 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 |
Julia CarpenterI write about the rhythms of relationships; family, friends and lovers. Categories
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