talking to my baby

One of the many wonderful things about being a mom was all the language games I was able to play with my child. From the moment she was born, whenever we were alone and often when we were not, I talked to her about everything. I profferred never-ending color commentary on the world. One of my foundational premises was that everything was new to Rosie. I imagined that little baby Rosie was gazing on a world that, at first, had no meaning or context for her. This is a mirror. This is a pin. It seemed, to me and my eagerness to open up as much as I could for my infant, that everything required long, colorful explanations. Even if she did not 'understand' my nattering, I knew that she understood that I was giving her all my attention because I loved her. Giving someone our attention is a fine way to say to them "I want you to be".

Rosie had my undivided attention when she and I were together.

How to explain the sound of a telephone ringing? And, then, how to distinguish to a preverbal baby who trusts you completely, the difference between the telephone ring and the doorbell? How to explain electric lights? Laundry? Grass? Dirt?

I assumed everything was fascinating to Rosie and, along the way, everything became fascinating to me as well. The world changed the first moment I began to imagine how to introduce everything to my baby. Indoors. Outdoors. Cars. Music. Music from a radio. Music in the car. Live music.

When Rosie was three months old, we flew to Chicago for her christening. Her dad came for the baptism but he did not fly out with us. From the moment we were settled in our seat, with my prescious cargo in my arms, I talked to Rosie the entire flight. I talked about the sensations a body might feel as a plane moves: it would feel quite different, I imagined, than her everyday life. Did her ears pop? I wondered aloud. I explained to her a bit about why I thought we feel sensation in our ears when a plane takes off or lands. I explained the seatbelt. I explained clouds. I pointed out all the sounds I could articulate; plane engines, clattering of service carts, the noise of a plane full of humans. Well, not explain, I guess. I talked about them, whatever thoughts drifted through me, I verbalized.

Then, after devoting a large portion of our flight to the fascination of flying, I began to talk about our trip. I explained to Rosie that we were going to meet people who already loved her. Imagine the miracle of love, I told my dolly girl. My brothers and my sister, my parents. . . I listed them over and over and over by name. All these people love Rosie and they have not even met you. We are going to have such a fine time, my little kitty cat, I cooed,  loving and being loved this weekend by people that have loved me all my life and who have loved you all of yours.. Now let me tell you something about these people. And then I told her stories about my dolly David and my baby sister Margaret and my brother Tom. I explained to her that all these strangers were going to want to hold her and snuggle her and kiss her and she would have to do her best to cope with lots of new people holding here. Our family, I explained only had a few days with her so they would be drowning her in loving attention.

My infant was fussy at night when she had been at a social gathering at which many people asked to hold her, passing her around like a football. I knew being passed around to be held by many people, especially strangers, was stressful for her. I couldn't say no to folks asking to hold her. I understood people's longing to cradle young infants. I did, sometimes, limit how much and how many people got to hold my baby. For her wellbeing. I explained to her that for her christening weekend, we'd be with family the whole time and people were going to want to hold her a lot. I cooed soothingly about this, assuring her these baby holders loved her already.

I had such a fine time on that plane ride. I don't think I stopped talking for a single instant.

As I stood in the aisle to deplane, a woman tapped me on the shoulder.

"I was sitting directly behind you and your baby and I heard every word you said," she began. I was aghast. It had not occurred to me that anyone could hear me. I had imagined the plane engine noise prevented people seated in other rows from hearing me talk softly to my three-month-old. If it had occurred to me, I would have been silent. I never did this talking to Rosie in front of other people. I was embarrassed as this woman spoke. I wished the line would move and I could escape my shame.

"If I had known anyone could hear me, I would not have said a word," I said, deeply chagrined.

"I thought it was beautiful," she said. "I am ashamed of myself because I never talked to my babies like that and, listening to you, I realized that I should have. It made for a very special flight for me."

I was dumbstruck. Rosie's father had literally forbidden me to talk to her like I had spoken on that plane ride. He said only someone mentally unstable would try and talk to a baby about everything. He said I paid too much attention to the baby. I told him that our pediatrician, Dr. Murphy, had said that it was impossible to give an infant too much love or attention. Dr. Murphy said it was impossible to hold a baby too much. He-who-shall-not-be-named told me that if I thought he was going to fall for that crap, then it was proof that I was out of my mind. "No medical doctor would give such advice."

"I wish I were coming with you so I could meet all these people who already love your Rosie," the woman on the plane went on. "I am going to be watching you greet your father when we get in the terminal. I don't want this story to end."  I had explained to Rosie that her Grandpa would meet us at the gate. This was before airport security and people could meet loved ones at their arrival gates.

The hardest, the very hardest part, about having lost my Rosie as I have, was that in the beginning years of this heartache, I thought it meant that all my silly little memories like this were meaningless. I thought it meant that I wasn't a good mommy. I thought it meant that it had just been my imagination that I had ever done anything right for her. I had always felt that I had been my very best with her and, then, I told myself that if she could cut me out of her heart the way she has, well, then all my beliefs about what I had shared with her must be false. The real loss was thinking that I had lost this part of my being. It hurt so much to think I had not been doing what I thought I had been doing on that first plane ride with my baby.

Now, happily, I am finding that I was that person on the plane. That I am that person on the plane. I don't know why but, lately, I feel, once more like the woman who raked catalpa leaves and baked pies with my Rosie. She helped with the pies by sitting on the counter and sucking cinnamon sugar off the apple slices. She helped rake catalpa leaves by sitting in her walker and watching.

When Rosie and I got off that plane in Chicago, my whole family was there to meet her. A surprise for me and revealing their eagerness to meet the first member of her generation in our family. The first grandchild. The first niece. They had come in two cars because no one wanted to miss the first possible moment of knowing her. As we stood in a terminal at O'Hare, and I watched all the people I loved most in the world pass my darling delight from one doting relative to the next, I was silent but I was already preparing my next remarks for the next moment when I was alone with Rosie. "Your Uncle David dressed up just to come to the airport to meet you. Did you see that?" "I have never seen your grandpa look so happy or so proud as he did when he first looked at you, my dear."

Let me hold her. No let me. My turn. No, my turn.

David and Margaret both complained that I had not chosen them to be the godparents. They were right. I should have chosen them but he-who-shall-not-be-named refused to let children be Rosie's godparents. We has asked, instead, my brother Joe and his wife but I knew in my heart that David and Margaret were right to feel aggrieved. I knew that they would be the ones who would love her the most. And they have been.

I loved that flight and arrival.