Babies at the Gate

Babies are hard to handle. I believe if we were truly honest with ourselves, truly rational people, we would never have babies. In the filling of one diaper, they change your entire life. They reset your sleeping and eating schedules to fit theirs, and your pick-up-and-go now comes with a diaper bag filled with toys, blankets, binkies, bottles, wipes, at least one change of clothes, oh, and yes, diapers. Like a soldier, you are packed for battle. Now, although their basic proclivities are different, this one likes anything with fruit in it, that one hates water in all forms, another cries only when you pick him up from day-care, they all share one basic truth: a baby can't talk to you for the first couple years of her life. Now she talks all the time, mostly to herself, but occasionally to you.

Unfortunately, she's speaking a foreign language. You look at her uncomprehendingly, "I'm sorry, what?" She says it again. You feel a tremor begin in your lower intestines, a tic starts in your eye, you swallow as if to clear your ears after a take-off and in preparation for the inevitable jump into enemy territory. "Oh, yes, sure," you say, unsure if you are supposed to be acknowledging a statement or answering a question. If you're lucky, she'll go back to ignoring you and you can breathe the same sigh of relief a soldier in combat releases after a firefight. Otherwise, you will need an alternative plan. "Wanna read a book? No. Look at the dolly. No, don't do that to the dolly, her head doesn't twist that way. Here's Mr. Ducky. Hey, Mr. Ducky." And you begin to quack and quack, a sound that turns maniacal as the baby's face begins to well with tears. Then, inspiration! You pick up the baby under the arms, holding her straight out, "Honey," you say, "It's for you!"

The baby's dirty little secret is that she begins to understand what you are saying long before she can actually talk to you. "You wanna go get the t.v. remote you dropped over by your blocks and bring it back here, please?" Startled as the baby returns with the remote, you mutter, "Thank you," and wonder what else she understands, and you hope she wasn't paying attention as you "talked" to other drivers while out on the road.

Of course, when it serves her purpose, she pretends not to understand what you are saying. "Don't bang the remote on the coffee table. I said don't! Now, don't! Here, just give it to me. No, not like that. That's my . . . Aaaahhh!!"

The next thing you know she is talking to you again. You hear her, but, because you are trying to read the paper, you convince yourself that she is talking to herself. "Good," you think, "she's learning to play on her own." Suddenly the paper is smacked from your grasp; there the baby stands, wadding up the paper, an angry little sergeant chastising an inept private. She speaks, this time raising her tiny, but surprisingly powerful arms, and this you understand, "pick me up!" Now, if only she could say, "This, this is what I want . . ." But she can't, so she becomes a caveman, uh, caveperson; she grunts. And points - vaguely, with her whole hand, her whole arm, "Go in that direction." So, you pick her up and move a little ways, or into the next room; "Here? Is here o.k.? What are we doing? What do you want to do?" Again, the point: still vague, still with the whole hand the whole arm . . . you move.