Fun With Play-Dough

Hollywood discovered a long time ago that babies are marketable, as is the experience of pregnancy. If you are pregnant, there are certain movies you will want to avoid, and some others you’ll want to watch again and again. It all depends on your mindset. My personal attitude towards baby raising was -for the longest time- defined by David Lynch. Seeing that little wormy creature in Eraserhead destroyed any fuzzy feelings I might have had. Like a muppet on crack, it would not shut up. That image still swims into my head at the most unfortunate moments. Thank you, David.  Not a good film to watch until your child is say, 18, and off to college. However, you can recommend this film to friends who don’t want kids just yet, or -in your opinion- shouldn’t have them at all. 

The Next Best Thing is an endearing movie, but it might be slightly depressing to see how fabulous Madonna looks after having had two chiildren. It might even be enough reason not to like her anymore, although she has done a lot to spice up the image of motherhood, and for that we must be grateful. As far as the plot of this movie is concerned, it’s fascinating that these people have a baby that instantly turns into a six-year-old. What kind of message is that sending to the rest of us? The first six years suck? And why do we see Madonna eat a burger at the diner, but we don’t see her throw it up afterwards? Very disloyal, if you ask me. I don’t care who you are, or how much money you have. A damn burger during pregnancy gets puked out later, it’s the law.

For research’s sake I forced myself to watch Junior. Now, I don’t want to piss anybody off, because as I understand it Danny DeVito is a very powerful man in Hollywood, and Arnold does nice things for inner city kids and stuff. But I still can’t figure out if I would have been better able to buy into the premisse if I hadn’t been pregnant at the time of watching. I spent the whole time thinking “But he doesn’t have a uterus!”.  Arnold pregnant and in drag: sometimes it’s just too hard to suspend disbelief. But, it’s such a nice premise!!! Please, yes, you guys can have it! And you will never have to give it back! Oh, if only. By the way, I think this film was made for and by jealous men. You know, the ones that still think this whole childbirth thing is the most beautiful experience, blah blah blah. It’s the strangest phenomenon.  There was a guy at my work place who couldn’t get over this whole admiration thing back when I was pregnant. Every time I saw him he would talk about the miracle of life and so on and so forth, and he would utter the phrase: “When my wife and I were pregnant…” Aha! There was many a day I wanted to punch him in the mouth.  Anyway, Junior is a stupid movie, and if you’re pregnant, you should watch it. It will give you something to bitch about, and as long as you don’t expect any fashion tips from Arnold, you’ll be fine.

I recently watched Look Who’s Talking. I remember once upon a time thinking this movie was cute and amusing. But then, I was in high school when it was released. That means I was dumber than I am now. I was also able to watch it without contemplating that that baby would go on to shoot his adopted daddy in Pulp Fiction. That kind of ruined the whole experience for me. And why does Kirstie Allley want a daddy for her baby so bad if her own father never talks to her? I also don’t like the babies secretly communicating with each other. What is that all about? We carry them for nine agonizing months, go through the ordeal of childbirth, only to have them gossip behind our back? I don’t think so. We should expect these babies to be up front and honest with us, and also live by the motto: “ If you have nothing useful to say, and you don’t, then don’t say anything at all”. The last thing we need is them exchanging tips on how to make our lives more miserable without us knowing about it.

Nine Months is a tragedy. This has nothing to do with the relationship between the two main characters. After all, who needs a bumbling idiot like Hugh Grant around when you’re having a baby? Especially since his initial reaction to the big news is to almost kill both of them. Forget the stupid Porsche. The one redeeming factor for him may be his attempt to beat up the Barney look-a-like. Everybody hates Barney. Otherwise, the guy is a  moron and utterly useless. I wasn’t sad at all when she left him, and the tears he shed when he saw the ultrasound, whatever. Wah, wah, wah. The only reason he changed his mind was because Jeff Goldblum told him to. Big Deal. I would change my mind about anything if Jeff told me to.  No, the part I couldn’t watch was the scene in the delivery room. Bad boyfriends, nervous doctors, crashed Porsches and what not are all child’s play compared to the fact that the poor woman did not get her epidural.  Now THAT is a real tragedy. What sick and twisted screen writer came up with that? I was so upset, I would have eaten a whole bag of M&M’s if my stomach had been bigger than a golf ball. I know many people think that natural childbirth (which is just a fancy term for “excruciating and debilitating pain”) is a good thing. This is not true. There is nothing noble about suffering. Watch that childbirth video again, look me straight in the eye, and tell me you are looking forward to that. 

