My name is George and I'm curious: what's the point?

No, you have to reciprocate. Like it or not, there’s a kid pro quo.

Other parents helped you kill a Sunday afternoon with your toddler, throwing a pirate party, a princess party, a bubble party or whatever, and now it’s your turn. Or, I should say, it’s my turn. The first birthday I could get away with skipping, but now I have no choice. Like it or not, unless I feel like violating this unspoken contract with the other parents in my circle and at my day care, I am throwing a party for my son’s second birthday.

Let’s just say things aren’t off to a good start. Cancer is involved. I know. I’ll get to that.

First, my dream was to never throw an elaborate or expensive or exhausting birthday party for a child too young to care or even remember it. That dream was crushed, as I mentioned, by the social contract.

I decided the only course of action was to suck it up and pay one of these indoor playground places to host us. It goes like this: I throw them some cash, they provide plates and forks, a ball pit, air-conditioning, a giant slide, a bucket of juice boxes and the satisfaction of knowing I have not shirked my mom duties. Again, my child won’t care — that dude just made his first poop in the potty; like he cares if he gets a sheet cake from the grocery store or a chocolate ganache likeness of Thomas the Tank Engine from a bakery that sells $7 cupcakes. Like I said, these parties are payback for all the genuine fun and amusement I’ve had at the expense and inconvenience of other parents.

Now, how does cancer make its way into this story?

Two months in advance, I book the Saturday of his birthday. Plans are made, invitations (OK, e-vites, sorry) are sent, and what do you know? This indoor playground lets me know they double-booked my time slot. I’m out, the other family is in, here’s your deposit back, so long and farewell.

Obviously, there was nothing to do at this point but hang up the phone, get insanely upset, be fully aware that this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone and also take a moment to ponder how horribly I’ve failed. All I had to do was throw a stupid party, like all the other moms do without incident. But I have no luck and no social graces, and this proves it. More self-flagellating to frost the teetering, tiered, rising cake of self-doubt.

Hell hath no fury like a toddler mom scorned. Let me tell you, my Yelp review was going to be none too kind. This is the only petty revenge I had for the horrible wrong this playground did me. They would pay. OK, this would be a waste of my time and probably have no effect on their business. And it would never answer the question: Why me? Why me and not the other family who booked the same time?

I fantasized about showing up at my time anyway. That would show them. They would have dueling parties and perhaps a fire hazard. They had my deposit, and I would have my party, on my day, at my time, their mistake.

That’s when the owner called, the mother of a girl a year older than my son. She said she was sorry, that this had never happened before, that she started the party playground to help busy moms, to make things amazing and memorable for the kids, to give herself something meaningful to do after she was diagnosed with cancer. That’s right, and that’s when I cried. And she cried. And she said things had fallen through the cracks since her treatment and her sister had stepped in to help out.

She offered me the 10 a.m. spot. Mimosas would be nice, she said. I could serve bagels. They would throw in some balloons and an extra hour for my trouble.

There are times when the universe goes, “Here’s your gift bag.” And you open it to find something more lasting than a painted face or a Curious George sticker. The theme of my son’s party this year is obvious. Perspective.

Your online “friends” have more community, more sisterhood, more fun than you do. Science can now prove it.

When it comes to parenthood, all the children on Facebook do adorable, precocious things with both pets and instruments. These angels wear stain-free sailor suits. They make sand castles, kiss puppies and giggle with rash free cheeks. That’s why every time you sign off, you feel just a little bit depressed by the vividness of their joie. Their brightness dampens you. This is something you’ve always known, but now science has an explanation.

Thanks to researchers at Stanford, we pretty much have proof that social networking is bumming us out.

Okay, I’m extrapolating here, but what they found (in a paper titled “Misery Has More Company Than People Think”) is that as human beings, we tend to overestimate how much fun our peers are having, while underestimating their negative experiences.

After perusing the photo album “Jordan Turns Two,” you will never know the cake wasn’t moist, the pizza made everyone gassy and Jordan had to be carried out like a surfboard when the pony peed on his shoes. You will never know most of the kids left sunburned and at least three viral infections were spread like cheap dip.

Personally, I don’t post much, but I lurk. I watch. I silently compare myself to these gleeful visions, especially to other moms, whose online family portraits have often been shot through a lens of manufactured, carefully produced joy and spiked with a dash of selective storytelling. No matter. It still sends me into a mood.

It’s not that I don’t have moments of transcendent joy, it’s that I don’t know how to share them.

No, not spiritually, I mean I literally can’t figure out how to make photo albums or upload images efficiently. Or, as I’m on the verge of mastering some major misrepresentation of the totality of my life with one kick-ass shot of my toddler’s dimples, he actually needs me to stop him from tumbling down the front stairs. I have neither the time nor the aptitude to fake you out.

I guess I don’t get the spiritual part either.

Last night, when my son got home from daycare, he pointed down the block, so I walked with him. He ran ahead. He ran four straight blocks, his hair flying up, little shoes smacking the pavement, going nowhere, just toward the flat-out euphoria of his body moving through space. I welled up and thought remember this remember this remember this.

Sure, he cried when I washed his face in the bath later, and left most of his rice on the floor, and whined when I put his arms in the sleeves of his pajamas, but I had that moment.

The thing is, that moment is boring. In fact, I’m sorry for boring you with it. If there’s a way of sharing the beauty without sounding braggy or hacky, I haven’t figured it out.

I do know this: I rarely feel happier or more connected after checking FB or Twitter.

There is often documentation of some social function from which I suddenly feel horribly excluded.

Intellectually, I know it’s just an illusion. Stanford proved it. No one is as happy as I think they are, and of course, I understand nobody posts a shot of their positive herpes test with a

Armed with this new information, I can at least adjust for the human condition. I can assume your reunion was 33% less “awesome” than it looks, and that your kid probably crayons the wall after eating a frozen dinner you failed to chronicle for an album titled “Sodium won’t kill him.”

This column originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Not making fun. Bless his heart.

Step aside, infamous Indonesian smoking baby, there’s a new gross-you-out and get-you-incensed Internet sensation in town. It’s the obese Chinese toddler!

