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D R A M A++Q U E E N

Did your best friend steal your boyfriend? Send your tale to Drama Queen for a Day

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T A B L E++T A L K

Women are getting pregnant after finding out they're HIV positive? Talk about it in Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Dreams of Bill
Monica Lewinsky wasn't the only woman in America getting hot and bothered about the President
(02/20/98)

Second thoughts
By Sallie Tisdale
Pondering the distance that separates women in my life
(02/19/98)

Are you a crystal vase?
By Joyce Millman
If you can answer these 20 questions, you've watched way too much of the Olympics
(02/18/98)

Addicted to day care
By Phaedra Hise
If it takes a village and you don't have one, a good child-care provider may be just what you need
(02/17/98)

Losing it
By Lori Liebowich
No lover but the first will ever know me as both a child and a woman
(02/13/98)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

BY HEATHER CHAPLIN | A strange thing happened to me the other day.

I was walking home from the corner store, a paper tucked under my arm, when I almost tripped over a baby. This child, who couldn't have been more than 2 years old, had broken away from his mother and was waddling toward me, shrieking in apparent delight at his newfound freedom or perhaps just the ability of his legs to carry him.

The toddler, who had a big round face, blotchy red skin and pale yellow hair that stood straight up in a wispy mohawk, stopped directly in front of me. He looked up the long distance from my shins to my face and stared at me as if he knew me. There was a pause. Then, for no reason that I can think of, his face crumpled into a thousand creases and he began to bawl, his arms stretched out at his sides as if he were being crucified.

For those in the know, spontaneous tears are as normal a part of babyhood as wet diapers. I, however, was not in the know, as the fine layer of sweat forming on my brow proved. But the heat building around my temples was more than just a reaction to the little red human screaming at my feet. Deep in my heart, I wanted nothing so much as to swoop the toddler off the ground and take him home with me. My fingers fairly ached to feel the softness of his fat limbs and the oversized roundness of his skull in my palm. For an instant, I considered boosting the tike into my arms and speeding away before his mother could catch on, or at least sitting down on the sidewalk and tickling him.

I of course did neither of these things, but I must admit that my baby-snatching impulses have been multiplying at an alarming rate. Without knowing how it happened, I have somehow become a baby-coveter. I have become the kind of person who turns and stares at every baby that strolls by, exclaiming, "Oh, did you see that baby?" I have found myself perusing children's clothing stores with nary a niece or nephew to buy for.

How, I ask myself, could this have happened? I am 26 years old, I'm in a stable relationship and I make a decent living, but I am simply not the kind of person who goes around coveting babies. I am too independent, too feminist-minded, too interested in having fun and flat-out too damn young for that sort of thing. Babies are for sissies.

Granted, I no longer hang out in hip bars until all hours of the night. In fact, I couldn't really tell you where the hip bars are anymore. And I suppose it has been a long time since I bought thrift-store clothes, pierced a body part or dyed my hair a color wilder than Espresso Brown. And though I'm loathe to admit it, it's also been a while since I escorted at an abortion clinic, volunteered at a women's shelter, served food to the homeless or marched to take back the night. Instead, I've focused on building a career I love and have forged a relationship with a man that I think will last the rest of my life. But does that mean I have to go around having babies?

N E X T+P A G E: Great American novel, yes. Babies? No