For a long time, women (and men, but who cares) have been brainwashed into thinking that natural childbirth can be a positive experience. I don’t believe this for a second, and no, I didn’t try this out for myself, thank you very much. Why then did God invent drugs? For decoration? This movie may have had a happy ending, but that woman will remember missing out on that epidural for the rest of her life. And as soon as the “high” of having a child wears off, she will start resenting her husband and all will end in a nasty divorce. She will get to keep the house and the Ford Explorer, and maybe he’ll get his Porsche back. He won’t understand what happened, and chalk it up to Post Partum depression.  There’s you damn happy ending.  Case closed.

The problem is, we don’t want realistic movies about childbirth. We get those at the hospital when we’re already pregnant and it’s too late to change our minds. If we want realism, we look at our own lives. Nausea, hormonal imbalances, and sleepless nights: we have all that. When we pop in a video, we want to be entertained. Hollywood babies need to be either disgustingly cute, so we can fantasize about having one of those starry-eyed creatures ourselves, or they must be extremely ugly so we can laugh at them. For some people, handicaps are acceptable too, as long as they are overcome at the end: “Davey Was Born With No Arms And Blind; Who Would Have Thought He Would Cure Cancer!”  Personally, I’m not so fond of that last category, but, you know, whatever. If you like that Hallmark crap, more power to ya.   Here’s another thing: being able to watch a whole pregnancy, conception to birth, within a ninety minute time frame makes the whole deal less scary and potentially amusing. “That looks like fun” we say to ourselves, and “We can do that!”.  Now, of course most women are not really pregnant when they act in these movies. They have some kind of thing under their dress that makes them look fat and that’s all there is to it. Some of these women have never even had a child.  Also, the babies are usually someone else’s, and sometimes they are robots.

There are a few very brave women who are exceptions to the rule, however.  Catherine Zeta-Jones in Traffic is one such woman. She looks wonderfully puffy in her close-ups, and what she says about red wine is true.   Also, it is refreshing to see a pregnant woman-turned-drug dealer. Of course, we all heartily disapprove of drug dealers (Bad! Just Say No!), but, let’s be realistic for a second. You don’t cheer on the bad guys for what they do, but for what they stand for. Catherine’s character stands  for the notion that a pregnant woman can still kick ass, hemmorhoids or no.  When I watch the scene where Catherine yells over her cell phone: “Kill him!” I imagine millions of pregnant women at home on the couch, in front of their tv’s, yelling: “Yeah! Kill him!”

Naturally, you say, Catherine only managed to look like a vixen because she has truckloads of money, and an army of assistants. Yes, but not 500 make-up artists can do anything about weak bladders and water retention. I am sure that, off camera, Catherine suffered very much. Also, her husband is extremely old, so the chance of him having a heart attack in the delivery room was much higher. I’m sure that added extra worry.

I have noticed lately that many movies with the word “child” in the title are horror films. There’s Child’s Play, Children of the Corn part 200, and so on and so forth. I even found something called 666 Demon Child, which should win the award for least original title.  I didn’t watch it since according to the Blockbuster website its plot involved archeology students discovering a prehistoric egg with a demon baby inside. I, too, have my limits.  I get the message; babies are creepy and if you have them anyway you’ll pay the price.

Enough about Hollywood. You should think about making your own movie. Now, I must admit, why anybody would want to be filmed giving birth is beyond me. Unless you are in Med school, you really don’t need to know that much detail. It’s not as if you sit down every Friday night and say to yourself: “Hm, what should I watch? CSI? Numbers? Nah, I know, I know!! Let’s see me getting ripped in half with lots of blood and squeeze out a child that really doesn’t look that attractive!”  Right. And trust me, your child isn’t going to want to see this, ever.  Having said that, you might decide you want it filmed anyway “just in case”. Fine, it’s your life. But if you’re going to do it, do it right.

Treat it like any other movie; you will need a script. Start a few weeks before you are due to give birth. Since guilt is such a powerful parenting tool, you will want to include some harsh moments to show to your child once he or she is grown up. Call this the “Look what I suffered through for you”- part of the video.  Include a bathroom scene where you throw up an expensive dinner. Put in some close-ups of your face while simulating a headache. You can achieve the best effect by lightly dusting your face with white powder, then misting it with water.  Film some scenes at the baby store. Don’t linger on anything cute, but focus on the prices as well as the long lines in front of the register. Close in on your swollen ankles. Make sure you film the “waiting in line” part in real time. Don’t include any fights you have with your partner; it’s none of the brat’s business Plus, in retrospect, it might be one of those rare fights in which you were wrong, and then you have to edit it out again which is a pain and a waste of time. Do include some Braxton Hicks contractions, and a visit to the maternity store. Again, focus on prices, and on how far you have to walk through the stupid mall to get there. (why are maternity stores never close to the entrance?)