Perhaps you have seen photos of Lu Hao, a 132-pound 3-year-old who eats three bowls of rice at a time and refuses to walk to school. It’s compelling stuff, the swollen kid crammed into a raft, floating in a pool, the massive baby gnawing on a chicken bone or being hoisted by his sweating, regular-sized dad as his girth tests the tensile strength of a T-shirt.

If you see the story anywhere online, don’t even bother reading the comments section. This is very predictable, the kind of kid story that causes parents to do one of two things: A) lots of pontificating about how mom and dad need to take charge and are actually abusive in their neglectful/idiotic parenting or B) feel sorry for the child and post about their pity, which causes group A to attack group B. These two groups will go round and round while missing the point: This fat baby is onto something, and I don’t just mean a steel-reinforced Bumbo chair.

I don’t know exactly what Bethenny Frankel does or is, but I know her name, I know she has written a couple of bestselling books, and I know she regularly trends on Twitter and has been featured on five reality shows, two that focus solely on her life.

Forget about the Strasberg Institute or the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Skip Juilliard, practicing your guitar, attending classes at Second City or even going to culinary school.

Just have yourself some brawls like the “Desperate Housewives” or the cast members of “Jersey Shore.” In other words, embrace your total lack of impulse control, and you will be on the road to fame and fortune.

If you find you can’t keep your mouth shut, you might end up getting punched like Snooki and become an overnight sensation. If you can’t restrain yourself — from toppling a table at a party, screaming, conniving, drinking, vicious gossiping, smoking, having inappropriate sex, having a zillion kids or, in the case of little Lu, eating — we are going to be very interested in you. You could be five bowls of rice from your own series.

Discipline gets plenty of lip service, but if you want to “trend” in our culture, don’t call a therapist when you can’t control your impulses. Call CAA. I think they are opening a special “Impulse Control” division because that’s how profitable it is to completely give in to your urges, at least if there’s a camera there to capture it. Only suckers bother with training, practice and long, boring, expensive educations that mainly lead to working mundane jobs while hacking away at manuscripts that will never sell. You know who sells books? The Situation. He sells books, and last I checked, he hadn’t “paid dues” or “even read a book” himself.

If TLC doesn’t get ahold of this obese baby, they are missing out on a chance for a docu-soap that could fit nicely into their lineup, the way Lu’s diaper fits perfectly over a queen-size bed. “Little People, Big Baby” could be the story of two little people struggling to raise a giant child. Look out for “The Littlest Biggest Loser,” in which Lu competes in weight-loss challenges with other chubby babies from around the world.

Lu could move in with the Duggars or be disciplined by Jo Frost or perhaps team up with the smoking baby (who has finally quit smoking, by the way) to live in a house on the Jersey Shore with Bethenny, her new family, a few MTV Teen Moms and an aging Puck from “The Real World.” A swirl of ids could provide new catchphrases, books, spin-off shows and viewing parties.

This fat baby is already learning something important about making his mark. The only thing he really has to worry about? The next 500-pound 4-year-old knocking him off his top spot. Or the smoking baby picking up again. Fame is a hard habit to break.

* This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

"I can barely deal with my cocker spaniels"

It was worth having a kid just to know that Oprah didn’t lie to me. I thought she was pandering her ass off when she’d stare into the camera at her audience of stay at home moms and tell them, “You have the hardest job on earth.”

C’mon, you’re better than that Oprah, I’d think to myself. Eye rolling became one of my Favorite Things.

Here’s what I didn’t know: Whether or not you like gambling – and I never have­­ – when you’re a mom every hand is all in. The stakes are painfully high and there’s no leaving the table. Ever.

If I tune out at my radio job, maybe I mispronounce Fallujah or Jermajesty. I make a mistake on baby duty? My kid drowns in a bucket of water and I end up on “Dateline.” They replay the same thirty seconds of footage of me from happier times over and over in slow motion, laughing and kissing what used to be my baby. A grave and deliberate voice-over will introduce the grisly tale, which will be titled something like “Drowning in Guilt.”

At work, maybe I say something spectacularly mundane, at worst, maybe I slip and drop an F bomb and get fired. That’s bad, sure, but not as bad as turning my back for a second at the park just long enough for my son to shove a leaf in his mouth and asphyxiate.

Every moment, I’m one choking hazard away from a cautionary tale.

I get distracted as a mom, and next thing you know I leave my baby in the car thinking I’ve dropped him off at daycare, he overheats in a tragic and stupid accident, and I’m right back on “Dateline.” One sloppy baby-proofing job and my boy is guzzling nail polish remover and chomping fistfuls of Ambien thinking, “These Skittles are kind of lame. I’m tired. Nighty-night forever.”

Aside from the unimaginable pain of losing one’s child, I’ll be that lady – the lady whose baby drowned in two inches of water in a bucket. For life, I’ll be the mom who let her kid choke on a leaf because she was checking email on her iPhone. There’s nothing worse you can be in this life than a bad mom, so if you let your kid overdose on Ambien, you have a serious PR problem to go with a lifetime of guilt and loss. And it’s going to be hard to get another prescription.

As a working mom, I can honestly say that going to “work” is like a vacation, because the worst that can happen there really isn’t that bad compared to the ever-present possibility of turning my back for two seconds as my son flips off the changing table into a long-term coma. Working is quarter slots, sipping a watered-down drink, just killing time until the buffet opens. Being responsible for a human life, the one nature has designed you to love and protect, is being pot committed, every second. You may have a pair of threes, but you just keep sliding chips into the pot until you’ve mortgaged everything you have and pawned your gold teeth to stay in the game. You may have to hit the emotional ATM all night long, but you have no choice, nervous as the size of that pot is making you. You can sweat and fidget all you want, but you just can’t leave. It’s like an awful Eagles song.

Sorry I thought you were pandering, Oprah.

I just assumed you had to suck up to moms, that you owed it to them for their boundless devotion, for their categorical embracing of a tycoon with a pack of Cocker Spaniels and servants.

