Today, one of the daycare kids had “the runs.”
I think this is one of the biggest things I dislike about the idea of being a parent. I cannot, or do not want to, imagine myself discussing things like my child’s bowel movements with the air of casualty that most parents do – and rightly should. After all, everybody poops, and kid-poop is the least offensive of any kind. I don’t mind changing diapers, just as I don’t mind picking up doggie doo. I just don’t want to talk about doing it.
Our poos were all we could talk about in Asia, since it really was a central concern: Where will I be able go to next? Will there be toilet paper? Why haven’t I gone in a week? Why have I gone every hour on the hour? What is going ON in my intestines? But generally speaking, this is not my favorite topic of discussion, and I was excited to get back to the prude US where we keep that kind of thing to ourselves.
I guess this is really it then. Being a parent reminds us that we are “merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other.”
I do not want to be reminded of this. I want to pretend, as often as I can, which still isn’t very often, that humans have something more to live for than just tube supplication/replication. One simply cannot do this when potty training is on the agenda.
Something I would, however, like about parenthood, if god forbid it were somehow thrust upon me, would be all the picture-taking.
If I ever had an addiction (besides food), it would probably be nostalgia- mostly self-indulgent, rather than the more generic historical kind, although that plays a part, too. (My previous post on smell attests to this).
Last night I pored over a box of my dad’s old photos, ones I’d seen at least a few times before. I am always struck by the same things: how similar I look to my dad when he was younger and doughier, how awesome the 60s/70s were, how adorable my first dog (Beowulf, a fattie German shepherd with droopy ears) was.
Aside from the usual parade of glossy moments, I found a new prize: a bag full of old papers. This was it, the proverbial bundle of letters from a parent’s past! I would open new windows into the shadowy psyche of DStein, or at least get a back-story on one of the girls he poses oh-so-debonairly with in many of the sepia shots from his doughier days, (especially the now semi-famous artist whom he wanted to marry but who refused him).
But as I delved into the bag, I recognized the writing immediately; they were all from Deborah. I knew this hand well, and wondered whether this was not unlike my own little stash of Deborah notes, mostly threats and angry outbursts about a small pile of clothing left on a closet floor or an insufficiently scrubbed tupperware. I wondered why anyone, besides myself, would have that sick, nostalgic desire to save angry notes like those. But I also figured that if it would be anyone, it would be my dad.
Turns out, though, they were love letters. Awful, tacky, can’t-live-without-you love letters that were more embarrassing to read than anything more pornographic would have been.
The thing that struck me the most about these, and I know this may be shocking for those of you who know a thing or two about DStein & Deborah (but not as much as me), is not “my how things have changed!” but, “yea, that makes sense.” To this day, Deborah makes no secret of her bizarrely enduring love for DStein (bizarre not because he is unlovable, but because of the trenchant bitterness that so often seems to characterize their everyday interaction). And it seems indeed that this must be the reason for their staying together, at least on her side of things. After all, she has been divorced three times before. There is no reason shame, or anything else, should keep her from making it four.
Yes, strange as it may be, I think they actually love each other. Well, I know she does. I know part of the reason he stays with her is his fear of being alone. Part of it is also that he likes the way he takes care of her, cooking, cleaning, unconditionally loving (in a way that my mother never did). But I think maybe he also has strains of that same can’t-live-without-you love. He kept the letters, didn’t he?
There’s something unsettlingly eerie about watching someone’s life progress through pictures, and this sense is only heightened by the narration of notes.
One of the “charitable deceptions” of nostalgia for many people is the romanticization of what once was; “the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and…thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.” But this has never been its primary appeal for me. Maybe it’s still escapism from the present, but not from the realities of life. No, I swallow memories whole because I want to remember, I want to feel every crushing moment, every uplift, every downbeat, just like the first time. I don’t know why- I guess I’m just a thrill seeker of the most pedestrian kind.
Of course, it’s never the same. The framing effects of memory, the passing of time and inevitable reflection mean that no single moment can ever be recalled the same way as it was, or even remembered the same way twice. No reconstruction of time and place is without the marring effects of time, just as no current time and place is without the marring effects of the present. This drives some people crazy, so that they either never think about the past, or only think about it to repaint it with a brighter palate than its true colors. And this is all the more true when trying to relive the past of someone else.
Looking back on my dad’s box of memories, the most poignant message was how complicated his life came to be. This is true for most people. But when, exactly, does this happen? When do we go from carefree youths to burdened old souls? Surely it is no moment, no single day. For most of us, it is probably a process that begins from birth. We don’t necessarily think life will be easy, yet we cannot fathom all of the bullshit it will throw at us. Delight, too- but mostly bullshit.
From proudly holding a string full of hooked fish to proudly patting the belly of a pregnant wife to proudly snapping photographs of your own children, before and after everything’s been torn apart.
I simultaneously lamented the fact that one day the terrain of my life might look this jagged, and yearned for the time when the complications can be all my own, rather than absorbed through the lives of others, as they mostly have thus far. Maybe this is the real reason I don’t want kids: can I stand to be a living repository for the memories of yet another soul? No, I think I want the picture box all to myself.
