09/01/11 - Amy

"First Birthday"

Today is my baby’s birthday. Happy birthday, Minnie!

I’ve been thinking about babies a lot lately…babies, and life choices. I have a baby, and her name is Minnie. She might look different than you’d expect, but she’s my baby, and I love her. It took me nine months of hard work and struggle to get her, and to me she’s so much more than just a car.

My all-time favourite episode of Sex and the City, “A Woman’s Right to Shoes” tackles this issue head on. Carrie arrives at a friend’s child’s birthday party all dolled up in her latest outfit, but her friend asks her (and everyone else) to take her shoes off at the door, so that dirt and germs wouldn’t be tracked into the apartment. Carrie complies, but at the end of the evening finds her $485 Manolo Blahniks missing. She comes back the next day to see if her friend found the shoes, but her friend couldn’t seem to care less. Instead of reimbursing Carrie for the shoes, she shames her for her “life choices.” Why should she have to pay $485 for Carrie’s self-indulgent (read: childless) lifestyle? (Even though Carrie has shelled out about $2,300 for engagement gifts, wedding and baby shower gifts, as well as kid birthday gifts.) The friend, in fact, used to wear Manolo’s, but since having got a “real life” forgot how it felt to walk in the single girl’s shoes. While Carrie has to be understanding of her life, her friend isn’t understanding of hers. While the friend puts her kids at the centre of her world, why is it not ok that at the centre of Carrie’s lays a pair of gorgeous, sparkly silver shoes? The friend’s attitude causes so much shame that Carrie wonders: “Is it wrong that my life is filled with shoes and not children?” I suppose that this is why I get my back up when people tell me I need to “just deal with” other peoples’ lifestyle choices, when no one else seems to have to, or be willing to, do the same with mine.

I don’t really like kids of the human variety, and don’t really want to have one right now, but I respect other peoples’ choice to have them. Society, however, only seems to value one model of lifestyle, the one that starts with marriage and ends with procreation. As Carrie says in the episode, ‘If you are single, after graduation, there isn’t one occasion where people celebrate you…Hallmark doesn’t make a “congratulations, you didn’t marry the wrong guy” card, and where’s the flatware for going on vacation alone?”

I’ve sat through conversations among friends and colleagues about diapers and formula… favourite kids’ books… advantages and disadvantages of magnet schools… none of which interested me, and none of which I knew anything about. Still, I smiled politely, respecting the childed peoples’ choices, waiting for a part of the conversation that I could participate in. It seems to rarely occur to people with children that others might not be interested in hearing about the minutia of their childed lives, because everyone likes to talk about kids, right?

The thing is, I try to show interest in my friends’ children because they are my friends’ children. They are a part of my friends’ lives – important to them, they are by default important to me. But often it’s hard, and I do have to make an effort. Still, most of my friends know hardly anything about my other baby – my book – and what it is about. Still fewer inquire about Minnie. The fact is, my book or my Minnie are probably about as interesting and relatable to my friends as the baby talk is to me.

Of course, our society needs to reproduce – that I get. But not everyone needs to – or wants to (or can!) – have a child. Still, having a child seems to be the pinnacle of every human being’s “to do” list: graduate high school, go to college, get a job, get married, have a baby. But what if you don’t tick all the boxes on the list? What if your lifestyle doesn’t follow that pattern? And what is wrong with, instead of parenting a human baby, writing a book, or getting your dream car? Why is mother a better occupation than teacher, or even investment banker? Why is one lifestyle valued more than another?

I was at a dinner following an amazing conference on Eastern European art last fall. One of the organizers, a Hungarian curator and art historian, was speaking with a Polish art curator about her latest exhibitions. The Polish curator (also a woman) suddenly interrupted the Hungarian one: “that’s great, that’s all wonderful,” she said, “but WHEN are you going to have a BABY?!” The Hungarian curator responded, “oh, we already have two kids.” “Oh, then everything is OK,” the Polish curator responded. I was flabbergasted. So, all of the achievements that this woman has made – the conferences she has organized, the exhibitions she has curated, the catalogues she has written, even the international connections she has fostered – those are all nice, but everything in her life is only “OK” once she has reproduced. I found that sad not only in general, but also in terms of my life, because I doubt that that Polish curator is alone in thinking that way.

I know that it probably sounds silly to refer to a car as one’s baby. But she’s ideal for me right now. She’s quiet, never cries, only needs to be fed about once a month, and never fusses. As a person who is just learning to take care of herself, this is probably the best baby that I could have, and the most that I can give right now. Minnie is my baby, and as silly as that may sound, it makes sense to me. I believe that’s what Lori might call…”Amy Logic”? In the meantime, I’m still waiting for my flatware…and my baby shower! Happy first birthday to my baby girl.