I assumed Oprah was just making moms feel meaningful as they defrosted chickens, vowed to get to Curves to lose those last 20 pounds of baby weight, ordered diapers in bulk online, vacuumed partially masticated cheese puffs out of couch cushions, poured capfuls of detergent on mounds of laundry, and prepared to climb into the mini-van for either a grocery run or to drive into a tree.

Yeah, yeah, I would think. I know it’s probably dull and trying being a mom. I know you have to shape young minds and the children are our future and all. I know you have to set boundaries and make rules and be a bummer and please and thank you over and over and eat your vegetables. I know. But is parenting the hardest job? Wouldn’t that be running a Fortune 500 company, sitting on the Supreme Court, dismantling bombs, air traffic controlling, or being a theoretical physicist, chess master or cellist or something?

Now I get it. The stakes. That’s what I couldn’t have understood before. Cellist. Cellist, my ass.

Sure, the average 23 year-old mom might not consider every grim possibility, cause she hasn’t watched as much Oprah as I have, but I do.

Yes, There’s something about the combination of aching boredom (at least at the baby stage, sorry, newborns aren’t that scintillating all the time) punctuated by moments of transcendent parental joy, all coated with a thick paste of danger and shellacked with a coat of exhausting hyper-vigilance that is unmatched by any other “job.” Coal mining, yeah, that’s boring and grueling and dangerous, but if you screw up, you don’t kill your kid. So parenting is basically like coal mining without the lunch break.

And this is why I shouldn’t write Mother’s Day cards.

That is so much darker than I mean it to sound, because only if you have something of value does the losing of it haunt you.

Being a mother is everything great I thought it would be: I don’t sweat the small stuff, my priorities are reshuffled in a good way, I don’t waste as much time worrying about who likes me or whether or not I’m good at things, I’ve experienced the refreshing lack of self-involvement that comes from total focus on another human being. It still feels foreign, like a play princess outfit I’m trying on at the store every time I say it, but “mom” really is the title I’m proudest to have, and when the kid clings to me because he’s scared and I’m comforting, I do feel a rush of achievement, because I’m that person for him. I just have to get used to the idea that while I used to see myself as a nickel poker kind of girl, I’m a high roller now.

Don't argue with the bell curve

The way I was going to dodge all the stereotypical haggard new mom behaviors, well, that didn’t really happen. It didn’t happen at all.

Yeah, I hate the sound of my own voice saying things like, “I just want to shave my legs. Is that such a luxury?” Hearing myself make jokes about the spit-up on my shirt makes me want to spit up on the rest of my shirt.

It’s not cute and it’s not adorable to complain about getting peed on or about being a new mother with severe personal hygiene deficiencies. You know why? Because it’s not special. Guess what: You are not the first mother to leave the house with baby drool on your shoulder or with mismatched shoes, and neither am I.

It’s one thing to be a bad mother (in fact, it’s probably the worst thing you can do, and no one will forgive you for that shit), but it’s another one to be hacky in your new maternity complaints. I have not been able to avoid the latter, and only time will tell about the former.

Hold on.

All of this self-deprecation is getting in the way of me bragging. Give me a second, I’ll be boasting about myself soon enough, but let me just finish the self-loathing so I can feel better about the boasting.

Not only do I find myself making all the stock mom complaints (tired, hard to find time for sex, hair not washed, stomach not flat, doing laundry all day, no free time, no girl time, no time with grown ups, back hurts from holding baby, arms hurt from holding baby, asleep by 9 p.m., lost track of world events, baby sitters are so expensive, going to the movie costs $9,000 now, you get the idea) I’m in serious danger of falling into another cliché, the competitive preschool waiting list thing. That’s right, after yapping about how I’m never going to be one of those despicable hover parents who need to get their genius child into the most elite preschool that charges you $17,000 a year for “creative play,” after insisting I was sending Buster to the $60 a month pre-school run by the park and recreation department, this bullshit preschool thing I was outrunning caught me by the scruff. It caught me and now it’s forcing me to go to open houses and do research and figure out what they mean by “co-op” and “Waldorf.”

It was all well and good to flaunt my working class roots, to insist on sending my kid to the same kind of free city preschool that taught me so much about chalk drawing and swinging, but the very impulse that snares all the other normally reasonable parents tagged me. What if I screw my kid by going all cheapo on his first school? Although logic dictates that a tricycle is a tricycle and any place that doesn’t allow him to swallow marbles and eat Laffy Taffy for snack time is pretty much the same as the next, I can’t be sure. What if there really is some voodoo magic in those fancy schools that enables pupils to tackle concertos and theorems while speaking multiple languages and excelling at Irish clog dancing? If I don’t place him in a learning environment that properly conveys “conflict resolution,” will he end up kicking the shit out of people and telling me to go fuck myself? What if?

So, I turned my back on the park and rec school for a moment and went to my first private pre-school open house (well, half of it, I was rolling on “mom time”). I must say, though I didn’t understand most of the information about learning styles, I was truly impressed by the diversity of the other parents on the tour. There were white people, and there were super white people. There were even a couple insanely white people, so at least Buster would be exposed to all manner of white people.

As far as bragging goes, while I might be failing at the job of resisting parental peer pressure when it comes to preschool, I’m already pretty okay with mediocrity.

If intelligence, or physical abilities or appearance, language skills, coordination, if all of these things follow a standard distribution, if most babies cluster around the mean in terms of when they crawl or walk or talk or get teeth or conjugate verbs, it’s unlikely my baby will be an outlier in any area, statistically speaking. And so far, I don’t find him to be many standard deviations from the mean (other than in terms of size, because he has a giant, outlying pumpkin head and is unusually tall and heavy, or in the parlance of toddlers at the park, he “is fat like an elephant”). As far as the type of skills you brag about to other parents, I’m going to say hello to mediocrity and give it a warm bear hug.

My boy is about ten months old, and he doesn’t exactly crawl yet. He just rolls across the floor or scoots on his belly. He has a normal amount of teeth. He kind of says “mamamammam” but he ain’t referring to me as he babbles. He sees the cat and says “kah” or “kee kah.”

