Perfect Babies

October, 2011

    Jill called me after spending the afternoon with Leslie, Joe, and Baby James.  ‘Mom, do you know that Joe Rydberg thinks that his baby is perfect?’ she said with disgust.  And I’m pretty sure that she was rolling her eyes in her inimitable way.  ‘He thinks that James is the most perfect baby in the world.’

    ‘Don’t get me wrong’ she added.  ‘I think that James is a great baby, I think he’s really cute, I think that he’s a pretty good sleeper for being six weeks old....but perfect??’

    I have to agree with Joe on this one.  I too think that my first grandchild is pretty darn perfect.  Just like I once thought my own firstborn son was perfect...

    I have a very vivid memory of standing with Aunt Shirl and staring through the nursery window at Steve as he lay swaddled in a blue blanket in a tiny baby bed, one baby among twenty or more in the Prentice Hospital nursery.  Steve was born before the days of rooming in. In 1976 new-borns spent most of their first hours in a hospital nursery while their tired mothers tried to sleep and anxiously awaited the arrival of their babies at feeding times.  Visitors met the new babies through the nursery glass.

    I remember staring at Steve and thinking that he was the most beautiful baby in that entire nursery.  I actually remember being surprised that all the other people standing and staring at the babies weren’t pointing at Steve and saying ‘isn’t that the most beautiful baby?’  Just like Joe, I thought that Steve was the most perfect baby in the world.

    It wasn’t until months later when I was looking at pictures we had taken of newborn Steve that I realized that Steve was not quite the perfect baby I had imagined.  Steve’s delivery had been a bit traumatic because he was what they called a posterior presentation, so I had spent four hours trying to push him out before he was finally delivered with forceps.  Being stuck in the birth canal for all those hours had given my beautiful baby boy a somewhat elongated head.  While I was blissfully staring at the nursery window at my beautiful baby boy, all those other people at the window were probably thinking to themselves, ‘Wow, look at the pointed head on that one!’

    I also thought that Steve’s sister Leslie was perfect--although her baby pictures show bright red marks on both cheeks from the forceps that were also used to deliver her.  And I thought that Jill and Johanna were perfect--although baby pictures of Jill show a red, squished up face.  Johanna, however, does look perfect in her picture!    

    Love, mother-love, father-love, aunt-love (because Aunt Shirl agreed with me that Steve was the most beautiful baby in that long ago nursery and I’m pretty sure that Jill thinks that James is nearly perfect) may indeed be blind,  and beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder.

  I’m beholding Baby James and I’m thinking he’s perfect.  As perfect as his Uncle Steve!

I Can't Be 60 If I Still Shop At Gap

    My blog posts have been a little heavy on the age issue so far and I'm trying to get away from that.  It's just that becoming a grandmother and turning 60 within the span of the last five months has kind of unglued me.  I can't seem to get my head around it, and find myself mumbling, "I can't be 60...," almost as often as I start sentences with, "Remember when."
    But I think I'm finally coming to terms with it and am ready to move on to other topics.  Like fashion.
    Bess went shopping recently.  Not high end shopping, but Goodwill shopping.  And not regular Goodwills, but three massive Goodwill outlets filled with Goodwill rejects that are sold out of overflowing bins instead of on racks and are priced by the pound instead of by the piece.
     Bess is a lot like me, with an eye for a bargain and a willingness to spend her Saturdays at garage sales or rifling through warehouses in search of a find.   She's also like me in that she often makes the mistake of going for quantity over quality.
    Which means that she sometimes arrives home with 50 pounds of clothes--or floor to floor clothing once I dumped out the 8 super-sized bags in search of treasures for myself.  Unfortunately, her finds on this trip were heavy on large sizes and I didn't find much to try on.
    Unlike my age, my weight has stayed in low numbers over the years and I rarely wear anything larger than a medium.  Not a bad problem to have, but also not nearly as good as it sounds.  Because, although my weight hasn't changed, it certainly has shifted.  "I remember when I had a waist!" has become a common refrain.
    I uttered it again when I tried on the cute little Ann Taylor skirt that I pulled from Bess's pile--the one that was tailored.  The one that, unlike me, had a waist.  The one that wouldn't come close to zipping closed and sent me back into the pile and not climbing out until the next day when I found a small pair of Tommy Hilfiger jeans.   The jeans were a keeper.  They were made out of that wonderful stretch denim that looks just like the real thing--at least in low light and in the eyes of someone who wears bifocals.  My girls might scoff, but stretch jeans are one of the few things that can get me through a day without leaving a button indentation on my non-existent waist that lasts until my next bath.  I love them.
     They're almost as good as the Gap jeans that I discovered on one of my own bargain hunting trips.  
     I've been shopping in Gap for years--mostly for my daughters, but also for myself.  Gap has great sales, and it's been gratifying to hang things in my closet from a store that my daughters didn't turn their noses up at.  It's also been one of the few stores that I've been able to shop side by side with the girls without eventually saying, "I'm just going to run over to the elastic waist department, or meet me in Naturalizer in 30 minutes."
     It's only lately that the Gap dresses have started to feel a little too short,  the tops a little too tight, and the store a little too young.   I still went in, but I rarely left with anything other than Christmas candles.  I got the bag but not the gratification.
     Until the day I came across a pair of jeans on the Gap sale rack, in my size, for $4.98.  I'll try on anything for $4.98, even jeans that look like they might be cut a little skimpy--like they should have been sent to T.J. Maxx as an irregular because someone cut the top five inches off of the pattern.  Like you can't hold them up without wondering what you're going to do with that extra five inches of underwear that will be peeking out.
     But low price tags resolve a lot of reservations  And I'm actually getting kind of used to a little underwear showing.  I've even been known to show a little bra strap myself on occasion.  Okay, not necessarily on purpose, like my daughters, but still.  And thank goodness for that, because I made a great discovery that day.
     Gap has these amazing jeans called "Low Risers."  They look just like regular jeans, but they stop many inches below where your waist used to be.  Now, admittedly, when you first hold them up, you're tempted to put them back because, "Whoa... these things are going to fall right off."  But when you try them on and turn around in front of that slightly too-well lighted mirror, you realize that your hips have expanded just like your waist, and will comfortably keep them up through whatever contortions you have to do to get out of your Lazy Boy.
    Sure, you may not want to bend over too far, but you're probably not doing that very much these days anyway. And, yes, you may need to buy some longer shirts and some shorter underwear, but that's a small concession for being able to breathe comfortably.   There's no waist band cutting into your stomach, no zipper extending all the way up into that dangerous area of belly fat, no sucking in to force that big button through the too tiny button hole, and no embarrassing elastic waists to stare at you from your dresser drawers and remind you that you've turned the wrong way at another fashion corner.
    I'm telling you these "low-risers" are made for the over 50 (okay, 60), no-waist body. Why Gap isn't out there marketing them to the aging baby boomers, I don't know and don't understand.  Because there's a thick-waist market out there just waiting to be tapped.
     They've certainly sold me.  I bought multiple pairs and am breathing more comfortably than I have in months.  And, really, I can't be 60 if I still shop at Gap.