Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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My Lucky Number

Posted September 07, 2007
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Ben is seven. Seven! I mean, I still dart away guiltily -- and for only a minute or two -- while he's in the bath, kneeling in four inches of water, even though (a) he can swim and (b) in order to keep his whole face submerged he would need to spend a week training with a contortionist. But the baby-book advice is as fresh in my mind as the smell of talcum powder (okay, we didn't actually use talcum powder, because there was something too asbestos-y about the dust). Only recently did I stop feeling a vague pang of anxiety watching Ben eat strawberries or honey; it was like a furtive habit, this worry, one that I was perennially too exhausted to rethink or even notice, but I finally realized that if he were going to turn blue and drop writhingly to the ground, he'd likely have done it already. But he was just a baby five minutes ago! Our baby!

On his birthday I told him the story about how, after he was born, the hospital door emitted a high-pitched squeak whenever anybody opened it -- a high-pitched squeak that sounded uncannily like the beginning of Ben's cry -- and how I would leap up to nurse him (post c-section I mean "leap up" in the strictly metaphorical sense), only he'd be still asleep, squashed in next to me like a blanketed burrito. And it would just be a nurse, coming in to stick me with something or other or poke the baby or flip on the lights or peer inside somebody's undies, the way they like to do in the dead of night to keep themselves amused. And I'd say every time, "The door sounded like the baby crying," and the nurse would more or less literally pat me on the head. And only in telling this story to Ben did it occur to me how much I must have sounded to them like a person suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. (The helicopters! I can still hear them!) Now there's not the stress so much -- but the love? It really is a kind of suffering, isn't it? Something just shy of a trauma.

But I get ahead of myself. I get behind myself. Ben is seven. And he is still exactly who he's been for his whole entire life: good-natured, easy to please, curious, funny, smart, a little worried, and hugely attached to us. I look at his baby pictures, his toddler pictures -- the wide grin, the sweet eyes -- and I think, "Yup, that's Ben." And yet I know he changes so much, so quickly. Every year we write things down on his birthday card -- a kind of interview about what he likes, who he is. And some things never change ("breakfast sausages" he always likes; "watermelon" and "strep tests" he always doesn't). But I was looking at last year's card, and in the "What's new?" section it listed a few vague accomplishments: "almost swimming!" it said; it said, "wiggly tooth?" And this year it said this: "Learned to read, ride a bike, swim, blow bubblegum bubbles, knit, tie a bow. Stopped sucking thumb and being afraid of dogs. First sparkler and lemonade stand. Lost two teeth." I didn't write about how his knitting looks like the scarf equivalent of cellulite. Or about the swimming -- the swimming! -- the way Ben splashes away, panicky and without discernible forward motion, like you do when a shark has been chasing you across the ocean for days. Or the fearlessness around dogs, which involves him grabbing me around the waist when he sees one, hiding behind me and peering around the edge of my hip until it's clear that somebody's Corgi has no intention of Cujoing him to death.

And I only note these details here because I am shy about how proud I am. I am shy about how we went to pick Ben up from chorus practice and when I heard the children's high, clear voices swell together in harmony, my eyes filled with tears. (Luckily my friend Nina was there too, with her eyes similarly glistening, so I felt less freakish in my sappy, sopping devotion. However I doubt the honking V of geese out in the parking-lot twilight sent her misting up all over again.)

In Ben's class, they do something for birthdays called "out-loud presents," where the kids sit in a circle, and each one offers the celebrated child a spoken tribute. Mostly it's an exercise in sitting still and letting someone else be the center of attention; there's a lot of energy of the "ditto" kind -- after one girl praised Ben's ability to let kids join in his games, six more children echoed this exact sentiment, along with heartfelt praise of the birthday snack he'd brought (Trader Joe's shrimp dumplings). But still, it moved me to watch the children work to express themselves, to sit next to Ben, who smiled and thanked each child in turn. I wasn't sure what I was going to mention myself: Ben's generosity? His kindness or enthusiasm? How much I myself like shrimp dumplings? But when it came time for me to speak I said, with my voice quavering only a little bit, I said, "Ben, you're beautiful inside and out," and he looked at me and smiled, and said. "Thank you, Mama." And then I couldn't help adding, "Ever since you joined us, our lives have just sparkled." And he just patted me on the back, the way you do, when your mom loves you like that.

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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