So far, he hasn’t set the world on fire with his precocity. I assume he will not be scooting to the prom on his belly, so I’m not worried. Sure, there’s something fun about having the kid who crawls at five months, walks at six, talks in full sentences at a year, writes in iambic pentameter at two. It’s undeniably cool having one of those stunning children about whom versions of the same story are always told (“We were at the mall, and a photographer asked if we wanted to get her into modeling” – “We were out to lunch, and an agent said he’d be perfect for commercials” – you’ve surely heard versions of the show-stopping baby story, the baby who is almost constantly begged to become a child actor by strangers in show business promising residuals and college funds).

I’d eat the cheeks off my boy and he’s adorable, but mama knows he’s not so far from the mean.

When my parents said that they just wanted me to be happy, I kind of believed them but empirical evidence showed me that they weren’t exactly bummed out when I won the spelling bee or the state poetry contest. Side note: earnest poetry written by a nine year-old from the point of view of a concentration camp inmate might win a contest or two, but could also be the worst prose ever written.

I knew where my bread was buttered, and in the land of American Jews, it’s buttered on the side of achievement. I don’t hold it against my people, because my grandparents came here as immigrants and were thus obsessed with public displays of “making it” here in the land of opportunity, but it sucks when the only way to stand out or be unabashedly loved is to become a concert cellist or chess master.

And having only been a mother for less than a year, I already understand the urge to see your child as faster and smarter, to squint and strain looking for ways your child is edging toward the righteous tail of that bell curve instead of hugging the midline, with all the other short stacks, just another pebble on baby beach.

For me, I’m resisting. I’m embracing the notion that Buster, like most of our kids, will be mostly average, and to look into their faces expecting otherwise is to hang a photo of parental disappointment on the locker of their psyches.

So do we go into debt to send our toddlers to the “best” preschool in town because we want to give them every advantage, or are we secretly hoping to maximize the odds of their Harvard admission so we can brag about it later and throw around some false modesty classics like, “I don’t know where he gets his smarts! Or, “How we’re going to afford it, I have no idea, but what can you do? He just scores so well on tests.”

Trying to tie this shit together is like trying to shove everything you’re going to need for the afternoon into a diaper bag, but I usually attempt that, so here goes.

One of my first epiphanies as a mother is that I am not unique. The bliss, the boredom, the sense of grief for the old life, the panic over poop color and rashes, the elation over milestones, the wanting to drive away and never come back between bouts of wanting to stare at his tiny face forever, this is basically how it is. I didn’t break the mom mold, and instead of needing to be different, I find deep comfort in being the same. While the banality of my maternal concerns can bore me, so can a good night’s sleep and a bowl of broccoli, and I need those things.

It follows that accepting my child for who he is, whether he walks at ten months or sixteen, whether he says “kitty cat” or “domesticated carnivorous mammal,” will also be comforting in the long run. Most moms, most babies, toddlers, tweens, teens, young adults, old people, most of us will be unexceptional, we’ll all need buckets of love and acceptance just because, and not just because we have an eight-octave range or can dunk.

The thing I notice about Buster, the thing that makes me want to brag though I usually manage to shut up about it, is that he smiles at strangers. And sometimes he smiles at the front door. Or at the “domesticated carnivorous mammal” whose hair he is clutching in his fat little fists. He smiles. I can’t believe I’m not even slightly full of crap when I say that this thrills me and makes me more proud than anything. If my child is a happy person, if his little soul is peaceful and his moods moderately mild, if he enjoys himself and seems to interact well with others – that will be his inner self enrolling in Harvard and I’ll be kvelling. Happiness has eluded me like the cat (mostly) eludes the baby. I grab at it, I eyeball it, I grasp it momentarily by the tail but it out runs me and scurries away before I can get it to curl up on my lap.

I hope I won’t ever need Buster to do anything extraordinary, but if he keeps up the smiling, and by extension, the overall sense of joie, even his happiness is only average, that will be good enough for me. And much cheaper than a Waldorf school.

I finished the first draft of my book this week. The baby, well, that rough draft will be on my hard-drive for years to come. I hope Buster will be compelling, rich and hard to put down, but if he ends up in the remainder bin, I guess that will also be on me.

Like having a baby, writing a book is something I thought I could never do, even though I’ve been a writer since I was 19, even though I’ve been turning out copy for years, I didn’t see how I could be an actual “author” a title that, like “mother” seemed too saintly and profound to ever belong to me. There are other parallels, although while babies and books are both challenging and life-changing, the baby at least smiles at me, whereas the book deadline mostly just glowered.

When I was writing the early chapters, sneaking off to the library in four-hour increments and pumping breast milk in the car of the library parking lot, I often wondered what I had gotten myself into, a sentiment that I assume other new moms feel from time to time about motherhood itself.

This morning, without the book crying to be picked up and rocked and fed, I took the baby to the park, where I realized that what mostly happens at the park in the early hours involves vagrants collecting cans and old people doing what appear to be very specific and very strange workout routines. As Buster looked up at the trees chewing on his lip, an elderly woman strapped her elastic exercise band around the slide in the playground for some squats. She eyeballed us like, “What the hell are you doing at my gym?” and we looked back like, “Listen lady, we got a lot of hours to kill so deal with it.” Meanwhile, an even older dude stretched his hamstrings out on the swing set.

Buster is decent company. He doesn’t just smile with his gummy mouth, but seems to express joy with his entire body. At just under six months old, I take this as a good sign that he’s turning out all right so far. On the other hand, he is easily bored, and taking care of him is often a matter of switching his position every five minutes, moving him from station to station at home (the ExerSaucer, the play mat, the pack and play, the bouncy seat, and back to one) or engaging him with various toys, songs and positions while out and about. Either he isn’t the kind of kid, or isn’t at the stage, to amuse himself for long periods of time.

It dawns on me that you can be a good mom, attached and in love, while also finding this time in your child’s life mind numbingly dull at moments.

I’ll shut up about comparing the book and the baby, because that can only lead to cloying metaphors about chapters ending and the future being unwritten, and I don’t want to sound like that Natasha Bedingfield song I’m embarrassed to like. I hope the book is good. While it’s a memoir about being pregnant, it turns out that the process for me wasn’t just about dealing with acid reflux and the like, but about exposing the other stuff that comes up and burns, the issues about my own mother, whether I would turn out like her, how motherhood like my old clothes, might not ever fit right.

