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T A B L E++T A L K

Is there a "best age" to become a parent? Join the discussion in Table Talk's Mother's area

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R E C E N T L Y

First family on the couch
By Lori Leibovich
Therapists analyze the Clintons
(08/20/98)

An affair to remember
By Nell Bernstein
President Clinton is trying desperately to salvage his reputation. Monica Lewinsky has lost hers forever
(08/20/98)

Clinton's silvery web of words
By Katie Roiphe
Once again, the president teased us and left us hanging
(08/19/98)

Finding your inner ape
By Polly Shulman
The books in Peter Dickinson's children's adventure series "The Kin" not only look at what life was like for the first humans -- they also explore what makes us human
(08/18/98)

No baby on board
By Pagan Kennedy
Zero population mom
(08/17/98)

BROWSE THE FEATURE ARCHIVES

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

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A MELODY OF HIS OWN MAKING | PAGE 1, 2
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Weeks go by. Months. We celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. We kiss him on the forehead at twelve precisely, New Year's Eve. It is February now, and now it is March, and five days out of every seven, Jeremy and I are alone until dinner. Just Jeremy and me, his skin against my skin, his curiosity and intellect bursting. I breathe him in until my green eyes tear with the burn of too much loving. We rock in the chair. We walk through the house. We read. We fall within the thrall of music. We go outside, if the weather's fine. We make daily trips to the train station, begin to pursue long lists of distractions. If there is anything larger than the two of us, then this eludes me. Jeremy is sacred and so is this time, and I cling to it, selfish and greedy.

And yet there is, I admit, that point in the day when I lay Jeremy down for two hours. This is when he dreams -- his eyes only partway shut; his fist stabbing the air; his body, a tender motor, purring. My cat slept this way, stretched out on the sill. I remember putting my hand where I thought her heart might be and understanding that it was smaller than my palm. Jeremy's sleep breaks the trance I've been in; all of a sudden I remember my deadlines. I'm a ghost writer of sorts for corporations and magazines -- an honest enough profession, strictly anonymous. No one ever sees me, I emphatically see no one, and yet now every day I'm on the phone, listening to strangers tell stories. They talk about fraud and insurance, property casualties, risk management, fire and shipwrecks. They talk about equitable solutions, ratios and calculations, sleights of hand. Words go back and forth; I write them down. Later, in the middle of the night when my half of the hemisphere is sleeping, I walk through the charcoal-colored hallways of my house, flick on my amber work lamp, and polish first drafts until they're reasonable. No one ever suspects just where the words come from, and that's fine by me; it's a living.

I have begun thinking that maybe an extra pair of hands a single day a week would help lubricate the gears. Jeremy could work off any schedule he pleased, and I wouldn't have to walk around gray-faced. One day only, and I wouldn't leave the house. I could hold my son when he cried for me, and touch the silk of his head when he was sleeping. I could do both at once -- be a mother and work -- if only I could find the right person. So far the few friends who've occasionally offered their help have distressed Jeremy somehow, thrown him headlong toward terror until he was back in my arms.

She knocks on our door and settles into our sparse front room, and the good impressions hold. We ask her the questions that come to mind, though in truth there aren't that many. "Will you be good to my child?" "Will you be gentle with him?" "Will you never usurp me, take my place?" Nods. Nods. All around nods. "One more thing," I remember to tell the applicant, lowering my voice out of shame. "We're not really people people, if you can understand what I mean. We hardly go out. We haven't done much socializing, in the proper sense of that word, since our son was born, and so it's possible that adjustment will take time. Will you mind if Jeremy's not immediately friendly? Not hold it against him? He's an angel at heart." Nothing's a problem. Anything will do. We agree on a price and plan for Monday.

And Monday comes. Before the appointed hour, I find myself all distraught with housework, all disrespectful and hysterical with lists: clean the bathroom, clean the kitchen, prepare company food, what would that be? Jeremy's crying and I know that he needs me, but I keep winding up his swinging chair. Twenty minutes, forty minutes, sixty. He must be seasick by now; I release him. Now Jeremy's in one hand and a dish towel's in the other, and I am trying to sing nice quiet songs, except Jeremy is smarter than that. He knows I'm nervous. He knows my body. The melody is a ruse. "Okay, little guy," I say. "I admit it. I've got the shakes. But how long has it been since we've had company over, and I do want everything to go just right." Jeremy looks at me through the haunted blacks of his eyes. I realize the commotion I've caused. "This is wacky," I tell him. "Mommy really is the worst." I throw the rag in the sink and take the two of us down the hallway to our rocker. We go back and forth and back and forth until we find our rhythm again. Jeremy's tensions dissipate after a while. He fits the feather of his skull under my chin. My head's lolled back by the time the sitter arrives. I can hardly remember why she's here.