Dedicate a whole ten minutes on how often you have to pee. Follow this with a lecture on the poor hygiene of public restrooms, and all the diseases you can contract there. Include a scratch and sniff card. Make sure to also note the temperature each day that you film, and a discussion of why this temperature, regardless of what it is, is extremely uncomfortable for pregnant women. Include different activities you can’t partake in. A six-year-old will respond to the fact that you couldn’t go on a roller-coaster for almost a year. A sixteen-year-old girl will be gullible to the ‘no-extended shopping-because-too-tired’- argument as well as any real or imaginary make-up allergies. On the eve of their twenty-first (or, if we’re honest, fifteenth) birthday, all children will be sympathetic to the fact that you couldn’t drink during pregnancy. I’m sure you can come up with a few guilt trips of your own. This way, your movie will last you a long, long time.

Once the day of delivery arrives, things go into overdrive. Write down instructions beforehand, and make a dry run with whoever will be holding the camera.  Especially husbands tend to get nervous when the big moment is there, so you will want to test him often. Arrange for a back-up, just in case he decides to go all drama on you and faint or something stupid like that. Make him answer the following questions: Is your camera ready? Are the batteries charged? Are you wearing comfortable shoes with non-slippery soles? Have you learned the lay-out of the delivery room by heart? Have you familiarized yourself with the sight of blood at the local butcher shop? If he can answer ‘yes’ to all of the above, he might be ready. Remind him to add in some close-ups of the epidural, the episiotomy, and the meanest nurse.  Finally, keep the camera in a handy spot; he will try to forget it when the moment arrives. 

When my mother was a small child, she nearly drowned twice.  I myself had the same thing happen when I was about seven years old.  We saw the warning signs and taught our daughter to swim at an early age.  Growing up in Holland, a country that is filled to the brim with streams, lakes, ponds, and borders a sea that eternally threatens to take whole sections of coastline, I have a deeply ingrained respect for water.  I have never understood people who are tempted by brand new subdivisions bordering a man-made lake; I immediately imagine my children drowning.  I sleep better knowing my backyard is nice and dry.

We run into trouble when we make our annual visit to my family.  As if there isn’t enough water in Holland, both my parents and my brother have decided to put a good sized pond in their backyards.  They worry about this more than we do; they yell warnings over the phone for months before we actually board a plane.  Contraptions have been made to keep the kids out of the water. After all, bad things are much less likely to happen if you worry about them for a really, really long time. Of course, until now, the only one who has fallen in is my brother himself, who should know better because he built the darn thing.

The Talmud tells us that teaching our children how to swim is our obligation.  I like this particular duty, because there are so many different ways in which ‘swimming’ can be interpreted.  Our children will need to learn how to keep their heads above water not just in the pool, but also in life in general.  That means we need to give them the tools to survive, and make progress. They can’t simply tread water and stay still; they need to swim.  The question is, how do we give them these tools?  And which tools do we pick?  When we first let our kids in the pool, we have life vests handy, we give them toys to keep them afloat, and we stay in the pool with them.  We keep them safe any way we can, but at some point we have to leave the pool and let them swim alone.

“Teaching our kids to swim” means taking them to school and leaving them there, even if they cry.  It means letting them solve their own problems, even when they fight with their friends over which toy to play with.  It means allowing them the freedom to struggle, to be disappointed, or confused.  It also means introducing them to better teachers than us, and stepping aside.  It means teaching them how to read, and subsequently letting them misinterpret things for themselves.  For parents, it is often not the teaching itself that is the hardest part, but the ‘letting go’ afterwards.

This is why the swimming analogy is particularly useful for teaching our children how to live.  A child can’t ‘learn’ swimming forever; at some point you either swim, or you don’t.  Once children learn the technique, an adult who grabs their hand is going to hold them back. Swimming is not hard to learn for most, but the benefits last a lifetime.  Being proficient can actually safe your life. Much of what the Talmud teaches makes a lot of sense; if only we’d listen, we’d be the best parents ever.  Maybe ‘common sense’ is really G-d’s voice in our heads telling us to get a grip. 

We are so busy shaping our children’s Jewish identity, that sometimes we forget not everybody in Omaha is Jewish. We take them to a Jewish school, synagogue services, religious school, and Chabad summer camp.  We celebrate the holidays with other Jews, and eat the appropriate foods at the appropriate times.  Every now and then we get to be reminded that, in spite of what our daily life revolves around, we are still part of a minority.  For instance, when I took my then three-year-old daughter shopping, and she sat in the cart singing the “I am Proud to be a Jew” song at the top of her lungs.  Yes, people stared. 

With the Christmas season almost here, majority culture is about to explode all around us.  Every year, this leads to discussions about how to navigate between who we are, and where we live.  Come the month of December, we can’t leave our house without stumbling over an elf, a Santa, or being told to have a happy Christmas.  In addition to that, many of us have mixed families, and are more or less expected to attend a tinsel-party in some way, shape or form.  We can choose to be annoyed (tempting, I admit) or we can go with the flow, all the while keeping a firm grip on what we believe in.