Writing this blog helped, the posts were like notes I kept along the way. Still, the term “mommy blogger” makes me gag more than morning sickness, and I’m not sure why.

When I was a columnist, and wrote about being single, I hated being called “singles columnist” because it seemed so reductive and belittling, and I was just writing about my life, which at the time, involved dating. Now, I’m still writing about my experience, and I guess that makes me a “mommy blogger,” and I guess it’s snooty to think to myself, “I’m not some lady who had a kid and now thinks she’s Irma Freaking Bombeck; I was a writer before.” And let’s face it, the good mommy bloggers have figured out how to make money from their online enterprise, and I certainly haven’t done that yet, which makes me an amateur baby exploiter and only two-bit mommy blogger at best.

Only now, I’m dangerously close to also being an author. Because books kind of raised me, when my mother shut her bedroom door and left with me with a stack of them, I only hope the book I birthed can do the same for someone else, just keep her company for awhile. Or him. Whatever. I gotta sell books.

As for Buster, he didn’t kill my dream or turn me into a bore, as I sometimes feared. For one thing, I was already a bore, and for another, having a baby not only gave me new material to exploit (why else have one?) it also gave me the discipline to just hack away, a page at a time, knowing there wasn’t some brilliant, perfect, literary masterpiece out in the ether that I could never capture, but just the simple things I have to say, pedestrian as they may be, the best I can do and still make it home in time to nurse the baby and relieve the sitter.

When I had a child, I lost the right to show up only when I feel inspired. While that’s not something I would have thought to put on my baby registry, it’s a gift I love almost as much as I love my ExerSaucer. And I love my fucking ExerSaucer.

At least I didn't take one of these.

I was full of pronouncements before I had this baby.

While new moms seemed to whine incessantly about not having time to shower, in a triumph of will and excellent planning, I was going to be the impeccably groomed mother of a newborn. I would make time for blow-outs and pedicures and basic hygiene, because I’m vain, own 17 tubes of lip gloss, refuse to wear too-tight Juicy Couture sweat pants and be all sacrifice-y and bland.

Cut to me sitting around in my own filth with breast milk stains on my husband’s giant plaid shirt, spit-up on my jeans and hair so dirty that when I finally went to the salon, the hairdresser asked me, with more genuine curiosity than disdain, “How long has it been since you’ve washed your hair?”

“Maybe four days?” I lied, before playing the new mom card. And there I was, in that second, manifesting the cliché and flying right in the puffy face of my own naïve declaration. On top of which, I had to ask the hairdresser to hurry it up, the sitter was waiting. The sitter was waiting. This is my life now. I’m this person.

It’s not unusual for me to take a hooker shower in front of the bathroom sink with a couple of baby wipes and almost no shame.

Like I said, I made a lot of pronouncements.

I also proclaimed I would never be one of those moms who has entire conversations about my child’s poop. So, last night I Googled “green poop” on my iPhone while nursing and have now had lengthy conversations with several moms about the causes and potential dangers of green poop. (Just so you know, poop is only concerning if it’s white, black or red, according to Babycenter.com.)

Now, I get it, I get the poop talk. As a new mom, I’m just trying to do right by Buster and he is very limited in his modes of communication. At ten weeks old, he has to let his poop do the talking. We have even photographed the green poop, lest our idea of green and our pediatrician’s differ. Mint green? Forest green? Mossy green? Let’s break out or camera and show you the exact hue. On my camera, there is more than one picture of my child’s poop. This is my life now. I’m this person.

To anyone who would listen, I announced that you would never catch me in any kind of Mommy and Me bullshit, or one of these New Moms support groups at the Pump Station. Now, I’m desperate to fit one into my schedule. If you have been a mother for even one day longer than I have, you know things I don’t and you have things to teach me. Whereas I used to assume I would never fit in with women who would populate these classes, that I would never be one of the stroller lugging mom masses who give a shit about the tensile strength of swaddle cloths or the most effective diaper cream, now I just want some more mom friends. These days, it’s not unusual for me to practically molest moms I see on the street, at restaurants, anywhere, peppering them with questions: Do you like that baby carrier? Does it hurt your back? How long did you breast feed? How long does your baby sleep? When did she start sleeping through the night? What exactly is a Sleep Sheep? Did your baby ever get a rash on her cheeks? What pediatrician do you go to?

I start feverishly taking notes about whatever sleep schedule DVD or book she says was the magical sleep maker. I buy it all.

When I get a mom in my clutches that seems to have her shit together, I don’t stop at the easy questions, I pry her for information about vaccines and anything else she seems open enough to reveal.

Just like the new kid in school who is trying to fit in, I’m starting to inch up to the mom crowd, to figure out what they wear and how they act and think. The clerk at the Pump Station told me that the Monday afternoon support group is empty, because all the moms go the Mommy and Me movie over at the Grove that day. Get there early on Tuesdays, she added, because it’s standing room only. And I realize, the moms travel in a flock, and maybe I’d be better off getting in formation than flying solo.

If I go where they go, maybe I can learn what they know. Part of me is still wary of joining, because I want to do everything my own way, but I’m starting to think my own way sucks and that there is an inherent wisdom to the flock. Besides, in every social situation I’ve ever been in, I always find the one other girl who feels like a complete outsider and we become friends, even if that bond is at least in part based on judging everyone else who seems happier and better adjusted.

What I’m saying is this: yes, I am sitting here in public (very public, at the Public Library, in fact, where a girl can look homeless and stink a little without bothering any of the registered sex offenders) wearing what is really kind of a nightgown with ankle socks and sneakers. This is my life now. I don’t even care. I’d rather not run into any ex-boyfriends, but essentially I don’t care.

I said a lot of things before.

I said I would never use a picture of my child as my profile photo anywhere, because I would rather lose my identity in more subtle ways. While I’ve resisted, my cell phone wallpaper photo is just Buster, no me, no dad, just the boy. That is a gateway baby photo, which can only lead to more serious use of the baby’s picture to stand in for my own. It’s happening.