Then it begins. With the armory of confidence that the sitter carries with her, she reaches both arms for Jeremy and waits for him to lean in her direction. He does not. He leans most assuredly closer in toward me, pulls my hair with his fist, and screams loudly. "Hey," I say. "Hey. Mommy's right here. Not going anywhere." I turn my back to the sitter to give Jeremy the view, but he recoils in an instant, hides in my shirt.

It's awkward. I'm mortified. I'm so glad Jeremy prefers me. Still, I've got a sitter in my house and she's standing in my front room and it's too early to offer lunch, so I say, "Coffee?" She looks at me, decides I'm worth a second chance. She follows me and my trembling little boy down the hallway of overhead lights and fuzzy carpet.

Now I make coffee. I make it even though I'm a klutz in the kitchen, though it embarrasses me to be studied, if only slightly, by a woman who has probably mastered such trivia, could keep house, stock a refrigerator, brew a pot of coffee in her sleep. I try to make some small talk, but I'm the poorest of talents -- launching into the plot of a recently read book until I realize that the sitter's fixed her stare at middle distance. "Oh well." I finally decide to hit the issue square on. "We'll all just sit together for a while and give Jeremy a chance to get his bearings."

That a while is an hour. It is two hours. It is us sitting around a paltry kitchen table until any hostess would agree: it's time for lunch. I go and get some, Jeremy strung around my neck with a vengeance while the sitter patiently waits. Several times I've tried to turn Jeremy to face our company, but he has proven himself stronger than me. He pulls at my shirt, mourns from the bottom of his soul, refuses to dig his head out of my chest, and clings.

I'm getting spooked. There are three hours left on the sitter's clock, and Jeremy's not budging. He won't eat his carrots, but he slowly agrees to juice -- agrees, that is, if I hold the bottle at an angle that quashes any view of our lunchtime visitor. The sitter is now telling me stories about her children, about her grandchildren, about kids in general: none, in her experience, quite like my son. I am thinking about the work I have to do, about the trouble I've stirred up, about how rude I'm being, about the backward part of me that had this notion in the first place. We were doing fine, I hear the words in my head. We were managing. We were happy. What's a lack of sleep compared to this? Then I look at the sitter and feel a flash of empathy for her condition. "I'm sorry," I tell her. "I really am."

"You could help yourself, honey," she tells me, not unkindly. "Remember who's in charge here. You're the mother. He's the child. Go take a walk. I'll set things right. Give him to me."

It sets me reeling, puts me right on the edge of a knife. Clinging so hard to my son isn't healthy, but leaving him? I can hardly fathom it. "Go up and down the street," she suggests. "And put him in my arms. He won't get adjusted with you hovering."

I know that's true. I know she's conveying all the common sense in the world, and if I don't go, it shouts loudly: I don't trust you. And that's not it. I trust her, I do. She is an incredible woman. But how can I subject my son to what I know will shake him deeply? I made him a promise a while ago: I'm not going anywhere. And yet I do.

Down the street. Up and down, a sprinter's pacing, running outright when I hit the midsection near my house, because I can hear Jeremy howling. Half crazed with worry, I finally fly up the steps, open the door. "Listen," I report to the sitter, out of breath, "I'll pay you now. Consider it a bonus for a hard first Monday, and I'm sorry, I really am. We will get better at this. You know he's my only one." I'm pulling Jeremy out of her arms as I speak, giving her an envelope of cash, yanking the doorknob, nodding her out. "I'll call you," I say. "You know I'm sorry about this." Maybe she understands, but it doesn't matter. She is walking away and she knows she did not err; all of the trouble stemmed from us.

I'm in the rocker. I have music on. I'm easing Jeremy back and forth, slowing the tempo, stroking his crown; he is exhausted. He is, despite everything, nestling in toward me, shivering the anxiety out of his heart, letting his muscles go loose. His whimpers turn to sighs, and then he doesn't have a choice: he sleeps.
SALON | Aug. 21 , 1998

Beth Kephart is a writer living with her husband and son in Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1998 by Beth Kephart. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.