They never hand me the baby

My husband Jeff's family used to have a Christmas gift exchange every year.  Adults drew names and traded gifts, with a $20 price cutoff. You also had to buy gifts for each of the children.

 

Somehow, relatives, usually women, would circle the group holding a baby. They would pass me by and plop the infant on Jeff's lap instead of mine, in a kind of instinctive game of maternal musical chairs.  

 

I never really understood children even when I was a child. Being an "only," I was more comfortable in the company of adults. In spite of this, as a young teenager I started my own babysitting business at our cottage on Rodney Street in Dewey Beach. To the amusement of the adults, I fashioned a crudely painted wooden sign, printed in my really sloppy handwriting, "Need a Babysitter? Enquire Within."

 

We lived on a really busy street where there was a marina in which many people docked their boats. I got lots of business, which silenced my parents' skepticism. It was perfect! Usually when I arrived at a rental or glamorous beach house, the children were asleep. If you can remember him, my most famous patron was "Bozo the Clown," who had a children's program on an old Baltimore, Md. TV station.

 

Fast forward to 1983 when I met Jeff on a 4th of July. Fireworks ensued, and we married the next year. Soon after, not one to really think things through for the long run (my mother always said that I lived for the day), I had three children in quick succession. It sped things up, for I had twin boys 22 months after the birth of my daughter Misty. Baby hunger!

 

I hadn't liked teaching school, but that didn't stop me. This would be my great creation. The experience of the great female paradigm, mystery revealed. My firstborn daughter Misty, my magnum opus, was an old soul. Wise beyond her years (she had probably been here in another life during the building of the pyramids), she was destined to be a lawyer and probably someday a judge.

 

She shrewdly counted on her fingers and said, "Was I at your wedding?" She barely missed it by nine months.

 

The twins Sterling and Jordan came next. They just seemed at first like regular young'uns, sliding down my velvet patchwork bedspread like it was a ski slope, tearing it to pieces, but they have turned out well. Sterling got his doctorate in education and is a middle school principal. Jordan was legislative liaison to Gov. John Carney and now works for State Treasurer Colleen Davis.

 

All this success despite my unconventional child raising ... I hesitate to use the word methods. I had always hated naps and bedtime as a child. In kindergarten, while the other children were dutifully napping on their mats, I looked around like a baby turtle until the ordeal was over. When my parents tried to put me to bed, I would crawl out of the crib and sit at the bottom of the front hallway steps until they finally gave up.

 

Likewise, I never had a strict bedtime for my children. They were never "put down," as I've heard many mothers say. They just slept when they finally wore out for the day. Once my mother-in-law babysat and was amazed when it only took them 5 minutes to come downstairs already dressed for school. The fact of the matter was that they had gone to sleep fully clothed and popped up fully dressed. Makes sense to me! Tooth-brushing was highly recommended, however!

 

Everyone had their own TV. My mother once called my home "Loud House." Five TVs going night and day! You can really learn a lot from TV.  Everyone did homework when or where or if they wanted. No policing or standing over them; only help if they asked for it. Speaking of homework, my twin boys once had a school project called Night-time. Their room had a nocturnal theme with star-studded curtains, a "cow jumping over the moon" mural painted by yours truly, a yellow carpet, and a ceramic moon sculpture. True, it was dumb of me to put a yellow carpet in their room, since it was soon so spotted that it looked like the green cheese of the moon. Anyway, back to the homework assignment; they cut the curtains in half and bagged them up for show and tell.

 

Until they left for college, the curtains stayed at half mast, for as the great philosopher George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." "What will I do next?" was not often asked.  Learning to entertain yourself is a great gift.

 

I've never believed in "cleaning your plate," never running after them holding a spoon screaming, "Just one more bite," like a recent TV commercial. The commercial says, "It's the easiest because it's the cheesiest." To me, it's the easiest because you eat what you want.

 

Anyway, they all made it to successful adulthood, so we must have done something right after all, even though they never hand me the baby. Once, an old school-type nurse came into my hospital room late one night after the twins were born back in 1986. She looked like a character out of the long-ago TV show, "Mama's Family" with shoes painted Florsheim Nurses White and an old-fashioned cap. She said comfortingly, "Don't worry. Hubby looks like a good helpmate."

 

She was fortunately right, because they always hand him the baby, for some reason that other women must know instinctively.