Only stone cold bores and anti-intellectual twats spoke for their infants, imbuing them with all kinds of adult thoughts and feelings they could never, ever possess, the way a spinster announces that Mr. Fluffy loves “Friday Night Lights” but doesn’t care for the sound of the mailman’s voice. That would never be me, I said.

That was before my soul took a dip in maternal hormones and dried off only to find it appropriate to say, “Buster has a crush on you” or “Buster is flirting with you” or “Buster loves Jimmy Page guitar solos” or “Buster just can’t wait to see grandpa” or “Buster feels so dapper in his cardigan” or “Buster just loves his bath.” Like I know what the fuck that guy thinks or feels.

The fact is: I don’t show shit. I literally don’t know shit about shit.

I don’t know why poop is green or if it matters, I don’t know what goes on in my child’s mind, if anything, or how best to plan his nap and feeding schedule so he sleeps through the night, or when to stop swaddling him or what causes a baby rash or if I should really stop eating milk or nuts or soy or whether he really needs all of his vaccines on one day or if he’s fussier than other babies or cries more or sleeps less or if, in fact, he is totally average. Do I hold him too much or not enough? I just don’t know.

It’s like I met a guy, fell in love at first sight, flew to Vegas to get married that day, and woke up a couple of months later to find I was madly in love with a stranger.

I know I love the child, because when I listen to John Denver songs and look down at him I cry right onto his onesie with a feeling of euphoria I can only call narcotic (later I cry because my stomach still hurts from the C-section and I just want to put him down, but he needs to be rocked all the livelong day).

Yeah, I’m certain I love him, I just don’t know him, or if there is much to know. I’m not totally sure how to make him happy yet, or how best to care for him, so until I get that down, which may be never, all of my pronouncements are out the window.

When he smiles up at me in the morning, squirming on his changing table, it’s like a shot of morphine right to my heart. I spend the rest of the day chasing the dragon.

Buster is one month old today.

And I think I am finally ready to tell the story about the rabbi, my estranged mother and a bag of shit, and how this only partially holy trinity converged at my Koreatown home one Tuesday afternoon.

When Buster was eight days old, we invited a rabbi over to circumcise the kid. My husband – not a Jew – was okay with the snip snip but thought it was creepy to turn the whole situation into a party. Fair enough. So it was going to be just the two of us, until he started suggesting it might be nice to have my mom there, my mom who I haven’t talked to in about a year.

Just before the baby was born, a package arrived addressed to the unborn child from “Grandma Strasser.” Inside were a hand-knit orange stuffed dinosaur, a tiny sweater with pockets and a hood, and a powder blue blanket. Though she hadn’t called me since my brother told her I was pregnant, it looked as though she had been knitting ever since.

There was a note to the baby that simply said, “Grandma can’t wait to meet you.”

I cried my fucking eyes out with that orange dinosaur in my hand because I was hormonal, and it was a week before my baby was due, and my mother was reaching out in her own stilted way and while it would be nice if she could say “sorry” or “I miss you,” I stood on my stoop fully aware that some people speak with yarn.

That woman let me down in such a profound way that just the sound of her clearing her throat too loudly makes me want to toss her purse out of a moving car. Try as I may, I haven’t been able to process the backlog of anger at her even after all these years, which has made me an inpatient, puerile, irrational daughter. Yes, the woman put me on many a Greyhound bus when I was in elementary school, but I don’t know how to stop making her pay, so I just stop talking to her.

It’s kind of a mom sabbatical. I take one every few years or so.

Somehow, between the extinct knit creature’s baleful look and the post C-section narcotics, my husband convinced me that we should invite my mom to the bris.

Also, when we went to the rabbi’s website, there was a check list of things we needed for the procedure, gauze pads, kosher wine, ointment and other items the acquisition of which would have been impossible as I could still barely get up and down and my husband couldn’t leave me alone with the baby. I was a mommy and I needed my mommy. I really needed my mommy.

My husband called her for me, and as he predicted, she accepted the invite on very short notice, offered to pick up everything we needed plus a platter of bagels and lox. I could hear her voice over the phone, and the tone conjured something like enthusiasm, maybe even chirpiness. It heartened me that my chronically depressed mom would not only sound psyched, but also drive five hours from Vegas to see her new grandson at the drop of a yarmulke, salve in hand.

So, with the rabbi and my mother heading our way for the afternoon ceremony, my bowels decide, after having been removed and put back into place during surgery, to finally work after several days.

The resulting poop clogs the decrepit toilet in our old house.

At this point, I can’t bend, lift or twist. So, I sit there on the potty with my head in my hands just trying to think my way out of this mess. The rabbi and my mother are arriving in half an hour, my one-week old son is stirring in the next room with his dad, and I am both hovering over – and up – Shit’s Creek.

I am not now nor have I ever been one of those women who impress guys by being really open and carefree about their gas and bodily functions. Even writing this makes me vaguely uncomfortable. I wish I was that fart-in-your-face girl sometimes (I honestly hate even typing the word F-A-R-T), but there came a point in my 20s when I realized two things: I don’t dance and never will, and I don’t enjoy talking about gas or bowel movements, and never will. When I embraced being fundamentally inhibited, it changed my life. I am not the girl pretending to think gas is funny or grimacing my way through the Conga line at a wedding. I’m the one that insists she doesn’t poop, but instead excretes waste through her skin, like a frog. I’m the one finishing off your dinner roll and wine while YOU dance at the wedding, because YOU enjoy it. In summary, while I don’t relish being a pooper, being a “party pooper” suits me just fine. While I have few, if any, emotional boundaries, I make up for it by being private, almost proper, about the physical realm.

Never have I indicated in any way to husband, up until this moment, that anything noxious ever comes out of my ass, but now I’m fucked.

“Baby,” I yell, sheepishly, “I have a problem.” That’s when my husband rushes to the bathroom door. I start sobbing because I’m freaked out and exhausted and I don’t want this magical Jewish ritual to be marred by the smell of feces wafting through the house, my feces, and I certainly don’t want my husband seeing, smelling or experiencing my waste in any way, but I’m out of options. I scrub my hands like I can cleanse myself of this whole situation.

