 I’ve told you a lot about my dad. Today’s story is about my mom and a New Year’s Eve more than thirty years ago. But first, a little background. My mom had my brother, sister and me in the late 1950s and early 60s, when a lot of women didn’t breastfeed — the prevailing wisdom being that formula was best. By the time my son was born, that wisdom had done a one-eighty. I nursed my son and all my friends nursed their kids.
From the moment my mom met her grandson — just hours after he was born — she fell for him with the kind of thundering impact usually reserved for lightning strikes. Every coo, every glance, every burp was discussed and dissected like it was breaking news. He was so beautiful, so obviously brilliant, so clearly superior to every other baby. In those early weeks, I spent hours at my parents’ house. We shared the diapering, the holding, the pacing-the-floor soothing. But not the feeding. I wasn’t working, so it was easy for me to breastfeed exclusively. When my son was about three months old, my husband and I decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve with dinner out for the first time, leaving my parents to babysit. This was before cell phones, so our date night meant we were truly on our own. And so were my folks. We came home a couple hours later and found our son asleep in my mom’s arms, looking like a Renaissance cherub. But the evening had not been smooth. He’d cried — not the polite kind. What started as sniffles escalated to sobs then deep, determined howls, making his rib cage shimmy like a hula dancer. Mom had tried everything: the bottle of pumped milk I left, the pacifier, diaper changes, rocking, shushing, a bath,miles of pacing the hundred square feet of the family room. No relief. And then, out of ideas and nearly out of hope, she sat down, lifted her shirt, undid her bra and offered him the chance to nurse.
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 Image via Reddit Remember the old-school romance covers? The Fabio era—glossy, dramatic, and one gust of wind away from a strategically placed sheet slipping. 😅
Romcom covers have shifted so much since those late-’80s/’90s days. Now they typically feature illustrated couples. Cute, but not too cute. No anime eyes. Not overly cartoonish. More modern, slightly blocky. A “this could be anyone” style. When it came to the cover for Missed You the First Time  My Dad grew up Jewish in a Catholic neighborhood. His parents owned the corner store, so he was a popular kid, able to offer a piece of salt water taffy or a cherry licorice dollar to kids dragged into the store alongside their harried mothers.
My Dad tells me he understood he was Jewish, but that didn’t mean much. He was just like the Catholic kids—trading Green Hornet comic books and playing stickball. And he was just as rich as they were, meaning not at all. My Dad was born in 1927, so his childhood knew no extravagance.  I spent last night in the ER with my mom. She’s 88. She’s becoming frail and her memory is fading. She can’t see (the kind of macular degeneration that isn’t treatable) and she can’t hear well (too stubborn to get a hearing aid). Her confusion is becoming a daily companion rather than an infrequent visitor.
In the examination room, they asked her simple questions. Either she didn’t answer or she replied to something no one had asked. I tried to help. “You’re here because you woke up last night and...” Like a Mad Lib, I want her to fill in the blanks. The singsong tone of my own voice reminds me of doctor visits with my children, when I’d try to get them to answer the questions. “Honey, you’re here for your physical because you’re going where this summer?” It occurs to me, Mom likely did this for me as well. Read More
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Julia CarpenterI write about the rhythms of relationships; family, friends and lovers. Categories
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