You guys, this baby. 

Names I call him:

Baby
Sugar
Sunshine
Honey Boy
Darlin’
Chunk
Beautiful
Handsome
Pumpkin
Gorgeous
Precious
Squidge
Sweetie Pie
Lovey
Angel Cakes
Shnookies
Bubs
Peaches
Sunny Boy
Bugga Boo
Mr. Hunka Munka

The last few weeks my son and daughter-in-law have been moving houses, so I’ve had Baby at least parts of four days this week (and I think I saw him on the days between, too). It’s been so much fun!

Monday, for example, I was only going to have him for several hours in the afternoon, but then I realized we were going to Foodie Group that night, so I offered to take him with us and then drop him off on our way home. My son was like, Well, sure!

And so I ended up having him for nine hours straight.

Days Baby comes, I often get up early to get work done beforehand. His arrival frees me from the tyranny of my to-do list, and then I slip into vacation mode. 

In the brief moments he’s self-occupied, I putts around the house, prepping our next meal or emptying the dish drainer. Sometimes, we run errands together, or go visit my mom, or I take him along on a walk with a friend. When he needs to pee, I dangle him over the deck railing (they’ve been potty training him since birth), and then kiss his toes and poke his tummy while snapping him into a fresh diaper. I talk to him constantly, asking questions, narrating my every move, and pointing out everything, like the cars driving by and the miracles of running water.

When he tires, I sing. Right now, Wheels on the Bus is top of the charts for his sleepy-sleepy song, but sometimes I switch it up with rumbly, made-up tunes hummed low and off-key, or hymns. 

While he sleeps (as he is now), I write. 

“My son has asked me to watch the baby three days in a row this week,” I told my friend, shaking my head. “What am I going to do about work?” 

She suggests I tell them I’m not available, but no, I don’t want to do that.

“Well, what do you want to do?” 

“Take care of the baby! FORGET CHEESE. All I want ever is be with the baby!” I was practically shouting.

“Then do that,” she said. “Say yes.” 

And so I do, over and over again, because he is the best thing ever. 

There were a few rough spells when we started watching him more regularly, so I asked them to send along a dirty shirt of my daughter-in-law’s.

They swap out shirts so he can always have a fresh dirty one, and Baby is a fan. He’ll grab the T-shirt of Love (my name for it) with both hands and then smash his head into it. The good smells soaked up, he’ll look up at me all smiles, and then a flash of confusion crosses his face.

Ha, he knows!

The Five Positions of Baby

First Position: Center
When I show up at his place, or he at mine, and I first pick him up, he often leans his temple against mine, his body slumps, and he stares ahead, vacant-eyed, like he’s docked into a charging zone. 

Second Position: Outward
He perches on my belly, or on my hip, and faces out, solemnly watches the goings-on: Danny Boy chasing after his ball. The tree branches shuddering in the breeze. The churning fan blades. The big people charging around the house. 

Third Position: Face-to-Face
He grips my fingers and rises to his feet, babbling with self-importance. I jiggle him in the air above my head and he cackles. I kiss him all over his neck and tummy, and he blinks, tense with anticipation. Sometimes his entire body grows still, except for his eyes, flickering as they rove over my face.

Fourth Position: Floor
Flat on his back, he kicks wildly, thrumming his feet on the ground, nostrils flared and mouth wide. I hang over him, talking and teasing, egging him on. I toss a cloth on his face and then yank it away, and he gasps and giggles. In the center of the rug, he’s a bottomless sinkhole into which I pour my attention. 

Fifth Position: Shoulder 
When he grows fussy, I hoist him into my arms and dangle the T-shirt of Love. He grabs it with both hands and rams his face into it, pressing against my collar bone. I sing, low and gravely, my words punctuated with steady butt-thwacks. Soon, I feel his little face stretch in a yawn, and then, slowly, his body grows heavy. As he drifts, he sometimes sings on the exhale — just once or twice — and then he’s out. 

My love for this baby is different than my love for my own children.

With them, my love was all-consuming and fierce, and burdened with responsibility. Everything about my children — their behavior, sleep patterns, diet — was mine to manage, and it all reflected back on me. 

This baby, I love without expectation, restraint, or judgment. Without fear of usurping the parents’ role. Without a need to fix anything, or control.

I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone this freely before, which is a quite unsettling to discover, really. Fifty years and I didn’t even know love could feel like this? Where have I been!

This didn’t just happen, though. It’s not like I’ve fallen under a spell, or am victim to my emotions.

Rather, I chose it.

It’s like launching myself down a slide. Just so happens that the ride is more thrilling than I could ever have imagined, and it just keeps going and going and going. 