He hands me the baby, and runs to the garage for some sort of drain “snake.” I try to place my thoughts elsewhere, so that I can easily delete this memory in the future. I bounce the boy and look out the window at Koreatown.

There is some running back and forth from the garage to the front door, to the bathroom in back. I hear him call the plumber, who can’t make it until tomorrow. He calls the hardware store to see if they have a larger snake; they do not. I bounce the boy and watch the clock. Fifteen minutes to go.

It is at this moment that I glance outside the window again and see my husband running gingerly along the side of the house holding a bag of shit.

It takes my mind a moment to register the image (again, drugs, lack of sleep, major surgery, sudden life-changing transition to motherhood, heavy emotional family issues about to be addressed, impending removal of my baby’s foreskin).

There it is. My husband walk-running around the side of the house carrying – as one might a goldfish won from a county fair – a bag of toilet water and the offending, drain-clogging crap that he had somehow liberated from the bowel.

Nothing says your life has crossed over like seeing your husband carry a bag of your shit.

If one could die of cringing, I would have.

This is all my fault, I tell myself, for not better orchestrating my life, for having a breech baby and a C-section, for moving to this old house just weeks before the baby’s birth because I couldn’t make up my mind any sooner, for all the chaos of unpacked boxes and curtains not hung. I want everything to be slender and clean and tucked away and predictable, but I can’t go back and I smell Buster’s fuzzy head just to get a hit of the good stuff.

This, too, shall pass, I tell myself, just as that poop did through my colon.

Until now, I didn’t even discuss going number one with my husband and now I’m anxiously running to the front door to find out how it went when he hand-delivered a bag of number two to the trash can out front.

“No big deal,” he says, trying to pass it off. “All fixed.”

A tacit agreement that this didn’t happen is made.

Before the rabbi arrives, a bearded man right out of Central Casting, my mom shows up. She has been driving for hours, so her lime green linen shirt is a bit rumpled, but I can tell she has dressed up. She is carrying a plastic platter of bagels, cream cheese and lox for fifteen, as well as a bag with doubles and triples of all the items on the rabbi’s list. When she opens the door, I hug her and point to the baby, sleeping in his bouncy seat perched on the sofa. She strains to keep a neutral expression on her face, but tears are landing on her shirt. She doesn’t make a move to wipe them away, because her face is still trying to say, “This is no big deal.” I hand her the baby and she cries right onto his blankie, which she must have recognized from her months of knitting it.

“He’s beautiful,” she says. And she manages to sound a way she never has before. Maternal.

And just like that, we make small talk about Buster, his dimples, will his eye color change, did he know what terrible thing was about to happen to his pee-pee. We have a nosh. Like the unspoken agreement never to discuss the contents of the bag, my mother and I silently conspire to act as though the past year, and many of the years before that, have not been crap.

The rabbi arrives, and dips a cloth into some wine while gathering the four of us to talk about the “covenant” and the idea that a circumcision happens on the baby’s eighth day, because there is no eighth day of the week and so the concept is to transcend the earthly plane  – or something like that. I don’t know. Anything a guy with a long beard who has done 15,000 snips has to say seems deep. And we give the child a Hebrew name – David – because my stepfather’s last name was Davidson and I know this will make my mom happy. When my stepfather was around, I could deal with my mother. He was a buffer, like the baby will be.

The rabbi asks my mom to hold the baby and let him suck on the wine-soaked corner of a cloth. This is anesthesia, old school style. The baby is sucking on that Manischewitz rag like maybe his gentile half is taking over, which gives us an easy laugh.

After looking around, the rabbi sets up shop on my desk, because that’s where the sunlight filters in and he wants a clear view. My husband holds the cloth in the baby’s mouth as the rabbi does his thing. Thirty seconds later, with barely a peep from the boy, it’s all over.

The rabbi gives us instructions on how and when to apply the ointment and tells us to bury the foreskin in the dirt to show God we are earthy. It feels like I’ve been sucking on a wine cloth of my own, but I’m just tipsy with a double shot of relief and gratitude; my husband not only fixed the toilet, but he at least duct-taped over the mom problem, which can never be truly repaired but can at least be patched and re-patched. Now, she isn’t just my mother, but my son’s grandmother, and I would be an asshole to rob my son of his grandma because I can’t forgive her.

The rabbi was a man gifted with babies.

He told us to stay calm, always calm, so your baby will do the same. This isn’t always easy for me, because I love that little fucker so much that the idea of making a mistake, of not knowing what he needs or failing him, the worry that something may be broken in his body or mind that I can’t fix, the idea that I don’t have the patience or sweetness or wisdom to deserve him, well, that is the big bag of shit my soul carries around.

The rabbi leaves. My mom heads back to Vegas. Later that night, I send her a photo my husband took of her holding Buster, tears dotting her green shirt, mouth slightly turned down at the corners, staring down at her first grandchild. She emails back, “Please keep the pictures coming, love Grandma.” And we bury the foreskin in the front yard.

My dad holds Nathaniel before exploiting him.

*  A Note: People who write letters to the editor to their small town newspapers are generally crazy old coots. That may be true of my dad, but he makes some solid points nonetheless. As those who have heard me talk about my dad ad nauseam on the radio already know, he was an auto mechanic for 35 years (alternators, generators and starters) and now tutors kids part-time. He probably reads a couple books a week, as well as renting out his services to whack the weeds from neighboring lawns for $50. He is my idol. And possibly a crazy, old coot. Here is a letter he wrote to the venerable Record-Bee:

Letter to the editor:

A few weeks ago I went to Los Angeles to be with my daughter and son-in-law at the birth of their first child (and my first grandchild). It would be a C-section and we knew that going in: A week before, my daughter was handed a sonogram which said “Frank Breech.” Her first  thought  was  that she had gotten the sonogram of the wrong child, a child named “Frank Breech.” She was soon to realize that “frank breech” means the baby is lined up to come out feet first, just the opposite of ideal.

