all soft clean pink and dimply knees and big smiles and a perfect belly button; the new mom gets back to her former routine and weight within two weeks.
In the real world, newborn babies lack some serious credibility. For one, they are greasy beyond control. Not clean at all! And they don’t seem to fit in their skins. They’re wrinkly, like some lackluster shopkeeper gift wrapped them in the womb before sending them off; their excess skin is covered in all kinds of crazy rash, their heads stay warped for days from squeezing through the forever too narrow corridor (why doesn’t evolution do something about this pointless cruelty? Come on!) to the outside world. There are no smiles for the new aunt; newborn babies mainly look angry and disturbed, their faces knotted in what I can only hope to be a fading memory of the pain of being born.
The strangest thing is, about an hour after he was born, my sweet nephew didn't look like he was in pain at all. He didn’t look knotted, or angry. I always figured babies aren’t really persons. I mean, they can’t have a decent conversation, they crap themselves, and they don’t know who they are. If anything, I figured they’d resemble a mental patient stepping outside after spending 9 months in solitary confinement in a padded cell in the dark. The outside world too hard and bright and loud to handle. His eyes squinting against the bright light, his ears sensitive to the smallest sound; his helpless body caked with dead skin flakes and covered in rash from lack of sun, squeezed into the harsh light all stumbles. Weak in body and mind, without a sense of self, groping for anything he might recognize; a basic survivor.
But when I saw my nephew in the hospital nursery, he was nothing like that at all. He was the Zen Master in a movie. The processing computer system in The Matrix. A universal satellite. The Encyclopaedia Brittannica. Motionless on the outside, with an almost superhuman awareness behind the eyes. The entire world was waltzing in, and he had started processing it all. There was no confusion, no squinting. My newborn nephew was taking in everything around him without even blinking. And I do mean everything. His ears pricked up to every hospital sound – registering, cataloging, building reference. Nostrils trembling with the smells of the room, the cafeteria on the first floor, and I’m pretty sure he picked up the outside trees and cars, too. I stood there watching him. I have never seen such focused intensity, ever, on anyone. All antennas up. At some point he shifted his gaze to look me straight in the eyes. Whatever, newborns can’t see anything but shapes and shadows, no real colors? My ass. My new nephew looked straight at me. And he saw me. Every single molecule. He was palpitating with new information, processing the incoming world at full speed, and not going mad. The effect wore off after a few hours. The next day, he was just a baby, with the crying and the poop. But I’d seen him, lying there. Completely open to the world and letting her in – all at once. How do you welcome someone like that into the family? Coochie-coo just doesn’t seem to cut it.
When I first held my wrinkly nephew up to the light I realized that babies are not born with belly buttons; nor is the belly button the result of cut umbilical cord tied into a careful little knot. Doctors cut the umbilical cord about 3 inches away from the baby’s belly and put a clamp on the end to keep the baby from deflating. The leftover bit of umbilical cord slowly dies and eventually falls off the baby’s body, leaving the scar mark that we refer to as the belly button. The first time I changed my nephew’s diapers I nearly dropped him when I saw the strip of bluish flesh hanging off his little body. Nobody ever tells you about this on TV. I figured this was it; aliens do exist and now they had finally got to my family. Even after my sister explained, for the first four or five nights I was afraid to even look at the clamped down strip of dying tissue; whenever I washed my nephew I would avoid going anywhere near the area.
Then, after a week or so, I had gotten somewhat used to the sight of the shriveling afterthought. My nephew didn’t even seem to notice it, so I decided it was time for me to stop being a big baby and deal with it. Besides, the poor boy’s belly was slowly turning a distinct greenish grey from lack of soap. So the next time I washed my nephew, I carefully held the cord – dried out and strangely resembling a strip of beef jerky – up between my thumb and index finger and started washing his belly. Suddenly, with a soft sticky sound and the slightest change in pressure, the cord let go. There I was, holding my nephew’s umbilical cord in my hands, clamped and all, but no longer attached to him.
I gaped at his naked little stomach in terror – for a horrific split second I held my breath, waiting for the sound of deflating balloons, and for my sweet nephew to be reduced to an empty bag of wrinkly skin before my eyes. All gift wrap, no present. I broke my nephew! What was I to tell my sister? It was an accident. She should have told me not to touch without asking permission first! She knows how clumsy I am. Why did she even leave me alone with him? This was all her fault!
My nephew smacked his lips, gurgled something about the meaning of life and started peeing on the changing mat. He couldn’t care less. This boy was ready to be released into the world.
Meanwhile at the restaurant, the woman braces herself to give the leash one final, magnificent pull filled with determination, irritation and something else. I may be mistaken but I think I detect a hint of fear in that pull. She will not lose her child today. And she doesn’t. The little boy is jerked back with such force that he falls on his diapered ass, and, after his initial surprise, he starts to cry. Mommy! The expression on the woman’s face makes way for concern, love and something else. I may be mistaken but I think it is relief. My little boy still needs me. He is not growing up just yet. He’s still part of me. We are still connected. I see this woman trying to hold on to that feeling of being necessary, like when she was pregnant; not just a caretaker (anyone could do that; people do it for money or for the hell of it, all the time), but essential to his survival, the womb vital for the boy’s very being.
That’s when it strikes me. The leash is not a tool for desperate parents, their last resort to keep an untamed child from destroying the civilized world. It is not the lazy way out of bad parenting – yanking a rope instead of teaching your child when and where to run and what not to touch and why. The leash is not used by parents who do not care. It is for parents who care too much. These parents have not realized that their child’s umbilical cord has been cut and the remainder has fallen off for a reason. They think they need to stay attached, to keep the clamp in place. The leash is their artificial umbilical cord, physically connecting them with their child until they are prepared to let go.
Or maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I'm not a mom. I'm not a feral child expert.
Then again, I totally get this particular woman's fear to cut the residual umbilical cord of this particular little boy. You can tell that this kid will totally be one to deflate. He'll be leaking all over the dining area and god knows where else in no time. It's an accident waiting to happen on too many levels. I haven't learned a whole lot since I moved to New York, but I do know it's considered a bad thing to be liable for someone else getting hurt. Never mind it was an accident, and you didn't mean to - you can save the heartfelt apologies for your loved ones as you pay damages for the rest of your life. Forget about that nest egg, or your kids going to college. All it takes is one unsuspecting Upper East Side lady who lunches and breaks an expensive hip as she slips on her way out; panic ensues, until someone pokes an accusing finger at the deflated toddler - who would ever allow their child to run wild like that? Lady and restaurant sharing their indignation and lawsuit. I'm pretty sure this woman is not insured for that.