For us that means a never-ending discourse with our children about the ‘why’s’ and ‘why nots’ of Christmas. Because every outward sign of this holiday either shines or blinks, it can look oh-so attractive to the little ones.  A tree with pretty things in it? Never.  Bright, flickering lights outside? Sure, as long as they are blue.  After Christmas sales? Always.  Attractively wrapped chocolates, shaped like Santa? No, absolutely not.  Although, believe it or not, many of them are kosher; don’t ask me why.  The truth of the matter is, if Christmas were a holiday mostly experienced inside a church, in a spiritual way, we wouldn’t have this dilemma.  It is the fact that it comes with ‘extras’, displayed in shopping malls, television shows, and even on people’s cars that makes it so hard to circumvent.  It simply is everywhere.  If you want to avoid it entirely, you must lock your doors or leave the country, and for most of us, that’s not exactly an option.

The key to a happy December is to not treat it as a competition.  We don’t need to buy bigger and better presents for Hanukkah, just because the stores are full of attractive displays; we don’t need to put wreaths on the front door just because the neighbors have such pretty ones on theirs.  However, we also shouldn’t avoid things that reek of ‘the season’ just to make a statement; we don’t have to prove that we are different, we already are.  Accepting ourselves as we are leads to accepting others.  So yes, I put out a Hanukkah flag, but I would anyway. I also put up lights all over the front yard, because I would feel a little sad if we were the only dark house on the block; to me that would send the message that we are too different to enjoy ourselves.  But it’s a slippery slope, and I can fully understand it if others decide they don’t need to be plugged in to that particular habit.  I guess, as with so many things, it’s about personal choices.  Whatever those choices are, we should forever stop feeling uncomfortable, we should never apologize, and we should all sing loudly in the supermarket.

My husband and I started a dangerous trend when, at the age of four, our daughter lost her first tooth.  Yes, that’s a bit young to show up at breakfast with a big bloody gap in your mouth.  She was freaked out, we were freaked out, and we decided to give her a nice little present and tell her it came from the tooth fairy.  Nice way to think ahead, I know.  She’s lost eight more since then, and the end is not is sight.  Who knew human beings had this many teeth?

Recently, while cleaning my daughter’s room, I come upon the following note:

“Please G-d, give me eight pretend kitties for my next lost tooth.

Love, Isabella”.

Apparently, the tooth fairy has been fired. She’s had it coming for a while; after all, she’s a stranger who comes into my daughter’s bedroom in the dead of night to steal a tooth.  What six-year-old finds that attractive?  And what, pray tell, does she do with all those teeth anyway?  From the questions she has been asking, I know my daughter has been imagining millions of baby teeth, piled high in a faraway land somewhere, and for what purpose, nobody knows.  It does leave my daughter with the small problem of where to trade her teeth for cool stuff, but the note proves she’s found her solution. 

As adults, my husband and I don’t have a clear blueprint for who or what G-d is.  We refer to a ‘Him’ because it’s convenient, but the truth is, Hashem is simply too big and incomprehensible.  So we try to do what we think He wants, and leave it at that. However, to our daughter, G-d is still the kind grandfather who lives in the clouds, and monitors her every move.  He can make sure she stays healthy, has enough to eat, and apparently He can bring her ‘pretend kitties’. 

What should we, as her parents, do next? When the tooth fairy was still deemed an acceptable entity, we used to include a fake note with Isa’s present. We can’t do that anymore; we have our limits.  Is she, at six, old enough to begin a discussion about why G-d doesn’t do our bidding? Why he doesn’t give us what we want, whenever we want it?  It’s a lesson she has learned about her parents and teachers, why wouldn’t we tell her the same message when it pertains to the Higher Power?  Maybe I’m hesitant because I don’t want to interfere with her basic, simplistic understanding of who and what G-d is.  After all, when she doesn’t get the expected response the next time a tooth falls out, she might not automatically conclude that G-d doesn’t exist, or that He doesn’t care.  It’s also not a bad idea to allow young children to figure certain things out on their own.  Plus, there is always the possibility that she’s long since forgotten about writing the note in the first place; it’s been a few months since losing her last tooth.

Besides, what on earth are “pretend kitties”? Stuffed animals? Cats that only exist in her imagination, like the friends she talks to but nobody else can see?  I think, when the time comes, we’ll just put a nice little book under her pillow. If she ever brings up the question why her note went unanswered, I’ll simply tell her the truth. I’ll tell her that there are many different types of answers.  It’s up to us to figure out their meaning.