The night before the surgery they took me to see  the new Michael Moore movie, Capitalism, A Love Story.  The movie had a newsreel of FDR, filmed  a year before his death, earnestly expressing  his vision of the fulfillment  of the New Deal. FDR enumerated four things that every American should have: healthcare, decent housing, a decent  job, and an education. That is the legacy I want to leave for my grandson. And, I want that for all children.

Then I thought, “what good are all these things if there is no planet?” And, how can we do any of these things while our precious resources and genius and life are spent  on the folly of foreign wars?

What to do? I am prone to get self-righteous: I ride my bicycle to work a few days a week, I don’t eat meat, I go to Democratic Club Meetings, I occasionally volunteer to help. I tell people about  what a champ I am (and, by implication, what losers they are) and it all makes me feel good. However, the reality is that I have not made a damn bit of difference. This thought leads to a “pity party.” But, then I remember the words of Norman Mailer, “self-effacement is the worst manifestation of the ego.” The other side of “self-righteous” is “I suck.”

But, they are two side of the same coin and only cause my mountain bike tires to spin. That having been said, I feel that I should try to work toward some worthy ideals. And, as the character of Shirley McLaine put it in the movies, “There aren’t  that many shopping days ‘til Christmas.”

Somehow, I began to think about Lech Walensa  and the Solidarity movement in Poland during the Cold War. At one time, I had thought  that the movement  spontaneously grew out of the working class. I was to find out later that that the movement  was born at a meeting of  a few college professors. “Solidarity” was born as an idea. Maybe, what we need are ideas.

However, many of the folks that have ideas have those ideas influenced by corporate power  (money). Most of the elected leaders that I see on TV are gray haired men, widening at the girth, wearing big shiny rings, drooling with self-satisfaction, and taking care to do and say the things that will perpetuate their time in office.

So, here is my thought: change must come from the bottom (us). We need some ideas to fuel that change, and as starters, what better ideas than those propounded by FDR?  I think that most of us could rally around those four crucial ideas. When my grandson or better yet, all our grandchildren ask us what we were doing when the dream soured, we better have an answer.

Nelson Strasser

Getting all self-reflective and shit.

Hey other pregnant ladies, quit avoiding my gaze.

All I want to do is chat you up, and find out how many weeks pregnant you are and maybe talk some shop – you know, where you’re delivering, what you take for heartburn, what you think of cord blood banking and the new iPhone app that times contractions.  I just want to be friends, pregnant strangers.

I’ve never done this baby thing before, and I’m always hoping we’re going to see each other and do a secret handshake, and have a moment.

However, it seems you gestational types aren’t that into me. For a while, I tried to smile at you when I saw you in line at the movies, or feeding your meter, or buying groceries. I tried to look welcoming, but you looked right past me, and off I went with my tail between my crampy legs.

It’s not like you don’t see me. Yeah, I’m the one that looks like a physics problem, like I shouldn’t be able to stand upright without toppling over. At first, I wanted to assure you that I wasn’t just carrying my weight in a very unfortunate manner, make sure you knew I was really pregnant, so I would rub my stomach in that ginger way only pregnant women do, but no dice. You and your fetus snub my fetus and me. The truth is, I’ve been a social disaster most of my life, so I’m not unfamiliar with the sensation, I just can’t figure out why this dismissal is so pronounced.

Honestly, if we ran into each other wearing the same shoes or handbag, we would probably at least look at each other and chuckle and maybe say, “Nice purse,” or “You have great taste.” A richly hued and hilarious interaction it would not be, but a human connection, yes.
If I were walking a mini-schnauzer and so were you, we would stop and have a chat about our doggies, compare schnauzer notes. Arguably, an entire friendship could spring forth from this one, shared characteristic. If we were both wearing Phillies hats, or driving Mini-Coopers, or reading “Eat, Pray, Love” at The Coffee Bean, there would be a warm interaction, but both heading into child birth (big deal) and motherhood (biggest deal ever) and nada. Nada?

Important point: this pregnant girl snubbing only pertains to complete strangers.

I have now made three new friends, simply because we are all pregnant at the same time and mutual acquaintances hooked us up. I love these moms-to-be and seeing them feels so right and comfortable that even when we don’t get together, we end up texting and emailing all day. I’m more pregnant than two of the girls, giving me a few extra weeks of wisdom, which is a luxury in a situation that is so new I mainly feel like a bloated dunce who is constantly faced with decisions she can’t understand. That’s right, I’m 33 weeks pregnant and have yet to choose a hospital, a name for the baby boy or even a brand of nipple pads. I’m lost, and sometimes euphoric, and 40 pounds heavier and three cup sizes bigger and 20 degrees hotter than I ever was.

Pregnant ladies who walk right by me on the sidewalk and turn away like I’m about to make you sign a petition about saving marine life, I know you can relate.

So I can only imagine there is some sort of animal kingdom thing at play here.

When I see you out and about, I sense you getting protective about your personal space and your baby. Maybe this is insane, but it’s almost like I represent a threat, another mother bear that might somehow compromise your safety or shrink your available resources. Is there something evolutionary going on, as in, that lady better not get more shelter, berries, attention or protection from strong males in the tribe?

Alternatively, this could be endemic to the Hollywood, Los Feliz, Hancock Park areas where I live and write in various coffee shops and drop off dry cleaning and wander. Last week, I was in the Valley and struck up a conversation with a lady who was nine days overdue and she was perfectly genial. The Valley could be a less competitive and more family-friendly place. Maybe it’s just more relaxed in the 818.

Or, both of these theories could be bogus. In the classic horror movie, “When a Stranger Calls,” the most chilling moment is when cops tell the terrorized babysitter, “The call is coming from inside the house.” There is a decent chance that this call is coming from inside the house, the house being my own haunted mind. Either I am unknowingly giving off a cold vibe that freaks out the women I’m trying to befriend, or I’m reading into this parade of pregnant girls some animosity that doesn’t exist.

Like I said, my social skills have never been great.

In the end, this could all be solved with an ice-breaking secret handshake. Or if that’s too intimate, maybe we just throw up a sign, one finger per trimester, sideways, OG style, and know for a sly, passing moment that we’re in the same crew.