Oh baby! The joy in a little shower
God has the best sense of humor.
One day you give diapers to the proud parents-to-be at the baby shower, the next you are hoping the babies who got those diapers will have become grownups and be kind enough to buy diapers for you.
Life’s a circle.
We had a baby shower in the office a few weeks ago. I love a baby shower, although this might have been the first one I’ve ever been to. Usually I find out a friend is pregnant, ask them what brand of diapers they want, and drop those off.
Diapers is my standard gift. It’s not flashy. Not Fifth Avenue. Not “all that.” It’s workmanlike. Nobody likes to get diapers at a baby shower.
What they want is the swing that sits on the floor and rocks the baby. They want the thing you attach to the top of an open door frame and at the bottom is basically a pair of underwear the baby sits in and, once the infant of eight or so months is in it, the little person learns to bounce up and down. Pretend walk. Maybe even pretend to moon walk.
And all that’s great. If I were a baby, I’d prefer those. Or the fancy clothes — just in case the baby needs to go to a board meeting or a wedding or even a baby shower.
But neg. I am a man of the people. A man of the excretory system. Practical. The reminder here is that it all comes back to plumbing.
Which means it all comes back to diapers. Standard gift. It’s the gift you need when the baby gives you the gift that keeps on giving. If the baby needs changing, a cute little swing’s not going to do you much good.
So I brought diapers to the shower and there was punch and chocolate cake and a proud dad who apparently had a decent time during quarantine since his beautiful wife was less than a month away, it turned out, from having the couple’s second child. She was all smiles, chocolate cake on her white shirt as she went back for seconds and who cares when you’re pregnant and eating for two, right? It was a picture of joy.
This week the mom, dad, and baby stopped by again, only this time the baby was on the outside of his mom and not on the inside. Big difference.
This precious little person had on a seersucker jump suit, maybe with sailboats on the front, short-sleeved white shirt, very classy, white socks, shoeless because, well, what’s the point? Even if he could have walked, the women in the room wouldn’t have let him. They passed him around gently and he never opened his eyes, just sucked on the pacifier and kept living the dream.
Babies are usually scrunched up in my eyes but I have to admit, this was one good-looking olive-skinned little man. Just beautiful.
He looked comfortable. At ease. A man of leisure. Maybe he was wearing one of my diapers.
This is my idea of heaven on Earth: having someone like 20 times your size hold you all the time, feed you, change you, rock you. If I were a rich man …
It gives you hope, baby showers and babies and little people do. We have managed to screw things up in this crazy world, make a mess so big that no diaper could hold it. Hopefully these precious little people who can’t walk yet will, and then run, and hopefully do a little better than we’ve done.
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