I could get off, I suppose, or I could dig my heels in and slow my descent — but no thanks.

Instead, I’m a-gonna throw my arms high and speed even faster, wheeee! 

This same time, years previous: midway, the quotidian (8.15.22), chocolate milk, almond apricot pound cake, breaking horses, the beginning of the end, bourbon and brown sugar peach pie, tomato bread pudding with caramelized onion and sausage, on getting lucky, knowing my questions, not your typical back-to-school post, a piece of heaven.

Last week, we went to my parents’ house for supper. As I was putting my contribution to the meal — a container of La Buena ice cream (plus cones!) — in their big chest freezer, I paused for a second to admire the frozen bounty.

My mother’s freezer is always a thing of beauty: plump bags of berries, gallon jars of granola, stacks of perfectly portioned green beans and corn and collards, loaves of bread, tins of cookies, thick wedges of cake — everything meticulously wrapped and labeled. 

How in the world do you eat it all? I asked my mother. You have so much ready-made food and it’s just the two of you! Why do you even bother to go shopping anymore?

***

People always warned me about the culinary befuddlements that arise when one’s family size shrinks back down to Just Two. After bulk batching everything, it’s hard to recalibrate, they said. 

Which is true, yes, but I’m also learning that quantity control is just one aspect of the problem — and a superficial one, at that. 

The deeper issue is an overarching question: if I don’t need to cook, why bother?

***

Cooking from scratch was one of the key pillars of how I chose to raise my children. (If you’re curious, some of the other pillars — that I’m making up right now but are not not true — included “lots o’ chores,” “books-n-boredom,” “school-free ferality,” and “screenlessness.”) 

With the children around, cooking was necessity, creativity, frugality, lifestyle choice, community, education, adventure, and joy all wrapped into one. Kitchen tasks paired well with constant interruptions so they were the backdrop to our days. For two decades, the kitchen was the engine of our home, and food made our family go round (haha). 

So what do you do when the one thing that was once so meaningful is no longer necessary? 

***

I’m in a constant state of disbelief about how little time I need to spend on food prep. I can make meal after meal, sometimes for days on end, from what feels like thin air. Just a quick root-around in the fridge and — zippy-zam-BAM — we’re feasting on tomato sandwiches, smoothies, spaghetti carbonara, a big green salad, eggs and toast, peanut butter apples, whatever. 

And still, much of what we eat is somehow still homemade and homegrown: milk, beef, pork, cheese, ice cream, butter. 

It’s rather astounding.

***

It’s not all bad, this new stage of not cooking, but there’s definitely A Tilty Feeling that comes with it. 

What I long considered The Way To Live no longer is, so where does that leave me now? I’m not sure, but I keep having itty-bitty paradigm shifts.

For example…

Example 1
It occurred to me that I no longer need to stock brown rice. Even though everyone always preferred white, I used to alternate between white and brown because: variety is good and we don’t always get to eat our favorites. But now that it’s just two of us, I have nobody to raise and nothing to prove. My husband prefers white (and I love it), so that’s what I stock. If I want brown, and I can buy a small bag whenever the hell I want, imagine that. 

Example 2
I rarely bake bread anymore because a) I get the stale stuff from the bakery, b) the kids drop off dumpster stuff from town, or c) it just materializes somehow, like the slider buns left over from a party Eucefe had a few months back upon which I’ve been building this week’s lunch sandwiches. 

Example 3
I’m even rethinking the classic family staple: granola. (I KNOW.) These days, I’ve been making pan-toasted raw oats with all the fixings for our breakfasts, or cooked oatmeal with berries and bananas. So if we don’t eat it, why make it?

***

So what’s for supper tonight? you ask. 

Oh, right. Supper. Hm, I’m not exactly sure but . . . maybe burgers?

Here, lemme break down what a burger supper looks like in a “I don’t really cook anymore” household:

• Bread: frozen Costco buns
• Meat: frozen dumpster patties 
• Cheese: take your pick! we’ve got smoked gouda, brick, Lady Zella, Colby, cheddar, all homemade
• Bacon: I unearthed a little container of frozen bacon crumbles this morning, whoop!
• Heirloom tomatoes: my younger daughter gave us a bunch from the garden where she works 
• Condiments: sweet pickles, kimchi, plus the classics.

Maybe I’ll make carrot sticks?

Oh, and there’s a little bit of La Buena leftover from that dinner at my mom and dad’s, so maybe we’ll have ice cream cones, too.

