Last night, David and I rung in the new year by watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Well, correction, I rung in the new year by watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with a sleeping David by my side. We did a Champagne toast at 8:30 p.m. because we new it was likely that we would not be around for the ceremonial ball drop—midnight seems like a foreign concept these days, one more likely to be associated with molars or breastfeeding than Champagne and high heels. So we did what we’re likely to do for many New Year’s Eves to come—we watched a movie on the couch.
Although it did push the limits in terms of time—I often feel that the editors are asleep if they let a movie last three hours—it was an appropriate, thought-provoking movie to watch after toasting to life and the things we’d like to see happen, change or improve in 2010. As Benjamin ages backwards and Daisy, his love, ages forwards they are forced to deal with only a short period where they are actually together at the same age. The predominant motifs throughout the movie are the idea that nothing lasts and the idea that we are meant to lose the people we love because how else would we really know how much they mean to us. As I watched Benjamin become an eight-year-old, a five-year-old, a toddler, and an infant, I couldn’t help but think of my own little Finny who is aging forward at an increasingly rapid speed. I often find myself taking mental snapshots, trying to hold onto the image of his beaming face with the six goofy teeth, of his stumbling, drunken man walk, or the sight of his little butt in the air when he sleeps. A photograph or a video doesn’t seem like enough; I want to store it directly in my brain. After watching this movie, I rifled through some of those mental snapshots, and I had one of those rare moments of contemplative quiet in my kitchen, just torn up over the bittersweet nature of life and age.
David and I toasted to a hope for a new baby in 2010. This should come as no surprise to many friends and relatives who have recently started flooding us with questions about number two. After the movie I started to really consider how wonderful it would be to have a new baby again. Up until recently a new baby was only conjuring images of sleepless nights and nursing bras, but last night, I remembered the magical part, the hopeful part, the awe, the innocence, the beautiful fragility of the wrinkly fingers. My sister-in-law just gave birth to their first baby this week, and in an email about baby boy ‘Van’ my brother-in-law said, “It’s been an amazing few days.” I had forgotten about the “amazing” part. Somehow I had gotten so caught up on the “inconvenience” part that I had forgotten about the magic and wonder and holiness of it all. Suddenly, not unlike the Grinch, I felt that my heart expanded right there in the kitchen as if saying I’m ready to include another in here.
But as quickly as it expanded, it recoiled again.
Share? My heart, my time, my energy, my lap? Finny and I are a pretty tight unit right now. We’re buds. He still calls me Daddy, but I know the translation. He and I have had some pretty special moments, and now, I want to screw things up by throwing another one in the mix? I’ve heard dog people say that once they had a child, the dog got ignored—what about the first child? What happens to him?
Just this week, my sister, who is expecting her second little girl in May, heard my twenty-one month old niece Jane lamenting in her crib, “Getting older…baby sister…getting older…baby sister.”
I think little Janie nailed what I’m feeling right now. The idea of a new baby is amazing, magical, exciting, but the idea that that means the first is getting older, growing up, staying out past curfew, leaving the nest, getting married—that part breaks my heart.
After dragging a sleeping David off the couch and up to bed, I asked him between teethbrushing, “How does your mom resist calling you all the time? Cradling you in her arms whenever she sees you?”
“Well, I’m an old, ugly dude now,” he said, “I’m not the little baby I once was.”
But Benjamin Button was born old and ugly and his Momma still loved him even when he was an old man. I have no doubt that when Finny is old and hairy like his Daddy, I’ll still want to wrap my arms tight around him. He’ll still be my world. The trouble is—I’ll no longer be his. Eventually, he won’t pull at my pant leg anymore or lay his head on my shoulder and say “Ahhh” or honk my nose with his tiny finger and thumb. Eventually he won’t want to be wherever I am, doing whatever I’m doing.
But I guess there’s not much I can do about this but sigh and continue to take those mental snapshots and well, perhaps make room for another. Maybe my crazy grandmother who birthed seventeen children wasn’t so crazy after all. Looking at her now with Momma’s eyes, my guess is she just couldn’t bear the thought of not having anyone around to honk her nose at a moment’s notice.
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