This same time, years previous: hormone replacement therapy: Carrie, help! my blender broke!, cuajada, black pepper tofu and eggplant, in the kitchen, the quotidian (8.6.18), pile it on, cheesy herb pizza, corn crepecakes, the quotidian (8.6.12), elf biscuits.

Last week, my husband and I zipped over to Eastern Virginia to visit our younger son who is doing a summer internship at the NASA Langley Research Center. He’d gotten a 4-hour window of clearance for us.  but we had to stop by the welcome center to show them our IDs and get visitor badges printed and issued. 

Once in, it was a little startling how run down the campus was. Our son had warned us about this — “Everything here is so old!” “The sidewalk system is terrible!” — but even so, it was surprising. It seemed like only a fraction of the place was being used. 

After our lunch at the cafeteria, we stopped by my son’s office — a windowless cubby in the depths of a nondescript 1950s block building. Not that my son seemed to care about the lack of natural light — no, he was just thrilled to show us the stuff he’s been playing with: a little lever the size of a half-dollar, and some sort of ancient-looking box with a screen that boasted some dancing wavy lines. 

Then he took us to his lab where he’s working on a stepper motor. He explained it in great detail with words I didn’t recognize and can’t recall. I do know he was referencing (or creating) some sort of computer program, and he had a notebook full of his hand-drawn sketches and codes, and instructions for the engineers who will be using The Thing* he’s working on. 

Oh, and there was a fancy joystick he was enamored with, which cracked me up. Here we were, surrounded by a staggering quantity of expensive high-tech gear, and my son was excited about a joystick the size of a eggplant. What the heck!

He riffled confidently through tables overflowing with cords and gadgety contraptions, gave us a demonstration of The Thing (when it moved, it made musical beeps up and down the scale), and then took us into a side room to show us a leaky roof that had been bugging him for weeks. He’d reported it, he said, so NASA set out a bucket to catch the drips. 

He’d gotten special permission for us to see one of the windtunnels. When we arrived, the team was preparing to run one of the last tests of the day, and while they waited for the plane to cool from the previous test, the lead researcher took us into the wind tunnel to see the plane. It was very hot (down to 95F from the 116F), and there wasn’t much to see — just long, garage-like room lined with black panels and windows with cameras, and in the center, a small black jet fastened to a steel pillar called a “sting.” 

Back in the control room, we watched on screens as the technicians did a final check in the tunnel (because you certainly don’t want any random bits of anything floating free when the fans fire up!), and then, once cleared, we watched them run the test. The wings would occasionally tilt a little, and the wind speeds varied, but mostly, all there was to watch was a bunch of people taking measurements on their computers. Our guide described the process of experimentation and development, pulled up photos from other tests, and answered our questions. It was fascinating, but in an non-climactic sort of way. There were no explosions and no mistakes, so yay?

Next, in The Maker’s Space, we admired the rows of whirring 3D printers (arranged like library stacks), the 3D microscope, and a plethora of yet more tools, wires, and gadgets. 

And then while our son finished his work day, my husband and I napped in a nearby parking lot before driving to a SweetFrog and buying ourselves some frozen yogurt — twice. (It was good.)  

Back at our son’s place, the tour continued: through the goose-poop pocked yard down to the water and then back to the house where he fed us a luxurious supper of Oreos, leftover chips, and stale movie theater popcorn.

(And yes, I’m being sarcastic with my use of the word “luxurious.” All summer, the kid has been subsisting on air and shredded wheat and sandwiches, so we knew what to expect.) 

The next day, we hit up a bakery before heading to Colonial Williamsburg where…

• We learned about dyeing cloth, making bricks, building shoes, printing, blacksmithing, cooking, etc. 
• My husband was served a raw sausage (and then they, perhaps accidentally, refunded us for the entire meal). 
• I couldn’t get over how the workers were dressed to the teeth in period-appropriate clothes and had to repeat the same information over and over to tourists, all while standing in the hot sun. It bothered me so much, I almost felt ill. 
• Our son begged to ride the bus system that ringed the perimeter of the grounds. He’s recently fallen head-over-heels in love with urban planning, and could not stop talking about that bus. So at the end of the day, we took the bus back to the parking lot for (our son’s) kicks and giggles. 

^{_{I want to ride the bus! Can we ride the bus? LET’S RIDE THE BUS.}}

And thus concludes our two-day adventure spanning our crumbling present all the way back to our glorified, uncomfortable past.

*The Thing = The Klinger Cube

This same time, years previous: one step further, the coronavirus diaries: week whatever, the quotidian (7.29.19), the quotidian (7.30.18), in the kitchen, injera and beef wat, my deficiency, do you strew?.